Chris checked the time. The preliminary test didn't need to be delayed.
He pocketed his phone and turned to face Ichinose Honami, who was watching him with barely contained anticipation.
"Just explaining it in words probably won't get the point across," he said. "Come with me. Let me change into the suit and show you directly — that should make it click."
"I appreciate it, Chris-kun."
Ichinose Honami gave a small, obedient nod, no hesitation whatsoever, and fell into step behind him at a brisk pace.
Not far away.
Shiranami Chihiro watched the two of them walk off side by side, their figures growing smaller in the distance. She opened her mouth — almost called out to Ichinose — and then closed it again, because she couldn't for the life of her figure out what reason she'd give.
She knew exactly why Ichinose had gone to find Chris. And honestly, she was the last person who had any right to complain — she was one of the people who'd directly benefited from the arrangement Ichinose had put herself in harm's way to secure.
She couldn't exactly storm over there and grab Ichinose by the arm screaming:
"Honami-chan! Don't go! You can't just wander off alone with some guy! He looks shady as hell — what if he takes advantage of the situation?!"
That would be petty. Embarrassingly, humiliatingly petty.
In the end, all she could do was bite down on her lip and fix her gaze on Ichinose's retreating back, watching until it disappeared from view.
The feeling was uncomfortably familiar. Like watching your husband leave for a business trip with his boss because the family needed the money, while you stood at the door being completely, devastatingly useless...
No. Wait.
She wasn't even a wife. At best, she was the powerless best friend who watched from the sidelines.
Which made it even worse.
Ugh...
...
A few minutes later.
They arrived outside his dorm room. Chris's hand rested on the door handle as he glanced back.
"Wait here for a second. I'll go put the suit on."
"Sure— ah?"
Ichinose had started to follow him inside on pure reflex — one foot already through the doorway — before it hit her all at once: this was a boys' dormitory, and he was going in there to change into a skintight combat suit.
The heat reached her cheeks like a flash flood.
"N-no, it's fine! I'll wait out here!"
Chris pulled the door mostly shut, leaving a crack. Through the gap, he could see Ichinose standing with her back pressed against the wall, doing slow, deliberate deep breaths — very obviously trying to compose herself.
He shook his head.
Ichinose Honami, if he was being honest, was exceptional on basically every front. Physically, her build was model-tier — figure, proportions, the whole package. And her personality was the kind of warm, bone-deep gentleness that most people couldn't fake on their best day.
But that was exactly where it curdled into a weakness. For her, and for Class B as a whole.
In a world that ran on survival of the fittest, taking every burden onto your own shoulders without the ruthless capability to back it up was a fast track to collapsing under your own weight.
Chris didn't dislike the saintly type.
What he couldn't stand was the version of it where the person's reach far exceeded their grasp — where the inability to actually do anything turned all that goodwill into a drag on everyone around them. That kind of helpless, well-meaning failure had its own particularly unpleasant flavor.
Kushida Kikyo was a different matter entirely. His interest in Kushida was simple and uncomplicated — he was drawn to the contrast, the gap between that pristine surface and whatever was burning underneath, and yes, to the frankly impressive structural engineering on display. That was purely aesthetic appreciation.
With Ichinose, though... he genuinely did have something closer to a developmental interest. A genuine curiosity about what she might grow into.
Here's hoping this helps her get at least a little sharper.
With that thought, he split his attention and opened the Black Sphere interface.
The game he'd chosen for this preliminary test was a classic straight out of Alice in Borderland — the ♥7: Wolf and Sheep.
Ruleset: the serialized version's settings, carried over intact.
Four players. One wolf. Three sheep. The sheep hide from the wolf — avoid being spotted. But in the end, only the player who holds the wolf identity when the game ends walks away alive.
And the catch: the moment wolf and sheep make direct eye contact, their identities instantly swap.
So the thing you were really hiding wasn't the sheep — the prey.
It was the wolf. The identity you had to bury deep, even if it meant betraying every human instinct you had, because survival demanded it.
[Game loaded.]
[Participants: Ayanokoji Kiyotaka (Class D) · Kanzaki Ryuuji (Class B) · Kaneda Satoru (Class C) · Machida Koji (Class A)]
Once the game confirmed as started, Chris let it go and stopped paying close attention.
Putting Ayanokoji in a mind-game arena against three opponents was like dropping a nuclear warhead into a pillow fight. It wasn't going to be a contest — it was going to be a beatdown. Entertaining for about thirty seconds and then just uncomfortable.
The more pressing issue right now was the lesson on this end.
Knock knock.
A careful, tentative knock at the door.
"Chris-kun? Are you dressed yet?"
Ichinose's voice came through — and with it, the door drifted open a crack. She'd apparently assumed it was locked and only given it a testing push, not expecting it to glide inward several inches without resistance.
"Ah! I'm sorry!"
She flinched and immediately moved to step back and pull it shut.
"It's fine. Come in."
Chris was already fully suited up, standing in the center of the room and rolling his wrist through a slow warm-up rotation.
"The door was open for you. Come in — let's keep going."
"Eh? O-okay."
Ichinose dropped the question, ducked her head slightly, and stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind her.
She took a quick look around.
Neat. Impressively, unexpectedly neat. No stale athletic smell in the air, no socks slung across the furniture. If anything, there was a faint clean citrus note hanging in the air — lemon air freshener, she realized.
The tension in her shoulders eased by a degree or two.
She crossed the room and stopped in front of Chris, suddenly uncertain what to do with herself.
"So... what do I do now?"
Chris turned to face her and extended his right hand, palm up.
"Here. Grab my hand."
"Eh?"
"Testing," he said. Short. No elaboration.
Ichinose didn't fully understand, but she was accommodating by nature. She reached out with both hands and closed them around his — around the broad, black-gloved surface of the combat suit covering his palm.
The last time she'd touched it, there had been residual warmth left behind. This time, she could feel the heat directly — the actual temperature of the person underneath, transmitted clearly through the suit's material.
Something about the contact made her pulse tick a little faster.
"Squeeze," Chris said, his voice even.
"As hard as you can. Max effort."
Ichinose bit her lip. Straightened her back. Put her weight into it, her hands pressing down with increasing force.
Then Chris looked at his hand — which had barely deformed at all — and at the girl whose face had gone red with effort while her arms produced almost nothing by way of actual force.
He sighed.
"You really don't work out, do you? That's your maximum?"
Ichinose lowered her head, embarrassed, and stumbled through an explanation:
"I c-can't help it... if I move too vigorously, it really hurts... in the chest..."
Chris's gaze dropped briefly to the relevant area.
Fair enough, he thought. Running any kind of high-impact training with that load is genuinely inconvenient. And if she overdoes it and loses volume, that's an actual tragedy. Absolutely not an option.
"If the gentle approach isn't going to work," he said to no one in particular, "then we go straight to the shock therapy."
He let go of her hands.
"What do you mean, shock— EH?!"
Before Ichinose could finish the sentence, Chris had already reversed his grip — caught her by the arm — and with one smooth, effortless motion, lifted her entire body off the floor.
Like picking up a kitten by the scruff.
Ichinose Honami: ...?
The sudden sensation of her feet leaving the ground short-circuited something in her brain. She blinked, dazed.
What just happened? Am I... flying?
"You still haven't processed what happened, have you?" Chris asked, watching her vacant expression with mild curiosity.
As he said it, he bent his arm slightly — drawing her upward and inward, pulling the suspended Ichinose Honami a few inches closer toward him.
The distance collapsed.
In the instant before she was pulled fully against him, it clicked.
She'd been lifted. One-handed. Off the ground, feet dangling, completely defenseless — suspended in mid-air in the most undignified, helpless, mortifying position imaginable.
This was too shameless. No — this was going way too far!
The realization hit, and Ichinose Honami's survival instincts kicked in on pure reflex. She started fighting back immediately — legs kicking, her captured arm yanking hard against his grip, her free hand slamming flat against his chest and pushing with everything she had.
Chris didn't move.
But he didn't push further, either.
No kiss. No wandering hands. Nothing.
He just held her there — one-handed, at that agonizing threshold between close and touching, close enough that she could feel his breath, close enough that there was nothing left to hide behind.
"Mm. Not bad."
He registered the force of her palm against his chest and gave his verdict, tone unhurried:
"Quite a bit more power than before. Like a little bull — solid."
And then, as if nothing had happened at all, he released her, simultaneously stepping back to a safe, neutral distance.
"Ha... hah..."
Ichinose stumbled, caught her footing, and wrapped both arms around herself — face so red it looked painful. She was breathing hard.
She stared at him, her expression caught between mortified fury and genuine confusion.
"Chris-kun — why did you do that?!"
Chris met her outrage with complete composure.
"Think back to the moment you were trying to push me away."
"Your senses, your strength, your reaction speed — did they all feel sharper? Even just slightly?"
Ichinose froze.
She looked down at her own hands.
Now that he mentioned it...
...Yeah. Actually.
The moment the shame had crashed over her — at the height of it — the suit had felt different. Like something had unlocked. Like she could have broken through anything.
"That," Chris said, completely straight-faced, "is what I meant. The difference."
He delivered it with all the gravity of a professor at a podium:
"The combat suit seems to respond when your emotions are running at their peak — when you're fully committed, fully present, or in a state of extreme agitation. That's when it gives you everything it's got."
Ichinose stared at him.
She opened her mouth. Closed it. She could sort of follow his logic — and yet something about it still felt fundamentally, deeply wrong.
In the end, she couldn't hold it in.
"That — that doesn't mean you had to do it that way! You could have given me some kind of warning! Using a method like that, I — I almost completely misunderstood what was happening!"
I almost thought you were going to kiss me!
And worse — the part that scared her more than anything else — was that in that split second, her brain had completely seized up. She hadn't even tried to dodge. She'd just... frozen. What was wrong with her?!
Watching her cycle through the very specific expression of someone who wanted to be furious but couldn't quite locate a valid target, Chris decided he'd made his point.
"Telling you in advance would've defeated the purpose."
"This was the most direct demonstration I could think of. So — putting the method aside — did it work or didn't it?"
"Remember what that felt like. In actual combat, if you hit a moment where your emotions spike like that, expect it. Anticipate the power boost before it happens."
"The last thing you want is to suddenly have twice the strength you're used to and completely lose control of your own body."
Ichinose Honami looked at him — delivering this lecture with an expression of total, unshakeable seriousness — and the scolding she'd been building up quietly dissolved.
"...Fine. I got it."
She took a deep breath, steadied the heart that was still hammering in her chest, and fixed him with her most severe look.
"But! If you're going to do something like that again, please tell me in advance!"
"Other people won't be as patient as I am — just now, when I thought you were about to... do that... I was genuinely ready to hit you!"
She raised her palm in demonstration, a clear and pointed warning.
"Duly noted," Chris said, nodding along cooperatively. "Next time, for sure."
But his mind had already drifted — back to the Wolf and Sheep game, back to Ayanokoji and the others, watching the situation play out through the interface only he could see.
He'd already moved on completely.
There was nothing to be done about it.
When a girl was naturally this sweet-tempered, even her anger came out soft. Getting a rise out of Ichinose was genuinely entertaining — and that little squirming pushback, that warmth and that softness, was every bit as satisfying as ever.
____
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