CHAPTER 84: CHAPTER 5

Once the morning classes finally concluded and the bell rang signaling the start of the lunch break, Suzune stood up, gathering her books with easy familiarity.

Just as she was preparing to leave the room, her two closest friends, Emi and Yukina, approached her desk.

"Suzu-chan! We can finally go with you again!" Yukina announced, her purple eyes bright with excitement.

"We finished our duties," Emi confirmed simply, her black eyes finally lifted from her phone.

Suzune smiled warmly. "Oh, finally! Are your community service duties already done, girls?"

They both nodded, with Yukina dramatically throwing her head back and acting tired and utterly exhausted. "Done, done, done! Thank the gods!"

Yukina and Emi were usually inseparable from Suzune, often accompanying her to meet Seijirou wherever he happened to be.

However, the two of them had recently gotten into trouble with the school nurse, Retsu, over some minor rule infractions, and were subsequently punished by being assigned community service duties during the lunch break for the past few days.

Yukina shivered dramatically, clutching her arms. "Never again, Suzu-chan. Never again will I even walk in the same direction as that demonic woman. Her smile is terrifying!"

Even Emi flinched subtly, recalling the nurse’s serene smile while holding a wickedly long acupuncture needle.

"She’s a smiling demon," Emi murmured, a rare display of emotion.

Suzune merely laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. "Oh, you two are so dramatic! I don’t believe you. I’ve seen and even interacted with Retsu-sensei. She’s a very sweet, soft-spoken woman who just wants everyone to be healthy."

Emi and Yukina just stared at her blankly, knowing any defense was useless.

They understood that having fallen deeply in love with Seijirou—a man surrounded by red flags—Suzune was obviously incapable of seeing the warning signs plastered all over the genuinely terrifying school nurse.

"Anyway," Suzune said, adjusting her bag. "Let’s go. Seijirou would be running a little late today as he mentioned he has to meet with the Student Council President first."

"That gorilla?" Yukina cringed visibly, the mention of Rindou eliciting genuine fear. "That woman is also very terrifying, Suzu-chan! So cold! It can be said that amongst the entire female population in the whole school, there are three people that shouldn’t be offended at all cost, or you’ll risk ruin."

Emi nodded in agreement.

"One is obviously you, Suzu-chan, after all you’re the closest to Seijirou," Yukina continued, counting on her fingers. "The other is the school nurse, Retsu. And the last is the Student Council President, Kobayashi Rindou."

"There you go again," Suzune sighed helplessly, "Instead of Miss Retsu, isn’t that President of the Science Club more terrifying?"

The president of the science club, Hanazono Mai, was a terrifying second year student who was obsessed with dangerous chemicals and various kind of sort of legitimate experiments.

She ruled the science club from a cramped, chemical-stained classroom at the far end of the third floor.

She was brilliant, unstable, and disturbingly cheerful, and due to her eccentricity was the only member, and everyone agreed it was safer that way.

Students avoided her door the way one avoids an unexploded shell; rumor said opening it too fast triggered a pressure sensor she’d installed "for fun."

Her coat was always scorched, her goggles were always fogged, and her smile appeared only when something hissed, boiled, or threatened to eat through the table.

She called it "progress", but everyone else called it "grounds for evacuation."

Last year, a curious first-year peeked inside and witnessed Mei cradling a beaker filled with purple smoke while whispering, "If it mutates again, we run."

The student transferred clubs within five minutes.

Yet the school tolerated her. The faculty, too. Because every time the board considered shutting her down, a letter arrived—from a university lab, a research institute, or occasionally a Nobel laureate—praising "Miss Hanazono’s uncanny experimental insight."

She’d accidentally synthesized a new heat-resistant polymer during lunch break.

She’d solved a catalytic reaction senior researchers had struggled with for years.

She’d even contributed data to a national materials-science project, although she claimed that part was an accident.

So the administration left her alone, and the students kept their distance.

And every day, in her private kingdom of fumes and danger, Hanazono Mai continued her work, remaining eccentric, terrifying, unaccompanied, and undeniably brilliant, the sole member of a club too dangerous to join and too valuable to shut down.

"You’re right, that woman is insane." Yukina shivered.

Emi and Suzune nodded.

With their shared fear confirmed, the three of them left the room, their combined perfume and confidence filling the hallway as they headed toward the abandoned storage house at the back of the school.

All the while, hunched over his desk, Hipuno Shisou observed their departure, his eyes burning with silent, volcanic hatred.

His gaze, hidden beneath his curtain of hair, followed Yukina’s figure until she disappeared around the corner.

He then pulled his phone closer, the screen glowing faintly with the icon of the Hypnosis App.

The dark magic of the application seemed to be exerting a profound pull on him, promising everything he ever desired as he looked around the thinning classroom.

The otaku knew he couldn’t afford to waste this power on a major target like Suzune, Emi, or Yukina without confirming its function, or else if something goes wrong and Kageyama Seijirou found out, death would be the best outcome for him.

So he needed a test subject—someone weak, disposable, and someone who deserved humiliation.

His eyes landed on a female student two rows over—a "normie" girl known to have multiple boyfriends at the same time, openly playing around with their feelings and treating relationships as disposable entertainment.

She was precisely the kind of person who symbolized the casual cruelty and emotional recklessness he despised.

Yes. She is a perfect, low-risk target, he decided, his lips stretching into a slow, lecherous grin.

He would use her as a test subject for this power and if it worked, then those sluts fate was sealed.

*

*

*

Suzune, Yukina, and Emi walked the crowded hallway as a veritable force of nature, their arrival causing an immediate and noticeable ripple in the sea of students.

The three of them were completely accustomed to, and actively soaked up, the intense, hungry gazes of the crowd.

Despite their deliberately controversial, gyaru style and their not-so-stellar reputations as "problem girls", no one could deny that they were among the most stunningly beautiful and stylish students in the entire school.

There were literally dozens of male "simps" in the school body who were willing to do anything they requested—perform humiliating favors, fork over large sums of money, or carry out dirty deeds—just to spend even five minutes in their presence.

So far, however, none of the hopefuls had ever truly succeeded in gaining anything more than a fleeting glance.

Conversely, there were also those men with fragile, wounded egos who, after being brutally rejected or financially drained by the girls, resorted to fabricating malicious stories, claiming they had played around with Yukina and the others before getting tired of them and moving on.

Yukina, Emi, and even Suzune didn’t bother to address or deny these rumors.

For them, they were simply part of the background noise of their powerful status, and so eventually, the stories spiraled entirely out of hand, adding to their already bad reputation.

At this moment, Suzune suddenly made a sharp turn down a less-trafficked corridor, an action that surprised both Emi and Yukina, as this was clearly the wrong way to the back storage house.

Nonetheless, they followed their friend without question.

It was then that Suzune called out, her voice bright and warm, "Touka!"

Standing outside a quieter, less-used classroom door, a woman with long bangs covering half of her face—Fujiwara Touka—immediately looked up.

Recognizing the voice, she quickly jogged off the wall and hurried toward them.

Emi finally looked up from her phone, her dark eyebrow arching in surprise, thinking that the contrast was jarring.

How did this obviously studious student come into contact with... problem girls like Suzune?

Yukina stared Touka up and down, a curious, wicked smirk playing on her lips as she rubbed her chin mockingly.

"Suzu-chan," she asked, her voice conspiratorial, "Are you planning on throwing this fresh meat to Seijirou’s bed like you did with us as well?"

Touka flinched visibly at the blunt, sexual accusation and the casual reference to her friends’ shared history with Seijirou.

She began to fidget with her hands but remained completely silent, unable to meet their gazes.

Suzune chuckled, giving her friends a look of apologetic guilt. After all, it is true. She was the primary reason why both of them ended up in Seijirou’s bed in the first place, and she even asked them for help in finding him other girls.

Yukina saw the apologetic look on her face and reached out, smacking Suzune playfully on the butt.

"Don’t worry about it, Suzu-chan," she said, her voice dropping to a seductive purr. "We’re happy now, aren’t we? It’s much more fun than being shy loners."

Emi moved closer, standing beside Suzune, and grabbed her hand, her expression serene. "Yukina is correct, Suzune. Compared to before, we very much prefer this life."

Suzune felt a genuine warmth bloom in her chest, touched by their unexpected sentimental affirmation.

She smiled at them both, her gratitude deep.

"Alright, enough of that sentimental crap," she declared, pushing the tender moment aside.

She quickly moved behind Touka, placing a hand affectionately on her shoulder, effectively trapping the shy girl.

"Girls," Suzune announced, introducing their new acquaintance, "I’d like you to formally meet Fujiwara Touka. She’s going to be the new CEO of Seijirou’s entertainment enterprise!"