Reine doesn't need my information. She doesn't need a cheat code. She doesn't need a hidden guardian angel.
In the original timeline, she won anyway. She dismantled the entire Seat Economy using nothing but her own baseline intellect.
Mark closed his eyes, retrieving the exact visual data of the final volume.
I remember the illustration. She annihilated her former class after they reached Class A. They possessed maximum capital, a total structural advantage, and two years of established hierarchy. She still crushed them. But she didn't look triumphant or satisfied. Her face was completely, utterly bored.
He opened his eyes.
The novel never explicitly stated it, but the data trajectory is obvious. She didn't transfer classes to prove a point. She transferred because the academy's closed system failed to generate a threat large enough to make her calculate at maximum capacity.
She's starving for a blind spot. She wants a life-or-death psychological war where the outcome is actually unpredictable. Even if she knew an opponent was armed with an unfair, impossible advantage, she wouldn't care. She would welcome the rigged game just to feel the pressure of a potential loss. She will say something like 'You can cheat all you want but nothing will change. I'll still win in the end.'
He looked down at his own small, unremarkable hands.
I cannot expose my meta-knowledge. Claiming I know the future is an illogical opening move. She would immediately categorize me as a delusional liability or a liar. Even if my predictions proved mathematically absolute, she wouldn't view me as a person.
And if I just secretly clear the obstacles in her path without telling her, I will only accelerate her boredom. I would ruin the exact game she wants to play.
I want her to enjoy high school. To achieve that objective, maybe I should... fight her?
He looked back up at his reflection in the monitor. The dull eyes of the background character stared back.
He paused. His fingers gripped the edge of the desk so hard his joints ached.
A severe psychological hesitation locked his chest. The biological impulse of a ten-year fanatic was screaming at him to protect her, to stand by her side.
To deliberately attack the sole architect of his previous life felt like a fundamental system betrayal.
But he knew her parameters better than anyone. To protect her was to insult her.
To satisfy her starvation for an impossible challenge, he had to force her to her absolute cognitive limit. He had to construct a scenario so hostile and unpredictable that she would be forced to utilize every ruthless tactic she possessed.
That was the only mathematical condition under which she would truly enjoy the game.
To do that, he calculated, the hesitation dissolving entirely into a cold, asymmetric thrill. I have to become her enemy.
He stared again at his average reflection in the dark monitor, his internal monologue shifting, directing his thoughts entirely to the phantom image of his idol.
I owe you my entire previous existence. You built my success and gave me my life. This time, I will pay you back by giving you the one thing this timeline failed to provide: the ultimate challenge.
You wouldn't care if I manipulated the board, would you? You stated it clearly in Volume 14 when Class C tried to rig the midterm exams. You said to the leader of Class C: "An asymmetric advantage is just another data point. You can cheat all you want. The final sum always belongs to me."
If I weaponize the timeline against you, you won't complain about the rules.
To begin with, your baseline super-genius brain is a biological anomaly. You were born with an insurmountable, unfair advantage. My cheat code—my meta-knowledge of the next three years—is nothing more than a synthetic tool to balance the equation. It simply levels the playing field.
Your understanding of the human body and psychology isn't just professional level. You can easily compete with the best doctors and scientists in the world. You operate with absolute, terrifying machine precision. You don't just break people's plans. You break their actual nervous systems.
So if you actually lose just because your opponent has the knowledge of the future, then you're not a true genius. You would be a defective product. But you are Reine Asakura. You are the apex predator I admired. You won't break from a mere structural disadvantage, and you would never use an 'uneven board' as a lousy excuse. The word unfair does not exist in your vocabulary.
Prove it to me. Prove that your ultimate intellect which I dedicated my life to is real.
The dull eyes of the background character 'Kenji' sharpened into something terrifying.
I promise you, Reine Asakura. I will not just play against you. I will dismantle you. I will destroy your strategies through and through until there is zero capital left to your name. I will force-feed you the exact feeling of defeat. I will give you the humiliation of the loser's bracket. And more importantly, I will give you the absolute terror of an unsolvable equation.
Because only then, the flawless super-genius human being will finally feel alive.
He broke his gaze from the monitor. The initial rush faded, settling into a cold, sharp focus.
He opened the desk drawer, pulled out a blank spiral notebook and a black ballpoint pen. He needed to map out exactly when Reine would make her move.
He pressed the pen to the paper and began to write, detailing the strict three-year timeline of the Seat Economy.
Phase 1: The Deficit. Their assigned Class D will initially fail the hidden metrics, plunging into a massive currency deficit within the first month.
Phase 2: The Shadow Command. Before the Midterm exam, almost 2 months in high school, Reine will begin her silent manipulation. She will weaponize that student seated to her left—a strict, academically gifted boy—acting as her decoy while he plays the visible leader. She will secretly subjugate the class's social elite—the popular boy and the popular girl—to control the underlying hierarchy. She will make a certain person as her obedient pawn. On June 1st, she will make her first major move. Meanwhile, Kenji Kato, seated to her right, would stick to his intended role: playing game console and acting as a perfectly useless background extra.
Phase 3: The Apex and the Purge. Throughout Year 2, Reine will ruthlessly crush the other classes, elevating Class D to the absolute peak as the new Class A. But she will not stop there. Behind the scenes, she will engineer a psychological trap for that Class leader, manipulating that person's voluntary expulsion. The student body will view it as a tragic defeat, entirely unaware that Reine intentionally purged that person to create a desperate, leaderless vacuum in the fallen class.
Phase 4: The Transfer. Day 1 of Year 3. Reine will abandon the empire she built. She will execute a class transfer to the ruined, leaderless Class. The general population of her former class, the current Class A of Year 3, will be shocked but arrogant, completely clueless that they just lost their actual genius leader who carried them in the shadow for 2 years. Only her five former puppets will understand the sheer, impending terror of their situation. From that lower Class, Reine will proceed to grind her former classmates into absolute, unrecoverable dust.
Mark stopped writing. He stared at the blue ink on the page.
The structural parameters of the game were locked. He could not fight her during Year 1 or Year 2. They were bound by the same class mechanics; any attempt to sabotage her would drain his own capital and flag him as an internal liability.
I cannot fight her from the same side of the board, he calculated. We will be in the same class for two years. But I can fight her the moment she transfers class.
The deadline is set. Day 1 of Year 3.
The exact moment she executes her transfer, he must execute his.
I will not stay in the new Class A during third year, he thought, his eyes narrowing at the timeline. Inheriting her leftover empire, relying on her massive capital advantage, and hiding behind her front-man is an insult to the challenge. I need to strike from the outside.
He drew a hard, black line connecting Class A to Class C, representing Reine's trajectory.
Then, he drew a separate arrow pointing toward her blind spot.
I will use Class 3-A as bait.
While her brain is focused, entirely fixated on slaughtering her former class and former puppets, she will leave her flank exposed. I will build an untraceable dark pool of capital over the next two years.
On the first day of Year 3, I will buy my way into a third, opposing class. The exact moment Reine executes her class transfer, I will transfer class as well. From that moment, the game is on. The board will flip.
He closed the notebook. The parameters of his "idiot camouflage" were now mathematically defined.
For the next twenty-four months, he had to be the most convincingly useless human being in the academy, quietly siphoning resources while Reine did all the heavy lifting.
I will bury you.
He slammed the notebook shut. The sharp, loud crack of the cardboard cover echoed, like a starter pistol used as the signal when the race starts, in the quiet bedroom.
SNAP.