STD Positive (fin.)

“Listen, Kocchan. This is going to be hard to believe, but I don’t dislike Sakura Emi.”

“…Right.”

Come on, did she really think I would buy that?

Just because she added a pre-statement to her statement?

Even I know gossiping about someone using their full name is the equivalent of stating your hate for them. Like how in middle school, I wasn’t Mizuhara from Class 3-1 but that Mizuhara Kohei. That overwhelming feeling of disgust was the same thing I felt from Mari’s ‘Sakura Emi’—at least throw in a ‘-san’ or something, don’t make it so obvious.

“I’m... fine with… Sakura… s-san,” she sputtered.

“Wait, did I say that monologue out loud?”

“...Huh?”

“Apparently not.”

“......”

“……”

I looked at her. She looked at me. Then she looked at her glass.

She was out of lemonade to drink, so I tried to give her an easy out of the conversation that didn't involve crunching ice.

Politely, I said, “Putting Sakura-san aside—”

“Ah, mou!”

“Wh-what?”

“I hate this!"

"But I didn't do anything?!"

"You obviously think I’m some sort of idiot... How ironic, coming from an actual idiot!”

“Projection! This is textbook projection!”

The Kitazawa Literature Club must've been a cutthroat organisation.

They were turning the girls abusive.

Tapping her foot restlessly, Mari continued like a chihuahua with rabies.

“Firstly, wipe that smug look off of your face,” she spat. “Secondly... fine. Perhaps you’re right, Kocchan. Perhaps I do dislike Sakura Emi—but that’s only if you’re using a loose definition of the word ‘dislike’, and it’s not for the reason you’re thinking of. I’m not that shameless.”

“O-of course.”

...Even if I’d never once directly accused her of disliking Sakura.

Even if there was a definite problem with her last sentence, being a two-faced fake lesbian and all.

For the sake of the narrative, I chose to agree—since dying randomly in a school café would be a shite ending.

“You’re thinking that I kept Sakura Emi away from you because I felt jealous, right?” she asked, her tone self-assured.

“Uh, well...”

The answer to her question was pretty obvious in my mind.

Sure, Sakura was part gazelle, tall, and athletic—and in comparison Mari looked like a sugar glider with her round face and dainty stature—but the two were different strokes for different blokes. If I really, absolutely had to (which by the way, I don't), I would say that they were on the same level.

Just a tier below Yukimura Kiku.

Thus there wasn’t a reason for Mari to get jealous.

…...

...Okay, so I’m not actually that dense, I just wanted an excuse to monologue about girls.

Back to the real topic at hand.

While the possibility of Mari’s female intuition being tipped off had briefly crossed my mind, I’d discarded it the moment she tossed out the ‘romantic date’ card so brazenly. Ascribing a reaction that extreme to just romantic interest in me would’ve been a rather arrogant stance to take—not to mention, Mari never antagonised others for shallow reasons.

She’d been my friend through and through when no one else would.

So.

“Not really. Actually, not at all,” I said.

“...Hng.”

I had no idea what sound Mari was trying to make, since it was barely audible.

Though it sounded rather close to a ‘hmph’—and so I doubled down.

“N-no no no, seriously. I-I have no clue why you were so hostile towards Sakura-san, but I’m sure if you explain it to me I’ll be able to understand. Y-you have your reasons, right? I trust you. I trust you, Mari.”

“......”

“Um, I trust you?”

“…I can’t tell if you’re like this because you’re super considerate or super dumb,” Mari said, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers.

“...Probably the latter.”

“Don’t ruin a good moment like that.”

“We were having a moment?”

"...Haahh."

With a sigh, Mari stopped twirling her hair.

But she didn’t proceed to pout or blow up—the look on her face was resolute.

Almost business-like.

“So, about that woman,” she said, putting our conversation back on track rather terrifyingly.

“Y-yes, we were talking about Sakura-san.”

That woman, huh?

I couldn’t tell if it was better or worse than Sakura Emi.

“Ahem. To make my earlier statement more clear, I don’t dislike Sakura Emi—I’m just suspicious of her.”

Suspicious is a very nebulous word.

And to be honest, there isn’t much difference at all between suspecting someone and disliking them, so I found Mari’s angle perplexing.

“But… suspicious about what? And didn't you mention you'd never met her before?”

“Yes, that's part of why I’m suspecting her.”

“…I don’t understand.”

It went from simply 'being suspicious' to outright 'suspecting' her.

Somehow, it was all even more confusing than when Yukimura drew parallels to fiction.

But it felt like she’d put a lot of thought into her reasoning based on how she sounded—at least, far more than the few minutes of contemplation Yukimura threw together while I was in the corridor with Watanabe.

So she definitely wasn’t making empty statements. She had a good reason to be worried about Sakura.

“You’ll understand soon enough,” Mari said. “Though as you might already know, I don’t think it’s good practice to give answers out for free—so I’ll have you work for them.”

“......”

“Ah, don’t worry, I’ll lead you there with guiding questions to expedite the process.”

What was this, her tutoring me for the Kitazawa entrance exams all over again?

In a café, no less.

That’s a real nostalgia trip right there.

“...Yes, Tsujimoto-sensei.”

“Question one. Have you looked through the STD System yet?”

“Of course? How is this even… oh, I see.”

On the surface, her question was stupid—but if you treated it as a rhetorical statement it made much more sense.

Mari was trying to say that her suspicion of Sakura was related to the STD System. Something to do with her profile, perhaps. It was actually a rather useful hint—it clearly outlined where I was supposed to look for the answer, yet it did so in a fashion that kept the mystery under wraps.

An amazing guiding question.

What a natural-born teacher, unlike someone else.

“Question two. Have you been looking through the Level Rankings thoroughly?”

“Hmm… I guess you could say so.”

To be more exact, the truth was 'yes, but actually no.'

I'd looked at the Student Rankings for almost seven hours non-stop—from when Mishima announced the news during homeroom till just before my lunch appointment with Mari. I mean, who wouldn’t? If anything, not looking at something that interesting would be completely unnatural. There were at least a hundred subcategories amongst the three As—it was like a bottomless well of entertainment.

Athletics, Academics, Aesthetics. No prizes for guessing which one was my favourite.

But the thing you had to focus on was the operative word ‘thoroughly’.

Although on a surface level it would seem that my browsing duration qualified as ‘thorough’, I wasn’t paying particular attention to figuring out the system. I’d just been taking in the sights without thinking critically—like reading a book for leisure, or browsing a Wiki page.

So like I said... yes, but actually no.

“Question three,” Mari continued. “Is the ‘Overall Grade’ feature working or not?”

“No, because aside from the three As, data for the other four categories don’t exist yet. It’ll be activated after the spring term.”

At least, that was the school’s official stance.

The Overall Grade feature supposedly did as its name suggested: It showed a composite score for a student aggregating each of the seven grading categories and then assigned a letter grade. Like Yamada Taro, 60 (C), Class 1-C for example. This part of the explanation was a certainty, since it came directly from Mishima’s mouth.

This second part of the explanation was more of my own guesswork, but I’d concluded the Overall Grade was the intended way of sorting students from Class A to F in the future. Unlike other high schools, classes were to be reshuffled at the end of every major examination—possibly coinciding with updates to a student’s Overall Grade.

So in total there would be three shuffles per academic year—assuming ‘major examinations’ (a phrase taken from Mishima’s mouth) only included academic assessments. 

But that’s a post-it note for a future plot point.

The most urgent question was this: How did the school sort the students initially?

I’d thought it was based on the entrance exams, but gaining knowledge about the STD System plus glancing at the Student Rankings for Academics convinced me otherwise.

As expected, ‘upper half’ students like Mari dominated the field—her name appearing on almost every subject’s top 10—but as you scrolled further down the rabbit hole, the more you'd notice underachieving elites and overperforming commoners. Then there were blatant anomalies like Sakura, who'd scored a respectable 75 (B) for Academics—in contrast to Watanabe with his 53 (D).

Yet Sakura was in Class 1-F and Watanabe was in Class 1-B.

But to be fair, Watanabe was gifted at athletics and also handsome, so after taking that into account...

The obvious answer was that the students were preliminarily sorted based on the three As, right?

Right?

Maybe, except Sakura Emi was also athletic and incredibly beautiful.

This wasn't my opinion, the System said so.

“Good job, Kocchan. That’s all the questions Tsujimoto-sensei has for you today.”

“Referring to yourself in the 3rd person, huh? You used to do that a lot.”

“Hehe,” she giggled. “Sorry, I got excited. So… did you manage to find out why I’m suspicious of Sakura Emi?”

Fact Four: STD Positive (END).