After reaching the cafeteria, me and Ike quickly grabbed a table while the rest went to get their and our bento. While we were eating, suddenly some type of music rang out of the speakers all over the cafeteria, followed by a girl's voice.
"Today, at 5pm in gymnasium number 1, there will be a club fair. For those of you with an interest in clubs, please come to gymnasium number 1. I repeat, today─"
I glanced at others, trying to guess their reaction.
"Well, I am gonna go there, I need to join the basketball club, that's the biggest reason I joined this school, after all," Sudo said, as if it were a matter of fact.
"Hmm, I don't want to join any clubs, but I'll just tag along," Ike replied with a grin. "Maybe I'll have my fated encounter over there~"
The remaining three of us also agreed to tag along, though none of us had any plans to join a club either. 'Well, I might as well join one if I find any interesting ones.' I thought, while internally cringing at Ike's thought process.
Once we unanimously agreed to go there once the classes were over, we quickly finished our lunch and decided to head back to the class. I gained names of around 40 other people including some seniors, but of course, I couldn't tell who was who just from the names so it wasn't as much useful.
While we were going back to the class, we met Kushida in between, who greeted us all with a smile. Much to Ike's disappointment, she just came to talk with Ayanokoji to get his contact since she couldn't do so yesterday, and ask him about Horikita, since she refused to give Kushida her contact.
I jokingly admired Ayanokoji's control over his emotions again, as he didn't even betray a smile when giving his contact to Kushida. It was hard to tell if he simply couldn't show any emotions, or if that was some kind of poker face.
Once we reached the class and decided to break apart, Ayanokoji came towards me and asked:
"Hey, uh, is it alright if I invite Horikita with us too?"
I raised an eyebrow and replied with a chuckle, "Uhh... sure, I guess. I don't think anyone will mind having a girl around with us, except the girl herself."
He nodded and left for his seat while I grabbed mine. Soon our maths teacher entered the class and started the lectures, without even caring that a quarter of the class was empty.
———
I was surprised by the fact that he managed to convince her to join us. Though she kept a fair distance from us, no one minded her presence. Around 100 people were waiting, all of them first years.
Since [Eye of superiority] could work as long as someone was in my sight, I used it on as many people as I could find, which might not have been the brightest of the ideas, considering it added a lot of names, which will likely make it much more confusing for later.
'But you can't blame me for that! It looks so cool with all these screens hanging around in the air.' I argued with myself, followed by a sigh from my rational mind.
All of us were genuinely surprised by the funds and quality of equipment these clubs seemed to be getting. Many of these clubs were famous nation-wide, and were considered to be one of the best ones. But that wasn't all, the amount of clubs was a bit shocking too. There were quite a few clubs with only 3 students as members, which seemed to be the minimum requirement.
Considering the fact that seniors seemed to focus on recruiting more of us, Horikita concluded that they likely got more funds if more members joined.
'Hmm, this does make it easier for me to join clubs without investing a lot of my time into them. Since it'll be a win-win situation for us.' I thought, feeling more eager to join a club if possible.
As we saw the club representatives introduce the clubs one by one, I short-listed down some of them which seemed easy to join, didn't require much time and were interesting or useful to me.
One by one, all the club representatives left the stage after completing their club's introduction. Soon, only one guy was left on the stage, with a slender body, normal glasses, black hair and a sharp gaze. I quickly used my ability to find out that his name was Horikita Manabu.
After reading 'Horikita', my gaze automatically fell on Horikita Suzune, who was staring at him with quite a sharp expression. It seemed she was somehow happy and scared at the same time. With that, I suspected he might be someone from her family.
After reaching the microphone, he didn't say anything for some time, noticing the whole gym. This got many comments and laughter directed towards him, but he didn't waver a bit.
He gazed at the whole stadium with his sharp eyes, enveloping it in complete silence. Soon, there was a complete lack of any kind of noise in the whole gym, which continued for half a minute. Any blind person would have a hard time believing that there were over a hundred people here.
Then he spoke in a soft tone, still somehow managing to keep the mood tense.
"My name is Horikita Manabu, and I am the student council president..." He gave a long speech, basically saying that the student council was only recruiting the best of the best students. But I wondered why someone that talented would even waste their time in things like student council.
After his speech, he walked off the stage and left the gym. In the end, I concluded he was very devoted to this school, for some reason.
"Everyone, thank you for coming. With that, the club fair is over. We will now open the reception area for anyone interested in joining. The reception area will only be open until the end of April, so anyone interested after then can bring applications directly to the club." A girl named Akane Tachibana said, easing the tension.
"So, any plans to join the club?" Ayanokoji asked me, after trying to talk to Horikita, who was just staring at the place where Manabu stood, seemingly zoned out.
"Well, I did find some of them interesting. I might join the cooking club if possible. I believe it'll be quite useful later on, and the pressure doesn't seem to be too much over there." I replied honestly, which caused Sudou and Ike to glance at me with surprise.
"Cooking club, huh? It indeed does seem tempting a bit, considering its size, they'll likely take in anyone just to get more funding." Ayanokoji analysed, agreeing with me.
"Well, why don't you join as well? It'll be nice to have some company over there." I asked him with a grin, but was quickly denied with a shaking head.
"It seems like too much trouble. I don't want to commit myself to something else, at least for the first few weeks." He said in his monotone voice, scratching the back of his head.
"Anyways, you have Ayanokoji's contact info, right, Yamauchi?" Ike continued after I nodded. "Well then, I'll leave it to you to add him to our boys' group chat."
"Oh yeah, let me add him real quick then," I said, glancing at Ayanokoji, who nodded in approval.
I wanted to ask for Horikita's contact info too, but it seemed she had already left. Since the chances of her agreeing were already low enough, it didn't bother me too much. Soon, we all parted ways as Ike, Ayanokoji, and Hondou left the gym while Sudou went for the Basketball club, and I went towards the Cooking club.
As I reached there, a second-year student, named Kento Nakamoto, greeted me and introduced me to the club and other information.
All in all, it seemed good enough for me to join. There were 12 members, and 4 other first years had already signed up. The best part, though, was that there were only three hours of compulsory attendance per week, and many other events and competitions were voluntary to participate in. The senpais seemed nice and eager to help us too, not wanting to let go of the additional funding.
"Thank you, Nakamoto senpai. I think I am ready to join, where can I sign up?" I asked him, not wanting to waste anymore time of either of us.
"Oh that was quick!" He said with a grin. "Anyways, here's the book, just add your name, class and contact info, we'll add you to the group and send more information by tonight."
I nodded and wrote my information in the book, also noticing the name and class of other first years. One girl was from class A, a boy and a girl from class B and one from my class, Mei-Yu Wang.
After everything was over, I decided to go and find Sudou. As I was walking away, a screen appeared in front of me, moving along with me at the same speed.
[Hidden mission: 'Join a club' complete!
Description: Join any club within the first month.
Difficulty: C
Rewards:
Evolve ability - [Eye of Superiority]
OR
+15 Available points]
'Huh, I managed to complete a hidden mission before even knowing what the normal missions are... Well, not like I am complaining, the rewards seem good compared to the difficulty.' I thought, 'Let's just evolve the eye of superiority for now, I hope it's at least as good as the 15 points.'
[Your ability [(B- Grade) Eye of Superiority] has evolved into [(A Grade) Eye of Jealousy].
[(A Grade) Eye of Jealousy - Allows user to look at other people's stats as long as they are less than twice the user's stats. Also allows the user to look at the grade and class of any student.]
'Huh... that seems good enough. I guess using the previous skill like a madman didn't go to waste after all. Now I should be able to know the critical thinking stat of most people, at least.'
A smile formed on my face, which would likely seem creepy to anyone else who saw me. After lingering around a bit and using the new ability on everyone I found, I met up with Sudou, who also managed to sign up for his basketball club.
[Name: Sudou Ken
Class: 1-D
Physical stats:
Stamina - ??
Strength - ??
Combat technique - ??
Average physical stats - ??
Mental stats:
Academic ability - 39
Memorisation power - 41
Critical thinking - 51
Average mental stats - 43.67]
I mentally clicked my tongue as it made no difference to him, apart from the class. But still, this would surely be useful in letting me know whom to be wary of, if needed.
"So, how did it go?" I asked him as we started walking towards the dorms.
"Ah well, nothing much, they just took our information and called us at their building tomorrow at 7am." Sudo said, scratching the back of his head. He seemed a bit disappointed.
"Oh. It was sort of same in my club too." I replied, then we walked in silence till we reached the dorms and parted away to our own rooms.
After freshening up and researching a bit on my computer, I decided to leave for shopping. There were quite many students in Keyaki Mall, though most of them were first years whom I had already detected back in the gymnasium. Still, I did find a few new names.
I directly went to my goal- to buy cooking utensils. While the club did have it's own kitchen, I of course couldn't use it for my daily necessities. I didn't really hold back much on the private points, since 100k Yen per month was way more than enough than what I needed, and I considered this money to be well spent.
I spent around 30k Yen on them, then decided to come back later for other raw cooking materials since it would be difficult to carry all of it together. Although I bumped into a few students from my class, none of them seemed eager to talk to me, thanks to Yamauchi's personality.
During this time, my respect for Yamauchi did increase quite a lot. I mean, getting the level of reputation that no one would dare to talk to him is a feat in and of itself. But doing that in one, single day? Terrific.
After setting up the utensils in my kitchen, I decided to buy some new clothes, since all I had was the school uniform and a pair of casual clothes.
———
As I ate the sandwich made by myself, I pondered about how my life had suddenly changed in a mere day. Trying to distract myself, I took out my phone and looked at my private points read, "55,780". I had managed to bring around 93k to a mere 55k in a day, though most of the points were spent on one-time things, so I wasn't bothered much.
I had spent around 30k on cooking utensils, less than 1k in raw cooking materials, and the rest in clothes, shoes and other accessorises which would easily last me a few years since I wasn't a fan of fast-fashion.
With nothing else to do, I used the [Eye of Jealousy] to look at the stats of all the people I had marked. I already had marked 123 students of my year, which was quite good considering there were only 159 of them. With all 39 of my class, 23 of class C, 32 of class B, and 29 of class A.
I decided to start with my class, while most were ahead of me in many stats, there were only about half the people whose stats I couldn't detect, since I could look at their stats as long as they were less than twice of mine. More than that, there were very few people who had more critical thinking stat than 198, which included Hirata, Horikita, Koenji, Yukimura, Kushida, and to my surprise, a girl named Matsushita, and Ayanokoji.
Even out of these, only Hirata, Horikita, Koenji, and Ayanokoji were the ones who surpassed twice of all my stats. While Hirata and Koenji weren't that surprising, I had my fair share of doubts about that Horikita girl, but Ayanokoji was someone whom I never expected.
It would only be fair to say these four stood at the top of our class.
Anyways, after mentally trying to note about these people, I decided to move on to class C. Surprisingly, none of them had a more critical thinking stat of more than 198. At least, none of the ones I had marked. Most of their other stats seemed average too, though around 10 of them had more physical stats than I could detect. It made sense, since I had only gotten 23 marked yet.
Disappointed, I went for class B. Here, the situation was quite opposite, most of them had their physical stats around 90, but except a few, almost everyone had more academic and memorisation power than I could detect. Though here, a girl named Ichinose Honami had all their stats more than twice of mine.
After pondering a bit, I moved on to class A. My eyes widened as I scrolled through the names of class A students, all 29 of them had their academic abilities and memorisation power more than I could detect. A few of them were also undetectable in physical stats. But what surprised me the most was that only out of these 29, 8 had more critical thinking stats than I could detect.
"Seems like class A will be the Academic powerhouse of our year…" I frowned upon seeing that.
After that, I quickly skimmed through the second and third year students, since they wouldn't be very relevant to me.
Ting!
I was finally added to the cooking club, and the message I got read:
Unknown: Hey everyone, this is Nakamoto, the vice representative of the cooking club. We'll meet tomorrow at our club's room, right after the classes. Though attending is not always mandatory, we expect you all to come since it will be the first day for the first years.
The message seemed more formal than I expected it to be, but soon everyone agreed.
[Name: Kento Nakamoto
Class: 2-C
Physical stats:
Stamina - 84
Strength - ??
Combat technique - ??
Average physical stats - ??
Mental stats:
Academic ability - ??
Memorisation power - 83
Critical thinking - 125
Average mental stats - ??]
I had almost used it subconsciously this time.
Since I had free time and nothing else to do now, I decided to do something that Yamauchi had never thought of doing– Homework.