The silence in the library deepened, becoming a tangible thing that wrapped around Riko's question. Hikari didn't look away. Her usual defiance softened into something more complex—a weary understanding.
"You won't get it," Hikari said finally, her voice low but clear in the quiet room. "But… try to understand something."
The words were a dismissal, yet they held a door ajar. Riko felt a surge of frustration, mixed with that sharp, analytical hunger. "Why won't I understand?" she pressed, her polite tone thinning. "The Council President said the same thing to me. 'You will understand once you see it.' I don't know what your or President Hoshino's relation to Kaito-senpai is, but why is everyone so convinced I am incapable of understanding?"
It was the rawest she had ever sounded—not polished, not strategic. Just genuinely baffled by the wall of secrecy she kept encountering.
Hikari studied her for a long moment, as if weighing Riko's desperation against some internal scale. Finally, she let out a slow breath, her shoulders slumping slightly.
"He had a sad story," Hikari said, the words dropping like stones into the stillness. "In his past. A betrayal. From people he trusted as friends."
Riko's breath caught. The answer was so simple, so human, and yet it explained everything and nothing all at once.
"Hoshino doesn't know this," Hikari continued, her gaze turning distant. "Because he never shared it. Not really. I just… saw the edges of it." She looked back at Riko, her dark eyes serious, holding a warning and a fragile offering. "And I hope you won't share it with anyone. Because… I trust you. As we are friends, I guess."
The word hung between them, simple and monumental.
Before Riko could formulate any response—a question, a promise, another plea for clarity—Hikari stood up. She slung her bag over her shoulder with her usual careless motion, but the action felt different now. Final.
"See you tomorrow," she muttered, and then she was walking away, her footsteps the only sound until the library door sighed shut behind her.
Riko was left alone at the large table.
The words swirled in her mind, but they were background noise to the one that echoed with stunning force: Friend.
I trust you. As we are friends, I guess.
For the first time since arriving at Sakuragaoka, Riko Aoyama felt a seismic shift in her understanding of her own position. She had been the observer, the strategist, the one seeking to categorize and conquer the social landscape. She had seen herself as above the messy bonds of simple friendship, seeking alliances, networks, influence.
But Hikari Tanaka, the rebel, the ghost, the girl who fought logic itself, had just casually placed her in a category Riko had never considered for their relationship. An equal. Not a rival, not a project, not a stepping stone. A friend.
And with that word, she had entrusted her with the most fragile piece of intelligence about the most guarded person in the school.
But as the initial shock faded, a final, chilling question crystallized in Riko's mind, sharper than all the others:
How?
How did Hikari learn about a past that was sealed so safely even the all-knowing Hoshino Shizuka was unaware of it? How did she "see the edges" of something Kaito Sato, the fortress, never shared?
The answer implied a proximity, a level of closeness that defied all of Riko's observations. It suggested that the distance between the solitary king and the class ghost was not a vast, empty plain, but a narrow, well-trodden path hidden from view.
Are they… that close?
The unseen conversation was over. But the word it had planted, and the terrifying, intimate question it spawned, grew louder in the silent library, rewriting the entire map of the world Riko was trying to understand.
(End of Chapter 42)