Classroom of the Elite: Standing Firm in Class A — Chapter 30

Chapter 30: Morishita Ai’s Harassment

It was yet another suffocatingly ordinary day at the Advanced Nurturing High School. Late morning sunlight spilled through the expansive glass windows, casting harsh geometric shadows across the pristine classroom floor. Up at the podium, the literature teacher droned on, dissecting the complex character relationships of a classic novel in a voice so aggressively monotonous it bordered on a hypnotic drone. The stifling warmth of the room, combined with that endless recitation, wove a heavy blanket over the students, coaxing their minds toward slumber.

Kaedehara Tetsu rested his chin heavily against his palm, letting the desk support the dead weight of his upper body. His free hand idly twirled a sleek ballpoint pen, the silver metal catching the light in rhythmic flashes. His eyelids drooped halfway. His dark gaze bypassed the open textbook on his desk entirely, staring into a vacant middle distance. His consciousness had long since abandoned the suffocating confines of the lecture, drifting through far more calculating, complex thoughts.

A sudden, minuscule pressure brushed against the back of his neck.

It felt like a stray gnat clumsily colliding with his skin. He ignored it, merely rolling his neck a fraction of an inch to alleviate the phantom itch.

A few seconds ticked by. Then, the exact same sensation struck the exact same spot.

This time, the projectile carried a distinct, calculated weight, delivering a tiny sting of impact.

The silver pen spinning between Tetsu’s fingers stopped dead.

He did not turn around. He did not shift his weight or alter his breathing. He maintained the perfect illusion of a drowsy, inattentive student. Yet, beneath those half-lidded eyes, the feigned lethargy evaporated instantly. His gaze sharpened into cold, predatory clarity. Tuning out the teacher’s drone, his ears isolated the micro-sounds originating directly behind his chair. A faint rustle of paper. The shift of a uniform skirt. And then, the distinct, high-tension creak of a rubber band being pulled taut.

The third strike was executed with lethal precision.

A tightly compressed wad of paper clipped his earlobe with a crisp smack before tumbling harmlessly down to rest on his shoulder.

Tetsu finally moved. Moving with agonizing, deliberate slowness, he turned his head. He did not give his assailant the satisfaction of a full turn; he merely angled his profile, letting his peripheral vision sweep the desk behind him.

Morishita Ai.

She was currently frozen in an utterly ridiculous posture. Her upper body leaned far over her desk, one hand raised like an archer drawing a bow, a yellow rubber band stretched tightly between her thumb and forefinger. Her other hand was buried deep inside her pencil case, clearly fishing for her next round of ammunition.

The moment her perpetually vacant, doll-like eyes locked onto Tetsu’s chilling, sidelong glare, she petrified. She looked exactly like a poorly animated character whose playback had been abruptly paused.

The heavy, dust-moted air between them stalled out completely for three agonizing seconds.

Then, Morishita’s survival instincts kicked in with startling velocity. She snapped her hands back as if she had touched a hot stove. Her spine shot bolt upright, and she slammed her palms flat against her desk in a picture of perfect, obedient scholarship. Whipping her head toward the window, she pursed her lips and began whistling a breathy, horribly off-key tune. Her entire demeanor screamed a desperate, exaggerated innocence, broadcasting the silent message: I am merely appreciating the architectural beauty of the courtyard, and I certainly do not know how to operate a rubber band.

The performance was so theatrical that a toddler could have seen through the deception.

Tetsu observed her terrible acting with an expression of absolute, freezing neutrality. After letting her sweat for a few seconds, he slowly turned his head back to the front. He ignored the paper ball resting on his shoulder, letting it fall to the floor. He dismissed her entirely, propping his chin back onto his hand and lowering his eyelids. He slipped flawlessly back into his disguise of total apathy.

Behind him, however, Morishita felt the ambient temperature plummet. She threw a cautious, lingering glance at Tetsu’s broad back. A sudden, inexplicable spike of genuine apprehension pierced her chest. Shrinking her neck down into her collar like a frightened turtle, she finally abandoned her mischief. Moving with extreme caution, she buried the rubber band into the darkest, deepest corner of her desk.

The shrill chime of the dismissal bell finally shattered the suffocating quiet of the lecture, liberating the collective tension in the room.

The rigid atmosphere instantly dissolved into chaotic chatter. Students quickly clustered into their established social cliques, their voices overlapping as they debated cafeteria menus and afternoon plans.

Tetsu remained perfectly still. He kept his relaxed, slouched posture, letting the noise wash over him without reacting. He waited patiently until the chaotic shuffling of chairs faded and the vast majority of the class had filtered out into the hallway. Only when the room fell into a quiet lull did he finally sit up, stretching his stiff shoulders before casually reaching for his bag.

“Kaedehara Tetsu.”

A flat, oddly energetic voice materialized right beside his ear.

He shifted his gaze upward. Morishita Ai stood right next to his desk, her hands clasped neatly behind her back. She leaned forward, invading his personal space, bringing her remarkably serious face entirely too close to his own. Her large, unblinking eyes stared intensely into his.

Tetsu studied her features. She possessed the refined, elegant bone structure of a mature, sophisticated older sister, yet the absolute deadpan absurdity radiating from her expression created a deeply jarring cognitive dissonance.

“Did you happen to hear a highly irregular sound during the lecture just now?” she asked. Her tone was gravely serious, carrying the solemn weight of a scholar presenting a new thesis. “It sounded exactly like an invisible woodpecker relentlessly assaulting the classroom wall. Tap, tap, tap. Do you suppose this institution is plagued by undocumented supernatural phenomena?”

To emphasize her point, she pinched her fingers together into a makeshift beak, violently pecking at the empty air between them in a vivid pantomime.

Tetsu watched her bizarre performance in absolute, chilling silence.

He did not offer a single word of amusement or annoyance. Instead, he smoothly leaned down, his fingers brushing the polished floorboards to retrieve the crumpled paper ball resting near his chair leg. He placed the offending object onto the center of his desk. With agonizing, methodical slowness, he peeled back the tightly compressed layers of paper.

Nestled in the very center of the wad was a dense cluster of black eraser shavings, packed tightly to give the projectile its stinging weight.

He calmly pinched the clump of shavings between his fingers and raised his hand, bringing the physical evidence right up to Morishita’s eye level.

“Is this the invisible woodpecker you were referring to?” he asked, his voice a dry, quiet drawl.

Morishita stared blankly at the dark eraser shavings dangling inches from her nose. Confronted with the irrefutable proof of her crime, her eccentric brain appeared to completely short-circuit for two full seconds.

Then, she aggressively clapped her hands together. A wildly exaggerated mask of sudden enlightenment overtook her features.

“Ah. My memory has returned.” Her voice spiked in volume, deliberately loud enough to draw curious glances from the few stragglers still lingering near the doorway. “That is correct. Kaedehara Tetsu. I actually approached you because I possess a philosophical dilemma of the highest order.”

She fired the words off at breakneck speed, constructing a verbal wall to prevent him from pressing the issue of the paper ball.

“Last night, I sacrificed my own rest to ponder an ultimate mystery regarding human evolution and the very survival of the cosmos.” She threw her arms wide open, adopting the grandiose posture of a visionary prophet. “Why do human beings require sleep? It is a catastrophic biological design flaw. Consider the mathematics. If humanity eradicated the need for sleep, we would harvest an additional eight hours every single cycle. Those hours could be weaponized for academic study, industrial labor, and technological invention. The advancement of our civilization would accelerate by a minimum of one hundred percent.”

She stared off toward the ceiling, thoroughly intoxicated by her own majestic, futuristic delusion.

Tetsu stared at her. His cold, calculating gaze analyzed her as if she were a particularly defective alien specimen that had just crash-landed on his desk.

Then, Morishita’s theatrical tone abruptly vanished. She leaned in even closer, dropping her voice into a conspiratorial, intense whisper.

“However, after conducting extensive observation of your behavioral patterns, I have discovered a biological anomaly capable of shattering modern scientific consensus.”

“That anomaly is you, Kaedehara Tetsu.” She thrust her index finger forward, stopping a mere millimeter from the bridge of his nose. “You blatantly sleep through the instructional periods, yet you somehow secured the sole perfect score on the recent examination. Your existence is a direct violation of the fundamental societal law that dictates hard work yields equivalent results.”