It really does work like money, the points. And the freedom to choose his purchases is something he can appreciate. Even if it's 100,000 points per student, per class, per grade... and its government funded—not suspicious at all.

Either the government's very wasteful or the money is unrealistic.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have the resources to investigate the government right now. Though he imagines it'd be far easier than the task he's about to attempt.

At least she looks at him this time.

"Another unpleasant coincidence." She sighs, irritated by his mere presence.

"You don't have to be so twitchy." To that she says nothing. He's going to have to work for this, isn't he?

"Well, since we sit beside each other, we should at least get along. What's your name?" He even knew the names of his white room neighbors and they were high priority business secrets.

Illegal for short.

But of course, he got stuck with an uncooperative neighbor. "You can tell me that much, can't you?"

Unless your name is illegal too, he thinks. In that case she need not say a word more. He already knows too much about too much. Anymore and his father will find legal grounds to storm the campus for him, student autonomy or not.

"Is it a problem if I refuse to answer?"

Illegal then. "No, but it's unsettling not to know the name of the person sitting beside me."

And she laughed at his expense. He was going to learn her name anyway.

"It's Horikita Suzune." That... doesn't sound illegal. But he's heard it before. Somewhere.

"Horikita?" Oh. "Like the student council president?"

He receives no reply. "You're buying a lot of cheap stuff."

Again, no reply. At least he saw it coming this time.

Maybe tracking Tsujihara down would be a more fruitful endeavor. "You have a lot of money though. You could buy more expensive—"

"I don't need it." She cuts him off. Is the key to just keep talking?

"But—"

"I don't need it, I said."

Or maybe she just finds him annoying. "Right."

"...You don't seem very good at interacting with people." She says after a heartbeat or two or silence. "You're a lousy conversationalist."

Insults are progress. "That's true, although you don't seem much better."

"True." She admits, still talking. He must be doing something right. "But I for one, feel no need to make friends."

Horikita turns away from him as she says it, but even without seeing her face, the words feel like a bold-faced lie.

A friend would be a great achievement. Greater since it would disappoint his father.

...And he kind of really wants one.

Horikita says something under her breath, captivated by a lower shelf. He peers around her to see it.

'FREE' the stand says. "Maybe it's to help people who use up their points?"

"On top of 100,000 yen per month?" Horikita scowls. "This school is seriously indulgent—"

"Hurry up! Everyone's waiting! " Where Horikita looks over immediately, he's a second behind. Not fast enough. He'll have to work on that.

Not that they can see much from here anyway.

"Just wait damn it!"

"You're holding up the line!"

Horikita didn't seem interested, but he glided around a few shelves, being nosy, and found the cause of the noise at the cashier desk. The two guys glaring at each other are clearly the ones fighting. Ayanokōji only recognizes one of them, the red head.

"What's going on?" He asks, noting the nervous line of mostly girls behind them.

"Oh? And who're you?" Red hair is already halfway to punching him for his words alone. Maybe his presence is that repulsive.

Ayanokōji raises his hands in mock surrender. "I'm Ayanokōji—from your class. I spoke up because I thought there was trouble here."

With his explanation, the red-head – hot-head really – calmed down. "Oh... I remember you. My phone died while I was in line. Forgot I needed it to pay."

 Your wallet can die on you, can't it? That's... sorely inconvenient.

"I can pay for you." He offers and the other guy scoffs.

"I wouldn't. You Class-D losers will be in hell real soon." He spits, smirking.

Hell?

Ayanokōji doesn't get to think about it much longer, too busy deescalating the red head's fiery temper so he can scan the item he held up the line for.

It's a giant container of noodles. 'G' cup according to the packaging. A "giga cup" he guesses, staring harder at the size of the circle, calculating the circumference.

He surreptitiously glances at the women in line as he scans his phone. None hit the mark.

"Did you just think of something inappropriate?"

When did she get there?

Horikita's glare burns into his cheek, beckoning his gaze, and he meets it head on and lies, hoping she can't smell fear. ".... No."

Beware women.

Yeah, he's beginning to understand the significance of that statement.

Horikita doesn't let up. And she doesn't look inclined to anytime soon.

Clearly, he thinks, I've overestimated my abilities. 

As soon as he can, Ayanokōji's beating a hasty retreat.

//

The moment they were dismissed, Tsujihara lost her uniform and hurried over to the mall. She weaved through several boutiques and shops before she found what she was looking for.

An idiot.

She flashes a pretty smile at the clerk and watches her prey sweat as she steps into his empty store.

"Hello sir," She started, docile and sweet as she approached him. "Do you think you could give me a job here?"

She stopped just in front of his desk and internally smirked, watching his eyes fall. The outfit she changed into wasn't inappropriate, but it wasn't chaste either. A skintight, halter-cropped top, and shorts. And sandals.

And no bra.

"Y-your n-n-n-ni–" Tsujihara averted her gaze, reaching to bashfully rub her upper arm.

"Ah - sorry. Bras aren't super comfy, and this place is kind of cold." She replied, blushing. "It's not a problem, is it?"

The guy frantically shook his head, eyes still glued to her chest, and drooling like a dog.

"Sir?"

The man snaps out his haze and takes a moment to recall her question. "I- um-"

Tsujihara stares at him for a moment, before visibly wilting. Her voice as downtrodden as her pouty expression. "You can't, can you?"

"I can put you on the payroll." He suddenly blurts and then quickly adds. "Y-you can't work where anyone can see you though."

Yeah, that tracks. There's an abundance of forms and contracts you have to sign for work on the Advance'd Tokyo campus, but the shops must keep their own employee records. As a student, Tsujihara is allowed to work because the rules don't forbid it, but if she follows the guy's plan, then she has more freedom and can write off her hours as whatever she wants.

But she does work, so. "Do you additionally have to do the accounting and data forms?" He nods. "What if I did it for you? I don't have to come in for that right?"

"N-no." He agrees. "I can email you the forms. But I'd like to review them at the end of each week to be sure they're accurate." Ah. There's the smart man the school hired.

"I can send them back to you to be reviewed, and you can upload the files to the system?" She tries, leaning over the desk, and he nods absently. His rationale receding once again with the valley of her chest in full view. Mindlessly he makes decisions for her benefit, adding the false information she gives him to the shop records. Not even pausing when she tells him to switch her pay from yen to points or to switch her paystub from hourly by the day to exponentially every day.

She'll have to quit after 2 weeks to avoid suspicion.

For his cooperation, the clerk gets a kiss on the cheek as she leaves. That's probably more than he's ever gotten.

At Tokyo's Advanced Nurturing High School, the private points are merit based by class performance. Tsujihara imagines that there's some sort of scoring system there, but she could care less about that. She's more interested in the private points and, if she's honest, has absolutely no faith in her classmates' academic integrity.

Private points however...

If class merit were all that mattered, private points wouldn't exist here. But they do. And Tsujihara will bet your end point balance can be converted to yen upon graduation. Or that you can buy the right to them at the very least.

If she can rack her points up enough and get them converted, she can get the hell out of Japan and the Professor's influence forever—or at least for a long while.

Though she escaped, there hasn't been a single minute of her life that she wasn't running, fighting, or both. The white room is a secret after all. Anyone who knows about it is kept on a tight leash.

So, though her escape was kept quiet, she was never allowed to settle. Settling meant potentially being dragged back to hell. Not settling also meant not having a home, but Tsujihara was fine with that. It isn't like she had anyone to share a home with anyway.

But she was also 13. Thirteen-year olds aren't supposed to run around all by themselves. The ones that did attracted the wrong kind of attention.

She wasn't exempt.

There are many things Tsujihara has done that she's not proud of, but the cost, gruesome as it was, was more than worth the reward. She regrets none of it. Not the innocent, nor the guilty. There was no room for it, when her life was on the line. And maybe that's selfish but being selfish was what kept her alive.

Caring for others would sooner get you killed.

The central mall is bustling with students now. Enough to make walking uncomfortable. She feels the eyes of a few others follow her, but that's nothing new.

Maybe one day she won't be so sensitive to other people's gazes, but today's not that day.

"Oi!" Tsujihara hears it, but she had put her earbuds in while coming out of the shop for a reason.

"Hey!"

Her stride doesn't so much as falter.

Eventually the caller does them both a favor and stops.

Good.

Tsujihara gets all the way to the dorms before she feels Ayanokōji's gaze coming from the direction of the dorm lobby's front desk. She doesn't stop for him either.

But he catches up and stops her with a hand to her shoulder.

"We need to talk."

"I won't disrupt your plans." She says reflexively, pressing the 'up' button for the elevator.

Two dings and it slides open. Ayanokoji steps in with her, pressing for the fourth floor and then for the doors to close faster before other students can enter.

"Well, that's impolite."

"Hmm." He turns to her again. "I don't have any plans."

That's... not at all what she was expecting him to say. "Come again?"

"I said I don't have any plans." He repeats and Tsujihara can't wrap her head around the words any better the second time.

The elevator stops at the fourth floor, opening and Ayanokōji stands in the entryway, expectantly.

Against her better judgment, Tsujihara follows him to his room. 401. She steps in first, moving to sit on the bed while he closes the door and rummages around putting things away.

It's oddly domestic.

"I take it you came here without your father's say so."

Ayanokōji nods once. "That's right. Matsuo, my butler, told me about this place."

"Butler..." She repeats because, "I knew you lived better than the rest of us, but butler?" Seriously?

He shrugged. "It wasn't that often. Or that much better."

She bets it wasn't. Not when Professor Ayanokōji is your father. You couldn't pay Tsujihara to spend a night under the same roof as that man.

"So, how'd you get here?" He asks next.

"I made a deal with someone in exchange for a recommendation."

"Not for university or a job I take it." He finally moves to sit on the bed beside her.

"You didn't come here for those things either."

"No, I didn't. I came here to make friends."

Tsujihara snorts. "Do you even know what a friend is?"

"No." He admits. "But the idea of one sounded nice."

Not for the first time, Tsujihara's wishes Professor Ayanokōji would drop dead. In the middle of Tokyo traffic. She'll manifest that one day, mark her words.

She sighs, lifting her gaze to the ceiling. "Making friends is fine but remember not everyone wants to be your friend."

"I'm aware."

Tsujihara shakes her head. "I don't mean Horikita."

Ayanokōji pauses, likely thinking over her words, trying to pinpoint a culprit, but he won't find one. Not yet. It's the first day. Her words are just honest advice. And while she doesn't think any of the students here can use Ayanokōji without him secretly manipulating them under several layers of pretense, teenagers in general are a convoluted lot. There's bound to be a few bad eggs in the bunch.

It's not long before she feels his eyes on her again. She wonders what he sees.

For a long while neither of them speaks and Tsujihara falls back onto the bed, content in their shared silence.

And then without warning the silence is broken.

"He was so pleased with your rapid growth he began making plans to arrange us together in the future to produce a genetically perfect child."

"That was so far out of left field..." She deflects, ignoring how quickly she caught on and pieced the moment and his reasonings together.

Tsujihara remembers that moment with perfect clarity. Remembers the blood and the pain, and the surgery they had to begin before the anesthetics kicked in or else, she would've died.

She was ten then and hadn't fully understood the weight of what she was told, but it hit hard when she was 13 and taking in the sights of mothers, fathers, and children in a park, smiling without a care in the world, happy.

And across the street there was her. Filthy, lonely, barren, her, on the run for the rest of her miserable life.

"I don't know if I want to thank you or kill you."

"Please don't kill me."

She snickers despite herself. Well, if they're trading secrets... Tsujihara's grin is all teeth. "I killed almost all of the investors."

Hence, the temporary shutdown.

"Did you make them suffer?"

"Of course. There's no mercy rule in real life."

Tsujihara has no idea what's happening with the dynamic between them. No words are exchanged, but there's a palpable shift in the air. It's not a friendship. Maybe a mutual agreement? But then, what did they just agree on?

"Even the cute ones?"

"All of the cute ones."

Next to her is one of the top 50 wonders of the world and one of the top 10 geniuses on the planet and he's never been hugged or ate pancakes or watched the Olympics or done much of anything really, but on the first try, he'll still do better than you.

Tsujihara turns, staring at him for once and contemplating what effect any form of association with Ayanokōji will have on her physically, mentally, or otherwise, and why of all places he ran away to school. Right now, she's drawing blanks, but then she remembers, 

I don't have any plans.

Oh. Oh.

Tsujihara turns back to the ceiling and tries not to laugh.

Ayanokōji you sweet, sweet, summer-child. I bid you the best of luck.