ANHS—the Director's office.
Not long after the knock, Tsukishiro personally went to open the door. "Come in."
Yagami and Amasawa—both from the White Room's fifth generation—stepped into the office. Tsukishiro returned to his chair behind the desk, while the two of them remained standing in front of him.
"Well?" Tsukishiro didn't immediately ask why neither of them had made a direct move during the cross-grade team exam. Instead, like a real school director, he acted concerned about their daily lives. "You've been here almost two months now. How's it been?"
"It's been pretty fun~" Amasawa wasn't stiff at all. She grinned brightly. "Forget the first-years—just the second-years alone have been interesting."
"Campus life is fun too. It's not quite like what books and the internet make it sound like, but it's still way more comfortable than that tiny White Room~"
"Mm-hm." Tsukishiro nodded along with an easy smile, like he genuinely agreed. When she finished, he turned to Yagami.
Yagami's arrogance was plain to see—his eyes full of contempt, none of that sunny friendliness he showed outsiders. "Boring. All of it is boring."
"They call them specialized teachers, but everything they teach in class is low-level trash. Not even remotely challenging."
"Especially the other students my age. They look at questions so childish they might as well be preschool worksheets… and they still have to sit there thinking forever before they can answer."
"Every class feels like I'm just throwing my life away. My time is valuable. If I had a choice, I'd rather go back to the White Room and keep studying than waste my time rotting here."
Their evaluations couldn't have been more opposite: one found it interesting, the other found it unbearable.
Tsukishiro neither agreed nor disagreed. He didn't criticize, either—he simply followed Yagami's logic.
"Then if you want to return to the White Room so badly… why didn't you carry out your assignment?"
"All you had to do during the cross-grade team exam was become Kiyotaka's partner. That would've made expelling him easy. Amasawa finding things interesting is one thing, but you—who's desperate to go back—why didn't you move?"
"And you should know… when the results came out yesterday and nobody was expelled, Atsuomi-sama called and absolutely tore me apart. He didn't hold back on an 'incompetent subordinate' like me."
Tsukishiro shook his head as he spoke, as if the memory still made him uneasy.
The instant Ayanokouji's name was mentioned, Yagami's expression twisted into something ugly—like he'd just heard the name of the man who murdered his family. His hatred for Ayanokouji wasn't just deep—it was violent.
Just hearing the name made the disgust inside him surge up, practically spilling off his face.
Even Yagami couldn't remember when he'd started hating him this much.
Once he understood the purpose of the White Room, he became convinced he was the strongest made genius—an ultimate product of human conditioning. Better than everyone. Anyone.
No matter how brutal the curriculum was, no matter how insane the combat training got, he finished everything in first place.
And yet he was never praised even once—because Ayanokouji existed.
Every time Yagami placed first, the instructors would stare at him with cold eyes and say the same line:
"The fourth generation's Kiyotaka was even better than you."
Not once. Not twice. Over and over, across every subject and every training program—just that same refrain:
You're not as good as him. Someone else's kid is always above you.
It made Yagami's jealousy rot into something darker. He came to hate Ayanokouji so much he wanted him dead.
Because the White Room wasn't a school meant to raise one exceptional genius.
It was an industrial machine—built to produce geniuses reliably, in bulk.
Which meant it only needed one successful case… and then it could replicate the entire growth path.
And the highest masterpiece of the White Room wasn't Yagami.
It was Ayanokouji.
So if Yagami couldn't-- become that successful case, then what was the point of fifteen years of hell? Of enduring the White Room's inhuman training and experiments?
For a time, he even questioned whether his life had any meaning at all.
Then Tsukishiro brought him good news—an assignment that would let him leave the White Room, expel Ayanokouji Kiyotaka, and bring him back.
To Yagami, it sounded like a gift from the heavens.
Expel him? Bring him back? Bring him back for what—so he could be used as the template while Yagami got discarded like trash?
No.
At that point… it'd be better to kill him here at ANHS and replace him. One clean solution.
That was exactly why Yagami refused to act during the cross-grade team exam. A setup like that didn't give him any hope of killing Ayanokouji.
And killing him quickly wouldn't be satisfying anyway.
Not after fifteen years of hatred.
If he was going to do it, he wanted Ayanokouji to suffer first. To be broken down completely—then killed.
So he needed time. He needed to map Ayanokouji Kiyotaka's surroundings—his relationships, his habits, his environment—wait for a better moment.
A moment where torment would be easy… and the final strike would be absolute.
Only then did Yagami finally look at Tsukishiro with something resembling respect.
"Tsukishiro-san… during the cross-grade exam, I figured Amasawa and Housen plan from First-year Class D had it covered, so I didn't bother moving."
"I didn't expect it to fail across the board. Fine—set up a large outdoor event for the school. I'll make you satisfied."
"Huh?" Amasawa's hand shot up immediately, eyes sparkling. "An outdoor event? Yes! Yes! That sounds amazing!"
"Two months of campus life is basically enough—I wanna go out and actually do stuff!"
For Amasawa, the White Room's goals and assignments weren't something she cared about. From start to finish, she'd been chasing fun.
Campus life. The outdoors. Ordinary scenery that normal people took for granted—things she'd never gotten to see after growing up inside the White Room.
She wanted it. Badly.
"In that case, I'll arrange it." Tsukishiro agreed without hesitation, more like a gentle caretaker than the person in charge of two White Room students.
As if whatever they asked for, he'd simply do.
Yagami found it a little strange.
Why does Tsukishiro-san feel like he's… listening to us? Isn't that backwards?
Back in the White Room, as Atsuomi's trusted subordinate, Tsukishiro's status had been higher than theirs. He didn't need to act like this.
Amasawa, on the other hand, didn't notice any of those weird little details at all.
She was already busy imagining how much fun the outing was going to be.