Chapter 8: Thus Spoke Sakayanagi Arisu (Part 2) (Patreon)

Chapter 8: Thus Spoke Arisu Sakayanagi (Part 2)

...

Sakayanagi described how, when she was young, her chairman father had taken her to tour the White Room.

Through the glass, she'd watched Kiyotaka Ayanokouji utterly dominate a game of chess, and the scene had captivated her completely.

He was the manufactured genius her father spoke of from the White Room, and Sakayanagi — who believed herself the true genius — had instantly felt a rivalry stir in her, a desire to bury this 'false genius.'

It had even given her a sense of mission...

In short, it was all rather surreal.

Both the purple-haired girl beside her and Ai Morishita beside him rubbed their temples.

"No, no, no — this is way too much. And isn't this the kind of thing you're not supposed to tell anyone?"

"Keep it a secret, then," Sakayanagi said, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

"Damn it!"

The purple-haired girl could only fume helplessly.

That was just how this island nation worked — but officially, there was no way information about such an inhumane secret training facility could ever be allowed to leak.

"Looks like someone's got a hold over you now."

"That's right~" Sakayanagi said, finishing her story, then glanced at Ai Morishita.

"As for this one, I'll leave her in your capable hands."

"Morishita knows how to keep her mouth shut, I'm sure."

Ajimu said flatly.

Beside him, Ai Morishita stared blankly at the ceiling.

She'd only tagged along for a free meal and ended up stumbling onto some national dark secret — clearly not something she could just laugh off as a joke. She was regretting it deeply right now.

"Mm," Ai Morishita mumbled weakly.

Ajimu reflexively patted her head. Honestly, he hadn't expected bringing someone along for a free meal to cause any trouble.

So the look he gave Sakayanagi was more than a little complicated.

"So, what happened next?"

After Sakayanagi's explanation, everyone else in the private room now knew that Kiyotaka Ayanokouji was the White Room's finest masterpiece...

"Back then I never had the chance to compete against him directly — all I could do was pour my time into studying chess."

"But now that I've become a jujutsu sorcerer, there's no reason I can't crush that 'false genius' head-on."

Sakayanagi declared.

Ajimu, however, just thought she sounded painfully edgy — full-on chuunibyou.

He rubbed his forehead. Frankly, he had zero interest in getting mixed up in any of this.

"But before that, I'll crush you first—!"

Sakayanagi threw down a challenge at him. Judging by her attitude, she still didn't think much of Kohei Katsuragi.

"Hey, so — is it possible that, given how garbage the White Room's training methods are, the ones who weren't weeded out... were actual geniuses all along?"

Ayanokouji's father, despite having only a high school education, had deliberately sought out the number-two hostess at a certain Tokyo nightclub and entered into a contract marriage with her.

He'd believed that, given her lowly background, any child born between them would naturally be inferior — so he'd simply thrown the resulting child straight into the White Room.

That way, if the White Room managed to shape the child into something remarkable, it would make for a far more convincing case — and since it was his own flesh and blood, it would boost the White Room's credibility, drawing in more parents and investors.

In reality, though, that didn't mean the two of them actually lacked talent.

If anything, that fake protagonist had inherited his parents' genes remarkably well.

A father who'd worked as a host and a mother who'd worked as a hostess had given him striking good looks, and being thrown into the White Room had given him the kind of top-tier education neither of his parents ever had.

The White Room's teaching methods were garbage, sure, but it was also a place where you could learn things no ordinary school taught — including but not limited to scholarship, academics, martial arts, self-defense, worldly cunning, and more.

None of that was information he was supposed to know, though, so Ajimu had no intention of bringing it up.

On one point, at least, he and Sakayanagi agreed.

Neither of them believed genius could be manufactured.

Sakayanagi wanted to prove this by defeating the White Room's finest masterpiece — but Ayanokouji himself was a genuine, top-tier genius.

"A real genius?" Sakayanagi hadn't expected him to say that, and her expression turned faintly cold.

Seeing this, Ajimu couldn't be bothered to argue with her.

"Doesn't matter. Forget I said anything."

"Just don't go burning through your life span on some gacha roll, though."

Ajimu picked up his eating pace. He wasn't as elegant about it as she was, but he was still doing a lot better than Ai Morishita beside him, who kept dropping rice grains from eating too fast.

"Gacha roll with my life span?" Sakayanagi seemed intrigued by the phrase.

"That file from earlier had a record that Manabu Horikita of Third-Year Class A has awakened Limitless. Since he doesn't have the Six Eyes, he can't use it to its full potential, but it's still one of the Three Great Families' techniques."

"And Nagumo Miyabi of Second-Year Class A has awakened Blood Manipulation — also one of the Three Great Families' techniques."

"Following that pattern, First-Year Class A — or possibly the whole first-year class — might end up awakening whatever's left of the Three Great Families' techniques."

Ajimu found the whole thing utterly absurd — Advanced Nurturing High School was helping students awaken cursed energy and cursed technique, and on top of that, they could even awaken the Three Great Families' techniques.

Then, playing the part of a fake insider, he gave a rough rundown of the Ten Shadows Technique.

Sakayanagi's eyes grew brighter and brighter.

The more she listened, the more she felt this technique suited her perfectly.

"It seems this is the technique meant for me."

"The Ten Shadows Technique does have an extremely high ceiling, but the entry bar is brutal too — you have to tame your own shikigami yourself, and the cursed energy cost is huge...," Ajimu warned.

That was arguably the biggest drawback of any summoner-type technique.

If you're stronger than your summons, they'll obey you — but if you're already stronger than them, do you even need them?

And if you're weaker than your summons, they won't listen, and might even turn on you... At that point, you'd be better off without them at all.

"None of that is a problem," Sakayanagi said, brimming with confidence.

Ajimu didn't bother trying to talk her out of it.

Seeing him finish his meal and get ready to leave, Sakayanagi — still lost in thoughts of claiming the Ten Shadows Technique for herself — suddenly grew anxious.

"Wait, Ajimu, you still haven't responded to my declaration."

"???"

Ajimu, in the middle of picking up his empty tray, looked utterly confused.

Then it quickly came back to him — that Sakayanagi had thrown down a challenge earlier.

"Uh, I'm not a genius, though. Why would you challenge me?"

"Hmph. If I can't prove my strength by defeating you all head-on, how could I ever earn the right to fight Ayanokouji?"

Sakayanagi said.

She'd apparently decided he was just a stepping stone on her way to her real target.

"And after Ayanokouji, it'll be the strongest sorcerer in the whole jujutsu world—!"

Her small hand clenched into a fist.

Now that some surreal power had entered the picture, Sakayanagi — who fancied herself a genius — had set her sights on an even loftier goal.

Ajimu, naturally, looked thoroughly unimpressed and had zero desire to indulge this chuunibyou fantasy. Sakayanagi immediately changed tack.

"This intel, plus the thing you had me do — surely that's worth a change in attitude, don't you think?"

"..."

Looking at the file Sakayanagi was pointing to, Ajimu's hand trembled despite himself.

There's no such thing as a free lunch, sure, but this lunch was turning out to be a little too 'expensive.'

"Fine."

There was a faint deadness in Ajimu's eyes.

That, at least, made the purple-haired girl and Ai Morishita feel a little better about their own situations.

But right after, Sakayanagi's expression soured a bit.

"What's wrong?" Ajimu asked, a bit puzzled.

"About the thing you had me do earlier..."

Ajimu really wanted to point out that it hadn't been an order, just a suggestion — and one that genuinely benefited the class, too. Sure, the cut from each class wasn't much on its own, but it would add up to a substantial sum over time.

He opened his mouth, but didn't argue — he was just curious what Sakayanagi was getting at.

"I got in touch with Class B's representative. In exchange for Class B agreeing not to shop on behalf of Class C or Class D, I offered them a thirty-percent discount."

"Then Class C... Their representative hasn't been officially decided, but Ryuen is the most likely candidate, and he agreed not to shop for Class D either. I gave Class C a twenty-percent discount."

"But then, when it came to Class D..."

At this point, Sakayanagi's expression turned hard to describe.

Honestly, when it came to Class D's situation, she genuinely didn't know how to put it into words.

"There's a student in Class D named Yosuke Hirata — sort of the class's central figure, I suppose. He genuinely wanted the discount... but he could only round up five or six people who were interested."

"The girls flat-out ignored him, and a lot of the students had already burned through their entire 100,000 Private Points."

"...Dealing with scattered stragglers like that was too much of a hassle, so I just gave up on partnering with Class D altogether."

When Sakayanagi finished, everyone in the room gaped in surprise.

This wasn't like the original story, after all — even Class D's stubborn homeroom teacher would surely have repeatedly told his students to save their Private Points, to avoid Class Point deductions wherever possible, and to let them know that the first month's special exam was still about behavioral conduct.

These days, Private Points could even be used to directly strengthen one's abilities, which made goods you could simply buy with outside money worth even less by comparison.

If the school administration's influence over the 'school' hadn't been so limited, they probably would have pulled certain products from the shelves entirely by now.

"That's a little much," the purple-haired girl said, admitting she just couldn't make sense of Class D.

Discounts on everyday goods weren't even the main point, especially since the school had worked to make so much of clothing, food, and housing free anyway.

What really mattered were the specialized jujutsu classes — adding one extra class per week cost a full million points.

With Class A's discount, you could save 300,000 points on that.

In fact, Class A's group chat had already decided that everyone would chip in 70,000 points each, pooling together 2.8 million Private Points to buy four extra classes.

Combined with the one specialized class they already had each week, that would give them five specialized classes a week.

For Class D, by contrast, two million points would only be enough to add two extra classes.

Of course, whether Class D could even scrape together two million points these days was already questionable, going by the way Sakayanagi looked like she'd just found a fly in her food.

Making her deal with Class D had genuinely been asking a lot of her.

Still, the way Sakayanagi had structured her discounts remained plenty aggressive — there was a clear trend of teaming up with Class B to weaken both Class C and Class D.

In her eyes, Class C and Class D — packed with delinquents and rejects — were clearly more of a threat than Class B, with its crowd of well-behaved students.

Ajimu, for his part, rather agreed with Sakayanagi's approach.

Especially now that he knew Class A's terms, competition between classes was clearly unavoidable.

"That must have been a lot of work. Well, in that case, I accept your challenge."

Ajimu didn't mind playing along for a while.

Once he lost to her, after all, she'd probably lose interest in him soon enough, and her attention would shift over to Ayanokouji.

"I'll head out first, then."

Ajimu didn't take the file with him — he didn't have a bag to carry it in, after all — but he'd already photographed the contents with his phone.

"Thanks for the intel."

One way or another, the intel Sakayanagi had gathered would help him earn more support within his own class.

"Don't mention it."

Sakayanagi still didn't seem to care much about any of that.

"I'm looking forward to our showdown."