Here's the rewritten scene from **Aoi
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The others had gone retreating like children from a battlefield they never understood. But he stayed. Of course he did.
There he was, on his knees. Silent. Broken. And yet… still burning.
I stepped into the clearing behind him, the silence of the night amplifying each step I took through the leaves. I didn't need to announce myself. He felt me. My little brother always did.
Still, he said nothing.
"Do you understand now?" I asked, my voice calm, precise, surgical.
He didn't look back. His head hung low, fists buried into the dirt like anchors holding down a storm. But I wasn't leaving without pulling that storm to the surface.
I moved in front of him.
"Look at me, Kei."
He didn't move at first. Then, in a low voice filled with seething frustration, he asked, "What the hell do you want from me, Aoi?"
Exactly what I was waiting for.
I crouched slightly, leaning closer not with kindness, but with conviction.
"Destroy them."
His head jerked upward at that, his golden eyes wide not in fear, but in disbelief.
"Destroy all of them," I continued. "Destroy the old version of yourself. Destroy Class D the children who think chaos is power. Annihilate Class B the fools who worship justice. And make Class A suffer. Let them perish beneath the weight of their arrogance."
He said nothing, but his silence spoke volumes. I knew he was listening.
I straightened up.
"Make Class C your puppets. Make them kneel to you. Don't offer them progress feed them only the result. Break them if you must, but win. Silently. Strategically."
His breath wavered.
I stepped forward again, voice lower now. "Use them all. Every classmate. Every rival. Even Haruto no especially Haruto. Let him shine in the light. Let him wear the crown in public."
Then I narrowed my eyes.
"But you, Kei... you will remain the true solitary hero. The one they never saw coming."
I turned my back to him. The choice was already made I could see it in the way his fingers loosened from the soil.
My work was done.
As I walked toward the docks, I gave him my parting words cold and honest:
"Never hold back again… brother."
Then, like a passing shadow, I was gone.
The cruise ship had arrived at the docks right on schedule. Students began boarding in groups some exhausted, others smug, a few utterly broken. I stood at the edge of the platform, arms crossed, silently watching them pass like cattle into their steel enclosure.
Kei, of course, was not among them.
I waited, letting the waves fill the silence. Eventually, all the students had filed into the ship. Just as I expected, Ichika Kenji couldn't resist.
He stared at me from across the dock, that ever-present grin glued to his face. His yellow-orange eyes gleamed with arrogance, the kind that stemmed from someone who thought he had control. He didn't. I had no interest in entertaining his gaze or his ego. I simply ignored him.
I didn't know much about him beyond the basics: his name, his status as Kei's self-proclaimed rival, and his reputation for playing dirty. But none of that mattered. He was a tool like the rest. Whether he knew it or not.
After the ship was sealed and the final headcount confirmed, I turned to the Class C homeroom teacher.
"Kei's still out there," I told him flatly.
The teacher blinked, surprised. "What?"
"We'll retrieve him."
He nodded, and the two of us made our way into the trees once more.
The teacher walked in silence for a moment before speaking. "You manipulated the entire school management, didn't you, Aoi?"
I didn't respond. Not yet.
He continued. "You were the one who proposed the Survival Gauntlet as a test. You pitched it, convinced us to implement it, made sure it offered the highest reward in points."
Still, I said nothing. His words weren't wrong.
"You read every class like a book," he added, his voice laced with awe and quiet suspicion. "You used Class A's ego and sense of entitlement, Class B's obsession with righteousness, and Class D's desperate hunger for approval. And Class C…"
He trailed off, watching me carefully.
I didn't flinch.
"You knew the whole staff was worried about bias because of your blood relation to Kei. They feared you'd favor him."
He was wrong.
"I gave him the opposite," I said at last, voice calm. "I ensured his downfall."
The teacher exhaled slowly. "Why?"
"I wanted the game to end in a draw. I calculated for the frustration. I wanted him to hate the outcome. I wanted to see if anything was still alive inside him."
My lips curled faintly, remembering that scream. That raw emotion Kei had buried so deeply finally clawing its way out.
"He cried out. Finally. He broke."
The teacher narrowed his eyes. "So what now? What's your next plan for him?"
I stared into the forest, the shadows parting for us as we walked.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?" he echoed, surprised.
"All I did was light the spark," I replied. "He has to keep the fire going now. If he can't… then he was never worth saving in the first place."
There was silence again before the teacher finally said, "He has potential. This exam this test it changed something in him. What do you think the next special exam should be?"
"Something physical," I said without pause. "Something that forces real collaboration. Something that exposes weak bonds."
The teacher chuckled. "I think I know just the thing."
I didn't respond.
We reached the clearing that would soon reveal Kei's presence. He wouldn't be far. Not anymore.
"For now," I said coldly, "let's retrieve my little brother."
"Very well," the teacher answered.
And we continued forward—into the wreckage of what remained of the old Kei Fushimiya.
Into the birth of something new.
(class C teacher perspective)
We found him near the southern edge of the jungle alone, kneeling near a tree with his head low and his eyes shadowed beneath his bangs.
Kei didn't speak. He didn't even look at us. He simply stood when we arrived and began walking beside us, silent as a ghost. His steps didn't falter. His breathing was calm. But something was wrong deeply wrong.
I walked beside him, stealing glances every few steps.
The boy I once saw as the quiet, average student of Class C... he wasn't there anymore. Something else had taken root. Something cold. It wasn't anger. That had already burned away. This was worse.
There was nothing.
Kei Fushimiya's presence was like standing near an empty room no warmth, no fear, no resentment. Just an unbearable stillness that made the air itself feel heavier. Even I, a man who had seen countless students break and rise, felt a chill in my bones. It felt like I was walking beside a corpse.
Aoi, on the other hand, was completely unfazed. He moved like it was just another day. He didn't even look at Kei. Of course he didn't. He didn't have to.
When we reached the cruise ship, Kei stepped aboard without hesitation and disappeared into the interior. I knew where he was headed his shared dorm with Haruto. But I doubted Haruto would recognize the person walking in.
Before I could stop myself, I grabbed Aoi's sleeve.
"We need to talk."
He gave me that unreadable look unblinking, patient. Always so composed. I guided him a few feet away from the ship's deck, far enough that no students could hear.
"Is that boy possessed?" I asked.
Aoi's expression didn't shift. "No. Not at all."
"Something's wrong. Kei Fushimiya isn't the same anymore. You orchestrated all of this don't think I haven't noticed."
Still, he said nothing.
"You were the last person to speak to him before he arrived at the docks. What did you tell him?"
Aoi replied calmly, "All I said was what was necessary."
"Did you convince him to do something unethical?"
He gave me the faintest smile. "I didn't convince him of anything. I simply destroyed the 'normal' inside him. He's not helpless anymore."
He turned to walk away, but I wasn't finished.
"You really haven't changed," I said bitterly. "I've been working at this school for over twenty years. I was here when *you* were a student. I remember you."
He stopped.
"I remember the terror you inspired. You turned Class A into your puppets and crushed every class beneath you without lifting a finger. Students didn't call your year the 'Puppeteer Age' for nothing."
Aoi didn't respond, so I kept going.
"You manipulated everything. You treated people like chess pieces. You broke them and rewired them until they followed your rhythm. And now you're doing it again with your own brother."
He didn't turn back.
"I know what they called you behind closed doors," I said. "Not just the students. The teachers, too.We called you the Puppeteer. And now you've started it all over again with Kei."
Still walking, he said over his shoulder, "Are you done talking about the past? Because I'm done listening."
He walked away, hands in his pockets, disappearing into the corridors of the ship like a phantom.
I felt a pressure building in my chest.
"You're going to make that boy worse than you ever were!" I shouted after him.
He didn't even flinch.
And that's what terrified me most of all...