All or Nothing

By : rainy26541

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V1 Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The "Masked" Girl's Plan

Intro

Kushida Kikyou of Second Year Class B, considered herself to be a very special person. In fact, from her very own point of view, void of reality, she was a very special person. The best of the best.

She had a body that was by far beyond a girl her age. She had a friendly persona that made her easily approachable and befriendable. She had a memory that was by far greater than quite a lot of people, making her easy to work with. And there was more to list about her.

From this list alone, her point of view of being a very special person wasn't far from the truth at all, and many people who were lucky enough to be around her or by her side whether from the start of her existence or during random periods thought that way too.

In her past life, praise had been presented to her so much that it completely affected the way she lived. However, what many people would think Kushida Kikyou would become was only but a wet dream in their minds.

Behind that "perfectionist" of a face was a volcano, with an explosion of lava that was the equivalent of the concerning Yellowstone Caldera, waiting to explode. There was no telling when that bubbling pool of red would explode and engulf the people around her.

However, the more Kushida was around people she extremely hated, the more she was likely to release her anger and reveal her true face behind the mask she wore in front of it. Horikita Suzune was a student who attended the same middle school she did, meaning that the incident she liked to refer to as "the meaning of truth" was something Horikita knew about.

Because of that, Kushida believed that she wasn't safe if Horikita was still around in Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School, especially in her class, and for that reason, she made it her personal mission to try and get Horikita expelled without letting people know that she was the cause for it.

There were not many opportunities for her to try and get Horikita out. Kushida had worked with Ryuuen on three occasions to humiliate Horikita and then finally expel her. In the end, she 100% won the first round, half won the second and completely lost the third. The reason she lost was because she made an enemy out of someone she really shouldn't have made - that being Ayanokouji Kiyotaka.

With both Horikita and Kiyotaka being labelled as people she needed to get rid of for her own safety, Kushida kept trying her best to oust either or both at the same time, which ended in her losing every time and not many other opportunities to oust her and Kiyotaka arised.

Until now...

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Part 1

Let's backtrack to just 2 days ago.

"See you girls later tonight! Kushida-san, see you tomorrow!"

Mei-Yu Weng, Inogashira Kokoro and a few others waved goodbye to everyone as they stood outside the second year student dorms. It was the former who said the farewell to everyone and especially so to Kushida, since Kushida was Mei-Yu Weng's best friend.

Waving goodbye to her friends, Kushida turned away and began walking in the opposite direction of the second year student dorms. Unlike her friends, Kushida's destination was not her home just yet. She had told Mei-Yu, Inogashira and the rest that she needed to meet up with someone before returning home, resulting in their parting ways just earlier.

After walking for a bit, she arrived at her destination - the first year student dorms. She buzzed on one of the room's doorbell, alerting the occupant of her presence, completely unaware that she was being watched by a couple that were just returning home from their date.

When she entered the dorms, Kushida took the elevator to the 5th floor and knocked on the door to a specific student's dorm room. After some sounds of fumbling from inside the room and footsteps approaching the entrance, the door opened and revealed a first year boy with messy brown hair and serene green eyes.

"Come in, Kushida-senpai."

Said boy, known none other as Yagami Takuya, one of the leaders of First Year Class B, moved out of the way and allowed Kushida to enter the dorm room.

When a certain incident where a gorilla tried to intimidate Kushida's class during the first special exam of the year, Takuya came to stop the incident from escalating and then approached Kushida, introducing himself as a kouhai from her middle school. However, this was a white lie.

He had managed to convince Kushida of this fact so that he could use her to fight Kiyotaka. During the uninhabited island exam, he exposed this lie in front of Kushida and threatened her to work with him if she wanted to continue studying at ANHS. Kushida had no other choice but to accept the situation, in other words, become Takuya's pawn.

She really didn't like the whole idea, but she didn't have a choice. He was helping her get rid of Kiyotaka since they both want him gone (or at least in her eyes), so she at least saw some benefit from it even if she hated being manipulated.

As she reflected on the past, Kushida noticed the sun shining faintly through the gaps in the closed curtains. It wasn't an important sight for her, but it did remind her that this was a secret meeting for a secret operation, like a spy and her boss meeting to discuss an infiltration mission.

Takuya served some freshly brewed tea to Kushida as she sat down at the table, but Kushida didn't reach for it, only glancing at it for a second before looking straight back at the now sitting first year boy.

"I didn't spike the drink, you know? There's nothing like poison or drugs in it. Perfectly safe to consume."

He responded to her gaze with his usual smile and tried to beckon her to take a sip of the tea he went and made for the two of them.

"I don't care about that, can you just get on with it?"

Kushida made no attempt to hide her frustration as she scowled at him and spoke with a slight hiss. Earlier on in the day, Kushida received a text message from Takuya saying that he wanted to discuss something with her privately in his dorm after school, resulting in the current situation. Kushida, who usually went out with friends and had fun on her own, was unsurprisingly annoyed at having to cancel her plans.

Takuya nodded with an "I see I see" expression, without so much as breaking his 'charming' smile.

"Excuse me, senpai. Then let's get straight to the discussion. Firstly, do you have the recording I asked you to make?"

In that message that Takuya sent was a task instructing Kushida to record a discussion on a phone in time for the meeting. Kushida nodded her head and pulled out her mobile phone, handing it over to Takuya.

Yagami pressed the play button and heard Chabashira's voice in the middle of an explanation of the new special exam for the second years, giving an overview of the unanimous vote procedures. After listening in silence to the entire lecture, including the examples, Yagami returned the phone to Kushida.

"I shall ask you without hesitation, Senpai. Kushida-senpai wants to crush Horikita Suzune and Ayanokouji Kiyotaka. That's all you want, yes?"

Kushida kept silent, as if she didn't need to answer now. It was very obvious what she wanted, so much so that Takuya didn't even need to ask yet still did. Taking her silence as a "yes", Takuya continued the discussion as he reached his cup of tea.

"I was briefed by our senpai beforehand, but it is still a very simple special exam. From a number of options, you have to repeatedly vote and adjust your votes to reach unanimity. There are five questions in total, and you have five hours to complete them. What did you think when you heard this?"

"That it's very easy, right?"

"Yes, it is. It is considered to be very easy for an exam that is billed as a special exam. But only the punishment for running out of time is severe. This must be because the school assumes every class will clear it. The closer the time is to expiry, the closer to unanimity everyone will inevitably be. Because whether you like the choice or not, everyone wants to avoid heavy penalties."

The cup of tea continued to steam in front of his face and he raised it to his lips to take a sip. Seeing her own tea steam in front of her, Kushida decided it would be a waste just to let the tea he kindly made for her just sit on the table and become cold, so she grabbed it and took a sip before talking again.

"I see. Well, here's the main thing. We are already in the middle of our second year. But while I'd like to expel those two, I haven't had the best opportunity to do it so far."

Takuya nodded and revealed a slight smirk he had been holding out on before responding.

"As far as I'm concerned, you're a little bit responsible for that, but that doesn't matter right now."

An obvious red vein, indicating her anger at his light jab, appeared on her forehead and she gripped the cup in her hand tighter, letting a bit of tea spill. She was already frustrated by Takuya's nature, but having him jab at her just made her extremely angry. She held herself back though, knowing there was nothing to be gained by lashing out at Takuya here.

"Have you been able to tell the rest of the senpais in your class about Horikita?"

"Oh, you mean the one about her being a... leader? In a manner of speaking, yes. But, well, I'm sure she'd have done it on her own without me telling her."

"It is not good to leave things vague and ambiguous. It's important for you to know that Horikita-senpai has been entrusted with this role."

"So what? You think you can get Horikita-san expelled at the next special exam?"

When she asked him that question with disbelief and doubt completely present on her face, he laughed a little and took another sip of the tea from his cup before responding.

"That's right. I've listened to the recording just to make sure I didn't miss anything or misinterpret anything, but this is clear. There is a good chance that the next special exam... there is a good possibility."

"How could you possibly know that? The only condition for expulsion is to let the accumulated penalty time accumulate in the individual's voting time. Do you think Horikita would make such a mistake? It's not just Horikita, no one else would make that mistake."

"Don't tell me you haven't come to the realisation yet? Of course, it is unlikely that any fool would be expelled for a cumulative penalty. But my interpretation of this exam, and the school in general, is that there are other ways to get expelled."

"Huh?"

Kushida's earlier expression was filled with more doubt than disbelief, but now the opposite occurred. Takuya couldn't help but smirk and chuckle at her dismay.

"Expel Horikita-senpai or, depending on the situation, Ayanokouji-senpai. It is possible that you can crush the one you want to crush. In that case, you should not hesitate to guide the conversation so that you can target both."

Kushida was still confused but she was listening intently, trying to discern what Takuya was trying to tell her.

"For example, one of the five questions could actually be a question where you could either gain a certain amount of class points by expelling someone, or just gain private points instead. Or maybe you either gain class points by expelling or lose a certain amount of private points per month by not expelling. Something along those lines."

Hearing this example, Kushida stayed silent as she contemplated the chance of this happening. The more she thought about it, the more she began to understand his stance. For a school that frequently had strict expulsion rules during special exams, and hosted a special exam where they needed to vote on a student to expel from their class, ANHS would not hesitate to have an expulsion question thrown into the bucket of 5 questions.

However, Kushida still narrowed her eyes at Takuya and asked:

"Are you sure?"

"Of course, I don't think the question will be the same word for word. But. I think there is a good chance that there will be a question with the same content as what I have just mentioned."

Takuya was part of the student council, so it wouldn't be surprising if he knew a little bit about the exam by Nagumo. However, Nagumo was not involved with this special exam nor did he know about it per se which meant that the only other person who would have told him would be the previous Acting Director and the person who enrolled him to this school - Tsukishiro. However, he hadn't been told about this by Tsukishiro either. He had come to the conclusion himself after being presented with the evidence.

"There is only one path Kushida-senpai would take when presented with a question like the one I just mentioned."

He then explained how she could corner Horikita and Kiyotaka in that question.

"What do you think? Doesn't this make you see the letter of expulsion? Of course, the whole class will have to cry, but that's a trifle to you, isn't it?"

"You think I can do it...?"

"I see that Kushida-senpai has the ability to do that, am I wrong?"

"You're doing a lot of shopping around already," Kushida grumbled as she took a sip of her cup of tea.

Takuya took a large swing of his own tea before responding.

"I had to test my senpais when I first met them to see if they were people I could use, you know?"

"What does that mean?"

"Don't you understand? Do you remember what I said when we first met?"

"I was in a hurry at the time. So what?"

"So what? Normally, you would wonder. We're strangers, we've never even met each other before. And yet you were able to get through the situation by improvising. That's how I knew you were capable enough."

In other words, like how Kei had proven herself to be a valuable ally and an extremely capable person to Kiyotaka back during their first year, Kushida had proven herself to be the same to Takuya, resulting in him using her to the max.

"But what if I'd asked who you were right there? Maybe I simply forgot."

"I don't think so. As long as we don't know where we met, maybe we were in the same secondary school. If that's the case, there's a possibility that I'd know about your past. If I were to say, 'I knew you because of that incident,' it would be a disaster."

In order to rule out such a possibility, Kushida immediately went to work on the story.

"If it's not the same secondary school, for example, but a cram school. Or if you found out later that it was a younger student who lived in your neighbourhood, then the risk of me being someone who knows your past is greatly reduced. You can just laugh it off as a misunderstanding. The first priority is to make sure that we are from the same secondary school, isn't it? And it's easier to divert the conversation if the subject of the past is brought up at all."

After drinking about half of his cup of tea, Takuya put the cup back on the table.

"Who the hell are you? How do you know about my past when we didn't even go to the same secondary school...?"

"I know you're wary, but think of me as some sort of guest in a special position. However, my goal doesn't actually have to do with you. My goal is to play with Ayanokouji-senpai."

"What? To play with him?"

"Yes. Well, I don't think he knows anything about me. Right now, it's my hobby to try different things without Ayanokouji-senpai noticing. Though it may be possible that he will find out sooner rather than later."

"What if I got upset when we first met and didn't give you the answer you thought I should've?"

At that time, Kushida was wondering how Takuya would answer.

"That's what I thought was so interesting. I'm sure Ayanokouji-senpai noticed the discomfort and looked at me with suspicion. I probably would have been able to greet him at an earlier stage."

"Are you telling me you went to the same secondary school as Ayanokouji-kun, by any chance?"

"Well, what do you think? It's a trivial matter for Kushida-senpai. Shall we turn our attention back to the special exam for now?"

"Yes, I know. If we get the question you're after... then I'll try and set it up."

"You're going to try and set it up...? That's pathetic."

"Pathetic? What do you mean pathetic? Are you saying that I'm weak!?"

Takuya stood up, stepped closer and grabbed Kushida by the shoulders, who reflexively tried to flee.

"Hey, what are you doing!?"

She tried to get away from him, but the power of Takuya was stronger than she had imagined, and her feeble attempt meant that she could not move.

"Please listen carefully, Kushida-senpai. You are in a much tighter spot than you think. Not only do you have Ayanokouji-senpai and Horikita-senpai surrounding you, but you also have people who you consider to be a cause for concern, such as myself and Amasawa-san, who continue to threaten your daily safety and livelihood. Isn't that right?"

"That's... Yes, but..."

As Takuya stared her straight in the eye, Kushida glared back at him without fear.

"As a matter of course, it is not easy to kick out your fellow classmates in this school. It takes a lot of effort to expel a student in his or her personal life. If there is an opportunity to expel a classmate through a special exam like this, it is unmistakably the chance of a lifetime."

"I know that. But if you go too far, you'll put me in danger."

"So you have to be prepared for that. Expel or be expelled."

Kushida felt as if she was under a strong pressure, even though she was the one who wanted the expulsions done.

"Of course, it's up to you to decide. If I were to say here, "If you don't want your previous actions of class disruptions to be exposed, you must expel either Horikita-senpai or Ayanokouji-senpai," that wouldn't be very charming would it?"

"That's what I call a threat."

"I'm sorry, senpai. I really don't mean to scare you. It's just that I think it's true that Kushida-senpai isn't prepared enough. No matter what sacrifices you have to make, you have to get rid of them. If you don't do something like that, you won't be able to drive them out of school. Forever."

Removing his hands from her shoulders, Takuya returned to his seat and sat down.

"Let me ask you again. Senpai wants those two to be expelled. Isn't that right?"

When Takuya looked her in the eye again, Kushida felt a mixture of anger and frustration. That was something that does not need to be reaffirmed. It's what she'd been wishing for every day for the last year and a half.

"I want to expel Horikita, I want to expel Ayanokouji. I'm definitely going to get them expelled...!"

"I can feel it. Finally I can confirm that your conviction is genuine."

Kushida was determined. She had to expel Horikita and Kiyotaka as soon as possible. Then there was also Takuya who talked about whatever he pleases. Sometime in the future, he'd have to be expelled too.

[After all, people who know about my past must disappear so I can live a happy life.] She thought.

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Part 2

After that discussion, Takuya sent Kushida on her way out of the room after she finished her tea and told her that he would send over a few more details and instructions later.

As he cleaned up the table after their little discussion, Takuya thought about the exam that Kiyotaka, Kushida, Horikita and the rest of the second years were taking.

Being a White Room student, and listening to Chabashira's explanation, he had used his extreme calculating and analytical ability to gain an idea of what the questions would be, especially the expulsion question. If he was able to come to this conclusion, he wouldn't be surprised if Kiyotaka had an idea too.

This made Kushida's effort to get either him or Horikita expelled a complete gamble. Kiyotaka was sure to realise what was coming up and Takuya was sure that Kiyotaka probably wouldn't hesitate to cut Kushida off either.

In all honesty, Takuya didn't really care about what happened to Kushida during this exam. His main goal was to mess with Kiyotaka. If he could rifle up Kiyotaka and his class just a little bit, he would call that a win in his book.

But, even though he didn't care about Kushida, he still considered her a useful asset as of yet. If Kiyotaka was going to get rid of her, Takuya couldn't let that happen yet.

[I did say that our battle will be beginning soon, Senpai. But for now, I want to play around with your little peaceful life before that battle. If I can anger you just a bit, then it will make our upcoming battle all the more fun.]

His expression turned dark as that thought came to his mind. The smile was ominous and his eyes narrowed hard. It was similar to Amasawa Ichika's expression when was fighting against Horikita Suzune and Ibuki Mio during the recent uninhabited island exam.

If anyone were to describe that expression, based on the fact that Takuya and Ichika wore these expressions, one could likely describe this as an expression only a 5th generation White Room student could harbour. A name like a White Expression.

Speaking of which, Takuya was still a little bit unsure about Ichika's position on their "mission". She had gotten in his way of destroying Kiyotaka during the uninhabited island exam, which he didn't exactly mind since that would've been too easy of a defeat for the "masterpiece of the White Room". But there was no telling whether she would continue to interfere with his predetermined battle with Kiyotaka, despite saying she would stay back a bit now.

Alongside that, Kiyotaka had Nanase Tsubasa on his side, which meant that he had slight control and vision on the first years. And with Nanase and Ryuuen Kakeru searching for the culprit of the Komiya and Kinoshita incident, it was inevitable that they would find Takuya soon.

In other words, Takuya had more food on his plate than he could swallow. There were a bunch of appetisers (whether tasty or not) that were standing in the way of the main course. He would have to gobble down the appetisers before he could take on the main course.

Takuya's dark expression returned back to normal and he sighed.

"I should worry about those later. Right now I should focus on the more important stuff."

He brought out his phone and texted a certain contact on his phone. The conversation lasted for at least 5 minutes before he stopped and put his phone back onto his study desk.

However, as soon as he did that, he heard a knock at his door. Not wanting to keep the visitor waiting, Takuya walked to the door and opened it revealing a girl with silver blonde hair and violet eyes. She appeared to still be wearing her school uniform, which consisted of an orange shirt, red blazer on top, and the usual short length white skirt that could easily show the sight of her g-string if given the angle.

"Come in, Tsubaki-san."

Tsubaki Sakurako, one of the two leaders of First Year Class C, entered Takuya's room. The latter didn't seem surprised that Tsubaki was here in his room. It seemed apparent that this was a planned meeting, set up by either of the participants.

Before sitting down at the table where Tsubaki was currently at, Takuya went to the kitchen to make another set of tea, despite having some earlier when Kushida was just in the room. Since he really liked black tea, he didn't mind having it more than once if needed.

After around two minutes, he returned with two cups of freshly brewed black tea. He placed one cup in front of Tsubaki, who thanked him with a quiet "thank you", and then sat down with his own one, taking a sip before he spoke.

"So. What did you want to talk with me about, Tsubaki-san?"

From how he started the conversation, it appeared that it was Tsubaki who wanted to talk with him and set up the meeting rather than Takuya himself.

Tsubaki still had a lollipop in her mouth when she arrived, which was a little bit more than half finished, and she only took it out now for the moment so she could speak.

"Firstly, can I just say your room looks a little bit empty. Don't you want to add some charm to it to make it look and feel more roomy?"

Despite sounding uninterested, it appeared Tsubaki did slightly care about appearance. Takuya gave a smile at that question.

"I have thought about that already. I just don't know what to get yet. Once I figure that out, I might start decorating this room better. Otherwise, I think this room feels pretty roomy enough."

"...I see."

"You didn't ask me to privately meet with you in my room just so you could ask that question, did you?"

Whether he was actually teasing her or not, Tsubaki didn't really react at all to it. She just put the lollipop back into her mouth, bit down on the remaining chop of the lollipop to finish it and removed the stick and placed it on the table. She then reached for the cup and took a large sip of the black tea before placing it back down on the table and responding to his question.

"Two things. But I'll start with probably the more important part."

"And that is?"

"It's about Ayanokouji-senpai."

"..."

Takuya went silent for a moment before beckoning with his eyes that she should speak.

"It's-"

End of Chapter 5...