Classroom of the Elite Final Year Volume 11

Part 5

When I reached the classroom, people were buzzing and gossiping about something.

All of them trained their eyes on me the moment I entered the classroom.

Kei was surrounded by girls and she was being questioned. She was smiling nervously and trying to evade answering them. She could have just said the truth but instead, she decided to keep quiet. She must be thinking that if she were to say something and that messed up the situation, it would only mean trouble for me. She must have wanted to prevent that from happening.

I put my bag on my seat and Akito approached me.

"What's the meaning of this?"

He asked. Airi, Haruka, and Keisei were behind them.

Everyone was looking at me to hear my answer.

Horikita also approached me and said, "Will you be kind enough so as to explain what the meaning of this picture is?"

She showed her phone screen to me.

Shown in the picture were me and a girl with a cane walking side by side.

This was the image that had been circulating on the school website since morning.

There was also a sort of note attached with the photo which read as follows: Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and Sakayanagi Arisu know each other since a long time back and have a special relationship. – Ryuen Kakeru.

"If Ryuen had just said so without any proof, I would have dismissed it as just his usual method of provocation but we have a definitive proof here. And there is no way it is edited, is it?"

"No. It is true."

"So, what is this special relationship that you two have?"

All the attention on me was making it quite uncomfortable for me.

While I was thinking about how to answer, my phone rang. I took out the phone but before I could Horikita snatched the phone from me.

She answered the call and put it in speaker mode.

"Hello. Ayanokoji-kun."

From the other side, the voice of the other person in question could be heard. Horikita narrowed her eyes on me and with her eyes motioned me to answer.

"Hello. Sakayanagi?"

"Ah, yes, it's me. It has surely spread wild and fast."

"So it seems."

"I have been pestered since morning to answer their questions and the situation there would be no different, right?"

"It may be even worse for me."

"Right. And here I wanted to keep the fact that we were childhood friends a secret till the very end."

She said as if she was genuinely troubled but I could still pick up on her excitement. She was probably very amused right now.

You could think of it as acting like you were angry when you were teased with your name attached to a girl but being actually and weirdly happy inside.