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ArabicAnime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 3
Chapter 3: The Problem Student in the Back Row
“Gold content?” Yui Yuigahama tilted her head, her bright eyes swirling with genuine confusion. “It’s… just a seat, right?”
“You still don’t get it.” Yozora shook his head with grave solemnity. He pitched his voice like a seasoned professor delivering a universal truth to the uneducated masses. “Listen closely. This specific coordinate, the back row by the window, is the homeland of kings. In elite circles, it is commonly known as the Throne of Kings.”
Yui blinked, thoroughly stunned by his absolute conviction. “Then… if you sit there, do you get some kind of special buff or benefit?”
“Of course there are benefits.” Yozora adopted the patient, benevolent aura of a mentor guiding a hopelessly lost student. “First, observe the geography. There is a solid wall to the left of this desk and only a single aisle to the right. Therefore, when you enter a state of deep hibernation, you can lean your entire body weight against the wall without the slightest fear of being jostled by wandering peasants.”
He raised a second finger. “Secondly, this is the most remote, desolate corner of the classroom ecosystem. From a purely probabilistic standpoint, foot traffic here approaches zero. It is the ultimate sanctuary of silence.”
“And finally,” Yozora concluded, leaning back into his chair, “claiming this seat broadcasts a passive stay away aura, effectively neutralizing any active social interactions from the normies. For a solitary entity who despises socializing, calling it a throne is a massive understatement.”
Yui struck her palm with her fist, nodding as if a deep cosmic mystery had just been unraveled before her very eyes. “So that’s how it works. Wow, I was being way too shallow about this.”
A few desks away, Miko Yotsuya buried her face in her hands and released a long, exhausted sigh. She stared at the cute girl in the gyaru uniform, seriously questioning if her brain was completely hollow. It was one thing for Yozora to spout absolute, unadulterated nonsense with a straight face. But for this girl to actually swallow it wholesale?
‘What Throne of Kings?’Miko thought, her lips pressing into a thin line.’That is literally just a pile of crooked, chuunibyou logic he threw together so he can slack off and sleep through class.’
The commotion naturally drew the attention of the rest of the room. As the collective gaze of the student body drifted toward the notorious back corner, a girl with long, straight black hair let out a sharp, icy scoff. Her piercing eyes stabbed toward Yozora’s face like a pair of physical daggers.
Yozora maintained his serene, utterly shameless smile. He kept his hand firmly planted on his bag, radiating an aura that clearly stated he had zero intention of yielding his territory.
The dark-haired girl scoffed a second time. Without another word, she claimed the adjacent desk, hooked her bag onto the side of the wooden frame, and completely ignored the staring crowd. She simply folded her arms on the desk, buried her face into them, and immediately went to sleep.
It was the very first day of the semester. The morning bell had not even rung yet. Naturally, this blatant display of rebellion sent ripples of whispers through the surrounding desks.
“That girl is a total weirdo.”
“No, seriously, isn’t the guy next to her way worse?”
“They both have top-tier faces, though…”
“Problem students? Delinquents? We better steer clear of that corner entirely.”
A female classmate who had been chatting with Yui earlier hurried over, her face tight with anxiety. She grabbed the edge of Yui’s sleeve and shot a highly wary glare at Yozora, who was currently lounging on his self-proclaimed Throne of Kings like a retired old man.
“Yuigahama-san,” the girl whispered frantically. “Don’t hang around weirdos like that, or everyone will think you are one of them. Come on, let’s go.”
Feeling the prickling weight of the classroom’s judgmental stares and the rapidly souring atmosphere, Yui pursed her lips. She cast a brief, slightly apologetic look at Yozora before silently allowing herself to be dragged back to the safe zone of the normal students.
“Sigh, existing is exhausting,” Yozora muttered to himself.
Completely unfazed by the mass exodus and the hushed gossip, he mirrored the exact posture of the dark-haired girl beside him. He dropped his head onto his desk, closed his eyes, and instantly checked out of reality.
‘What an utterly bizarre human being,’ Miko thought, watching the two sleeping delinquents from afar.
Despite her reservations, she hardened her resolve. The moment an opportunity presented itself, she absolutely had to corner Yozora and interrogate him. She needed to know his secret. How exactly did he casually devour terrifying evil spirits while still possessing a human body? If she could just learn that method, if she could wield even a fraction of that power, she would not have to live this miserable, suffocating life of pretending not to see the horrors lurking in every shadow.
Several minutes ticked by.
Shizuka Hiratsuka strolled into the classroom, releasing a massive yawn while aggressively rubbing her tired eyes. She looked like a woman who had been forcibly dragged out of bed against her will.
The lively chatter of the classroom died instantly, replaced by a tense, disciplined silence.
Shizuka nodded in vague satisfaction at the quiet room. Just as she opened her mouth to deliver her opening remarks, her lazy gaze drifted toward the back row. There, in plain sight, two students were completely dead to the world, breathing in a steady, rhythmic slumber. A distinct frown creased her forehead.
The rest of the class caught her shift in expression. A collective wave of schadenfreude rippled through the room. Sleeping openly on the very first day of school, right in front of the homeroom teacher? Those two were definitely about to be dragged into the hallway and publicly executed.
To their immense disappointment, Shizuka merely held her stare for a few seconds, sighed through her nose, and turned her back to the class. Acting as if the back row simply did not exist, she picked up a piece of chalk and began writing her name in bold strokes on the blackboard.
“My name is Shizuka Hiratsuka. I am in charge of teaching Japanese Literature. Starting today, I will be your homeroom teacher and your student counselor.”
The students exchanged bewildered glances. She was just going to let that slide?
“Next, we will go down the rows. Please stand and introduce yourselves one by one.”
The process was agonizingly standard. One by one, nervous teenagers stood up, rattled off their hobbies, and sat back down. Nothing of note occurred until the wave of introductions finally crashed into the back corner.
When the final normal student finished, Shizuka tapped the blackboard with her knuckles, the sharp clack echoing in the quiet room. “The two students in the back row. Please stand up and introduce yourselves.”
Neither Yozora nor the dark-haired girl twitched. They remained perfectly motionless, lost in their respective dreamscapes.
Shizuka released a long, suffering sigh. She stepped down from the podium, walked down the aisle, and stopped directly in front of the beautiful, sleeping girl. She tapped the wooden desk. “You there. Please stand up and introduce yourself.”
The girl slowly lifted her head. She rubbed her heavy eyelids, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders, and cast a flat, unimpressed look at the towering teacher. There was zero panic in her expression. No flinching, no stammering apologies for being caught. She simply pushed back her chair, stood up, and spoke with absolute indifference.
“Kazusa Touma.”
Her voice was undeniably beautiful, yet laced with a biting, sub-zero chill that instinctively kept people at arm’s length. It also carried the distinct, heavy irritation of someone whose precious nap had just been rudely interrupted.
Having delivered her two-word introduction, Kazusa dropped back into her chair without waiting for permission and immediately buried her face in her arms to resume sleeping.
The entire class stared in stunned silence. Only one thought echoed in their collective minds.
‘Arrogant.’
This was way too over the top. Daring to brush off a teacher with that level of blatant disrespect? Was she the sheltered young miss of some terrifyingly powerful noble family?
Faced with Kazusa’s icy dismissal, Shizuka felt a headache building behind her temples, but she swallowed her reprimand. Before the semester even began, the school administration had pulled her aside for a very specific briefing. The situation regarding Kazusa Touma was highly irregular. The directive was clear: as long as the girl physically showed up to the classroom on time, Shizuka was to turn a blind eye to absolutely everything else.
Shizuka despised that kind of spineless teaching methodology. But it was a unanimous mandate from the upper management, and a mere homeroom teacher had zero power to overturn it.
She shifted her gaze to the adjacent desk. Yozora was still face-down, sleeping as peacefully as a newborn infant. Shizuka rubbed her temples, deciding to completely skip the futile process of waking him.
“This boy’s name is Yozora,” Shizuka announced to the room, doing his job for him. “Alright, everyone has been introduced. Let us begin the lesson.”
The morning lectures dragged on, passing in a blur of monotonous chalk scratches and textbook rustling.
When the shrill chime of the lunch bell finally pierced the air, Yozora stirred, lifting his head from the desk and stretching his stiff shoulders.
Just as his eyes focused, he caught sight of a minor commotion near the classroom doorway. A male student from another class, someone with a decent enough face but carrying a heavily frivolous, try-hard aura, was physically blocking Kazusa from leaving the room. The boy leaned in, flashing what he clearly believed was a devastatingly charming smile.
“Hey there,” the boy purred. “Mind if we become friends?”
Miko, who had just quietly handled her way over to Yozora’s desk, noticed where his attention was fixed. She watched the unfolding drama by the door, a dark sense of schadenfreude creeping into her usually anxious expression.
“Now we get to watch a good show,” Miko murmured to herself.
Right on cue, a terrifyingly sharp glint flashed through Kazusa’s slender, delicate eyes. The temperature in the hallway seemed to plummet several degrees as she parted her lips, delivering her verdict in a voice made of absolute frost.
“Move aside. Don’t block the way.”