LET’S GO BACK IN TIME about two months, to a certain day in February. In a meeting room in a certain facility somewhere in Tokyo, a man who looked to be in his forties read information off a screen as he explained something. A child was quietly listening to him speak.

This child was fifteen years old. They would soon be entering high school—and they were no mere child.

This child had been raised in a top-secret facility known as the White Room and received a rather special education.

“That is all the detailed data we have on Ayanokouji Kiyotaka and the other one hundred and fifty-six students in the second year. Have you committed all of that to memory?” asked Tsukishiro.

The screen in the room displayed all the data on its students that the school had collected over the past year. Data that included names, birth dates, and what schools they had previously attended, of course, but also, parents and siblings, their grades from early childhood, even their friendships. This was a top-secret meeting. The kind of information being shared here was the kind that even homeroom instructors wouldn’t normally be able to access.

“I’m sure you’re already well aware of this, but the important thing here is to get Ayanokouji-kun kicked out of school and then bring him back to the White Room before the end of April. We cannot afford to delay our plans any longer. However, please be smart about how you execute this operation. You must never make anything public. If the government does happen to hear about our actions, then, his—sensei’s—name could be dragged through the mud,” added Tsukishiro.

After hearing this explanation, the student from the White Room slowly raised their hand. “In other words, don’t do anything to attract unnecessary attention?”

“Precisely. Which is exactly why only someone like you, who can pose as a student to infiltrate the school, can do this. I will provide you with as much support as possible, but Sakayanagi will likely be much more cautious from this point forward. You won’t be able to do anything careless,” said Tsukishiro.

The student seemed to have gotten a grasp on the situation, but their expression also seemed to contain a hint of frustration. Tsukishiro did not miss that.

“The look on your face is telling me that you’re not exactly happy about this,” said Tsukishiro.

After briefly glancing at Ayanokouji’s picture on the screen behind him, he turned his gaze back to meet the child’s.

“I take it you know that he—that Ayanokouji-kun—is touted as our facility’s magnum opus, our masterpiece? Not only was I sent, but they’re even sending someone from the White Room. Meaning they interrupted the experiments being conducted in the White Room, which had finally resumed operations. I have to say, it truly seems like an excessive and rather generous response. I suppose that to someone who has been raised in the same facility, there might be nothing more humiliating,” said Tsukishiro, strongly emphasizing that last point as he continued his explanation.

He was trying to get the student to show what they were capable of by fanning the flames of their student competitive spirit. Ayanokouji Kiyotaka is our masterpiece. Whenever the students heard those words, some emotion lurking deep within their hearts came bubbling up to the surface.

Tsukishiro had conducted himself flawlessly. But the one thing he had misread was what that emotion was. Something those who were raised in the White Room had drilled into them so thoroughly that they grew to hate it.

“Become someone who can surpass Ayanokouji Kiyotaka.”

A feeling of intense hatred, which an unrelated third party who hadn’t been raised in that facility could not understand. Sometimes, that feeling would swell to the point where it could no longer be contained, and it would spark an outburst.

“The stage has been set. All I want you to do now is demonstrate the full extent of your ability. Based on the data I’ve looked at, I see no issues. If you have this level of ability, then it shouldn’t take much effort at all for you to get him expelled, now, should it?”

After Tsukishiro was done giving his explanation, as well as a rather perverse form of provocation, he powered the screen off. The room was engulfed in darkness for a moment but was filled with light once more shortly afterward, as the ceiling lights came on.

“Now, then. If there are no questions, let’s stop for the day. Time is quite precious, after all,” said Tsukishiro.

The child, after hearing that, turned their back to Tsukishiro and moved to leave the room as though nothing had happened. He felt slightly bothered by their calm and collected behavior. His instincts were telling him that he had misspoken earlier when he was giving his explanation. However, he couldn’t take back any of the words that he had already said.

“One more thing. There’s something I forgot to check,” said Tsukishiro, calling out the child from behind, stopping them from leaving the room. “You’re not hiding anything from me, are you?”

He was well aware that even though they were on the same side, the organization wasn’t a monolith. If their ideas didn’t align to start with, things wouldn’t work out so well. That was what he was trying to confirm.

The student, without even looking back, just gave a small nod and quietly continued walking away.

After the student had left the room, Tsukishiro turned the lights down once more and brought the screen back up. Shown on the screen was all the data about Ayanokouji Kiyotaka that had been recorded in the White Room.

“I don’t like to use a word like this so casually, but… He really is a monster,” said Tsukishiro.

Needless to say, he had an elevated level of academic ability. And on top of that, his physical abilities were so incredible that he could put adults to shame. With his achievements and record, even if he were put up against a professional fighter in a no-holds barred fight, it would be over in an instant—with Ayanokouji’s victory.

“A battle between two White Room students… If they had a fair, direct competition, I wonder what the results would be?”

Of course, Tsukishiro had already devised a plan to ensure that he would win. But even so, there were no absolute guarantees.

“Hunt or be hunted, huh? This is a game between children, but it seems like it could get interesting.”

Tsukishiro, an adult, wasn’t panicking. All he did was carry out the task he had been given, methodically, without hurrying.

IT HAPPENED ONE YEAR, well into the twenty-first century. While the rest of the world faced a variety of issues, Japan was, similarly, at a turning point itself. A declining birthrate and an aging population, environmental issues, decreasing political power… Japanese society was in decline. To really get at the root of these issues and fix them from the ground up, the government began to put a great deal of effort into cultivating capable people.

This high school was created as part of that governmental initiative. A center for learning that brought together students from all over the country. A school that nurtured young people so they would be ready to go out into the world.

The Advanced Nurturing High School.

One of the school’s most distinctive characteristics was that its administrators did not ask applicants to submit the grades they had received all the way up through junior high. Its students, who were selected based on the school’s own unique set of criteria, had a wide variety of distinct characteristics themselves, both boys and girls. There were those who were capable when it came to studying but lacked communication skills. There were those who excelled in sports but struggled with academics. Some students, meanwhile, seemed to have not a single redeeming feature at all.

And yet, the school lumped all these students together so that they might be granted an education. It was a system that seemed entirely unthinkable for a normal high school. These students, with their wide variety of unique personalities and quirks, were made to go about their daily lives in groups and to compete against each other, class against class. The purpose of this was to give them the necessary foundation to do battle with a competitive society, and to survive by cooperating with others.

And the fate that befell those students deemed unfit by the school was expulsion. No mercy. You couldn’t survive at this school if you were only good at studying or only good at sports. Each grade level was divided up into four classes: A through D. At the time of enrollment, there were roughly forty students assigned to each given class, making for a total of one hundred and sixty students.

Allow me to go into more detail about what makes this school so wildly different from others. Let’s start with the basics. Students are prohibited from contacting anyone outside the school during the entirety of their three years here, until they graduate. At the same time, students are forced to live in the dormitories and prohibited from going outside campus.

That being said, the school boasts an impressively vast campus equipped with a wide array of facilities for the students’ use. So it’s not like living on campus poses any issues. At Keyaki Mall, a large commercial facility meant for the exclusive use of students and school personnel, you can find almost anything and everything you could possibly need. There’s a café, an electronics retailer, a barber, a karaoke place, and more. In the unlikely event that something isn’t available for sale there, students can purchase it via the internet.

Furthermore, the money that students need to make purchases as they go about their daily lives is given to them in the form of something called “Private Points.” These points can be used in place of real money, with an easy-to-understand conversion. One point equals one yen.

However, it isn’t as though these Private Points are handed out freely. They don’t grow on trees. Each month, students receive a number of Private Points equal to one hundred times the number of corresponding Class Points their class possesses. In other words, to save up the requisite Private Points to go about their daily lives, it is important for students to first secure Class Points. There are several ways to go about increasing your number of Class Points, but the standard method of doing so is to complete a certain assignment given by the school—something referred to as a “special exam.”

Basically, the four classes compete against one another in these special exams, with the class placing first earning points, and the class coming in at the bottom losing points. If a class had one thousand points, that meant that the students of that class would get a monthly stipend of one hundred thousand yen’s worth of Private Points. Conversely, if a class continued to lose and their Class Points tragically dwindled all the way down to zero, students in that class would receive a total of zero Private Points every month.

The wholly inextricable relationship between Class Points and Private Points was most likely contrived by school officials in order to make students with differing ways of thinking come together. Having a decent number of Class Points meant you were guaranteed to live a decently comfortable life as a student.

However, that isn’t the only appeal of the Advanced Nurturing High School. The school’s greatest selling point is what comes for those students who graduate from Class A.

The students who successfully manage to make it through and graduate from Class A are able to go on to any place of higher education or workplace of their choosing. Even in extreme cases, like a university that boasts about how extremely difficult it is to be accepted there, or a massive, prestigious company, a student would be guaranteed to get in. A free pass.

That being said, it wasn’t as though students could afford to be overly optimistic. It was clear that if a student didn’t have the real ability to pass that barrier to entry on their own, they would eventually get screened out and eliminated. Even so, there was no doubt this was an extremely attractive perk.

Well, I suppose I’ve explained the gist of how things work with the Advanced Nurturing High School.

I… Ayanokouji Kiyotaka, am currently enrolled in this rather remarkable school as a student. And I will soon be entering my second year here. As of April 1, I will be a student of Class D, which has a total of two hundred and seventy-five Class Points, meaning I would be receiving nearly thirty thousand yen’s worth of Private Points every month.

Sakayanagi is currently in first place. Class A, which she leads, has an overwhelming one thousand one hundred and nineteen points. Following behind them is Class B, led by Ichinose, with five hundred and forty-two points. And slightly behind them is Class C, led by Ryuuen, with five hundred and forty points.

When you compared our class to the others, the difference seems stark. But even so, you could say we’d narrowed the distance between us. The amount that we could further close it over this coming year would spell the difference between victory and defeat.