Chapter 33: Trouble and a Special Date (Patreon)

Chapter 33: Trouble and a Special Date

...

It turned out the goods were so cheap not because of some new-student discount, but because the school wanted to support students with clothing and food.

They hoped to ease some of the worries weighing on students as they made their way toward becoming jujutsu sorcerers.

After all, under the old standards, each year's Class D would get docked down to only 200-300 Class Points, leaving them unable to even afford specialized courses.

Mind you, Class D had produced capable people before — some had even carried the class all the way up to Class B. But even then, the initial conduct exam had always been a disaster.

Sometimes, even knowing the exam content in advance, it still took more than two months just to unite Class D — the least self-disciplined, least orderly, and most self-serving class of all.

You could say the school had worked hard to cut down student expenses.

Who would've guessed that such generous discounts would only fuel Class D's spending habit instead?

A foreign-brand laptop that cost well over a hundred thousand outside sold for just fifty or sixty thousand inside the school — who could resist that?

Three years later, sold secondhand, it could still fetch forty or fifty thousand.

Incidentally, one Class D student who knew a fair bit about this went ahead and bought two — not to use himself, but to sell off after graduation.

Using the living stipend the school handed out to buy a laptop that, still sealed after three years, could fetch seventy or eighty thousand — even he thought he had quite the business mind.

Anjouin didn't know the details of Class D's situation, but the truth he laid out left Suzune Horikita reeling.

"Th-that... that's not reasonable..."

"It's perfectly reasonable. It just shows how important jujutsu sorcerers are."

To an outsider, a school this large training only 480 students, providing full room and board plus a monthly stipend, already seemed unbelievable.

Yet the school wanted to offer them every convenience on top of that — expanding the free-supply zones, with post-graduation benefits so good there was nothing left to say. The whole setup was almost like raising sworn-to-die retainers.

"Mm..."

Watching Suzune Horikita reel from the blow, Anjouin offered a reminder anyway.

"If you want to prove something to your brother, you'd better pull that mess of a class together soon — though I doubt reminding you now will do much good."

If Class D didn't have a monster like Kiyotaka Ayanokouji hidden among them, a class that blew through its points right out of the gate like this would have almost no chance of turning things around.

Without specialized courses, Class D's growth as jujutsu sorcerers was bound to stay slow.

Not to mention that after their first month's exam, their Class Points were already visibly running thin.

Sure, Haruki Yamauchi had looked cool awakening the Ten Shadows Technique, but summoning a Divine Dog in the dorm, wrecking the place, and nearly dragging other students into it would cost him at least 100-200 Class Points.

And since any deduction during the conduct exam period was doubled, this alone was likely to chop a long chunk off Class D's 'health bar.'

Oh, and don't forget the public discussion about boobs on top of that.

It felt like Class D's point deductions this time were even worse than in the original story — good thing Class Points couldn't go negative, or they'd have had to take out a loan just to stay in school.

After all, a lot of the island nation's systems were copied straight from their sugar daddy America, so student loans popping up wouldn't be too surprising.

"In the end, you all just don't have enough sense of crisis."

Unlike Class A — whom Anjouin had warned with the saying that even good swimmers can drown — the Class A students had the intelligence to actually grasp what he meant.

But most people at this school didn't understand what becoming a jujutsu sorcerer really meant, nor did they know what position they actually held in the nation's eyes.

Anjouin couldn't promise he'd guessed right, but between the sudden addition of interviews and the steadily improving benefits...

...the 100% guaranteed higher-education and employment track that used to belong only to Class A had now been extended to Classes B, C, and D as well.

"The better the terms, the more serious the situation."

Anjouin looked at Suzune Horikita, who seemed to have had her soul sucked right out of her, eyes glazed and unfocused, and went on. "You've been in Class D a few days now — ask yourself honestly... do you all really deserve treatment this good?"

The benefits were even more absurd than they used to be, so good they felt almost unreal, yet hardly anyone stopped to think about the risk hiding behind them.

No — the mindset of Class A across every grade had probably shifted by now.

Based on what he knew of Manabu Horikita and Nagumo Miyabi, the two of them surely understood the state of the jujutsu world far better than most.

Nagumo Miyabi might even be secretly in contact with the Kamo family, one of the Three Great Families, through some instructor.

And with his warning, Class A understood all too well what this windfall from the sky actually meant.

"Mm..." Suzune Horikita tried to remember.

She didn't really pay attention to her classmates' affairs; if Anjouin hadn't asked her to look into Class D's spending, she wouldn't even have bothered eavesdropping on their conversations.

But just recalling that much was enough to drain even more color from her face.

Seeing that Suzune Horikita needed a while to withdraw into herself, Anjouin didn't bother with her further, and headed off to eat with Ai Morishita instead.

As they walked, Ai Morishita let out a sigh.

"So this is what the Student Council President's little sister is really like."

"Hm?" Anjouin glanced over, a little surprised.

"What~ Can't I tell that the Student Council President and Horikita look alike? They've both got black hair and red eyes, and their presence feels similar too."

Whether at the entrance ceremony or the club orientation, the Student Council had really stolen the spotlight.

The Student Council President's two appearances had left a deep impression on everyone.

Still, the surname Horikita was common enough; something like Ayanokouji, on the other hand, only turned up unrelated politicians or celebrities online.

Apparently, it was a rare surname.

"What do you think of her?"

"She's trouble," Ai Morishita said, thinking it over seriously.

She hadn't added Horikita to the Gluttony Series — instead, she filed her under 'trouble.'

"She's the stubborn type. Once she's made up her mind, not even a team of wild horses could drag her back. Really pig-headed. Her heart isn't weak, but it isn't strong either."

"The moment it involves her brother, she instantly slips into helpless-little-sister mode."

"But when it's got nothing to do with him, she goes completely deaf to reason."

Ai Morishita's serious, analytical side was a stark contrast to how she usually acted — though, granted, most of the time in front of him, she was in little-sister mode too.

"I took payment from the President, so I'll look after her a little, but I'm not selling out Class A's interests."

At least not for a million points and an old book — that wasn't worth Class A giving up the edge it had already built.

Letting other classes learn about the course-buying deal early wouldn't help Class A's plan to turn Class B into a subordinate class, either.

"Split it fifty-fifty?"

"Dream on."

When Ai Morishita reached out her little hand, Anjouin swatted it away, annoyed.

"Fine, seventy-thirty then — seventy's mine."

"You're just raising your own cut now."

Faced with Ai Morishita's shamelessness, he had no choice but to bust out his cheek-pinching special move.

With his right thumb and forefinger, he pinched down hard on her soft, springy cheek, subduing her in an instant.

"Ngh!"

Ai Morishita tried to fight back, reaching to pinch him in return, but Anjouin kept dodging out of reach.

The two of them tussled by the roadside for a bit, and once more people started showing up, they finally stopped — their food had settled by then anyway, so they simply headed back to the dorm.

Since he had a special 'date' tonight, the extra tutoring session for Class A could only run until eight thirty.

"Another win for me."

"You're so underhanded."

Ai Morishita muttered under her breath, cheek still pinched.

Without realizing it, she'd let him get a grip on far too many of her weak points.

Like when he pinched the back of her neck — she'd go limp as a kitten and give up struggling.

If he pressed down on the top of her head, her arms just weren't long enough to reach him.

And if he pinched her cheek, she'd barely resist at all, worried it might turn red.

Yeah. He had her in his grip — quite literally, this time.

—

At eight thirty that night, Anjouin left the dorm and, before long, arrived at the shore where he'd agreed to meet Kento Nanami.

He got there right on time, but Nanami had clearly arrived early.

"Mr. Nanami, it's been a few days — you're looking well."

"I hope so."

But Nanami, looking like an ox worked three straight days and nights of overtime, answered listlessly, his face even paler than before.

"Yeah, might just be the last flare before the candle goes out."

"...Don't say that. It doesn't sound like a joke at all."

Nanami pinched the bridge of his nose.

Making a special trip into Advanced Nurturing High School already counted as overtime on its own, not to mention that lately cursed spirits kept sprouting like chives — cut one batch down, and another grew right back.

"So, where's the 'Strongest'?"

"Satoru Gojo's always late. Let's not wait on him."

Whoa, everyone joked that Satoru Gojo was a bargain-bin version of 'Fifty-Fifty' — hopefully he hadn't picked up everything from him.

Being late was never a good sign — especially since, so often, it was exactly someone's lateness that ended up causing tragedies.

"I heard you handled things well before, keeping the damage from spreading."

"You flatter me."

Anjouin genuinely respected Nanami.

Even though jujutsu sorcery work was, frankly, garbage, Nanami had chosen to keep working as a professional sorcerer even when he'd had other options.

While they waited for Gojo, Anjouin asked Nanami about the finer points of Reinforcement and cursed energy condensation.

After all, Nanami was the real deal — an actual jujutsu sorcerer.

Anjouin might have had textbooks on hand, but his own skill level was still quite limited.

"You really do think about your classmates a lot."

"Not really. It's mostly that this school's system is designed to raise high-grade workhorses."

Producing talent for society — that's really all it boiled down to.

Calling Advanced Nurturing High School a vocational-school battle royale was never just a joke. Even if Class A got a free pass to any university they wanted, or a path to chase their dreams, how many students in Class A could actually make those dreams come true?

There was no way Advanced Nurturing High School could cram all forty students into the University of Tokyo.

Turning into Jujutsu High only made the school's true nature stand out more.

Normally, what island-nation high schools taught wasn't enough on its own to get students into university — most students aiming for college had to take outside cram classes.

But Advanced Nurturing High School offered no such option at all — it was closed-off education, with no cram schools.

All they had to do was wait until graduation, sit Class A students down for a career chat, wave around a few corporate partnership contracts, and the whole class would fall in line.

"Under Advanced Nurturing High School's current system, the strength of the group outweighs the individual. One person's mistake is bound to drag the whole group down."

That was exactly why Anjouin had kept hunting for loopholes from the start, working to pile up Class Points for Class A.

Even if he himself felt it was putting the cart before the horse.

But only a strong class could carry individual students toward real strength.

In a sense, the 'individual ability comes first' system Nagumo Miyabi was pushing for would actually suit the current Advanced Nurturing High School better.

Anjouin thought it wasn't a bad idea, and wanted to seize it as an achievement for Class A — that was also why he'd set his sights on the Student Council.

Once Nanami noticed Anjouin's instinct to look out for his classmates, he taught him without holding anything back.

"Yo—"

A flippant greeting broke through the pleasant mood of their outdoor lesson.