Chapter 243: White House's Request, Seeking Help from Gojo Satoru (Patreon)

After finishing his talk with Ichinose, Chris led Morishita Ai down the corridor and back to the Class A classroom.

But he'd barely stepped through the door, and they hadn't even sat down yet, when every pocket in the room started buzzing at once.

It was a mass email from the school.

It announced that all advance tests and Special Exams would be suspended for the next two weeks. The students were entering a recovery period, and were to prepare for the large-scale final exam that would follow.

The classroom went quiet for a moment, then filled with whispers.

Some students sounded worried. Some sounded relieved. Some cheered, and some just let out a long breath.

Either way, Honami Ichinose had stayed up all night compiling the existing Black Sphere intel and had selflessly posted it in every class group chat. On top of that, the Black Sphere exams had so far only ever hit a handful of unlucky people.

Most ordinary students already had their own expectations deep down.

If the sky fell, tall guys like Chris, Ayanokōji, and Ryuuen would hold it up. As long as you didn't go looking for trouble, the odds of being picked as an Intruder weren't actually that high.

Apart from the veterans who'd lived through the midterm on the Uninhabited Island, and the classmates who'd been picked as Intruders, everyone else had spent the whole time hiding in the safe zone. They had never truly felt how cruel a Black Sphere exam could be.

They'd only heard about it from Ichinose and the others, so it was hard for them to really feel it.

Amid the noisy crowd, though, a few gazes stood out as completely out of place.

They belonged to the transfer students who'd been carefully selected from the White House and sent to various classes.

They'd come to this school with a mission.

Now they'd learned that they might actively go hunt monsters in the Backrooms. Instead of fear, their eyes lit up with eagerness.

To them, this was a heaven-sent opportunity.

At last, they had a place to show their worth. Once they entered the Backrooms, they were sure they'd shine in no time and take the exam slots away from the so-called old guard!

Morishita Ai, who was leaning one hand on Chris's shoulder, caught every one of their micro-expressions.

She tilted her head slightly and clicked her tongue, pitching her voice so only the two of them could hear:

"These people... Should I call them completely fearless of death, or just raised to be naive and simple?"

Chris didn't answer. He casually pulled out his phone and tapped out a few lines on the screen:

"I think it's fine. Better than panicking all day once they hear the news and spreading fear everywhere, right?"

Morishita Ai read the screen and nodded lightly in agreement.

But she quickly pointed out the hole in it:

"The logic works. There's just one thing that bugs me... a lot of them still haven't collected enough points for a [Combat Suit]."

"In that state, if they want to get stronger and kill things in the Backrooms, the vampire bloodline from the [Stone Mask] alone probably won't cut it, right?"

Chris looked at her, noncommittal, and kept typing:

"I don't think that matters. After all, Ichinose is there..."

He didn't get to finish the sentence.

A breeze with a faint citrus scent drifted past. Kushida Kikyo had sidled over without a sound.

She clasped her hands behind her back and leaned forward slightly, her white uniform shirt outlining a startling curve.

"Um... Chris."

"I saw the message Ichinose posted in the group chat when I woke up this morning."

"I've been thinking. It's obviously unrealistic to expect the whole class to go to the Backrooms with us."

"For everyone's safety, we'll need some kind of simple screening, won't we?"

Chris flipped his phone face-down on the desk and turned to look at Kushida, whose expression was so earnest she seemed genuinely to be asking for his opinion.

After a moment's thought, he said:

"No need to go to that trouble."

"After school this afternoon, the Student Council is organizing an outing. It gives some students a chance to see their families from a distance."

"Just have everyone who wants to go home and is willing to enter the Backrooms sign up. No extra screening hurdles."

Kushida Kikyo was visibly taken aback.

She blinked, unsure.

"That... sounds a little delicate, though."

"Organizing a family visit at a time like this... won't it make them feel like it's a last meeting before they die?"

Chris leaned back in his chair and spread his hands, unbothered.

"In a way, you're not wrong. Life and death are up to fate."

"What, you think we're going to babysit them in the Backrooms and watch over their growth every second?"

Chris chuckled. "Come on. Even if only a small portion of each class joins, across three grades that's still close to two hundred people. We don't have the energy to look after them all."

"Besides, the final exam is coming up. Are we supposed to stop getting stronger just to keep pace with them?"

Kushida Kikyo nodded slightly.

With her "little angel" act set aside, the refined egoist in her found nothing to fault in what Chris said.

But...

"What about Ichinose?" Kushida reminded him softly.

With the saintly personality of Honami Ichinose, who valued her friends above her own life, it was hard to imagine her standing aside and looking after only herself while her classmates were in danger.

Chris waved a hand and answered offhandedly:

"Ichinose won't get stuck on this. She knows what matters most and what can wait."

"If she gets distracted playing babysitter, our top-tier strength doesn't improve, and the world ends at the final exam... that would be a real loss. She understands that."

Kushida Kikyo thought it over, then broke into a smile.

"Got it. I'll go explain the dangers of the Backrooms to the classmates who want to go. Better to give them the bad news up front, so they don't throw their lives away on blind confidence."

Chris nodded slightly to show he had no objection.

Then, using the break between classes, Kushida Kikyo went to talk to the eager newcomers without wasting a second.

Morishita Ai watched her back and murmured:

"Knowing Ichinose, she'll probably leave behind some life-saving items, or simply wait on a low-risk level in the Backrooms until the newcomers can protect themselves. Only then would she head to deeper levels to farm points... though that's a drop in the bucket."

"And since this trip to the Backrooms isn't a forced exam by the system, nobody gets pulled back automatically. In a place like that, even support items like the [Phantom Mask] probably won't work."

Chris flipped open his textbook and answered casually:

"It's fine."

"If Gojo Sensei helps us get into his world this afternoon, I can ask him to look after these classmates over there. That shouldn't be a problem."

Right then, Suzune Horikita, who sat directly in front of Chris with her back ramrod straight, pretending to study, finally couldn't hold back any longer.

She turned around, her cool phoenix eyes full of confusion, and stared straight at Chris.

"...Were you talking to me?"

Chris shook his head and pointed to Morishita Ai on the other side of the aisle:

"I'm talking to a ghost. Right now only I can see her... well, and Yotsuya Miko, who was born with Spirit Eyes."

"She's not stupid. I'd say she's passable as a strategist for tactical reference."

Suzune Horikita tilted her face slightly and followed the direction of his finger.

All she saw was the clock hanging on the classroom wall. Nothing else. The spot was empty.

She frowned in bewilderment.

Morishita Ai, who was actually standing there, showed no anger at the frankly insulting assessment.

She just stared at Chris, dead serious, and spoke in a flat monotone, as if reading from a script:

"Are you using that weird phrasing on purpose to get my attention?"

"Heh. Men."

Chris rolled his eyes outright and couldn't be bothered to follow up on this spacey girl's nonsense.

...

That afternoon.

Kushida Kikyo had spared no effort explaining to the class what taking part in the "Backrooms" really meant.

Carrying a list of names of those who still wouldn't back out after the filtering, she and Chris went to the Student Council Office.

Given Honami Ichinose's personality, the Student Council's decision to skirt the rules and let some students visit their families wasn't limited to a few privileged people.

Still, it was essentially a violation of school regulations, however small.

Even though the school's upper echelon was now on the students' side and wouldn't care about something like this, they still had to consider the Black Sphere...

So Akane Tachibana instructed each class to send only a few core members, collecting the willing participants into a report to hand over.

They didn't make a big show of it, but at least the surface work had to be done properly.

Chris hadn't come to register names, though. That was Kushida Kikyo's job.

He'd simply come to find Akane Tachibana, Miyabi Nagumo, and the others to discuss the details of the upcoming trip to the Backrooms.

So he wouldn't get in the way of Kushida's handover, Chris waited a while in the corridor outside.

Only after he saw Kushida Kikyo and the other classes' representatives finish the paperwork and file out did he raise a hand and knock on the open mahogany door beside him.

Miyabi Nagumo gave him a slight nod, not surprised at all.

Before Chris could state his business, Nagumo pressed his crossed hands under his chin and spoke first:

"The school has finished negotiating with the White House. They'll open up access so we can enter the Backrooms for training."

"But as a condition, they want a favor from us."

Chris raised an eyebrow and pulled out a chair to sit down.

"This condition... it wouldn't happen to involve me, would it?"

"Otherwise you wouldn't be sitting there like you've been waiting for me on purpose."

A smile tugged at the corner of Nagumo's mouth.

"Just as you guessed."

Chris sighed and leaned back.

"Let me say this up front. Don't ask me for blood samples or serum for them to study. Just picturing myself getting drained like a lab rat makes me sick."

Nagumo chuckled.

"It won't come to that. They aren't dumb enough to offend you directly. The point is, the condition they've put forward is one only you can satisfy perfectly right now."

"I'm listening."

Chris made a go-ahead gesture.

Nagumo explained:

"The White House wants us to bring out any explorers they've sent into the Backrooms that we run into, when we come back."

"But none of us has any exploration experience in the Backrooms. And going by the intel Ichinose compiled, there's a chance of random noclipping into other levels. Splitting up to search for those levels one by one is a bad deal. The risk isn't worth the reward."

Nagumo's fingertips tapped the desk lightly, and his gaze burned into Chris.

"So the only safe option now is to rely on that spatial item you have, the [Mountain-River Realm Map]."

"As a container for picking up survivors along the way, its interior is a world of its own and absolutely safe. Fitting a few dozen people in wouldn't be any problem."

Chris stroked his chin, thought it over, and replied with some reluctance:

"Student Council President Nagumo, you should know the underlying logic of the Backrooms is strangeness and disorder. It's dangerous in there."

"If it were only about farming points safely, I could use the [Mountain-River Realm Map] to take people in, then use the [Enma Blade] to cut open space and send them straight to safe levels I've already explored."

"But looking for and sheltering the White House's lost explorers means we'd have to leave the safe zone on purpose and venture onto unknown levels. That goes against the whole point of staying alive."

Nagumo mulled it over, a slight frown creasing his brow.

"That is a thorny problem."

But his brow soon smoothed out, and his tone turned cold.

"Still, overall, we hold the upper hand in this deal."

"If we all agree on our story afterward, then even if we never rescue those explorers, nothing substantial changes when the transfer students report it back."

"Of course..." Nagumo gave a cold laugh. "I don't think those people are stupid enough to turn on us at a time like this."

Chris spread his hands, noncommittal.

"Who knows? You have to believe in the diversity and complexity of the human species."

Nagumo didn't mind. He picked up an outing application form from the desk and held it out.

"While you still have time, do you want to leave school and see if there's anyone worth saying goodbye to?"

"If nothing goes wrong, we'll have things coordinated by tomorrow and can open the gate that anchors the Backrooms to our world."

"After that, we won't have this kind of leisure."

Chris took the form, glanced at it, then pushed it back.

He gazed out the window, a wistful look in his eyes.

"If I could, I'd want to go out and see someone too."

"Unfortunately, I can't even remember what my past was like. All I have is a blurry outline. Where would I even look for family?"

Chris sighed. "For me, everyone worth missing is already in this school."

Nagumo glanced at him and took the form back.

"I did hear Ichinose mention that..."

"But for those of us striving to climb to the peak, the past is often just baggage along the road that we can drop whenever we like."

"Maybe we were limited before by the laws of physical reality. But now, as long as we have enough S Points, I believe there's nothing the presiding god can't do."

"For us, at least, regrets can be bought back at any time, as long as we live to the end."

Chris smiled and stood up.

"Can't argue with that. Even something as against nature as reviving the dead or changing the past is casually put up as a priced chip by the Black Sphere."

"For people like us who've already seen hell, there's not much left in the real world that's hard to imagine."

With that, he waved at Nagumo and at Akane Tachibana, who had been quietly listening the whole time:

"You've probably guessed why I came, and everything that needed saying has been said."

"I'll head back, so I'm not in the way while you deal with all those students trying to pull strings to get out."

Beside them, Tachibana was sorting and filing the collected forms. She looked up and said quietly:

"Thank you for your trouble..."

"For a long while to come, we'll probably have to bother you often to use the [Mountain-River Realm Map] to transport people, junior."

Chris waved it off, looking relaxed.

"That's nothing. It's a small favor."

"What worries me more than ferrying people is the [Goldphoenix] that came looking for me in the Mirror World."

"If it comes to find me inside the Backrooms too, things could be far more serious than we thought."

"If it really reaches the moment I think of as critical, I might have to spare some attention to follow Goldphoenix and see what's going on. Then the people left on the monster-farming levels in the Backrooms would be on their own."

He said it half joking, half serious.

Nagumo leaned back in his chair, completely unfazed, and snorted.

"No problem."

"When the two-week gap ends, it's the final exam."

"And knowing the presiding god's nature, the final exam will most likely be an indiscriminate survival mode for every student."

Nagumo's eyes were cold. "By then, as long as the people lost in the Backrooms levels are still alive, I doubt the Black Sphere would skip forcibly summoning them. Once they're pulled into the final exam hall, they're out of trouble automatically."

"As for those who aren't strong enough to survive that long in the Backrooms..."

"Let Ichinose revive them once she's saved up enough points." Nagumo shrugged. "With her saintly personality, she'd never let them die without helping. Sometimes I wonder if she's really the Virgin Mary reborn."

"Definitely," Chris agreed wholeheartedly.

He waved at the two of them again, turned, and walked out of the Student Council Office.

He'd just reached the door.

With quite a few people inside the Student Council Office just then, Morishita Ai hadn't bothered going in to join the crowd. She'd only waited by the door, listening quietly.

When Chris came out, she turned her head slightly and sighed in a tone tinged with weariness:

"Some things fade with time, and some things are brought back by time in some unguarded moment."

"I don't know whether the color of your past is dark or bright."

"But without a doubt, everything we go through bit by bit every day is already enough to leave a deep mark on us."

Morishita Ai looked straight into Chris's eyes. "Whether you drown in the shadow of the past or carry that memory forward... the dividing line is your own choice."

Chris glanced at her, a little surprised.

This deadpan, spacey girl usually looked so vacant, yet she could really lay down the wisdom when she wanted to.

He teased with a smile:

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Don't tell me, Sis Ai, you think what I said in there was just me putting on a brave face and playing pitiful?"

"Don't underestimate me. I'm the tough guy who got ambushed by your ghost face right in my face and didn't even blink, acting like nothing happened."

Morishita Ai, who had finally gotten the philosophical mood just right, instantly broke character.

She lowered her eyes and shot Chris an unapologetic glare.

"For any good detective,"

"a suspect's one-sided verbal account is no way to confirm what really happened."

"Everything needs evidence." Morishita Ai pursed her lips. "Anyway, the look on your face back then didn't seem like you didn't care at all."

...

Bickering back and forth like that, Chris and Morishita Ai soon made it back to the Class A classroom.

By now, thanks to the news Kushida Kikyo had brought back, quite a few students had gathered to discuss what to do once they left school temporarily.

And at the center of the discussion, naturally, stood Kushida Kikyo, playing her usual role as everyone's caring big sister.

After all, with the perfect persona she showed in class, a harmonious family and a happy home were indispensable pieces of the flawless puzzle she was maintaining.

Even though, deep down, she didn't care whether she went home or not, and even found it a bit of a waste of time.

On the surface, though, she put on an act of aching homesickness, eyes slightly red, impatient to get home, looking utterly pitiable.

It drew plenty of sympathy and comforting words from the people around her.

Compared to Kushida's smooth handling of everyone,

the other people in the class, apart from the transfer students assigned to leave and pass on intel,

showed almost no real desire to go out.

Kouenji Rokusuke was grooming his golden hair with a comb, and Chiaki Matsushita was checking the Backrooms supply list.

As thorough realists,

even though both of them had good family atmospheres with no conflict at home,

they didn't think a hasty meeting over a short time mattered more than meeting the "extra teachers" hired from other worlds in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber that afternoon.

As for Nanase Tsubasa and Suzune Horikita, their reasons were even simpler.

They just saw no need.

Since the final say on everything lay with the presiding god, even if they met their families, if they failed to save the world and didn't survive the final exam, all the warmth now would only add to the grief.

In fact, among all the survivors of the Black Sphere's life-and-death exams, plenty felt the way Horikita did.

With death liable to strike at any moment, a simple meeting might only make their families worry, creating needless emotional ties and trouble.

When it came down to it, only Ichinose Honami truly wanted to go home and visit.

Even though, back in middle school, her mother had slapped her hard and forced her to kneel and apologize over stealing a hairpin, a trivial matter by today's standards...

In her gentle heart, none of that could erase how much her mother and little sister meant to her.

For a girl from a poor single-parent household, her family had been her source of motivation.

In fact, she'd chosen Advanced Nurturing High School in the first place only because it advertised "free tuition and guaranteed placement," hoping to ease the burden on her family.

As for Kei Karuizawa...

In a sense, her home had something in common with the Ichinose household.

Both were rather "heavy."

Only, Ichinose's family was poor, which bred her inferiority complex and misunderstandings.

Karuizawa's family was financially normal, yet when she was brutally bullied by classmates and needed protection most, her family offered no shelter at all.

It could be said that Kei Karuizawa's deep lack of security and her warped way of surviving by clinging to the strong came at least half from the coldness of her family.

After the Black Sphere baptism, and after successfully latching onto Chris's thigh,

Kei Karuizawa naturally had no reason to go back and visit those cold relatives.

Rather than waste time on irrelevant people, she'd better use the gap while her biggest rival, Ichinose, was away from school to get closer to Chris!

That was Kei Karuizawa's calculation.

And as a girl who'd once been bullied and forced to max out her "reading the room" skill,

Karuizawa had noticed that the way Suzune Horikita looked at Chris lately was completely off!

She didn't quite understand why Horikita sometimes gave her a strange look of pity, but

honestly, Karuizawa felt this was a golden opportunity!

If she could recruit Horikita, the two underdogs allied together could surely get something done in the vacuum while Ichinose was gone!

"With Ichinose gone, me plus Horikita is unbeatable!"

Kei Karuizawa clenched her fist in secret.

Of course, all these little moves and micro-expressions, in Morishita Ai's eyes as a bystander, couldn't help but look a bit funny.

Soon the bell for the last class of the afternoon rang out.

The new transfer students confirmed for the upcoming "Backrooms training," the students who wanted to go home and see their families, and the spies sent in by various factions to pass on intel...

All left their seats and, together with Honami Ichinose, headed to the Student Council to go through the final procedures for leaving school.

Chris followed the main group staying behind and walked, as he knew the way by now, to the extra classroom the school had arranged for them.

The moment he pushed open the door,

he saw the three teachers from other worlds standing in a neat row in front of the podium.

Before they could even greet them, a student burst out, unable to contain his excitement:

"Gojo Sensei!"

"We heard outside! Is it true that your world recently became the exam site for our upperclassmen?"

Hearing this, Koro Sensei and Jiraiya, standing on either side of Gojo Satoru, turned in some surprise to look at the white-haired, blindfolded man.

Gojo Satoru didn't hold anything back.

He slipped one hand into his pocket and nodded without hesitation.

"That's right."

"The monsters that showed up in the exam were stronger than expected, but in the end, the students passed it flawlessly."

"Honestly, seeing how they performed made me really happy. I even felt a bit inferior."

A flippant smile hung at the corner of Gojo Satoru's mouth, but his tone was unusually serious:

"After all, even if you rely on those magical items for much of it, I could never have pulled off such feats at your age."

Down below, Ryuuen stroked his chin and picked up the thread:

"Gojo Sensei, since you're a local of that exam site, there's something that's been bugging me. Could you clear it up for us?"

Gojo Satoru nodded and gestured for Ryuuen to go ahead.

Ryuuen took a deep breath, organized his words, and fixed his eyes on Gojo Satoru:

"It's about what happened after the exam."

"After it ended and all the testers and qualified participants were teleported away by the Black Sphere... the Mysterious Merchant who'd been in the exam site, that cyberpunk-looking mechanical doll."

"Was she teleported away along with everyone else?"

"Or is there some other story about where she went that we don't know?"

"Oh? That's what you wanted to ask?"

Gojo Satoru lifted his chin slightly. "If I remember right, that mechanical lady named Orianna is the Mysterious Merchant who randomly spawns at different spots in every exam you take, isn't she?"

"As examinees, don't you know where she's heading?"

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka explained calmly from the side:

"The situation has changed."

"After the upperclassmen's group returned, the presiding god told us there will be no advance tests or Black Sphere exams for the next two weeks. It leads straight into the worldwide final exam."

Chris chimed in:

"With the final exam approaching, if everyone wants to raise their survival rate significantly, the only way right now is to go farm points in the dangerous Backrooms."

"And to turn points into combat strength, we have to find the Mysterious Merchant inside to spend them. So confirming whether she stayed in the Backrooms is crucial to our next plan."

Gojo Satoru clapped his hands in sudden understanding.

"I see..."

"In that case, this really is major intel that bears on whether you live or die."

He tipped his head back slightly and put on a show of deep thought. "Let me think carefully about the details from back then, so I don't get anything wrong and mislead you."

About ten-some seconds passed.

Gojo Satoru suddenly clapped.

"I remember!"

"After the blue light of the Black Sphere teleported away Akane Tachibana and the rest of the last testers..."

"I was thinking that the little mechanical lady had helped us a lot, so I wanted to keep her for dinner to say thanks."

"But Miss Orianna said she had a mission and couldn't stay in the exam world for long."

Gojo Satoru shrugged, sounding resigned. "Then Student Council President Horikita, the one you all left behind in our world, left together with the Ex-Machina girl at his side and the Skull Knight on his horse."

"There was a lot of Jujutsu world business left to handle after the battle, and I had to keep things in order, so I couldn't slip away to tail them."

"So how they ended up leaving, and where they went, I honestly don't know."

After hearing Gojo Satoru's account,

everyone in the classroom exchanged blank looks, black lines running down their faces.

Strictly speaking, what Gojo Satoru said wasn't completely useless.

But there wasn't much in it worth digging into!

It was just like the joke, "How many steps does it take to put an elephant in the fridge?"

First, find an elephant. Then open the fridge door. Finally, stuff the elephant inside.

The steps sound perfectly right, but how do you actually do it?!

That's hard to say...

Still, for a group about to explore the Backrooms, Gojo Satoru's words weren't a complete waste of effort.

At least they confirmed that Orianna, the Lady of Clockwork, was indeed still somewhere in the Backrooms.

Though given the Backrooms' endless levels, where space could warp at any moment, it was hard to say they'd be lucky enough to run into her.

But at least they had a clear hope to hold on to.

As she thought this, Nanase Tsubasa seemed to remember something suddenly.

She raised her hand and asked, her face full of hope:

"Gojo Sensei! In that case, I have something I'd like to ask your help with. Would that be all right?"

This time, though, before Gojo Satoru could answer with a smile,

Koro Sensei and Jiraiya, who'd been ignored for ages, protested with a hint of jealousy.

Red stripes, the mark of anger, even appeared on Koro Sensei's yellow round face as his tentacles waved:

"Hold on, hold on... why are all you students asking only Gojo Sensei questions?"

"What about me? Koro Sensei is important too, you know!"

Jiraiya nodded repeatedly, arms folded, putting on the smug air of a hidden master:

"Exactly! I, Jiraiya, swallowed my pride and went into Konoha's forbidden scroll archives to beg for the training methods of the Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu and the Flying Thunder God Technique, just to give you more ways to survive..."

"These are super powerful forbidden space-time techniques! Master them, and you'll swagger around the Backrooms like you own the place!"

Watching his two colleagues sulk, Gojo Satoru couldn't help scratching the white hair standing up on his head.

"Hahaha!"

He laughed loudly and patted Koro Sensei's tentacle, then turned to Nanase Tsubasa, his tone cheerful:

"No problem! Ignore these two jealous old guys."

"Tell me, Nanase Tsubasa. What do you need your teacher's help with?"