By the time Chris followed Karuizawa Kei back to the open-air plaza where Ayanokoji and the others had parted ways that afternoon, the sun had already sunk completely below the horizon, leaving only a few dim streaks of fading afterglow.
The plaza was dotted with small clusters of students. But even among Class D, the atmosphere was far from celebratory.
They were the undisputed winners of this exam — and yet not a single face among their gathered classmates showed even a trace of joy.
Instead, many of them looked exactly like the students from Class B and Class C nearby: heads hung low, spirits crushed to the floor.
Maybe it was the grief of the hare watching the fox die, a reminder that they could easily be next. Or maybe they were simply dreading the day when their own luck ran out.
Then again, it was entirely possible the atmosphere just happened to be unusually civil today — because none of the usual chaos-causing troublemakers had bothered to show up.
While Chris was quietly taking stock of his surroundings, Kushida Kikyo — who had been standing with Mori Ningning ready to receive them — caught the movement out of the corner of her eye.
"Kei, Chris — you two worked so hard out there."
She peeled away from the group without drawing attention, hands clasped behind her back, her voice warm with concern.
"By the way... where's Horikita?"
Karuizawa Kei's brow furrowed slightly.
If she was being honest, she'd never had a particularly good impression of Kushida.
For one thing, that perpetually radiant social butterfly act — the way Kushida always seemed perfectly friendly with absolutely everyone — had a habit of dragging Karuizawa's memory back to the ugliest parts of middle school, the days when she'd been bullied.
For another, Kushida had been one of the original Black Sphere test subjects. She'd been oozing a quiet sense of superiority over everyone else for days now — and yet when the exam registration was announced that morning, she'd completely lost her nerve and buried herself at the back of the crowd like a tortoise yanking its head into its shell.
Not that Karuizawa had any room to talk, given that she'd also been terrified of dying.
But things were different now. She belonged to Chris.
As a proper parasite, deflecting unnecessary nuisances on behalf of her host was simply part of the job description.
"She's always done things on her own terms," Karuizawa Kei said smoothly, stepping to Chris's side. "You're always going on about how close you two are — how would you not know that?"
Kushida let out a soft, awkward laugh at being called out so cleanly, though she didn't seem the least bit offended. She simply murmured gently, "The exam just ended — I didn't want to bother Horikita. I just assumed... that you'd all come back together once it was over."
As she said this, Kushida suddenly waved past Chris toward something just off to one side, her smile blooming brightly.
"Oh, Horikita! You made it~"
Chris turned to look.
Horikita Suzune was walking over alone.
Faced with Kushida's cheerful greeting, she wore the same untouchable, stone-faced expression as always — not even bothering with a perfunctory nod.
Chris looked away and tilted his head toward Karuizawa Kei.
"Go find Matsushita Chiaki and the others. I need a word with Horikita — it's private."
"...Understood."
Karuizawa Kei didn't ask a single question. She gave an obedient nod, didn't spare Horikita so much as a glance, and simply turned and walked toward the cluster of girls.
That unusually docile compliance left Kushida Kikyo standing nearby looking slightly startled.
As Chris walked directly toward Horikita Suzune, Kushida bit her lower lip, hesitating internally over whether to swallow her pride and trail after them to fish for information.
Fortunately — or perhaps unfortunately for her — homeroom teacher Chabashira Sae's arrival gave her something else to worry about.
"Looks like everyone's still here."
Chabashira Sae click-clacked over on her heels to where Hirata Yousuke and the others were standing. The expression on her perpetually sardonic face had, for once, shifted into something resembling genuine satisfaction.
"Well done. Not only did you take first place in the preliminary exam, you absolutely crushed it in last night's main event too."
She held up her phone, showing them the notification.
"I'm sure you've already received the school's class points update. This time, Class D's class rating has skyrocketed by 950 points. When the class rankings are updated next month, we'll officially be reclassified as Class B. And if this momentum holds..."
"I have every confidence that Class A's seat will be yours before long."
And yet.
To Chabashira Sae's evident surprise, there was no cheering. No celebration at all.
What followed instead was dead silence — and several pairs of eyes barely suppressing open fury.
"Chabashira-sensei..."
Hirata Yousuke stepped forward, exhaustion written plainly across his face.
"Don't you think... that's a little too cold?"
"We enrolled in this school because of the incredible opportunities and the hundred-percent university placement rate. But now..." Hirata clenched his fists, knuckles going white. "What we're facing now is a Black Sphere exam that could kill any of us at any moment! Under that kind of constant threat — who the hell still has the headspace to care about class rankings?!"
"Even if we do make it to Class A... we have to actually survive long enough to graduate first!"
That particular point struck a raw nerve even for Horikita Suzune — the very person who had set "leading Class D to Class A" as her absolute objective from the very first day of school.
"At a time like this, still clinging to that hollow script-reader routine..." Horikita said coldly. "Do you really think you're standing on some untouchable pedestal?"
Chris, standing off to the side, gave a quiet shake of his head.
"Just wait and see."
"The preliminary exam and special tests at the start were manageable. But look at where things stand now. Just a few days in, and we're already seeing hidden bosses worth twenty or thirty points or more, and exam rules that coldly demand human lives as the price of failure..."
"If the difficulty keeps escalating at this rate, there will come a day when no one in this school can afford to stand apart from it."
Since Chabashira Sae was so obsessed with "reaching Class A," maybe when that day came, she could lead the charge herself and see if she had the guts for it.
Horikita Suzune didn't take the bait.
She came to a stop, tilting her pale neck back to look up at Chris. "You came all the way over here just to find me? What for? If it's about tutoring, I'm not in the mood right now."
"Lower your voice."
Chris angled his head slightly toward the shadows of the trees not far away. "This concerns you, and it's not something strangers should overhear. That said — if you want, I can say it right here."
Horikita Suzune's brow furrowed.
Full of questions but unwilling to dismiss Chris's judgment, she turned and walked toward a quieter corner.
"Fine. Let's hear it."
The two of them moved one after the other until they'd confirmed no one else was within earshot.
Only then did Chris stop — and drop a bomb.
"Horikita. You don't need to participate in the Black Sphere exams anymore."
Horikita Suzune froze mid-step.
She spun around, her sharp eyes cutting into him like blades. "What do you mean by that?! On what grounds?!"
Chris sighed, his tone matter-of-fact.
"On the grounds that unlike me, you weren't given extra lives by the Black Sphere. And on the grounds that so far, you haven't been able to make any decisive contributions on the field."
"Rather than let you walk in there and get yourself killed, it makes more sense to give that main-event slot to Ayanokoji — someone who actually needs it and has a margin for error. Is that reason enough?"
"In your dreams!"
Horikita Suzune ground her teeth, like a cat who'd just had her tail stepped on.
"Who gave you the right to make decisions for me?! My life is mine to control — and so is my death!"
Chris wasn't surprised in the slightest by her stubborn refusal.
He didn't bother arguing further. He simply pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and pressed play.
A man's voice came through the speaker.
——"I've already told her — whether she survives in this school is up to her own choices."
——"But I trust in your ability. Suzune... I'm leaving her in your hands too."
The moment she heard Horikita Manabu's voice —
Every last spike on Horikita Suzune seemed to vanish at once.
She stood frozen in place, pupils trembling, her expression laid bare in a way she had no power to conceal — pure, helpless bewilderment.
"Brother..."
Her lips trembled faintly. "How could that possibly be... something Brother said?"
"What else would it be? You think I hired a voice actor to dub over it for you? Do I look like I have that kind of free time?"
Chris pocketed his phone, his expression flat as he pressed on.
"Since the Student Council President says he's already spoken with you, I'll assume you already know — this school has never once held Black Sphere exams before any of this."
"You don't need to chase a death game that was never part of the normal curriculum just to prove something to him. And frankly, at this point, you have zero margin for error left."
Chris looked her directly in the eyes. "Do you know what happened to the students today — after the preliminary exam ended — to the ones who didn't lose to an opponent, but were still eliminated because they had no lives remaining?"
Horikita Suzune went pale and shook her head.
"A red laser dropped from the sky." Chris tapped the center of his own forehead. "Straight through their skull. Dead before they hit the ground."
"So, given that you could be executed at any moment, the smart move is to stay in the back and keep yourself safe."
"Whether it's for your brother's sake, or for everyone else's."
Horikita Suzune pressed her lips together, all the color drained from them.
Inside, it felt like two forces were tearing her apart.
But in the end, that desperate need to chase after her brother's shadow — that stubborn obsession — won out.
"...The top three in the midterm exam receive a Black Sphere bonus — a resurrection slot."
She fixed her gaze on Chris, fighting with every ounce of willpower not to let her tears fall, and declared stubbornly: "I'll take it. Once I do, I'll have earned the right to keep going."
"Why are you so fixated on this?"
Chris rubbed his temple, expression pained. "Can't you tell? Your brother is indirectly looking out for you — trying to protect you — in the only way he knows how."
Horikita Suzune's shoulders were rigid as iron, her entire posture screaming that she would not bend, not even if she broke.
"Because... I want to be able to help him."
Her voice cracked slightly, but her conviction was absolute.
"If I do nothing, then when he faces a life-or-death crisis in the Black Sphere — when he needs me — are you telling me I should just hide in the school and watch coldly from a distance? Waiting for news of his death?!"
"I could never accept that! Never!"
Chris pressed his fingers wearily to the bridge of his nose.
"So that's the reason... I genuinely have no idea how to argue against that."
He thought for a moment — then abruptly changed tack.
"Alright, how about this."
"Horikita — you have a Combat Suit right now, don't you? Then put it on."
Chris looked at her steadily.
"Unarmed combat, swordsmanship, marksmanship — pick any one of them. If you can beat me in even a single discipline, I'll take back everything I said and drop this entirely. Deal?"
Horikita Suzune's head snapped up, that unbreakable competitive fire flooding back into her entire body.
"Fine! I accept!" She lifted her chin defiantly. "I won't lose."
Chris glanced inwardly at his Heart of Steel panel — nearly six hundred stacks deep now — and couldn't quite suppress a smile.
"Then shall we find somewhere to do this?"
Horikita Suzune gave a crisp nod. "I'll go back to the dorm and grab my Combat Suit. Wait here."
"I need to grab mine too... same direction. Let's go."
At that moment.
Kushida Kikyo, who had been keeping half an eye on the two of them, noticed that Horikita Suzune's expression had turned dark and grim — like someone walking into a duel. She quietly drifted over to Karuizawa Kei's side.
"Kei... did something happen between Chris and Horikita during the exam?"
Karuizawa Kei glanced at her sideways, expression blank, and shook her head.
"I don't know."
A proper parasite knew her limits. When it came to her host's private business and private plans, she always understood where the lines were.
Don't ask what you shouldn't ask.
Don't say what you shouldn't say — not even half a word.
That was her code. Her way of endurance.
Half an hour later.
Inside a small, enclosed training room beside the gymnasium.
The space was just Chris and Horikita Suzune — who had changed into her pitch-black Combat Suit.
"Ha!"
With a sharp kiai, Horikita Suzune drove off her right leg, the Combat Suit's boosters unleashing a terrifying burst of force in an instant — a powerful, high-arcing kick driving straight at Chris's neck!
But the gap between ambition and reality was brutal.
Horikita held a solid B+ in physical education — and in the original timeline, she'd even traded blows briefly with Ibuki Mio. But by design, she had never undergone any formal martial arts or combat training.
Even with the Combat Suit multiplying her physical specs tenfold —
In Chris's eyes, this seemingly fierce attack was nothing more than a textbook swing with no soul behind it.
"Too slow. You're wide open."
Rather than dodge, Chris simply shifted his weight to the side, extended his left hand, and hooked her wrist — redirecting her own momentum forward with practiced ease.
His right foot swept in lightly.
Thud!
Horikita Suzune hit the floor, clean and efficient.
Before she could force herself back up, Chris was already on top of her — a direct response to her stubborn spirit — locking a textbook Brazilian jiu-jitsu chokehold around her neck, cinching it tight.
"Ngh..."
The air was being squeezed from her lungs. The crushing sense of suffocation made it nearly impossible for Horikita Suzune to breathe. Her hands instinctively hammered against Chris's arm; through the struggle, her normally composed and elegant face had gone beet red, tears forcing their way to the corners of her eyes.
Only when she let out a strangled groan and her strikes began to weaken did Chris release her and step back.
"Cough, cough — hah — cough!"
Horikita Suzune clutched her throat, hacking violently, as though she were trying to cough her lungs out.
"Well?" Chris stood over her, looking down. "You can't even beat me. So how do you plan to face the increasingly powerful alien monsters in the Black Sphere exam?"
Horikita Suzune ground her teeth and forced out a defense.
"As Qualifiers... we don't fight enemies with our bare hands!"
"Fair enough."
Chris didn't argue the point.
He walked to the equipment rack nearby and tossed two wooden practice swords onto the floor in front of her.
"You were in the field this exam — you know better than anyone the charge time and range limitations of the X-GUN and Y-GUN in actual combat, right?"
"And you don't have enough spare points to buy an upgraded weapon. So the moment you step onto the exam field, you'll be fighting with nothing but the Black Sphere combat knife they hand you at the start."
Chris picked up the other wooden sword and pointed it at her from across the room.
"Come. Show me what you've got."
Horikita Suzune bent down and picked up the wooden sword.
Even after being thoroughly dominated just moments ago, the girl raised her refined chin, gripped the hilt with both hands, and didn't flinch.
"Come at me!"
Crack!
"Men!"
Crack!
"Do! Kote! Tsuki!"
Accompanied by Horikita Suzune's fierce, textbook kendo calls — one after another, her wooden sword was sent flying from her grasp by Chris, and she was knocked flat on her back each time.
Thud!
By the fifth time Horikita Suzune was knocked to the floor — body coated in dust, sweat soaking the black hair plastered to her forehead — she was still biting down hard, pushing through a grip hand so numb it had gone beyond pain, arms so sore they could barely rise.
And yet, she was clearly about to reach for the sword again and drag herself upright for another round.
Chris finally ran out of patience.
He stepped forward, wooden sword thrusting out.
Rip —
The tip pierced cleanly and precisely through a small blue circular node on the Combat Suit at Horikita Suzune's wrist.
"What did you just do?"
She felt the strength that had been filling her body quietly begin to drain away. Horikita Suzune froze, staring at Chris in disbelief.
"Don't panic — a damaged Combat Suit resets automatically the next time an exam begins." Chris explained calmly.
"I just wanted to show you something. The Combat Suit's enhancements are not invulnerable."
"If a monster discovers this secret, it could puncture the ring nodes on your suit and strip you of the enhancement effect in an instant."
Chris looked at the girl now slumped on the floor, every last advantage gone from her.
"So tell me — without the Combat Suit, with no combat skills to speak of... what do you think happens to you on that exam field?"
Horikita Suzune finally fell silent.
Completely, utterly silent.
She stared at her wrist, now dim and powerless — and the memory of that helpless, hollow feeling she'd had facing Goto and the Decepticons came flooding back.
The armor of pride had been stripped away. What remained was nothing but the cold, bare truth.
She didn't even have the standing to take a single blow on this person's behalf for her brother's sake — let alone survive the Black Sphere exams that would only grow more brutal from here.
A long, heavy silence followed.
The struggle, the pain, the unwillingness — all of it, at the moment the final decision was reached, crystallized into something unshakeable.
Under Chris's faintly surprised gaze —
The girl who had never bowed her head to anyone brought her knees together and pressed her upper body flat to the floor in a full, formal dogeza — her forehead meeting the wooden boards with a resounding knock.
"Sensei!"
Horikita Suzune's voice rang out clear and firm against the floor.
"Please teach me to become stronger!"
"Please make me strong enough... to endure anything that comes."
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: COTE: Confessing to Sakayanagi From the Start
Let's achieve our community goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 extra chapter for everybody