Chapter 10: Digital Sins and Hallway Whispers
[A/N: Just a heads-up: Rumors are always 90% drama and 10% truth, so take the rumor section in this chapter with a massive grain of salt. (And no, don't ask about the bunny suit. We're moving on!)
Also, a pleasant surprise for my OG readers: My girl and I just finished reading through my old MHA fic together! It actually got me hyped again, so I've officially started writing for that one too. Double the updates, double the chaos.
You're welcome. Now get into the chapter!]
(Akane Tachibana POV)
I feel like my face is currently the temperature of a dying star.
I'm sitting in the President's private quarters—a place I usually only enter for official business—but right now, the "business" is strictly of the scandalous variety. Manabu is standing right behind me, his presence like a wall of cold marble, yet I can practically hear his heart hammering against his ribs.
We are looking at it. The forbidden file. "Budget Reports 2024" -> "Appendix C."
I clicked it. My hand was shaking so hard I nearly dropped the mouse. I expected school secrets, maybe some classified data on the S-System. What I found was... poetry. And prose. And detailed observations about me.
It was a love story. A literal narrative written by the most stoic, unshakeable man in this school, detailing how he felt when I brought him coffee, the way I tucked my hair behind my ear when I was stressed, and—oh god—how much he liked the specific frames of my glasses.
The silence in the room was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. Manabu opened his mouth to say something, but only a faint, airy puff of sound came out. He looked like his soul had just exited his body through his ears.
"President..." I whispered, my voice cracking. "How... how did Sunny-kun know about this? This school is a fortress. We're in the middle of a private island with military-grade firewalls. We only arrived here as first-years, and Sunny was... well, he was just a kid in the outside world."
Manabu finally found his voice, though it was strained. "Sunny is... an anomaly. Before I even left for this school, he was obsessed with a long-term project involving a custom-built AI. He told me that if he ever 'finished' her, he'd find a way to say hello to me here."
He leaned over me to grab the mouse, and for a split second, his arm brushed against mine. We both jumped as if we'd been hit by a lightning bolt. The awkwardness was so intense I thought the floor might actually swallow us whole.
"I thought it was impossible," Manabu continued, his eyes fixed on the screen to avoid looking at me. "I checked the security system when I became President. It's impenetrable. Or it should have been. But two years ago... he did it. He hacked into the server from the outside, bypassed the encryption, and left a note on my private drive without triggering a single alarm."
He opened a text file buried at the bottom of the folder.
FROM: Your Favorite Brother-in-Law
Yoo, brother-in-law! If you're reading this, your security is trash and my first word to you is: BUSTED. >
I'll keep it short—me and Suzu are doing fine. But man, I did NOT expect to find this spicy little romance novel in your 'Budget' folder. I didn't know you had it in you to love your Secretary this much! Don't worry, I've already made three different encrypted saves. I'm a professional, after all.
Hacking this place without getting noticed usually takes a month of prep, but with my girl Aqua (my AI, don't get jealous), it only took a few hours. Anyway, Suzu is definitely going to see this eventually. Imagine the look on her face! LOL. Bye for now—I didn't peek at any school secrets because that's boring. If I actually apply to this school, the fun is going to be infinite. Truly bye!
Manabu let out a long, weary sigh. "You can imagine the shock. I spent three weeks trying to find the 'Aqua' signature in the logs. I found nothing. He's a ghost in the machine, Tachibana."
I looked back at the "love story" on the screen. My heart was doing somersaults. "So... he's been holding this over you for years?"
"Yes," Manabu said, finally meeting my eyes. "And now he's actually here. The disaster has officially moved in next door."
We stayed like that for a moment, the romantic tension and the sheer embarrassment of Sunny's prank swirling around us, before we both scrambled to change the subject to literally anything else.
(Kushida POV)
Thump! Thump! Thump!
I am currently slamming my fist into my pillow with enough force to tenderize steak. If I had a picture of Suzune Horikita's face right now, I'd be using it as a dartboard.
"That... that... BITCH!" I hissed, my 'angelic' voice replaced by a rasp of pure venom. "Who does she think she is?! Coming in here, acting like she's the Queen of the Class, buying desks, taking control... and looking at me like I'm something she found on the bottom of her shoe!"
I threw the pillow across the room and took a deep, shaky breath, smoothing my hair back. Calm down, Kikyo. Maintain the mask. If you lose it now, she wins.
She's a threat. She's the only one who doesn't buy the "sweet girl" act. And that silver-haired freak Sunny is even worse—he looks like he's laughing at a joke that only he knows, and I'm the punchline.
"At least," I muttered, picking up my phone and scrolling through the new Class D group chat, "because of her little 'emergency session' demand, I have everyone's contact info. Even that elegant, self-centered bastard Kōenji's. It was so easy to play the helpful assistant while she played the tyrant."
I stared at Suzune's name in the contact list.
"Enjoy your little throne while it lasts, Horikita-san," I whispered, my smile returning—sharp, cold, and utterly fake. "I'm going to find out what you're hiding. And when I do, I'm going to break you."
(Third Person POV)
While the students of Class D were settling into their dorms, the rest of Advanced Nurturing High School was currently vibrating with a very specific kind of energy: Gossip.
Rumors in this school travel faster than light, and by sunset, the "Legends of the First Day" were already being debated in the upper-year hallways.
The Empress of Class D: The story of a first-year girl who purchased her own desk for a single point just to "flex" on the teacher had reached the ears of the second-years. They were calling her the "Desk-Buyer," and the consensus was divided between "She's a genius" and "She's absolutely insane."
The E-sports clubInterest: Ikuto Kiriyama, the
E-sports club manager, was reportedly seen in the E-sports club looking like he'd seen a ghost. Word was out that a first-year girl had walked in and liquidated the club's entire prize pool in sixty minutes. People were already placing bets on how long it would take for her to challenge the Student Council.
The "Sunny" Anomaly: But the weirdest rumor—the one that nobody quite believed—was about the President himself.
"I'm telling you," a third-year boy whispered to his friends in the cafeteria. "Nagumo's scouts saw it. Some silver-haired kid named Sunny walked into the Student Council office, and for the first time in recorded history, Manabu Horikita lost his composure. Like, actually shouted."
"No way," his friend replied, shaking his head. "Horikita is a robot. He doesn't have emotions, let alone the ability to lose his cool over a freshman. It's a joke. It has to be."
"Maybe," the first boy said, glancing toward the faculty wing. "But I saw the kid. He was wearing a hat with a propeller on it. You don't wear a hat like that unless you're either a god or a complete moron. And in this school... the line between those two is pretty thin."
As the stars began to poke through the purple sky, the players were all on the board. The stoic President was compromised, the "Angel" of Class D was seething, and in Room 403, a boy was about to try and defeat a god-slayer while being hand-fed mackerel by a girl who wanted to see him suffer.
The game hadn't just started. It had already gone off the rails.