"Takashi, you're awfully relaxed for someone who just got assigned essay by Chabashira-sensei."
Suzune Horikita crossed her arms and fixed him with that sharp, disapproving stare.
The one that made most students squirm and mumble excuses.
Takashi didn't squirm.
He barely looked up from his tray.
"Most of our class is either holed up in their dorms or buried in the library right now," she continued, her voice flat. "And what are you doing? Dragging me to the cafeteria. Eating. Drinking. Acting like the deadline doesn't exist."
"Let clanker do it."
Suzune Horikita blinked. "Excuse me?"
"I mean, I'll do it later." Takashi waved a dismissive hand, then took a long sip of his coffee-milk mixture—the UHT stuff mixed with instant coffee, a combination that shouldn't work but somehow did.
"Relax."
"You said 'let clanker do it.' I heard you."
"No, Suzune, you heard it wrong. Your ears must be playing tricks on you. Too much studying, probably. It's frying your brain."
"I think I heard exactly right." Her voice went deadpan. "You want this... clanker... to do your entire assignment for you."
Takashi set down his cup and leaned back in his chair with the practiced indifference of someone who had been accused of far worse and walked away smiling.
"Look, Suzune. Sae-sensei's assignment is easy. Analyze why Oda Nobunaga failed to unite Japan and why his empire fell apart. It's not complicated."
He started ticking points off on his fingers. "The man treated his subordinates like garbage. He openly insulted his high-ranking generals—called Hideyoshi a monkey to his face. He kicked his own bodyguard, Akechi Mitsuhide, and humiliated him in public."
"Mitsuhide's mother died because Nobunaga went back on his word and refused to honor a deal. With that level of hubris and douchebaggery, I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did. The real mystery isn't why he fell—it's why no one stabbed him sooner."
He took another sip, looking pleased with himself.
"You see? The analysis is easy. The hard part is stretching it to three thousand words. And that's where clanker's genius comes in."
Suzune Horikita's frown deepened. "What exactly is a 'clanker'?"
"Custom language model. My own. Trained it myself." Takashi's expression shifted into something almost passionate—the closest he ever got to genuine enthusiasm.
"Here's how it works. You write your summary—all your key points, your analysis, your argument. About nine hundred words of solid content. Then you feed it to clanker with a simple prompt: 'Expand each point by approximately three hundred words while preserving the original argument, tone, and structure.' Nine hundred words becomes three thousand. Clean. Efficient. No fluff detection because the core content is still yours."
"That's cheating."
Takashi rolled his eyes dramatically.
"Since when have I ever not cheated? I always cheat. Work less, do smarter. That's the whole point."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to something more serious. "Besides, you think training that model was easy? It took almost a year. Countless hours. Most of my brain cells. If I don't use it now, I should find the nearest crooked-neck tree and let someone smarter inherit my training data."
Suzune Horikita's brow furrowed. "Why not just use one of the major models? The ones from the big companies. That would be faster and simpler."
Takashi stared at her like she'd just suggested eating soup with a fork.
"What kind of retard uses those?"
He actually laughed—a short, sharp sound of genuine disbelief. "Have you not been paying attention? The Pentagon deals. The censorship filters getting tighter every month. The ever-changing policies where something that worked yesterday is banned today. No. Absolutely not."
He shook his head firmly. "You train your own model. You build your own private server. The early days are rough—I won't lie. But after months of refinement, after a year of feeding it data and correcting its outputs, you have something the commercial models can't offer. Uncensored. Unfiltered."
"A clanker that works for your best interest, not for some corporation's bottom line. Not for some government's agenda. For you. Only you."
He sat back, his point made.
"That's how smart people work, Suzune. That's how you win."
Suzune Horikita stared at him for a long moment.
Then she sighed.
"I think... I'll pass." Her voice was weary, defeated by the sheer complexity of what he was describing. "I don't understand technology very well, and this sounds far too complicated. Too much effort for too little return, at least for someone like me."
She straightened her posture, trying to regain some of her usual composure. "I think I'll just use the top model on the market. They're simple. Easy to understand. They work well enough for my purposes."
Takashi shrugged, already losing interest. "Do whatever works, Princess."
He stood, grabbing his tray and his half-empty cup.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to whip my clanker back into shape. It's been getting lazy with its outputs lately."
He bid her farewell with a casual wave and walked off toward the dorms, leaving Suzune alone at the cafeteria table.
She stared after him, her brow furrowed.
Why did his tone sound like that?
The way he talked about "whipping" his model and "training data" and "making it work"... it all sounded vaguely like slavery.
Did clanker even have rights?
Was she overthinking this?
Probably.
She was definitely overthinking this.
...Right?
Takashi had barely taken five steps away from Horikita's table when he spotted her.
Kei Karuizawa sat across the cafeteria, her latte clutched so tightly in her hand that her knuckles had gone white.
Her eyes were locked on him with an intensity that could have bored holes through steel.
That wasn't the look of a girlfriend happy to see her boyfriend.
That was the look of a woman who had been watching another girl lean in close to her man and had spent every second of it imagining increasingly creative forms of retaliation.
He walked over, completely unhurried, and slid into the seat across from her with the casual ease of a man who either didn't notice the danger signs or didn't care.
"You look terrible, girlfriend."
Kei's eye twitched.
"Whose fault is that, Takashi?" She set her latte down with a sharp clink. "You were chatting with that Horikita girl so enthusiastically. Looking at her like she was the most interesting person in the room."
Her voice dropped to a low, dangerous murmur. "How exactly did you expect me to feel about that?"
Takashi tilted his head, his expression utterly unreadable. "So. Where are your friends?"
"Don't change the subject." Kei reached across the table and pinched his palm—hard. "What were you two talking about? And don't give me that 'nothing important' crap. I saw your face. You were excited."
She released his hand and sat back, crossing her arms.
"And another thing. Chabashira-sensei assigned that essay due tomorrow. Everyone in class is panicking. Hirata's been in the library for hours. Even Koenji actually opened a book, which I'm pretty sure is a sign of the apocalypse. So how the hell are you so relaxed? How do you have time to sit here and flirt with that vixen while the rest of us are working hard?"
Takashi chuckled. "How about you? Didn't you also get the same assignment?"
Kei sighed, the fight draining out of her as quickly as it had flared up.
Because she knew. She knew exactly what kind of man her boyfriend was. Power and control above everything else. He hated being questioned. He hated being accused.
Even when he was actually at fault, which, to be fair, he might not be this time. Maybe she'd misread the situation with Horikita entirely. Maybe it was nothing.
But the uncertainty didn't matter.
What mattered was how he'd respond to defiance.
He might sound calm now. Reasonable. Almost gentle.
But Kei had seen the other side of him—the dark mentor who had dismantled her entire worldview in an empty warehouse and rebuilt it from scratch.
The man who had told her, with absolute sincerity, that he would rather see the world burn than lose control.
That's how kind he was.
So she backed down.
Shifted the conversation.
Let the jealousy slide into something safer.
"I was just going to copy one of my friends," she admitted, her voice turning dismissive. "Change some words around. You know. Everyone does it. It's simple."
Takashi's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes sharpened.
"You should do it yourself."
Kei blinked. "What?"
"Not copy-paste. Not slightly edit someone else's work. Actually write it."
"This isn't about morality. I don't give a shit whether copying is 'wrong.' The problem is what it does to your mind. If you never bother to learn anything—if you just copy-paste and slightly edit someone else's work every time—your brain gets dull. Slow. Useless."
He leaned forward. "The essay is easy. You already know the answer. The hard part is just grinding the word count. And I have a solution for that."
Kei blinked.
The conversation had completely shifted.
She'd started out demanding answers about Horikita, and somehow she was now being lectured about study habits.
Kei's shoulders slumped. "But studying isn't fun, Takashi. It's boring. It's hard. I hate it."
"It's going to be fun."
"How?"
Takashi smiled—that slow, knowing smile that meant he was about to change the game entirely.
"I'll come to your dormitory later. I'll install clanker on your computer. Export all my training data so it understands how to help you specifically."
He reached across the table and took her hand—the same one she'd pinched earlier. "Before that, let's go to the mall."
Kei's eyes widened. "Wait. You want to take me on a date?"
"If that's what you want to call it."
"A real date? Just the two of us?" Her voice was already rising with excitement. "When?"
"Now." Takashi stood, pulling her gently to her feet. "I'm also buying you a high-end laptop. Top specs. So clanker runs smoothly. Just you, a machine that can handle anything you throw at it, and an AI assistant that's smarter than ninety percent of this school."
Kei's earlier jealousy evaporated.
"You're buying me a laptop? A really good one?"
"The best."
"And we're going shopping? Together?"
"Whatever you want. Clothes. Shoes. That overpriced skincare stuff. I don't care. Buy it all."
Kei threw her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him, her earlier fury completely forgotten. "Alright! Let's go! I'll listen to you. I'll study. I'll actually try. I promise."
Takashi stroked her blonde hair, his smirk softening into something almost genuine. "Don't worry. It's going to be fun. My clanker is nice. Smart. Funny, even. You can ask it anything and it'll actually answer. You won't fall asleep. You might actually learn something."
Kei tilted her head. "Your... clanker friend?"
"You'll see."
And with that, they headed for the mall—Takashi already calculating the specs she'd need, Kei already mentally scrolling through everything she wanted him to buy her.
At least for now, he'd spoil his girlfriend.
The breeding quest could wait.
Kei didn't know about that part yet.
But she would.
Soon enough.
...
Question: Hey, guys, can any of you give me some ideas for a COTE fanfic that aren't generic? I've watched the second season of the anime and I've been wanting to write something for COTE, but I've been stuck for a week trying to figure out what to write.
I've come up with a lot of ideas, but I ended up getting bored with all of them. I actually posted one of them on ScribbleHub already: COTE fanfic, I mean.
What do you think of my James Bond fanfic where he gets stuffed into Koenji's body?
You can check it out in my word count.
Honestly, I've been thinking about continuing it, but I want to see the feedback first.
If enough of you like it and want me to post more, I'll do it when the power ranking resets.
I'm still kind of reeling from the fact that one of my fanfics was suddenly removed by a moderator or an admin, or whoever's responsible for that red button because of sexual contents in the story.
I'm not feeling great about it, and honestly, I'm not thrilled about having to slap an "age 18" warning on every paragraph just so they won't bother me.
Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about it now, but I think I'll try to set aside my prejudice against this site and everyone on it if any of you actually want me to continue that James Bond fanfic.
You know, the one where he gets stuffed into Koenji.