With every sentence Li Wu spoke, the system delivered a narration, as if trying to explain the current situation.
Hilarious. Raiden Mei is a good girl, and these are the exact lines the protagonist used to win her over in the comic. This system is just here to mess with me! No wonder it acts so human.
Raiden Mei is such a pure, good girl, and she's smiling so sweetly. How could she possibly want to kill me?
Just because I saved her and said I'd help her?
No normal person would treat their benefactor like that, right?
Especially someone like Raiden Mei, who's being severely ostracized and bullied. She should be longing for someone to stand by her side.
This system is 99% just trolling me. Li Wu believed he had seen through everything.
"Then I'll be in your care, Li Wu-kun..."
Raiden Mei's voice was as sweet as ever, but this time, there was an inexplicable pause in her reply.
Since she had her head down, Li Wu couldn't see her expression, but he figured she must be overjoyed!
Following the comic's plot, Li Wu successfully avoided all the hazards on the way to school and safely escorted Raiden Mei to the classroom door.
Both the front and back doors were inappropriately closed, which was obviously unnatural.
What normal class keeps both doors shut in the morning? It was clearly a prank setup.
Yet Mei seemed completely unguarded, reaching out to push the door open.
"Wait!"
Li Wu stopped her, pulling Mei back to his side.
"Let me."
With that, Li Wu forcefully kicked the front door open. A basin filled with sticky liquid crashed to the floor with a crisp CLANG.
Inside was cola—essentially, sugar water...
There was a lot of greenery outside the school, and during the summer, there were plenty of ants. It went without saying what would happen if someone got drenched by this basin of cola.
In the comic's plot, because Raiden Mei was doused in this cola and couldn't clean herself up in time, she ended up covered in ants. Eventually, the dense swarms stung her, triggering a rapid, systemic allergic reaction that killed her.
That's right, this was a world full of sick fetishes. The malice directed at the heroines was never disguised. Even the most trivial of incidents could cost a heroine her life.
"Go on in, it's fine now."
Li Wu swept a scrutinizing gaze over the students in the classroom, then turned to speak to Mei.
But Mei's face was deathly pale. She stood rooted to the spot, completely dumbfounded. Her slender fingers were entirely drained of color as she gripped Li Wu's arm tightly, unresponsive for a long time.
"Raiden-san? Raiden-san?"
Assuming she was just spooked by the "prank," Li Wu prompted her. After all, her grip on his arm was starting to hurt.
"Ah... Yeah... Thank you. Let's go in! Class is about to start."
[Raiden Mei's affection has dropped significantly, and she has developed a massive amount of disgust toward you.]
Li Wu continued to ignore the system's narration, walking into the classroom side-by-side with Mei.
There was nothing to hide. Since he knew the plot inside out, Li Wu was confident he could defuse all these minor school crises.
However, there was something else that caught his attention...
Kiana Kaslana.
Back when he was refining the plot, he had put Kiana and Mei in the same class.
In his memory, after the comic's protagonist helped Mei deal with the door prank, the boisterous Kiana would jolt awake from her sweet dreams. Then, she would fly into a rage, transforming into a superhero of justice to scold the pranksters, before coming over to check on Mei and the protagonist.
But now...
Li Wu sat in the back row, near the center. His gaze skipped past the guilty or disdainful faces in the classroom and landed squarely on the "King's Seat"—the second-to-last desk by the window.
Kiana Kaslana sat there quietly, looking intellectual and elegant, like a serene masterpiece of a painting.
In stark contrast to the expected image of her sleeping soundly on her desk, Kiana was leaning sideways against the wall, a closed fist propping up her cheek. The hazy morning light filtered through the window pane, half-cloaking her in a layer of pure mist.
Her silvery-white hair was meticulously combed, tied into a neat high ponytail that draped over her shoulder, giving her a valiant, dashing look.
Kiana had her head slightly bowed, her long eyelashes fluttering like the wings of a butterfly. All her attention seemed focused on the thick book in her hands.
The commotion in the classroom, the mess on the floor, the suppressed whispers among the students...
All the noise and chaos vanished without a trace the moment they neared her.
Kiana didn't even spare a glance from the corner of her eye. The motion of her turning the pages remained steady, her gaze as tranquil as the falling morning light.
Li Wu's brow twitched imperceptibly.
Wrong. This is completely wrong.
How could the Kiana from the comic possibly be reading a book? How could she maintain such an intellectual posture?
She should have hollered, jumped onto her desk, eyes burning with the fire of a... lion, acting like a little sun crashing into everything.
Not like this... Perfect, disciplined, yet as cold as a spotless, otherworldly crystal palace with no entrance.
Before he could ponder this further, a few neatly dressed students approached Mei. They said something to her, and Mei followed them out of the classroom.
Li Wu glanced up at the clock on the wall. 10:25 AM—the exact time the girls' bathroom incident took place.
"I'll have to figure out what's wrong with Kiana later. I need to help Mei deal with the bathroom incident first."
Chiba Academy was a school for the elite.
Those who studied here were either rich, powerful, or the rare commoner admitted on exceptionally outstanding grades.
Because of this, when conflicts arose, the ones who resolved them were rarely the teachers or the principal, but rather the parents of the students involved.
In the comic, because the protagonist helped Raiden Mei during the bathroom incident, the parents of those students hired thugs to beat him to death with clubs in the middle of nowhere, leaving his body to be eaten piece by piece by wild animals...
Fortunately, he had Ruslan as a trump card. Li Wu remembered that the parents of those few students were just wealthy, not top-tier powerhouses. Handing them over to Ruslan would easily prevent their subsequent revenge, saving him from a gruesome death.
Just as Li Wu stood up and was about to head out the door, a bone-chilling voice drifted over from the window.
"This matter isn't that simple."
Kiana closed her book at an unhurried pace, using her slender fingers to slip a bookmark onto the page she was reading, before finally looking up.
Her eyes were a clear, translucent ice-blue, as spotless as the sky.
There was no curiosity, no concern, no anger—not even the most basic hint of appraisal.
"What are you talking about? I just thought the classroom felt a bit stuffy, so I was going to get some fresh air," Li Wu argued defensively.
Normally, no one would poke their nose into someone else's business like this. That excuse should be enough to get him off the hook.
But Kiana's gaze remained tranquil, showing no signs of retreating. It was like the unwavering light of the sun, which inevitably falls upon every corner of the world, illuminating every insignificant speck of dust equally.
Kiana stared straight at Li Wu, enunciating clearly: "The Farmer and the Viper. A household tale, told to death. A farmer finds a freezing viper and, out of shallow sympathy, places it in his coat to warm it. After the snake revives, it follows its biological instincts and bites the farmer."
"Um... I know that story, but I don't think it has much to do with me."
"You still don't understand."
Kiana paused. Her cold voice was like beads of ice dropping one by one onto a jade plate—exceptionally clear in the quiet classroom, yet carrying an air of detached alienation.
"I don't oppose your actions, but a wise man does not stand beneath a crumbling wall. Before you act, you need to consider whether the other party is truly worth doing that for."
"There have been people like you in the past, but the outcome never changed. If you can figure out the reason, you'll understand what I'm truly trying to tell you."
[Kiana Kaslana has developed a sense of pity toward you.]