Hachiman Hikigaya felt absolutely nothing. No excitement, no nervousness, no anticipation. Just... calm. Complete, utter, soul-crushing calm.
The bus engine rumbled to life, and the vehicle lurched forward along the road toward the school.
Utterly bored out of his mind, Hachiman slipped into his usual default mode: people-watching. It was a skill he'd honed over years of having nothing better to do—observing humanity from a safe, socially-distant position.
First up: his immediate neighbor.
She had waist-length straight black hair that fell like a silk curtain down her back. A decorative bow and a thin braid adorned the right side of her head. Her eyes were a striking violet-pink color with an almost fox-like quality to them, sharp and intelligent. Everything about her screamed "ice queen"—from her perfect posture to the invisible "don't talk to me" force field radiating off her in waves.
In her hands, she held a dark blue hardcover book. Plain, serious-looking, clearly not light reading material.
Hachiman squinted at the title.
The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche?
Huh. He'd actually read that one.
Back in his second year of middle school, during his peak "I'm not like other kids" phase, he'd deliberately sought out the most obscure, pretentious literature he could find. He'd hunted through the dustiest, most forgotten corner of the school library, digging up foreign philosophical texts that 99% of students would never voluntarily touch.
His classmates had taken one look at him reading dense German philosophy and decided he was studying some kind of chuunibyou dark magic grimoire. Complete nonsense, obviously!
The diaries of ancient gods, secret world government reports—he'd sealed those away ages ago, thank you very much. Totally different thing.
To hide his embarrassment at being called out, he'd forced himself to actually finish reading The Antichrist. And honestly? The book's dissection of human nature, morality, and the conflict between good and evil was genuinely interesting. Pretty heavy stuff for a middle schooler, but whatever.
At some point, the previously quiet cabin began to stir with commotion.
The cause became immediately apparent: a "suspicious old lady" had just boarded the bus.
Why suspicious?
Well, this was supposed to be the Koudo Ikusei charter bus. The passenger manifest should consist almost entirely of students, with maybe a handful of adult staff members thrown in. A frail, elderly grandmother made absolutely no sense in this context.
"Um, excuse me... could you please give up your seat?"
A short-haired girl with an impressively generous chest, wearing puffy casual clothes, approached one of the boys sitting in the priority seating area. Her voice was soft and polite as she made her request.
"This is the courtesy seat, right? The elderly should have priority access to these, don't you think?"
"Oh, what do we have here? A pretty girl~"
The person occupying the priority seat responded with a lazy, arrogant drawl.
It was a tall blond guy—easily over six feet—with his arms folded across his chest and his legs crossed. His bag occupied the adjacent seat. He was basically hogging two courtesy seats like some kind of feudal lord claiming territory.
Where the hell did this arrogant young master come from?
"I should move just because I'm young?" The blond continued, his tone dripping with condescension. "Ha! That's ridiculous."
"Even if I'm young, standing up wastes more energy than sitting down. Basic physics."
"Why should I do something pointless and unrewarding?"
The blond prince rattled off his justifications one after another, occasionally glancing at the old woman with a barely concealed sneer.
So he noticed too, huh?
Hachiman had also found the grandmother extremely dubious from the moment she'd boarded.
She appeared frail and unsteady at first glance, sure. But her cheeks were ruddy and full of color—the complexion of someone who was clearly living comfortably on a generous pension and getting plenty of exercise. She didn't look like someone genuinely struggling to stand for five minutes.
"But... giving up your seat could count as a social contribution," the short-haired, well-endowed girl persisted, her voice taking on a pleading quality. "And she looks so uncomfortable standing there..."
She blinked her large, watery eyes in an exaggerated display of concern and sympathy.
Her obvious kindness immediately won the favor of the other passengers watching the exchange.
Helping the old lady while simultaneously polishing her own image... am I being too cynical here?
Hachiman's dead fish eyes narrowed suspiciously as he observed the performance.
Two somewhat dim-looking guys actually started to rise from their seats in support of the girl's request. But upon getting a better look at the blond guy—easily 180 centimeters tall and clearly packing serious muscle under that uniform—they quickly shrank back down into their seats like intimidated animals.
"I'm not interested in social contribution," the blond declared flatly, shutting down that line of argument immediately.
"Besides, what about everyone sitting in the regular seats?"
With an unnecessarily dramatic flourish—complete with what had to be hair gel making his bangs shimmer—he flicked his head back and swept his gaze dramatically across the entire cabin.
It was a clever rhetorical move. He was pretending to shift blame while simultaneously testing how many other people had also seen through the grandmother's act.
Most passengers immediately averted their eyes, suddenly finding the floor or their phones incredibly fascinating. Nobody wanted to get involved in this mess.
Not wanting trouble himself, Hachiman quickly looked away as well.
His gaze landed across the aisle, where he spotted an expressionless boy who appeared to be doing the exact same thing—people-watching with a detached, analytical air.
A kindred spirit?
Hachiman felt an immediate, almost desperate urge to befriend this fellow observer of humanity.
The poker-faced boy apparently sensed the stare. He turned his head slowly, locking eyes with Hachiman.
Those eyes were icy. Soulless. Completely empty of any recognizable human emotion.
"!!!"
It felt like a demon had just glanced back at him.
Hachiman jerked his head aside so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash.
D-dangerous!
What the hell was that thing?!
A mannequin that somehow got stuffed into a high school uniform?!
Every instinct in Hachiman's body screamed at him to stay as far away from that boy as physically possible.
The expressionless boy studied Hachiman for a long moment, his head tilted slightly as if trying to figure something out. Then his lips parted slightly, like he was about to say something—
"Would anyone be willing to give up their seat for this grandmother?" the short-haired, busty girl pleaded again, her voice cutting through the tension.
"I will!"
Hachiman Hikigaya sprang from his seat like he'd been launched from a rocket.
The old woman thanked him with considerably less tremor in her voice than before, and swiftly claimed the seat that Hachiman had just vacated. She settled in with the practiced ease of someone who'd done this many times.
Far from earning anyone's goodwill or admiration, the "good Samaritan" Hachiman was now being regarded with the special kind of contempt reserved for obvious fools and hypocrites.
Which was perfectly normal, really.
After all, the busty short-haired girl and the blond prince had been having their little debate for several minutes now. If someone were truly a decent person, they would have stood up immediately. Waiting until now to finally act was pure, transparent hypocrisy—virtue signaling at its finest.
The thing was, Hachiman actually agreed with that assessment.
He genuinely hadn't given up his seat for the "sprightly senior citizen." His true motivation had been purely self-preservation—he desperately wanted to escape from proximity to that certain "dangerous life-form" with the dead eyes.
"Um... thank you so much for what you did just now."
The short-haired, well-endowed girl approached him, her expression radiating gratitude and warmth.
"No, really, it's fine. I'd just been sitting for too long anyway," Hachiman deflected quickly, waving off her thanks. "I was starting to feel a bit carsick. Needed to stand and stretch my legs."
"Are you all right, though?" The girl's eyes widened with apparent concern. "Do you need me to help steady you? You can lean on me if you need to."
She even extended her hand toward him.
"I'm totally fine, really!"
Hachiman hastily dodged the hand reaching for him, taking a quick step backward.
Like hell I'm falling for that!
Couldn't she see the absolutely murderous glares he was receiving from every single guy in the immediate vicinity?
Those two "not-so-bright-looking" dudes who'd started to stand earlier were now staring at him with pure green-eyed jealousy, looking like they wanted to tear him apart and devour the pieces.
Misery... absolute misery...
His dead fish eyes drifted miserably toward the bus window, seeking escape in the scenery.
The bus was rolling across a long sea-bridge now, and beyond it, a massive artificial island came into view. The scale was impressive—this wasn't some small campus. It was basically a self-contained city.
A grand entrance gate made of marble columns stood at the island's edge, looking almost absurdly impressive and grandiose.
Hachiman raised an eyebrow, his suspicions growing stronger by the second.
This high school—Koudo Ikusei—was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent off.
The bus came to a stop at the gate.
Passengers began filing out, students chattering excitedly about the campus, the facilities, their new lives.
"So we're seriously stuck here for the next three years?" Hachiman muttered to himself, slouching dramatically as he shuffled off the bus. He radiated pure listlessness, his dead fish eyes somehow managing to look even deader than usual.
You've got to be kidding me.
Three whole years without seeing his adorable little sister Komachi. This was worse than enduring Nagato's "how many floors can one bag of rice withstand" speech on repeat for eternity!
Maybe he should just commit some minor, harmless crime and get himself locked up in juvie or something. At least then Komachi could come visit him on weekends...
He seriously started weighing the pros and cons of this plan.
"Starting school with that level of apathy and negativity—how did the interviewer ever pass your application?"
A cool, cutting voice interrupted his criminal conspiracy planning.
It was the black-haired ice queen from the bus.
"Yeah, honestly, I've been wondering the exact same thing," Hachiman nodded in complete agreement.
The truth was, he'd deliberately sabotaged his own interview in an attempt to fight back against his parents' complete disregard for his wishes and life plans.
When asked about his hopes for the school and his future dreams during the interview process...
He'd brazenly declared that he was primarily looking forward to meeting "high-quality females" on campus, and that his ultimate ambition was to become a househusband and find his future wife at this school.
He still vividly remembered the interviewer's face—like someone had just force-fed him a bowl of excrement. The man's expression had screamed guaranteed rejection.
A 99% certainty that Koudo Ikusei would immediately toss his application into the trash!
Hell, Hachiman didn't even want to attend this weird experimental school anyway.
With his decent enough entrance exam scores, attending the nearby Sobu High School would have been perfectly adequate. Perfectly normal.
Maybe he'd even find his "genuine thing" there. Slim chance, sure, but the possibility existed.
Yet somehow, unbelievably, impossibly—Koudo Ikusei had accepted him.
After such a catastrophically terrible interview, they'd actually let him in.
The school had to be doing it on purpose, right?
Like they were deliberately recruiting oddballs and misfits for "biodiversity" purposes—trying to simulate a realistic cross-section of society for their little social experiment...
"By the way, that look you gave me on the bus earlier—what exactly did it mean?"
The black-haired girl's sharp question snapped him back to reality.
If you weren't looking at me, how would you even know I was looking at you in the first place?
The logical inconsistency was obvious, but Hachiman had absolutely zero interest in getting into a verbal sparring match right now. He went for the safest possible response:
"If I somehow offended you, I sincerely apologize."
"That's not what I meant..."
His immediate meekness apparently caught her off guard. Her razor-sharp tongue suddenly had no target to strike.
She paused, then changed tactics.
"Why did you offer that old woman your seat?" Another seemingly random question. "Frankly, I could tell from the beginning that you never actually intended to give it up—so why did you suddenly change your mind?"
"What about you, then?" Hachiman countered, never one to answer questions obediently. "What's your reason for not giving up your seat?"
"I withheld my seat because I act according to my convictions and principles," the black-haired ice queen declared, her voice righteous and unwavering.
Wow. That somehow sounds even colder than just admitting you didn't want to move.
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