章節 5: Chapter 5
Gakushuu's 'blending in' stage of the plan went relatively well.
There was gossip, but it wasn't really him. He was little more than a background fixture to anyone not in his class.
His class was, unfortunately, quite aware of him. Once he came in sight of the kids who didn't like to lose, as the overall number 1, there were silent challenges everywhere.
If they couldn't dominate over him in ranks, they would find different methods.
There were some who wanted to defeat him in their favorite subjects, some who wanted to defeat him in sports, some who wanted to get him into trouble by making up lies or rumors.
There were all kinds of things going around.
He didn't bother mitigating them, and just dealt with it as it came. They wanted to challenge him academically? Fine. They wanted to challenge him in their sport of choice? Well, if he was unfamiliar, he would need a day or two to get familiar with the rules but otherwise he was pretty good.
One of his weekly tests got ruined, he stayed after school to give another and pointed at one of the students being a bit more malicious towards him to get punished for it.
He didn't mind challenges. But having his books or clothes ruined bothered him much more.
But it was already time. Time to slowly raise their awareness of him, that is.
He started with sports. While he was still a part of a few sport clubs, due to his father's preference, he could choose maybe three, and even then, his presence was limited in them.
Well, to be technical, he started kendo and since he was a beginner, people had the false impression that he was bad at sports.
He also played soccer, but he was playing that for sociability points really.
His third club was basketball, which he hadn't actually attended aside from the very first one.
So, he started with soccer.
He had already beat most of the players through sheer physical ability but when the game started, he let others have the limelight.
His senior teammates were actually aware of his talents, but his year mates showed their jealous sides and put him down when there were no actual results coming from him.
It was slightly more effort to shine.
(He went home exhausted, beating others again and again while maintaining a high athletic ability instead of just having fun was annoying. )
It didn't take too long to see results. A few more clubs related to his footwork knocked on his metaphorical door.
He had to give his polite smile and shut it on their face.
The next was kendo. He had started kendo after announcing that it was his first time- kids explore new options right?- and he had shown definite improvement.
He made it into the bracket of five students who were going to participate in the interschool kendo competition.
It was actually pretty funny to watch the way everyone flailed when the opponents failed to get past him.
Kendo competitions had a 1 vs 1 where every time a teammate was defeated, the next in line would pick them up. Generally the best was in the last.
(Asano Gakushuu was the second name on the list, no one made it past him.)
Then before the hubbub about him could peak, there was the pre-midterm Assembly and anxiety peaked.
Normally he took midterms relatively lighter, but this time he couldn't. He was about to start his club and he had to get excellent marks.
His sleeping time decreased dramatically.
Time passed and his standing in the eyes of general student population increased. His eye bags became obvious and this seemed to have reassured some of the students of his species as a human being.
But he went out of his way to help out students who had either asked him for help (friends he made throughout the other classes came by to tentatively ask for his help).
(He almost couldn't help the flash of satisfaction that filled him the first time someone interrupted his lunch to ask for a study book reference.)
Gakushuu went above and beyond to help the students to asked for him. He personally showed them important points to memorize, formulae to use the most frequently and some handy little quirks to make calculations easier.
For him, a lot of things had been intuitive (*cough* past life *cough*) and while his father had turned up his nose at Gakushuu's shortcuts, Gakushuu still used them and found more for regular use outside of Gakuhou directed lectures.
Not to mention, he had been planning for a while.
Plus teaching others was sort of…relaxing, though he would never - even on the pain of death- tell that to Gakuhou. He would genuinely rather die again than go into the teaching profession.
It seemed to have started a trend around school, where lunch time was dedicated to asking fellow students for help.
It was the first show of anything not-negative from the collective student body, and Gakushuu had to silently admit that in a way his father was indeed right.
(The thought burned, and he wanted to prove him wrong, he wanted to burn it all to ashes-
But no, that's not what he was doing. Even if the end goal might fall somewhere close by, his purpose and method was completely different.
He just wanted to live his own life.)
Studies made much of the student body come together, and it was here that the first embers of the E class started.
The people who didn't care, the people who excluded themselves from the trends and groups of studying, the people too shy or too hesitant to join- they started to form a peripheral group, unnoticed by everyone.
This was one more thing his father wasn't wrong about. He wasn't wrong.
But.
(But, one of them was Akabane Karma.)
The school results were out, and everyone wanted to see the results they put so much work in.
They wanted to see real changes based on their hard work. There was enthusiasm and budding competition.
Asano Gakushuu was first, Araki Teppei was second, and Akabane Karma was third.
And finally-
They saw the results of their hard work.
They saw classes change, and schedules shift and teachers change- all because of their marks.
In between it all, Gakushuu waved at the Kimiko from 1-B who transferred to 1-A, he smiled at the boy who had first approached him about the study guide as he sat in the same class as Gakushuu, and he acknowledged the group of students who had decided to hog Gakushuu for almost a week straight so he could tutor them in their weak subjects.
He smiled, satisfied when he saw the glint of surprise in Araki Teppei's eyes and smirked at Ren's laugh and tried to ignore Akabane Karma's yawn.
Another step was complete.
Then he finally established his Self Defence Club.
He didn't particularly promote his club, but news spread.
People were curious, or mostly just willing to come by to degrade it sometime later.
Calling it a 'Self Defence' Club was slightly high handed after all.
Well, people still appeared sporadically though.
He spent some time to talk about laws related to self defence before explaining a few basic moves, and then promptly making everyone try those moves out too.
A lot of people had never fought, or had just come to talk to Gakushuu or even even the start of what Ren called a fanclub. He was pretty sure they hadn't expected him to actually start demonstrations nor make them attempt them.
It was a slightly messy affair, but he was at least vaguely familiar with all the people in his school by now so it wasn't particularly hard to manage the few people who did come by to check try out.
He arranged people by physique and temperament.
Fortunately none of the people who came were the type to walk out in the middle so he managed to convey at least two important points to his audience, even if they took it lightly or didn't really case about it much.
First, that no permanent names of members would be added to the Club regardless of attendance, because it was a 'special club' that would participate in no competitions and held no exceptions for attending members.
Second, he had safely given his phone number to the attending students.
Of course, he might start receiving prank calls and such from then on, but, it was a number he handed off to Ren, when he was busy with lessons.
Still, he had started off on the right path for now.
Gakushuu acting as a part time teacher at the Self Defence Club aside, he was a part of a multitude of clubs whose activities were really starting off after the midterms ended.
The basketball interhigh was starting, and he barely had enough time to attend the sessions or take part in most of the teamwork exercises. He asked to be a first string substitute instead so he could still help out, but didn't have to be an integral part of the team.
He missed the first game, but managed the third and then the forth, but unfortunately, he was late for the fifth and they didn't manage to score enough to qualify for the finals.
He did manage to win in the high school trivia competition which was on the same day as the fifth match of the basketball interhigh.
There were a few academics clubs he had to dedicate a little more time to, but he was mostly trying to manage his limited time to complete his lessons, study and still manage the clubs attendances.
He was glad he wasn't in his third year because they even had a class trip and if it was him, he would have definitely missed it for the amount of things he had had to handle this time.
He had already stopped classes for violin and replaced it with guitar, and his classes for piano were already as rare as his martial arts classes, which were about once or twice a month with a highly skilled instructor.
Mostly, his majority of the time went into the Academics part recently. He was slightly unhappy about it, but he still practiced everything else enough to not lose in skill as time passed by.
Not to mention, he had perfected his Self Defence lessons with his instructor before trying to teach a bunch of preteens. He wasn't as thoughtless as to teach something he hadn't perfected himself. But he still wasn't sure if the man was a highly skilled underground criminal or someone employed by the government. He wasn't sure if he would ever find out, either.
His father was as mysterious as always.
Either way, it wasn't too bad. It was slightly tiresome, but it could have been worse.
He could still afford to skip a few times to spend time on his own, or shift things around to make time for friends- like the time he went to give an apology treat to his basketball team (their coach's treat had been shabby at best, for them failing to get into the nationals. Leaving it at that would have been too depressing).
The period of time between midterms and finals was generally a time for interclass competitions. For the first semester, it involved sports.
A lot of national competitions were ongoing during this time, including basketball, soccer, baseball, volleyball. Of course, they didn't really care about completions involving music since those were generally featured in the latter half of the year, during the school festival.
Nonetheless, the students were quite bothered by the variety of sports they were made to take part in.
P.E. was a compulsory class, but Kunugigaoka was a school where academics came first. Without a decent level in academics, they would fall into E class and be kicked out of their sports clubs- a possibility so horrifying no one could bear it happening.
As soon as Gakushuu found time to breathe after getting involved with the clubs, he was almost immediately thrown into the interclass rivalry egged on by his own classmates.
He almost couldn't believe the amount of ego inflation they must have received to decide to walk into hell themselves.
(As punishment, he subtly incited their P.E. teacher to increase their workload. They needed to feel their legs giving out on them at least once. Ren shot him desperate looks, but he ignored them all. It would serve them well.)
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