COTE Year 2 Reimagined

Volume 8:Part 2

The next few days went by as expected, Horikita updated me on anything that happened in class, Kei visited me every day and Ryuen transferred the points as per our deal which left me with almost 8 million private points, I might've overdone it but I had a feeling they'd end up being useful.

I also got an update from Nanase about the first years. Apparently, Yagami's expulsion led to his class being demoted down to class C, not to mention the fact that they lost their leader.

Now it was the start of the new week, and I was trying to make it to school but was unfortunately ambushed by Horikita.

"Ayanokoji-kun. Walk with me."

Her words could be taken as a nice invitation to walk to school together, but her tone made it clear that I was being threatened. I sighed and followed after her.

"It's clear you don't want to discuss what happened, so I've been thinking about it on my own. Yagami-kun wanted to expel you, so you arranged the meeting in order to set him up and force a confession, then you came in yourself to stop him from hurting anyone since you knew he'd become aggressive."

I didn't respond to her words, but she kept going anyway.

"I understand most of it, but I'm still missing some information. You wouldn't go that far,  and even participate yourself if Yagami wasn't dangerous. You and Yagami-kun are connected somehow, and so is Amasawa-san. You had to have known about his abilities beforehand in order to take action this way, and it's also unusual that people like Yagami-kun and Amasawa-san who have such impressive abilities like you do just happened to enroll here and try to expel you."

Horikita was smart enough to gather that much, but there was no way she could understand it all without knowing about the white room. A place that's so ridiculous you'd think it only exists in movies or books.

"Maybe, as you've said, I don't plan to discuss this."

Horikita nodded at me and kept walking.

"I know. I simply wanted to inform you about what I've learned."

I see. She wanted me to know that she had connected most of the dots on her own.

"How did it go with Matsushita and the others?"

She seemed confused for a moment but immediately understood what I meant.

"They weren't happy that I lied to them, but they were glad my plan worked in the end."

Ryuen and Horikita had been working together all along. His exposing our plans about the maid café was all part of her scheme to attract attention to us by creating this rivalry. Only Horikita, Ryuen, Katsuragi, and I knew about this until the day of the festival. From the looks of it, Matsushita and Sato didn't hold a grudge against Horikita for leaking their idea, which was good.

"The class is starting to trust you more."

She nodded but still looked uneasy.

"That's true, but Ryuen-kun and Sakayanagi-san are both still ahead of us, even Kanzaki-kun hasn't completely fallen yet."

It's true that the class rankings were still quite close. Now wasn't the time to let our guard down and take it easy.

"We should be hearing about a new special exam today. Prepare yourself."

Prepare myself?

"Why are you acting like I'm participating?"

She glared at me without hesitation.

"I'll do what's required, but don't expect anything else."

I had no plans to do more than the bare minimum.

"I should've expected as much."

Horikita sighed and walked off while looking back at me with a disappointed expression. Shortly after that, Kushida, who's been walking behind us the entire time, came up to me.

"Good morning, Ayanokoji-kun."

She gave me a cold greeting without even glancing at me and then started walking next to me.

"What's got you upset?"

I decided to skip right to it and see what was up with her.

"You can notice? And here I thought I was doing pretty well."

Her acting skills were impressive, but I could instantly tell.

"I'm irritated that you didn't tell me. You're the one behind Yagami-kun's expulsion, aren't you?"

I nodded, and she clicked her tongue at me.

"I don't care anyway. I just came here to ask about what's next."

It sounded like she did, in fact, care, but I decided to keep those thoughts to myself.

"Yagami is now, and Amasawa probably won't come near you, so there's no reason for us to continue this relationship, although I might need your help in other small matters."

She wore a proud expression now.

"You're completely useless without me. Is that it?"

It seems she really wanted to feel superior to me.

"I could probably deal with it all without you. It'd just be more troublesome than it needed to be."

She looked irritated once more and started thinking.

"I guess helping you won't be too annoying if they're small matters."

As expected, Kushida will end up helping me regardless.

"How nice of you."

She seemed to have something else on her mind.

"When we're done with all that, I wouldn't mind being your friend."

She said that in a somewhat low tone, but i still managed to hear it. However, before i could respond, she had already walked away from me.

Was she asking me to be her friend while making it sound like it would be some sort of privilege for me? I suppose Kushida really struggled with being genuine.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't mind calling Kushida a friend, I'm not sure if that's how I truly felt about her but she was one of the only people I felt somewhat comfortable around, alongside Kei and Nanase who also understood me more than most.

I kept walking towards the school building while thinking about what kind of special exam we'll have this time.

I was also wary of Nagumo and Amasawa, so I had to do something about them.