Mark did not survive the corporate world by being a genius. He survived by copying one.
Whenever his logistics firm faced an impossible deficit, Mark asked himself one question: What would Reine Asakura do in this kind of situation?
Reine was the cold, calculating, flawlessly logical protagonist of his favorite light novel, "Welcome to the High School of Meritocracy."
Mark used her fictional strategies to climb the corporate ladder in the real world by simulating her cold, analytical thought process.
Then, a twelve-ton truck suffered a brake failure, and Mark’s real world ended.
He wakes up inside the biological vessel of Kenji, a painfully average, 160-centimeter-tall background character. He is sitting in a pristine white classroom. The girl sitting at the desk next to him has flat, dark reddish-brown hair, piercing amber eyes, and a perfectly neutral expression.
It is Reine Asakura. He is trapped inside the novel.
This academy does not operate on friendship or standard grades. It operates on a brutal "Seat Economy." Classes fight in psychological Special Exams to earn currency. That currency is used to buy the physical seats of students in rival classes. Once your seat is bought, you pay monthly rent to the enemy. If you default, you are expelled. It is a system of financial hostage-taking and mutual assured destruction.
Kenji does not want to be her ally.
In his previous life, he owed his entire corporate success to Reine's way of genius thinking. He was imitating her mind's cognitive process.
Now, standing next to his idol, he feels the ultimate drive of a fanatic. Just as a basketball player dreams of playing a serious, limit-testing game against their ultimate idol, Kenji wants to step onto the court against Reine. He wants to prove he can dismantle the flawless genius mind that built his own success in his previous life.
Kenji has one advantage: he knows the entire three-year timeline of the novel. But he also knows a mathematical truth. Meta-knowledge is not enough to defeat the super-genius, Reine Asakura, in a fair fight. If Reine detects that he can predict the future, her genius mind will adapt, and she will crush him.
Kenji makes a calculated decision. He cannot fight her immediately because they are assigned to the same class. He knows her exact script: Reine will operate in the shadows for two years, secretly pulling the strings to elevate their defective Class D to the top-ranking Class A.
Once she succeeds, she will transfer to an enemy class in Year Three simply to seek a real challenge. That is Kenji's strict deadline. He has exactly 24 months to gather the massive currency required to execute his own transfer to a third, opposing class.
While Reine builds her empire, Kenji plays the perfect background character. He acts like an idiot. He complains about trivial things.
He tricks Reine into categorizing him as harmless biological noise, even provoking her into a spontaneous, absurd bet: If he ever defeats her in a battle of wits, she has to go on a date with him. She agrees, calculating the probability of his victory at zero.
She is wrong.
While Reine manipulates the school from the shadows, Kenji uses his future knowledge to quietly exploit the economy's blind spots. He builds an untraceable dark pool of capital right under her nose.
Then, the first day of Year Three arrives.
Former Class D became Class A.
Reine transfer to other class.
Kenji cashes in his hidden funds, executes a hostile class transfer, and shatters his camouflage.
The two-year observation phase is over. Reine’s data on foolish Kenji become suddenly obsolete. The war between a flawless super genius and a man holding the knowledge of the future has begun.