"Love?"
Horikita Suzune's brow furrowed, eyes flickering with genuine confusion. "What does that have to do with me not being able to learn Ripple Breathing?"
"Everything," Chris said.
Facing her skepticism, his expression was unusually serious.
"I don't know whether you scanned the item guide against the Ripple itself after you bought it. But she and I both ran comparison scans on the item at some point — Sakayanagi Arisu and I."
"The information we got from the guide was far more explicit than anything your brother passed along verbally."
"Ripple Breathing never worked through rote imitation. It runs on a 'sense of life' and instinct."
As he spoke, Chris glanced across at Nanase Tsubasa, who was sitting opposite them, mouth half-open as if about to say something.
"Take Nanase — the reason she was able to feel her way to the entry threshold so quickly isn't just her exceptional physical baseline. The bigger part of it is that she's an instinct-type fighter."
"She doesn't lean on rigid logic. She goes by feel. She doesn't suppress her own instincts — she's willing to release the force of life as it comes."
Chris's gaze drifted back to Horikita Suzune.
"And you, Horikita?"
"Hyper-rational. Locked inside a shell you've labelled 'perfection.' Every surplus emotion, every raw instinct — suppressed."
"Ripple needs flow — and you're fighting to control it. Ripple needs the passion of life — and you demand of yourself constant, unyielding restraint. You're working completely against the grain. How could you ever hope to resonate with it?"
Being called out so bluntly — and so accurately — Horikita Suzune pressed her lips together in stubborn silence.
"But — Ayanokoji managed it!" she shot back instinctively. "The way he carries himself isn't that different from me. If anything, he's even more extreme. There's no reason it works for him and not for me..."
The girl lowered her head, staring at her own palm, voice dropping. "I think... it's probably just me. I simply don't have the talent for this."
"No."
"You're wrong."
Chris shook his head, his tone certain. "Horikita — do you know what I've noticed? Most of the time, the vast majority of people never even reach the point where talent becomes the deciding factor. They're still stuck at the effort stage."
"Is suppression the same thing as composure?"
"The wall you've hit is entirely the result of your own mental block."
"And I happen to know exactly what that block is."
"W — why? How?"
Horikita Suzune's head snapped up. Those eyes that always kept the world at arm's length — for just this moment, something like desperate want flickered through them.
Chris looked at her.
He reached out his hand. It hovered in the air for the briefest pause — and then, gently, it came to rest on the girl's smooth black hair.
"After the Black Sphere exam before last, your brother came to find me. We talked, just the two of us, for a while."
Horikita Suzune's body went faintly rigid. Even her breathing stuttered.
Chris seemed not to notice. He continued at his own pace.
"After we exchanged the intel we'd agreed on, we talked about a lot of things. He made a particular point of asking me — if things got dangerous in the exam grounds — to look after his secretary, Tachibana Akane, if I could."
"And in all of that... he never once said your name."
Horikita Suzune bit down on her lower lip at that — then released it just as quickly, at a loss.
"Now, I believed he wasn't lying. But I also didn't believe that Horikita Manabu would genuinely place Tachibana Akane above his own little sister."
"So I stopped him as he was getting up to leave, and said it plainly — that he'd probably come because of you."
Chris felt the slight tremor running through the girl beneath his hand, and kept going.
"He didn't explain himself. He just turned his back to me and said — that you'd always copied him, ever since you were small. He was cold, so you became cold. He offhandedly mentioned once, as a throwaway lie, that he liked long hair — and you kept yours long for years after."
"You chased after his shadow like a puppet on strings. And that, he said, troubled him greatly."
"Combined with what he did at the volcano — the sacrifice he made to save you."
"Everything became clear to me."
Chris withdrew his hand. His eyes, when they settled on her, were deep and steady.
"Horikita — because of a single offhand remark from your brother, you forced down the person you actually are and rebuilt yourself into a machine without feelings. You've kept every nerve strung tight, terrified of putting a single foot wrong..."
"So let me ask you this — someone who can't even find their own authentic self. Do you honestly think you can master an energy like Ripple Breathing, one that represents pure, unbridled life?"
Horikita Suzune went silent.
Her mouth was slightly open. No sound came out.
Or rather — there was nothing to refute.
Because Chris hadn't said anything wrong.
And beyond that — something like the detail of keeping her hair long because of a single word from her brother was the kind of secret that could never have been uncovered through observation alone. The only possible source was her brother having confided it himself.
Her brother... had always known.
And it had troubled him?
"Does that mean... I really was doing it wrong?"
Horikita Suzune's voice came out barely above a whisper — a murmur threaded through with bewilderment.
"No. You weren't wrong."
Chris denied her self-doubt once more. "Horikita — having a goal to orient yourself toward, moving forward in pursuit of a beautiful ideal — there's nothing wrong with that, not at all. Chasing the light is simply human nature."
"But if chasing the light costs you your own shadow — if you lose your true self in the process — then you've gotten the whole thing completely backwards."
"A heart kept dark and compressed can never hold up a radiant face. And naturally, it can never understand the secret of life either. It's like ice that's frozen solid — you have to let it thaw slowly, at its own pace, before it can flow again..."
Horikita Suzune's lashes dipped. The confusion in her eyes deepened.
"But... I've gotten used to living this way. I don't know how to change. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do anymore... Whatever I do right now, it all feels like the wrong answer."
This time, before Chris could even open his mouth —
Nanase Tsubasa, who had been quietly listening all along, beat him to it.
"That's not true, Senpai!"
The golden-haired girl fixed her with a sincere, earnest gaze. "You've already done so much, Senpai! Even if you're lost for a while right now, that doesn't mean you've lost! Once you settle down and think it through, I know you'll pick it up — and fast!"
Chris glanced at Nanase Tsubasa, then gave a quiet nod of agreement.
"She's right. You don't have to keep forcing yourself."
"Think back — when you helped me out in the exam grounds, you weren't sitting there calculating profit and loss or checking whether it fit your direction, were you? You simply wanted to. That was all. It's the same now."
"If you don't know which way to go — then stop walking for now. Rest. Don't force yourself to find a perfect answer this instant."
Chris paused, then added quietly:
"And if you really are lost... I can look with you. Until you find yourself again."
Horikita Suzune's lashes gave the faintest tremble.
But her fierce pride still won out. She dropped her gaze and turned away from Chris's eyes.
"I... I'll think again about where I go from here."
"Thank you... for being willing to say all of that to me. I won't stay like this — wallowing — forever."
With that, Horikita Suzune shot to her feet as if she'd been electrified.
She didn't even pick up her phone. She just wanted to escape — to get out of this dizzying warmth before it swallowed her whole — and she turned and walked quickly toward the library doors.
"...I'm heading back first."
The girl left the words behind in a hurry, her retreating figure carrying just a hint of barely-concealed panic.
However.
Unlike Chris, who had been sitting behind Horikita Suzune the whole time, Nanase Tsubasa had been seated directly across from her. Even when Horikita dipped her head to avoid anyone's eyes, Nanase had caught every shift of expression on her face.
It was the look of someone... like a prisoner walking free — a deep, bone-level relief, as if a crushing set of shackles had finally been pried loose.
And yet — having gone so long without ever letting the sunlight reach her — she was instinctively flinching away from the warmth now that it was here, retreating in flustered, unguarded confusion.
Watching Horikita flee like a startled animal, Nanase Tsubasa picked up the phone she'd left behind. She was already half-rising with the intention of going after her.
"Don't."
Chris reached out and pressed a hand to her shoulder, his tone easy. "Don't disturb her right now. Let her have some time to herself."
Nanase Tsubasa stopped. She pressed her lips together, her expression complicated as she turned to look at him.
"Senpai... were all the things you just said to Horikita-senpai true?"
Chris raised an eyebrow, the faintest smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.
"Your instincts really are sharp."
"Mmm... there was, admittedly, a small degree of artistic license on my part. But the facts and the core meaning behind them haven't changed."
"So you don't need to worry about Horikita getting hurt again — finding out she'd been deceived, because she couldn't make the change after all."
Because everything he'd said was the truth. Not a word of it was fabricated.
The only omission was that Horikita Manabu hadn't complained about Horikita Suzune to his face, word for word.
But that was what had happened. That was reality.
Undeniable.
And besides — given the mutually prickly stubbornness shared by both Suzune and Manabu, the odds of either of them sitting down to compare the exact wording of what was said were essentially zero.
Even if he'd gotten a detail or two slightly off — in the face of the real gem of truth at the heart of it, his version stood as gospel.
Hearing that, Nanase Tsubasa let out a slow breath of relief. "That's a relief then..."
Then, as if something had suddenly jogged her memory:
"Oh, right — Senpai. The first-years' preliminary trial is set to start every Tuesday afternoon, isn't it?"
"It's not that far off now. Has our class confirmed the slots yet?"
Chris withdrew the hand resting on her shoulder and answered offhandedly:
"Hirata hasn't made it official yet, but barring anything unexpected, it'll most likely be the same handful who took the extended leave from Chabashira Sae for special training."
Nanase Tsubasa gave a thoughtful nod.
"Setting aside your fixed slot as a Black Sphere regular — that means five more spots are needed, between the trial and the main exam."
"If the next trial runs similarly to the rules Hirata shared from last time — multi-class competition—"
The girl fixed him with a bright, burning look. "Is there a chance I could compete for one of those slots?"
Chris looked at her. He neither confirmed nor denied it.
"Maybe. That side of things isn't really my call, and I have no interest in getting involved in roster decisions."
"But with the Ripple Breathing talent you've shown so far — if you wanted to put yourself forward, you'd absolutely have a shot."
In truth — within Chris's own mental script, the next exam was something he'd already been quietly planning around. He intended to send the squad up against the Pillar Men and vampires from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Creatures with a crippling weakness to sunlight — as a proving ground for new combatants, absolutely workable.
And with a bit of luck, they might even have a chance to receive Ripple energy directly from the original Ripple Warriors of the source material — a chance at genuine enhancement.
More than that, though —
This exam was different from the full-school battle royale on the Uninhabited Island. As a mid-scale transitional trial, it was actually perfectly viable to slot Shiranami Chihiro in and continue progressing her revival arc.
Since there'd be Pillar Men and vampires anyway, why not just build out a proper Rule-Horror style testing environment while he was at it?
Slot Shiranami Chihiro in as a "special rules entity."
Make her believe — and genuinely feel — that if she's seen by anyone other than the first person to lay eyes on her, she'll immediately fall and be erased as a malignant spirit.
And simultaneously feed the other examinees a misleading rule suggesting that catching a glimpse of the "ghost" would trigger open combat.
The whole thing would naturally evolve into a scenario where both sides were desperately trying to avoid being spotted by the other.
As a bonus, this would also lay the groundwork for Shiranami Chihiro to reappear at school in a way that made logical sense later on.
After all — with Shiranami Chihiro as she currently was, the prospect of her showing up at his doorstep uninvited was a beloved piece of theatre he'd been looking forward to for quite some time.
"That said..."
Chris's thoughts began to drift.
The preliminary trial could only ever sharpen a small handful of people at a time.
If, by the time a major end-of-term exam on the scale of the Uninhabited Island event inevitably rolled around, the vast majority of students were still deadweight — the actual pressure of combat would still fall on the same few shoulders it always did.
Conveniently, class points across every homeroom were overflowing right now. Just sitting on them was pointless.
Maybe it was time to add a patch — allow class evaluation points to be exchanged for usage time in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber.
Inside the Chamber, students could temporarily borrow the core Black Sphere three-piece set for live combat simulation. That would not only drain off the inflating class point economy, but rapidly push up the floor for ordinary students.
As for the exchange rate...
10 class evaluation points for one real-world minute. That felt right.
He'd handed those points out for free anyway. This was just one way to recoup a portion of them.
Boosting the baseline survival rate across the board, while simultaneously giving every class fresh motivation to keep pushing — a perfect closed loop.
—
At the same time.
In a vast, open indoor sports gymnasium.
As the afternoon class bell rang out, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka tucked his phone away and turned his gaze toward the other side of the court.
Thud!
A dull impact — and Hirata Yousuke skidded across the gymnasium floor for several meters on his back.
He was gasping hard, his undershirt soaked through with sweat.
And facing him, Koenji Rokusuke flicked a hand through his golden hair with a casual, unbothered air, looking for all the world like he'd barely broken a sweat.
"Let's pause there."
Ayanokoji stepped in to break up their sparring session. "Time's about up."
"Also — Chris just sent me a message on LINE."
"He says that new transfer student, Nanase Tsubasa — she's already crossed the Ripple Breathing threshold. She's requesting to enter herself for the preliminary trial coming up in a couple of days."
"He specifically mentioned that she came here expressly for the 'Black Sphere Miracle,' and her fighting spirit is high."
At that, Koenji Rokusuke stopped his advance toward Hirata Yousuke.
He let out a light, amused sound, his eyes glittering with something like interest.
"Oh-ho? Managing to break into Ripple Breathing in that short a time... looks like she actually is a talented Girl."
"But coming all this way specifically for the Black Sphere Miracle — now that really is an adorably naive thing to do."
"Still — letting her enter isn't out of the question. Even the most gifted rough gem needs to be tempered by real battle before it can truly grow. A greenhouse flower won't last long against the Black Sphere."
Hirata Yousuke's wound-tight nerves finally had room to breathe.
He fished his phone out of his jacket pocket, glanced at the time, and spoke up with a note of concern:
"If Nanase is going, though — what about Karuizawa Kei?"
"Before the last preliminary trial, Karuizawa already said in front of the whole class — all the girls — that she'd be going next time."
Hirata Yousuke wiped the sweat from his brow and said with clear concern: "If she backs down at the last moment, it'll inevitably stir up talk among the girls, and that's bad for class morale..."
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka thought it over, then spoke:
"That's easy enough to solve."
"If the slot count for this preliminary trial is four again, then just have both Karuizawa Kei and Nanase Tsubasa enter together."
Ayanokoji laid it out calmly. "Looking at what Chris has been doing lately, it seems like he's planning to use Karuizawa Kei to coordinate the class's girls as a whole. In that case — we may as well do him a favor and help push Karuizawa into position."
Hirata Yousuke found the logic sound and gave a nod.
"Then let's give Matsushita Chiaki's slot temporarily to Karuizawa. I'm sure Matsushita Chiaki would understand the bigger picture."
Koenji Rokusuke dusted himself off and walked to the side to lift his custom water bottle.
"All this logistical reshuffling — that's your department, Hirata Boy. You handle it."
He tipped his head back and took a long drink, then asked as an afterthought:
"What I'm more interested in is — for the Black Sphere main exam this time around, who does our class intend to send?"
"Given the state Horikita Suzune's been in lately — drifting around like a ghost — there's a fair chance she won't be rotating in this time."
Hirata Yousuke's gaze shifted to Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.
In his mind, setting aside Chris — who didn't appear on the rotation list — Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, who had integrated the Parasyte and mastered Ripple Breathing, was without question the safest, most reliable option available.
And yet — Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, quite unexpectedly, shook his head.
"Originally, I was also planning to register."
Ayanokoji explained slowly:
"But after the Uninhabited Island exam settled... I was paying attention to Katsuragi Kohei's score. And that made me reconsider."
Koenji Rokusuke raised an eyebrow, catching on immediately.
"Katsuragi's score... yes, indeed."
"I remember that at settlement, his cumulative score was irregular. If you only count what he was meant to have from the exam proper, it should have been three points lower."
Koenji's lips curved. "The extra three points... could only mean one thing — the Black Sphere tallied in the score from that small-scale Beastmaster Katsuragi took down during the preliminary trial, and counted it toward his total as well!"
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka agreed with quiet calm.
"Exactly."
"If kills made as an 'intruder' are also counted by the Black Sphere and calculated into one's S-points — then I think we can change our approach."
"With my current combat strength — between the Parasyte integration and the power of the Titan — I no longer need to rely on the basic equipment inside the Black Sphere space."
"Even entering the exam grounds empty-handed, I have both the ability to protect myself and to eliminate targets."
"So — whether it's guaranteeing the safety of the other intruders, or looking at it purely from the angle of preparation — choosing to be an 'intruder' in the preliminary trial is the most correct move for me right now."
Hearing that —
Koenji Rokusuke studied the boy before him — seemingly unremarkable on the surface, but with depths that kept revealing themselves — and the admiration in his eyes was entirely undisguised.
"Heh heh heh heh..."
"Boy — I find myself growing fonder of you by the day."
"In that case — since you won't be entering the main Black Sphere exam, the primary slot shall be taken up by this perfect specimen standing before you."
Hirata Yousuke, listening to both of them from the side, finally understood the full shape of their plan.
Because, according to the Black Sphere's weighted scoring rules —
Each trial intruder who survives a failed test grants every participant in the main exam a baseline floor of one guaranteed S-point at final settlement.
And if a fight is actively initiated during the preliminary trial —
As long as the team survives, not only do they collect the standard completion reward when the trial ends — any monster-kill points accumulated along the way are carried over in full into each participant's personal account.
Sending Ayanokoji as the "intruder" wouldn't just shield the other intruder-students from losing points — he'd be out there grinding monsters and scooping up scores on the side.
This was unquestionably a far more stable play than simply grinding through the main exam the hard way.
But...
Hirata Yousuke thought it over, then raised a key question anyway:
"If Ayanokoji decides to go in as an intruder — shouldn't we give Katsuragi Kohei and Ichinose Honami a heads-up in advance?"
"We could tell them to specifically choose students in the trial lineup who are just barely short of enough points to buy a Combat Suit — and have those students deliberately throw the trial."
"I'd imagine — as long as you're there leading the way and guaranteeing their safety, even facing the risk of deliberately losing the trial and forfeiting a life in the process... for the chance to obtain a Combat Suit that could genuinely change their odds of survival, they'd be willing to take that gamble."
Koenji Rokusuke clapped his hands together with a sharp crack, letting out a loud, delighted laugh.
"Bravo! A magnificent idea, Hirata Boy!"
"This is already the optimal solution within the current ruleset! And we could even have Ayanokoji serve as a guide — gradually drawing the majority of the entire year-group along, until nearly everyone has a Combat Suit."
"All of it building toward the inevitable large-scale Black Sphere exam that's coming — full combat readiness for every student across the board!"
Koenji looked toward Ayanokoji, a teasing glint in his eye:
"The only concern is... this babysitter style of play is going to be quite the ordeal for Ayanokoji Boy."
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka slipped his hand back into his pocket.
His fingertip traced slow, quiet circles across the all-purpose capsule cradling the Parasyte within.
He answered without particular interest:
"It's fine."
"As long as the outcome is maximised."
"The process..."
"I don't care about that."
— End of Chapter —
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