Chapter 196: The Destructive Power of One Fool

Unknowingly, more than a third of the Sports Festival events had already been completed.

The scorching sunlight baked the field, steaming up the mingled scent of fresh grass and rubber. The schedule broadcast on repeat over the speakers and the clamor of the stadium intertwined, forming a uniquely distinctive Sports Festival atmosphere.

The ball toss, the boys' and girls' tug-of-war, and the obstacle course race had all been completed.

However, compared to the sweeping, unstoppable victories of the Class A boys, the girls' side was looking rather strained and shorthanded.

Perhaps it was because the Class A girls lacked someone like Katsuragi Kohei or Fuyuji Mikage who could coordinate and command the big picture, or perhaps compared to their academics, the girls in the class were somewhat more reserved when it came to sports.

In team competitions, whenever they encountered Class B, led by Ichinose Honami, the outcome was, without surprise, a completely one-sided rout.

Come to think of it, expecting his airheaded girlfriend to cooperate with sincere dedication, expecting his tsundere bro to command the entire field, expecting the adorable little Miki to not be shy in front of other girls—just imagining it conjured a sense of collapse too painful to behold.

This might also be one of the major advantages of having a girl as class leader. The boys were merely passable, while the girls were, on the contrary, exceptionally well-coordinated.

If he really had to choose someone from a single sweep across Class A, the only one who felt suitable was Shiraishi-mama. However, it was abundantly clear that Shiraishi-mama had absolutely no interest in this kind of thing. Compared to this, she'd far rather spend her time on Fuyuji.

As for Morishita Ai, Yamamura Miki, and Kamuro Masumi—those three... yeah, better not put them in a difficult spot.

"How are our class's scores looking right now?"

In the gap between the second and third-year events, inside the Class A tent camp, Fuyuji—still in the midst of steaming—held a few cards in his hand. His body leaned lazily back against the folding chair, his gaze slanted sideways toward Katsuragi, who had been buried in his notebook the entire time, writing and scribbling away.

The canvas of the tent billowed gently in the breeze, casting swaying, dancing shadows and light.

"Probably around first place. Our class should be leading Class B by about a dozen points or so. Completely unable to pull away." Katsuragi rubbed his temples, his brow tightly furrowed, his voice filled with frustration. "A complete failure. I was so focused on the students with more outstanding physical ability that I completely overlooked the girls' team events."

Among the first-year girls, there was no outlier existence comparable to Koenji Rokusuke on the boys' side, or the second-year senpai. The points earned in individual events were roughly the same across the board.

And in team events, winning just one match could open up a huge gap in points. That was precisely why Class B, which had been rather unremarkable before the competition, was now scoring repeatedly in the team events.

"Stay calm, Katsuragi."

Fuyuji glanced at the card set in his hand and casually tossed out a Southern Barbarian Invasion.

"Even if we had known in advance, there wasn't much we could do about Class B, right?"

Given Class B's degree of unity, the possibility of a traitor emerging was basically nonexistent. If they were like Ryuen, fond of playing dirty tricks, that would be fine—Fuyuji could seize the flaws and counterattack.

But this was a class with a harmonious, cheerful atmosphere, and their leader advocated fair and square head-on confrontations. This, on the contrary, made it difficult for Class A to strike.

The situation had naturally evolved into a direct clash between the two classes.

"That's true..." Katsuragi's expression softened slightly.

"What about the scores between the Red and White teams?"

Fuyuji turned his head and redirected his gaze back to the picnic mat—and then his face instantly darkened. His horse had been stolen right out from under him by the neighboring Morishita-sama.

"Ho ho~ Boyfriend-kun, Morishita-sama shall reluctantly accept your dowry."

Morishita Ai stretched out her little hand and equipped Red Hare onto her own general. She even stood up with considerable politeness and gave Fuyuji a respectful bow.

"Arigatou..."

"Then give it back to me, you bastard!" Fuyuji erupted in frustration. "And besides, we're clearly on the same side! Why did you steal my horse instead of Miki's repeating crossbow?!"

"Is that so?" Morishita blinked and declared with righteous confidence. "Because I already have a weapon. I just happened to be short a horse. Don't worry, boyfriend-kun. Leave it to me. I'll cut them all down from horseback."

Her petite chin lifted, Morishita puffed out her modest chest, brimming with self-assurance.

"After all, I'm thoroughly familiar with Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I could recite it backwards by the age of one..."

Fuyuji Mikage: "..."

Every time you put on that expression, we end up losing horribly...

"As for that, it's unclear for the moment."

With a snap, Katsuragi shut his notebook and picked up the earlier thread of conversation. Even more plagued by headache, he said, "My rough guess is that the scores between these two classes are neck and neck, with no significant gap. That Koenji-kun is truly a trump card."

Class D's participation roster had already been leaked to that extent, and yet Koenji, together with that Sudo Ken, had still managed to pull the gap back. They really couldn't be underestimated.

Just then, a disturbance clearly different from the clamor of the competition drifted over from the neighboring Class D camp.

At first, it was just a few abrupt, conspicuous sneezes. Immediately after, a wave of panicked, bewildered murmuring gradually rose in volume and rapidly spread outward.

"What's going on?" Katsuragi immediately raised his head in alert.

"Did something happen over at Class D?" Several students at the edge of the Class A camp replied with equal puzzlement.

The students who had originally been focused on their card games or resting were drawn in one after another, curiously peering in the direction of Class D.

Near the Class D tent, figures were shifting and milling about. A rough glance showed more than a dozen people gathered together.

"Let's go take a look." Fuyuji set down the cards in his hand and stood up, not forgetting to remind the girls. "You all stay here. Don't move."

"Hurry back." Morishita pursed her lips, the little braids at her chest swaying with the motion.

"Alright."

Katsuragi immediately followed. Hashimoto Masayoshi and Kito Hayato exchanged a glance and, with the same wordless understanding, rose to their feet, flanking Fuyuji on either side as they followed behind.

Approaching the Class D camp, that sense of disturbance grew even stronger.

A Class D boy who had seemed perfectly fine just moments ago was now deathly pale, his body occasionally trembling faintly. His condition looked utterly terrible. The remaining two students, though still with relatively decent color in their faces, were also clearly exhibiting cold symptoms.

Hirata Yosuke was holding a thermometer, his face full of anxiety as he tried to calm them.

Oscar-winning actress Kushida Kikyo stood far outside the tent, her fist loosely clenched and pressed against her chest, her face full of worry.

Horikita Suzune stood slightly further out on the perimeter. She raised a hand to her forehead, biting down hard on her lower lip. An icy, bone-chilling cold radiated from her body. Her expression was as grim as it could possibly be.

"Hirata, what happened?"

Katsuragi strode with great, sweeping steps to the front of the tent. He saw the problem at a single glance and asked in a deep, grave voice.

"Didn't you ask your classmates about their physical condition this morning and take proper precautions in advance?"

The school had sent out a notice about guarding against seasonal influenza just yesterday. As long as the class leaders paid attention and had their classmates stay in their dorms as much as possible, a single day was enough time to identify which students in the class were showing symptoms.

And those students who hadn't shown symptoms yesterday should have, this morning, been able to feel subtle signs in their own bodies.

The remainder were asymptomatic carriers with lower transmission risk. But this was an open sports field, naturally well-ventilated.

As long as basic precautions were taken, any problems should have been isolated, individual cases. How could three people collapse in a row all at once?!

"How the hell should I know?!"

Within the Class D camp, Sudo Ken abruptly raised his head. He clawed at his red hair with extreme agitation and roared.

"Hirata did it! He did everything he was supposed to do! He told them yesterday to stay in the dorms! He asked over and over again this morning if anyone wasn't feeling well! How the hell was anyone supposed to know it would suddenly turn out like this?!"

Having finished, he slammed his fist against the pole supporting the tent in sheer frustration, producing a dull, muffled thud.

"Arguing about this now is pointless." Katsuragi replied calmly. "No matter what, the most urgent matter at hand is getting these clearly unwell classmates to the medical hut."

"Right, right!" Hirata jolted awake as if from a dream.

After another round of frantic, chaotic scrambling, the crowd of onlooking students dispersed. Accompanied by Hirata, the three Class D students filed out of the tent one after another.

Out of courtesy toward their temporary partners, Katsuragi also followed along.

"Hashimoto-san." Watching the Class D contingent depart, Fuyuji spoke in a low voice.

"Right here. What are your orders, Boss?" Hashimoto stepped closer.

"Go check what that bastard Ryuen is up to right now."

Something was off. Logically, from the time the notice was sent yesterday until now, more than a full day had already passed. The optimal window for transmission and onset of symptoms should have already passed. So why had three people suddenly shown symptoms all at once, right in the middle of the competition?

"OK."

Hashimoto nodded and decisively turned around. He walked briskly toward the Class C camp, his figure swiftly vanishing into the crowd.

"Kito-san. Just in case, go ask our class again if anyone is feeling off. Don't miss a single person."

"Understood."

A low, hoarse voice sounded beside his ear. After a flurry of hurried footsteps trampling across the grass, Kito had already returned to the Class A camp.

...

Despite what he had said just now, Fuyuji could clearly sense that the flickering, evasive look in Hirata's eyes seemed to be hiding something.

Given his personality, there was a high probability that he knew the truth, and was deliberately hiding it out of fear of disrupting the harmony of the class.

Therefore...

After briefly making his arrangements, Fuyuji came beside the other person who might possibly know the truth.

He gently placed one hand atop the girl's hair—smooth as silk—and comforted her as if stroking a kitten. "If you're feeling upset, sharing a secret with your temporary teammate might lighten your mood a little."

Horikita coldly swept her gaze over those few Class D boys leaving the tent for the medical hut, her eyes finally fixing upon Fuyuji's mischievous, wandering hand. The expression on her fair, pale face softened ever so slightly. She parted her lips as if to speak, but then, as if suddenly realizing something, she wrenched her head away and immediately reverted to her ice-cold beauty state.

"It's none of your business." Her jet-black hair slashed a sharp, fierce arc through the air, sweeping across the back of Fuyuji's hand.

"So... what actually happened? I can lend you my shoulder to lean on. To repay you for the lap pillow last time..."

Fuyuji smiled and silently curved the back of his hand, continuing to stroke the elegantly shaped back of her head, intermittently and absentmindedly.

Mm. Nice texture. And carries a faint, delicate fragrance.

Horikita's body stiffened faintly. She did not, as she usually would, immediately slap his hand away. Instead, she unconsciously drew a fraction closer to Fuyuji. After drawing a deep breath, she slowly closed her eyes.

"Yamauchi-kun." Her icy tone carried a thread of profound exhaustion.

"..."

Fuyuji tugged at the corner of his mouth. What an utterly unsurprising culprit.

"Just how did that... great Lord Yamauchi achieve this magnificent accomplishment?" He looked toward the interior of the Class D camp.

The sub-human named Yamauchi Haruki was now cowering in the corner of the tent, utterly devoid of his earlier arrogant, blustering bravado.

"It shouldn't have come to this. As long as your class had taken this matter somewhat seriously, it shouldn't have spiraled into this. That redhead just now also said that Hirata made reasonable arrangements."

"The premise for that is that every student in the class truthfully reports their own condition." Horikita's head drooped powerlessly.

"Don't tell me..."

Fuyuji instantly understood. The corner of his mouth twitched a few times. His brain went into frantic overdrive at this very moment.

"What was he after?"

What kind of benefit had that Ryuen bastard given him? Or had he been sweet-talked into believing he could transfer to Class C afterward? Or had some shady, underhanded threat been used against him?

One had to realize—the moment this matter came to light, it would be practically impossible for that Yamauchi Haruki to continue staying in Class D.

Well, fine... though one could say his current situation was already more or less the same.

Immediately after, a faint, gentle sensation—carrying body warmth—came from Fuyuji's right shoulder. The girl's head leaned more heavily against him.

Her tone was saturated with deep, profound bewilderment, helplessness, and despondency...

"According to his explanation, it was because Hirata-kun had, in the class group chat yesterday, reminded him a couple more times. He felt he had lost dignity. So, in the group chat, he made a huge, bombastic fuss, swearing he absolutely would not get sick. And then, to refute Hirata-kun's words, he specially spent points to invite the few boys in class who still talked to him out for a meal, to collectively protest Hirata's arrangements. As a result, by evening, he really did get sick..."

She paused briefly, then continued in the same dazed, bewildered tone.

"Probably still trying to save reputation, after secretly taking medicine, he stubbornly grit his teeth and didn't tell Hirata-kun about it. Those three classmates sensed something was off, but he kept persuading them not to tell Hirata-kun either, saying that since things had already reached this point, telling Hirata-kun would only bring the class's blame down on them. It was better to just pretend nothing was wrong and bluff their way through..."

"?"

A question mark slowly materialized above Fuyuji's head. He turned his head with a sharp, mechanical crank and stared, equally bewildered, at the girl leaning against his shoulder.

What the hell was she even saying?

Why could I clearly understand every single word, yet the moment they were strung together, I had no idea what any of it meant?

What did he mean—because he felt he had lost dignity, he made a bombastic fuss swearing he wouldn't get sick? What did he mean—to protest the arrangements, he specially treated people to a meal and rallied them to his side? What did he mean—after getting sick, in order to cover up the bullshit boasts he'd made, he pretended he wasn't sick and stubbornly forced himself to come to the Sports Festival? What did he mean—it was better to just pretend nothing was wrong and bluff their way through?

Was this a human being?

Was this something a carbon-based lifeform could pull off?

Was this something a person would do?!

Fuyuji's brain, in this very moment, suffered a complete and total system crash.

This Class D... was there even a single human left in it?

A long, long while passed.

"Suzune..." His palm once again gently, softly covered the crown of Horikita's little head.

"Mm?"

"Staying in Class D all this time... must have been really hard on you. Actually... it's perfectly fine if you don't make any friends... really..."

"Ha?"

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50 [Power Stones] = Bonus Chapter!