I woke up feeling a bit weird. My body felt kind of smaller, weaker, and very different. It was as if it wasn't my body at all. As I shot up and looked at my body in confusion, I realised why it felt different—because it was different.
In confusion, I looked around to notice that I wasn't in my room either. I noticed a mirror on a nearby cupboard and started going towards it. Before I could reach there, though, I heard a loud ring from a mobile phone beside my bed.
I decided to check that out first, and reached the phone. It read:
"Ike Kanji [Accept / Decline]"
'Ike Kanji? Why does the name feel somehow familiar?' I thought for a bit and realised, 'Wait, don't tell me...' I took the phone and rushed to the mirror to see my reflection, which seemed to confirm my doubts.
In the mirror, I saw a boy in his teens, with average height and short brown hair, and slight red eyes. I let out a long sigh as I recognised the boy in the reflection. Yep, it was none other than the so-called 'Masterpiece of Black room - Yamauchi Haruki'... but seriously, couldn't I find a better body to transmigrate into? Like, is there even a worse option than THIS?
Okay, Sakura might be one, but at least she has her future well-set.
'So not only did I somehow transmigrate in my sleep, I managed to do it in the body of one of the worst, if not the absolute worst, student in the whole history of ANHS?' I thought, not at all surprised because of my luck. 'Well, at least I do know about future events... I am pretty sure I'll manage to survive somehow. But, what is my goal supposed to be here?'
As I was thinking about that, the call ended automatically since I didn't answer it. While I was zoned out, staring at my reflection, a translucent blue screen appeared in my line of sight. I immediately recognised it and a creepy smile flashed on my face.
[Welcome! Would you like to-]
"Yes!" I said, before the white text on the screen could complete its sentence.
[Congratulations! You are now the host of the System. As a price, you will lose your knowledge about future events of Classroom of the Elite.]
As my face turned grim on hearing that, another screen appeared before me.
[Additional rewards for joining:
Ability - (B- Grade) Eye of superiority
Misc. - Memories of Yamauchi Haruki (auto-consumed)
+50 Available points]
'Huh... Something feels different from just a moment ago.' I thought, as the previous memories of Classroom of the Elite left my mind at a drastic rate and Yamauchi's memories made their way into my mind. 'Ah, well anyways...'
"Status," I muttered, waiting for a new screen to appear while trying to make sense of sudden memories coming into my mind.
[Name: Yamauchi Haruki
Physical stats:
Stamina - 45 (-10)
Strength - 47 (-10)
Combat technique - 52 (-10)
Average physical stats - 48 (-10)
Mental stats:
Academic ability - 42 (-10)
Memorisation power - 59 (-10)
Critical thinking - 49 (-10)
Average mental stats - 50 (-10)
Available points: 50
Abilities:
Eye of superiority
Disabilities:
Memory lock, Weakness, ADHD]
I could feel my mind nerfing itself. Soon, it felt quite difficult to think at the pace I used to, feeling a slight headache. But this wasn't very surprising, I had realised something similar would happen the very moment I saw myself in Yamauchi's body.
'Uh... It feels quite obvious, but can you explain the stats and other things to me?' I mentally requested the system, still trying to make sense of everything happening.
[Stamina - Ability to continue/endure physical activities for long periods.
Strength - Ability to increase maximum power exerted by your muscles. (Also increases max speed.)
Combat technique - Ability to take advantage of various factors in hand-to-hand combat.
(A/N: This one is quite vague, for example, it also relates to stance while running or swimming, and other sports too. I just don't know what term to use without making it too long or weird.)
Academic ability - Ability to quickly learn and derive theoretical topics. (Doesn't automatically give knowledge when points are increased.)
Memorisation power - Ability to memorise anything. (Memories before points are used are unaffected.)
Critical thinking - The Ability to think practically and use it to create advantageous scenarios.
Note: 100 points in each skill represent the average level of a high school student.]
My heart sank after reading the note, but then again, it made sense since I had the body of Yamauchi. Wait… why did it make sense for Yamauchi to be so dumb, again?
I suddenly felt a ton of memories invading my mind, but they weren't mine. Most of Yamauchi's memories were vague and full of him fooling around.
However, it wouldn't be exactly right to blame him completely for his state, since he never got enough support, if any at all, from his family or teachers. Not to mention his non-existent talent.
I shook my head and thought, 'What about the abilities and disabilities?'
[Abilities:
(B- Grade) Eye of Superiority - Allows the user to look at other people's stats that are lower than that of the user's. Once used on someone, it can be used to check again at any time.
Disabilities:
Memory lock - Blocks the user's memories related to Classroom of the Elite.
Weakness - Weakens user's physical stats by 10 points each. (Gets removed once the user's average physical stats cross 75.)
ADHD - Makes it difficult to focus, think, and memorise. (Gets removed once the user's average mental stats cross 75.)]
'Ah... that's why it's so difficult to think. Hmm, given that this is just a school, I don't think physical stats would matter much, I should just focus on bringing mental stats to 100 for now.' I thought, sitting on my bed, unaware that my past self would have been cursing me if it knew about this.
After lingering around for a bit and freshening up, I decided to add all my current points in critical thinking for now. Soon, a screen appeared in front of me.
[Critical thinking - 99 (+50)
Average mental stats - 66.67 (-10) (+16.67)
Available points: 0]
Feeling my mind free up, I sighed in relief and picked up my phone. The date was 2nd April, meaning the second day of school, and time was 7:15, 45 minutes before school time.
After that, I checked my private points, which stood at 97,000. I could remember myself- or rather, Yamauchi- spending them all on junk yet expensive food yesterday. Gladly, he hadn't bought much yet. As I was thinking that, I got Ike's call again, which made me remember that Yamauchi and he planned to buy some video games worth 60,000 private points this morning.
With another sigh, this time out of trouble, I answered his call and greeted him in a voice as if I had just woken up.
"Yo, Yamauchi! Were you still asleep? Don't tell me you forgot our plan already! I am waiting in line, there are quite a few people over here, come quickly." Ike said a bit angry and excited at the same time.
"Uhh... I don't feel like buying it now. I have a bit of a headache and haven't even eaten anything yet. You can go ahead and buy it, if I like it, I'll buy it later too." I shamelessly lied through my teeth. There was no way I was gonna play some games now, let alone spend the majority of my points on them.
"Huh? But you were so interested yesterday, what happened suddenly? Well... anyways I'll just ask Ken about it then." He said with a tone of surprise and then quickly ended the call.
As the call ended, I looked at my other contacts, which, unsurprisingly, included only two others. Sudou Ken, and Kushida Kikyou. This made me remember the crap introduction Yamauchi had given yesterday which caused my eye to twitch.
'Ah... I'll have to fix my impression. Anyways, I should just go and eat something from the store for now, since this guy hasn't bought anything to cook or directly eat.' I thought, as I left my room and went for a meal.
———
After finishing my meal and getting ready, I decided to reach school earlier today since it was technically my first day, and since Yamauchi had shat all over the class, I had to fix my social status, so extra time would help.
I pushed the door open after releasing a quiet sigh and confidently made my way into the classroom. Given that I was early, only a few students were present in the class.
My eyes first met with Hirata, who was talking with some girl named Inogashira Kokoro, as I greeted him with a smile and a nod of approval, I tried to use the [Eye of Superiority] on him.
[Name: Hirata Yousuke
Physical stats:
Stamina - ??
Strength - ??
Combat technique - ??
Average physical stats - ??
Mental stats:
Academic ability - ??
Memorisation power - ??
Critical thinking - ??
Average mental stats - ??]
I stared at the screen in disbelief, although it was expected. Then I tried it on Inogashira, which sadly gave the same results. Then I glanced at the rest of the class, which was mostly empty, and only had five other students, including Kushida.
Without wasting another moment, I used it quickly on all of them too, but did not bother to read the screens for now. I knew that with my crappy memory stat, it would be much better to have information already loaded up in [Eye of Superiority]. At least I could know their names that way, if nothing else.
"Good morning, Yamauchi. I hope you are all right."
It was Hirata, walking towards me and offering a handshake. He didn't seem to be a bad person, but he had already started getting hate from many students, though most of them were jealous boys, shortly after his introduction. Of course, that included Yamauchi too.
"Good morning, Hirata! Yeah, I am all good, what about you?" I replied, shaking my hand with him.
After a bit of chit-chat with him, I took my seat and lingered a bit, getting comfortable with the atmosphere of the class. Then, I activated my [Eye of Superiority] again, and started reading the information on the screens, making it look like I was looking at my book.
The long, black haired, cute girl sitting near the corner was Horikita Suzune. I already knew about Kushida, who was talking to this girl named Mei-Yu Wang. There was a fat guy with spectacles, likely reading some novel, named Hideo Sotomura, and another grey-haired guy with huge round spectacles, named Teruhiko Yukimura.
I could only see the stamina and strength stats for both Mei-Yu Wang and Yukimura, while everyone else had all their stats higher than me.
With not much time left, I decided to get information about my all other classmates who entered the classroom with my ability one by one while looking at the chapters of my math textbook.
After around 10 minutes, most of the class was full and I was feeling a bit troubled. Apart from a few students, most had all their stats better than mine, which was a bit disheartening to see.
However, that wasn't the reason for my troubled expression, it was because of the fact that even though I knew most of these math chapters quite well in my previous life, I couldn't manage to actually know what it was. I mentally thanked my academic stats while rolling my eyes.
'Ugh... this is going to be troublesome. Will I have to study everything from scratch then? I hope there are other ways to get points.' I thought.
Soon, everyone in the class was present, so now I had all forty names stored in my ability, which also included Chabashira sensei. My seat was at the right edge of the classroom, with Ryoutaro Hondou ahead of me, Kushida diagonally ahead, Sudou right beside, Kayano Onodera diagonally behind, and Sakura Airi behind me.
Since today was the first day of lectures, they were light and only mostly reviewed our previous grade's course; almost everyone except Koenji was focusing on the lectures. While the man in question just occasionally glanced at the board, smirked, then went back to observing his own face in his mirror. Talk about creepy.
Somehow, none of the teachers cared even after noticing him. Which felt very weird considering normal schools used to be much more strict.
Although I struggled a bit in the lectures, they weren't too overwhelming. As the bell finally rang, marking the start of lunchtime, Sudou cheered up. Me, Ike and he naturally formed a group, also adding in Hondou with us as we decided to leave for lunch.
I glanced around the class for a bit, looking for better companions. There were quite a few lonely people, though most of them felt as if they either wanted to be that way.
"Well, I was thinking of heading to the cafeteria. Does anyone want to come with me?" Hirata's voice echoed through the half-empty class, grabbing the attention of loners.
Though within a moment, he was surrounded and getting dragged out of the class via multiple girls. I followed his line of sight to find a gloomy boy at the corner of the classroom, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka. His hand was awkwardly hanging in the air, as he watched his Messiah getting dragged away from him.
I would have likely been laughing if it wasn't for the case that it was just too relatable. As I decided to call him with us, others reluctantly agreed mostly because of pity, I guess. Sudou seemed to know him and was quite willing to let him join in too.
"Hey, uh, Ayanokoji, right? Wanna join us for lunch?" I asked without beating around the bush, extending my hand to him after I reached his seat. For some reason, the girl beside him glared at me as if I had just stolen her toy.
"Yeah, sure. Thanks for asking me," he replied in a distant, monotone voice. His body or expression didn't seem to betray any signs of excitement or any other emotion.
'Huh, he seems to have quite good control over his emotions.' I couldn't help but think. After all, although it wasn't that huge of a feat, he was still the only one in our group to have all of his stats better than mine.
We decided to go to the cafeteria and talked on the way. The gloomy guy didn't add much to the conversation, but I could tell he was quite interested and listening to others carefully. I shared contact info with him and Hondou too.
'Ah, this does feel good. Even though my skills are destroyed to the core, experiencing these small things indeed seems better than my previous life.' I grimaced at the thought of my previous life, while a small smile made its way to my face. 'Maybe this isn't so bad after all.'