Classroom of the Elite: Alter - Solace

Vol. 7: Chapter 11.1 - Hostage

That night, I dreamed about my childhood-- about that time I killed a snake. If I grabbed it and taught it to feel fear before killing it, would I still have slaughtered it in the end?

"Freakin' stupid."

That line of thought was pointless. You only got one life, and it didn't have an undo button. Some days, you won, and some days you lost. Yesterday just happened to be the latter. The number of times I'd been beaten was probably in the triple digits by now. Heck, yesterday hadn't even been the first time I'd lost to him-- to Ayanokouji.

So, what made this different from everything that'd happened so far?

At eight o'clock the next morning, I left the dorms and made my way to the school building. Although this was the first day of our winter vacation, club activities were still being held, so the building had been left open. School rules required uniforms to be worn within the building, but I didn't need to pay attention to that particular rule anymore-- or any rules, for that matter.

The clubs were already engaged in their morning practice which generally started around seven. Since Keyaki Mall didn't open until ten, I was probably the only student heading toward the school building now.

"Achoo...!"

Along the way, I encountered a lone student standing by the side of the path, trembling from the cold. I ignored her and kept going, but she called out to me.

"You finally came."

I just kept walking.

"Hey, wait a minute!" she yelled, chasing me in a panic before grabbing my shoulder.

"What are you doing? Don't touch me like that," I snarled.

"I don't exactly want to touch you. You dumped your phone on me, remember? I'm just giving it back," said a red-nosed Ibuki.

She thrust my phone back at me.

"You could've done this at a better time. How long have you been waiting?" I asked.

"Who knows?"

So she'd waited for quite a while, huh? She's unnecessarily sensitive when it comes to pointless things like this. I didn't take the phone, but Ibuki grabbed my arm when I tried to slip past her.

"Don't quit," she suddenly said.

"I knew it. You didn't just come here to return my phone."

"Do you remember what you said back when you fought Ishizaki and Albert? You said that the strongest person is whoever wins in the end, no matter how many times they lost before. That's exactly how it went when you fought them." She glared at me, but it wasn't just filled with hate.

"So what?"

"Are you really going to end this after losing to Ayanokouji yesterday?"

"You've been with me ever since we started waging war on other classes. You saw how Ayanokouji outsmarted me when I tried to set Yamauchi and Ike up. Then, he figured out our plan during the Deserted Island Exam. He also screwed over my schemes for the Zodiac Exam by figuring out the pattern on the first day. After that, he used me as an accomplice for his own plans. Heck, he even predicted the expulsion of his classmates and saved one of them just to send a message," I elaborated. "I used my last and strongest card yesterday, Ibuki. And even with that, I still lost."

"My question is the same. Are you really going to end this because you lost?"

"You were already fast asleep during the height of the fight. If you saw how Ayanokouji dismantled Albert and the others even after they swarmed him, you won't have the guts to even ask me that question."