In the corner of the classroom, Kaito Narumi's desk gets kicked again. His textbooks hidden, his indoor shoes thrown away, and the usual words: "Read the room, loser." At Meikyo Academy, a prestigious private high school in Tokyo, Kaito is invisible. Nobody cares. Nobody helps. He's just the bullied kid.
But nobody knows the truth. After school, in the empty classroom, Kaito's phone buzzes nonstop. "Amane-san, do you have the past midterm papers?" "How much for dirt on that teacher?" "Can you i
Laughing Behind the Scenes - On the day of the culture festival—the giant screen exposes a secret.
The air in the gymnasium was thick with heat. Despite it being mid-October, the body heat of over seven hundred gathered students swirled between the cold floor and the high ceiling. The murmur of the crowd waiting for the opening ceremony to begin ebbed and flowed like waves.
Narumi Kaito sat in the very back row of the spectator seats, at the far edge against the wall. His deep brown eyes behind black-rimmed glasses quietly fixed on the stage. Beneath his carelessly grown-out black hair, his expression remained still. Only his right hand, gripping a secondary smartphone inside his uniform pocket, was slick with sweat.
*(It's starting.)*
He muttered briefly in his mind.
At the front of the gymnasium, on the stage, a massive 150-inch screen glowed white. Beside it, student council members hurried with preparations for the opening ceremony. Cables from the broadcast equipment snaked across the floor, and the stage lights illuminated the platform.
"Everyone, thank you for waiting! We will now begin the opening ceremony of Meikyou Academy's Kyouka Festival!"
The voice of the female student serving as MC echoed through the gymnasium via the speakers. Applause erupted. In the parents' seating area, adults with cameras aimed their lenses at the stage all at once.
Kaito slowly exhaled.
As if pushing every last bit of air from his lungs.
*(Just a few more minutes.)*
The opening ceremony proceeded as scheduled. The principal's address. The guest's congratulatory remarks. The student council president's speech. All of it sounded like distant noise to Kaito's ears. His consciousness was focused solely on the weight of the secondary smartphone in his pocket.
"Next, we have the class introduction speech by Kurokawa Tatsuya, representative of Class 2-C."
The moment that name was called, Kaito's fingertip traced the screen of his secondary phone.
From the wings of the stage, a male student stepped out.
Kurokawa Tatsuya.
His brown hair was neatly styled in a center part, and he smiled with narrowed, sharp eyes of deep brown. The uniform wrapping his tall frame looked newly pressed for today, the creases crisp and sharp. The piercing in his left ear caught the stage lighting and glinted.
An especially loud round of applause rose from the audience.
Kurokawa walked to the microphone with a confident stride. He glanced across the spectator seats for a moment, then flashed a smile with the mask of an honor student perfectly affixed.
"Um, I'm Kurokawa Tatsuya, representative of Class 2-C."
His voice carried through the gymnasium via the microphone. Low and resonant. A tone brimming with confidence that showed he had practiced repeatedly.
"Our Class 2-C has prepared for this year's Kyouka Festival with the entire class working together as one. Through cooperating with my classmates, helping each other, and sometimes clashing, I believe we've managed to create the best cultural festival possible."
Appreciative nods came from the parents' seating area. The teachers, too, listened to Kurokawa's speech with gentle smiles.
Kaito watched that scene with cold eyes.
*(Cooperating with classmates. Helping each other. The best cultural festival.)*
*(Easy for you to say.)*
Kurokawa's words gnawed at old wounds deep in Kaito's chest. That day—the textbooks knocked to the floor. The trash stuffed into his locker. The thumbtacks planted on his chair. The gym clothes that vanished. The forced dogeza in the darkness of Keyaki Hill.
All of it—the flip side of this guy's "cooperating with classmates."
"As the leader of this class, I learned how difficult it is to bring everyone together. But more than that, I came to understand the importance of believing in your friends."
Kurokawa's voice grew increasingly impassioned. The audience was drawn into his words.
*(The importance of believing, huh.)*
Kaito re-gripped the secondary phone in his pocket. It was slippery with sweat. His fingertips trembled slightly.
*(Have you ever believed in anyone, even once?)*
Kurokawa's speech was approaching its climax.
"Our class's attraction is a maid café! For these two days, today and tomorrow, we sincerely look forward to welcoming you all to the Class 2-C classroom!"
Thunderous applause filled the gymnasium. Kurokawa smiled with satisfaction and bowed deeply toward the audience.
That was the moment Kaito had been waiting for.
The speech ended, and Kurokawa raised his head. He stepped back from the microphone. The applause still hadn't died down.
Kaito's thumb pressed the screen of his secondary phone—quietly, but with certainty.
—*Bzzt.*
Static.
For an instant, the screen went dark.
The applause shifted into confused murmuring. Someone muttered about a technical problem.
The next moment.
Footage appeared on the massive 150-inch screen.
It was surveillance camera footage from a classroom.
The date was the day of the first-term midterm exams. The footage showed Kurokawa Tatsuya facing his test paper. He kept glancing at a smartwatch strapped to his left wrist—again and again, with unnatural movements.
The image zoomed in.
The small smartwatch screen clearly displayed lines upon lines of text. Answers. Test answers, displayed on the smartwatch for cheating.
Kurokawa's own voice began playing through the loudspeakers at high volume.
"Shit, it's all in here."
His quiet mutter during the test had been recorded with crystal clarity.
"Gotta delete this later. If a teacher finds out, I'm done."
The audience froze.
A beat of silence.
Then, an uproar—somewhere between screams and laughter—swirled through the gymnasium.
"N-no! This is some kind of mistake!"
Kurokawa shouted, still gripping the microphone. The color drained from his face. The honor-student smile from moments ago had vanished without a trace.
"This footage is edited! Someone's trying to frame me!"
But the footage on the screen continued without mercy. The surveillance camera angle. The full view of the classroom. Every time Kurokawa looked at his smartwatch, his expression flickering between tension and relief was captured clearly.
*(Edited?)*
Kaito sneered coldly in his mind.
*(That's real. It's irrefutable proof that you cheated on tests, over and over, with your own hands.)*
The vice principal rushed toward the stage wings. The homeroom teacher, Miyazono Toshio, was also pounding on the equipment room door, his face pale.
"Someone! Stop the footage! Open the equipment room, now!"
But the equipment room door was locked from the inside.
Inside, Majima Riku stared at the control panel with cold, ash-blue eyes. His long white hair was tied back in a single ponytail, his profile unreadable. His fingers quietly pushed up a fader on the mixer.
Kurokawa's voice blared from the speakers at even higher volume.
"With this, I'll get a perfect score again. Zamaa miro."
The uproar in the audience grew louder.
Kurokawa dropped the microphone and clawed at his hair.
"No! That's not it! That was just that one day! I just happened to be checking a notification on my phone!"
No one believed him.
The students' gazes pierced Kurokawa all at once. Curiosity, contempt, and a faint trace of fear. The eyes of those who had once cowered before him began, little by little, to change.
Kaito watched the scene from the back row, expressionless.
*(Not yet.)*
*(This is only the beginning.)*
The footage on the screen switched.
This time, it was security camera footage from a convenience store.
The date was a Saturday last month. The person shown was Tanabe Kenta. A small boy with curly brown hair. He was in the magazine section of the convenience store, checking his surroundings repeatedly before slipping a small bag of snacks into his uniform pocket.
Tanabe's face zoomed in to fill the screen.
His face was horribly distorted with fear.
"Th-that's Tanabe..."
"He was shoplifting?"
Whispers rose from various parts of the spectator seats. Tanabe, at his own seat, had gone pale. His narrow eyes were wide open. His lips trembled, and his body began to shake in small tremors.
"N-no... I, that's, um..."
Tanabe's voice reached no one. The students around him pulled away, as if distancing themselves from him. That movement wounded Tanabe's heart even more deeply.
*(This is your sin.)*
Kaito stared at Tanabe's trembling back.
*(You chose to follow Kurokawa and hurt me. This is the price.)*
The screen displayed the next piece of footage.
This time, it was SNS screenshots. Posts from the secret accounts of two of Kurokawa's group's hangers-on. Slander and abuse directed at classmates, lined up one after another.
"That guy's seriously annoying. Wish he'd just disappear."
"Today sucked again because of him. He should just die."
Voices resembling screams rose from the spectator seats.
And the last thing displayed was an SNS screenshot suggesting compensated dating. A photo of one of the hangers-on having dinner with an older man. Beside it, message exchanges with what appeared to be amounts of money.
"Wait, is that real?"
"That's disgusting..."
The entire venue was being enveloped in an atmosphere of condemnation toward Kurokawa's group.
Kaito bit his lip.
*(Zamaa miro.)*
*(Everything you did to me—I'm returning it to you right now.)*
Anger surged up from the pit of his stomach. The back of his throat burned hot. Even so, his face didn't move. Don't let emotion show on your face. Kaito told himself.
—That was when it happened.
"Who did this! Who the hell did this!"
Kurokawa screamed on stage, clawing at his head.
"It's you, isn't it! Narumi! It's you, isn't it!"
Kurokawa's finger pointed straight at the back row of the audience.
Every gaze in the venue instantly focused on Kaito.
Over seven hundred pairs of eyes stared at Kaito's face.
Kaito didn't move.
He stared back at Kurokawa with a cold gaze.
*(Yeah, that's right.)*
*(It was me.)*
He answered quietly in his mind.
Kurokawa tried to jump off the stage. But the teachers who had rushed over restrained his body.
"Let go! It's him! He did this!"
"Calm down, Kurokawa! Right now, confirming the situation comes first!"
His homeroom teacher Miyazono desperately tried to soothe Kurokawa. But Kurokawa continued to thrash.
At that moment, the AV equipment room door opened from the inside.
Majima Riku quietly appeared.
"I'm sorry, the equipment was malfunctioning, and I couldn't operate it for a while."
Riku bowed politely to the vice principal and the homeroom teacher. His face was as unreadable as ever.
"You! Did you do this!"
Kurokawa tried to grab Riku. But the teachers restrained him again.
"What are you talking about? I was locked inside the equipment room."
Riku's voice was calm.
The vice principal gave Riku instructions.
"Anyway, stop the footage! And we need to explain this situation to the parents immediately."
Riku nodded slightly and returned inside the equipment room.
The footage on the screen disappeared.
But the chaos didn't subside.
"Cheating was being tolerated at my child's school!"
"And shoplifting too! What kind of supervision is this!"
Parents pressed in on the teachers. Their voices trembled with anger.
"P-please calm down! We are currently investigating the details!"
The vice principal's voice was clearly shaken.
Students held up their smartphones, filming the footage that had been displayed on the screen one after another. That footage spread through SNS in the blink of an eye.
"This is bad, it's already spreading."
"It's all over the school already."
Kaito left the spectator seats, taking advantage of the chaos.
He moved to the wall and quietly watched the commotion in the gymnasium.
*(It's over.)*
*(It's finally over.)*
The anger had cleared.
Information gathered over half a year. A meticulously prepared plan. Everything had been executed perfectly, exactly as intended.
Kurokawa's honor-student mask had been torn off. Tanabe's self-preservation had crumbled. The hangers-on's true natures had been exposed.
Novelia is an AI-powered platform to read original light novels and fan fiction, create your own in just a few taps, and chat with the characters. New, illustrated episodes arrive daily — free to start.