(COTE X OC)The cheater is the red child

Chapter 9

External POV - Before

A man slowly advanced down a hallway, a long trail of blood visible, gathering around a single young man. The man knelt before the young man, but he had no face—only a mask with a question mark.

Mysterio: "You're an interesting subject, Hishida. So? How does defeat taste? How do you feel when I tell you that if your friends are dead, your parents are dead, and the families and friends of them all are dead—it's all because of you? Simply because you existed."

The young man's face remained empty, while the masked man laughed in a silly, provocative manner.

Mysterio: "Ah, how beautiful it is to discover a man. To see what happens when he experiences trauma—there's nothing more entertaining than that. To witness you, for the first time in your life, feeling safe, feeling loved, and then SHLACK—everything disappears and returns to nothing, just like your life at the beginning. A mere parasite."

Hishida turned his head toward him, his gaze still empty, marked by tears. He had become incapable of crying.

Mysterio: "So, what will you do now?"

POV - Hishida

The days passed as I moved forward. I'm still far from my goal.

Why is that?

How is it that, as a genius, I'm struggling so much with this seemingly trivial challenge?

Am I condemned to remain what I am? To exist by this single, unchanging rule?

No matter your strength or intelligence, someone will surpass you in this domain. No matter how much you resist manipulation, someone can manipulate you with ease. That's why, when I fight, I always apply one truth: never underestimate; it's better to overestimate.

An idiot is also unpredictable, and their thought process can be skewed. An intelligent person can be predicted: if we share the same logic, we'll reach the same conclusion. But just like with the two problems, there will always be a solution.

Life is just a problem to solve, and the answer is different for each of us. We don't start the same, true, we're not equal, but we have the power to become what we want.

To reach this ideal, as I always say, all you need to do is solve the problem.

I walked through the hallways, contemplating future events. The project I set up for Horikita is already in motion. If I want to control Kushida, I need a contingency plan in case this one fails. When someone is intelligent, their mistakes have greater and more dramatic consequences. This is the purpose of my initial plan for Horikita. I know there's a risk, sure, it's minimal, but anything can happen in life. Never trust high or low probabilities. As long as they're not zero, there's always a risk.

When the school showed its true face, Horikita couldn't believe her eyes. She, who considered herself above others, was now seen as just another part of the system's trash. When you present an undeniable truth to an arrogant person like Horikita, she typically refuses to believe it. An arrogant person is stubborn: either they'll ignore the fact, like Koenji did, or they'll try to prove that the truth is wrong—like trying to convince the teacher that her placement in class D was a mistake.

Horikita is someone who, when told her faults, justifies them with something that seems logical to her. When told that her arrogance is a flaw, she responds by saying it's simply self-confidence. Self-confidence is trusting your abilities, while arrogance is having an illusion of your own abilities. The distinction is subtle, but it's there.