In the Service Club room.
Yui Yuigahama and Yukino Yukinoshita were sitting together. The gloomy guy, Hachiman Hikigaya, sat alone in the corner, happily watching the drama unfold, while Tadayana fixed her gaze on the blond boy in front of her and began questioning him.
“So? What exactly is the situation right now?”
Tadayana asked with an openly unfriendly look aimed at Hayato Hayama of Class 2-J.
She honestly hadn’t wanted to get involved. The so-called rumors going around the class that Yuigahama had mentioned sounded to her like nothing more than some petty little bit of class drama. She hadn’t expected this guy to actually bring a request to the Service Club over something this trivial.
Then again, the gloomy guy didn’t want to deal with it either, and Yukinoshita, driven by both her obsession with finding whoever had spread the rumors and her hunger to learn dialectics, had gone and dragged Tadayana over.
Tadayana’s own reason for coming was simple too: last time, she’d promised Yukinoshita that she would personally show her how to use dialectics.
It couldn’t be helped. Once she’d promised her disciple something, she had to follow through. That was her responsibility as a master.
Still, the blazing, eager-to-learn look in Yukinoshita’s eyes was making her a little self-conscious.
“Um… how should I address you?”
Hayama asked, trying to ease the tension in the room.
“You don’t need to worry about my name. Just tell me about your crappy little problem.”
“C-crappy little problem?”
Hayama couldn’t quite keep his expression from twitching. He’d come here because he’d heard the Service Club would help solve whatever troubles people brought them. Instead, none of the three members seemed interested in doing anything, and they’d called in a younger girl from a lower grade instead.
And from the look of it, she didn’t like him in the slightest.
Watching from the side, Hikigaya was secretly delighted. It wasn’t often you got to see a handsome normie like Hayama get shut down this badly. Today really had opened his eyes. Apparently, normie privilege meant nothing to Tadayana.
Tadayana treated loners and normies with perfect equality. Ah, what a great and kind person.
Even the confidence she’d smashed to pieces last time was starting to come back now, helped along by the grin he was struggling to suppress.
“Sorry. Tadayanan can be a little blunt. She’s kind of like Yukinon that way. But she takes things seriously. Please trust her.”
Yuigahama hurried to smooth things over. She didn’t want the atmosphere in the room getting any more awkward than it already was.
“All right. Then I’ll explain. I’d like you to deal with the rumors being spread in our class. I don’t want something like this to happen again, and I don’t want it affecting relationships between classmates anymore.”
“If you want to solve a problem, you first have to look at how it came about. If these rumors started at this particular time instead of any other, then that means some condition exists right now that made them possible. Finding that condition first is the key to solving this.”
When Tadayana finished, she saw Hayama looking at her in a whole new light.
“You’re different from her. I misjudged you last time. Sorry.”
“Misjudged me? What do you mean? Who’s ‘her’? Do I know her?”
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
What was with this guy—did he only speak in riddles?
Tadayana turned to Hikigaya beside her.
“Gloomy guy, can you tell me what kind of people the three at the center of the rumors are like? You’re in the same class, right?”
The moment Tadayana tossed the conversation his way, Hikigaya stopped grinning.
He knew perfectly well what those guys were like, but that wasn’t the sort of thing he could say in front of Hayama.
Seeing his hesitation, Tadayana spoke again.
“If you don’t want to say it, fine. Then tell me this—has your class, or maybe your whole grade, had any new activities or group rules announced recently? Or anything coming up soon?”
“If it’s that, then yeah, I know one. Our second-year workplace visit program is about to start. The rumors started showing up around the same time as that.”
“Oh, right. Hikki, you’re amazing. Your powers of observation are incredible.”
“As expected of the lonely observer. If it’s you, you could probably see through the truth of this whole thing on your own already. Sorry, though. This time I need to demonstrate the process of solving a case for someone else.”
“No, it’s fine. Though… you actually know that title?”
Hikigaya was genuinely surprised. What surprised him was that Tadayana actually knew about his “lonely observer” title. Could it be that she used to be one of his kind too…?
“Yukinoshita-senpai, did you catch that? We’ve found the main contradiction. Remember this: usually, the root of conflicts between people lies in the policies and systems imposed from above. And for students, the school is the authority above them.”
As soon as Tadayana said that, Yukinoshita started taking notes.
“I see.”
“Mm-hm. The palest ink is better than the best memory. Good, good.”
Clearly, coming here hadn’t been a waste. Yukinoshita really was learning something.
Tadayana then turned back to Hayama, who had watched the entire exchange from the side.
“All right. Give me your assessment of those three classmates.”
“Tobe may not look like a very good student, but he’s great at livening up the atmosphere. Whenever something comes up, he’s always eager to join in.”
“Yamato is very calm. He always listens carefully when other people speak. He’s a good person too.”
“Ooka gets close to people easily. He’s easygoing and approachable—also a good guy.”
“All right, I have the general picture now. One more thing, gloomy guy—how many little cliques like that are there in your class? The kind that feel kind of unnecessary and might end up causing trouble for other people.”
“Just that one.”
“Ohh… then the whole thing is clear. If there’s only one group like that, then nobody would want to get too involved with them. Whatever happens, good or bad, doesn’t really affect anyone else, so we can rule out the rest of the class as suspects first.”
“Ehh, I don’t think you can say that for sure. For this workplace visit, we’re getting split into groups, right? So what if someone outside that clique wants to team up with Hayama-kun, but because groups are limited to three people, they deliberately put the other three down so Hayama-kun would give them a chance? I mean, this would affect people’s relationships afterward too, wouldn’t it?”
The moment Yuigahama finished speaking, she realized everyone in the room was staring at her in shock.
“W-what is it…?”
“I didn’t expect even Yuigahama to think of that.”
Hikigaya deadpanned.
“That’s so mean… What do you mean, ‘even I could think of that’…? I have a perfectly normal life, you know. I got into Sobu High School on my own merits.”
“Groups of three?”
Tadayana’s attention, meanwhile, was fixed on something else entirely.
This is a fan translation of 转生白毛的我开局被雪之下拒绝告白 by 暗影之中 Rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!
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