In fact, I can add unlimited points

224. Hirata's junior high school record: His punching power dominated the entire grade.

Have you ever been too afraid to save a fellow traveler, and could only watch helplessly as they were persecuted?

Seeing that Hirata Yosuke was starting to show interest in talking, Aragaki Shun bought a canned drink from the vending machine, handed one to him, and then sat down on the bench next to him without wavering, answering:

"First, let's define what kind of person can be called a companion. Under that premise, I have never experienced the situation you described."

Powerless?

This idiom is a bit too far removed from the reality of Shun Aragaki, who seems to be living a second life.

Even tracing back to his not-so-powerful past life, he had never actually witnessed his companions being persecuted.

This doesn't mean he was particularly capable back then.

The key point is that, in his previous life, starting from elementary school, he was always full of homework every day, so he really didn't have much energy to socialize or play.

To put it more sadly, from elementary school through middle school to high school, over such a long period of time, Shun Aragaki never made a single friend in his previous life who could be called a true companion.

Because his grades were pretty good, he wasn't at the bottom of the class. He could talk to most of the students, but the relationships weren't really deep. They were the kind of relationships that would be lost if the students were reassigned to different classes.

After finishing the college entrance examination and entering university, he didn't even recognize all his classmates except for a few roommates, let alone become friends with them.

After entering the workforce, it goes without saying that everyone is a money-driven worker. If they feel that a company is not suitable, they will change jobs and leave. They never dwell on whether they are colleagues or not.

In short, in his previous life he was far from being able to afford to consider such things, but in this life he can do anything and doesn't need to worry about these trivial matters.

“I think so too!” Hirata Yosuke’s face was full of bitterness, and he made a self-deprecating remark: “With Aragaki’s abilities, he naturally doesn’t need to worry about this, but I’m different. Whether in the past or now, I’ve always been like a useless person. I can’t do anything, and whatever I do always backfires.”

"So what exactly did you do in the past that made the school put you in Class D?"

Shun Aragaki asked curiously, "I've always thought that Class D is a cesspool. Even the best-tempered person would be driven crazy by the idiots there every day. If there are students who already have hidden dangers, they will explode sooner or later due to the atmosphere around them."

Putting a group of flawed individuals with various defects and dark histories together makes one wonder if the school is playing a game of cat and mouse, ultimately raising an unprecedented tyrant.

To reiterate, if someone has a mental illness, they should see a psychologist or be placed in a peaceful and supportive environment to return to normalcy, rather than being thrown into a garbage dump and left to languish.

"Aragaki-kun's evaluation is really excessive."

Hirata sighed, but couldn't find a rebuttal, so he changed the subject:

"If I had to say, I was a very inconspicuous student in my class until I entered the second year of junior high school."

Hmm, that's a bit hard to imagine.

As far as Aragaki Shun knew, Hirata Yosuke had only been in school for a short time, but he had easily become the center of attention in Class D of the first year thanks to his kind, selfless, and helpful personality.

How could someone like him say that he used to be insignificant?

Wait, the important milestone is the second year of junior high school?

Upon hearing this unusual age, Shun Aragaki began to have some guesses in his mind.

"Although I'm not particularly noticeable, I'm not entirely insignificant either. I have a few friends, and I'm really just an ordinary person."

Neither popular at the top nor isolated at the bottom, they are just ordinary middle-class people, which sounds very ordinary and inconspicuous.

So what exactly happened to make him look like this?

“I have a childhood friend who I’ve been very close to since I was little. He’s a boy named Sugimura. We were in the same class for six years of elementary school and lived very close to each other. I remember we would go to and from school together every day.”

"We were in different classes after we entered the first year of junior high school. Even so, we still went to and from school together at first."

"But since a certain day, the number of times has gradually decreased, and I've started only playing with the students in my new class. This in itself... well, it's probably a very ordinary thing."

Hirata seemed to be reminiscing about the past in a somewhat dreamy and unrealistic way.

That was a fairly ordinary memory, because it's natural to make new friends when you enter a new environment, and it's not strange at all.

If it were Shun Aragaki himself, after entering junior high school and being reassigned to a new class, it wouldn't be long before he forgot the names of his elementary school classmates whom he rarely saw.

"But... while I was playing with my new friends, Sugimura-kun was being bullied behind my back." Hirata Yosuke gripped the jar tightly in his hand.

“Sugimura sent me countless distress signals, such as when he had a facial injury or bruises on his body, but I prioritized playing with my classmates and didn’t take them seriously.”

"Sugimura has always been very competitive and prone to fighting, so I didn't think too much about it... However, when I saw him again in my second year, Sugimura's heart had already broken down."

"His cheerful and lively image vanished completely, and he took the violence of punching and kicking for granted. His bullies wouldn't even let him go to the toilet; he lost control of his bladder in class, and then was bullied again. This scene unfolded before my eyes..."

It's that same old story about school violence and group bullying again. Aragaki Shun frowned slightly.

That's just how things are in Sakurajima. Whether it's elementary school, junior high school, or high school, most schools inevitably experience similar incidents.

When he was in junior high school, he also encountered a group of stupid idiots who inexplicably disliked him and wanted to cause trouble. As a result, he taught them a lesson, and even the teacher who tried to smooth things over was dismissed by him.

"During this time, you just stood by and watched him get bullied without doing anything?"

Aragaki Shun couldn't understand, "Isn't he a comrade you acknowledge? With the momentum you just displayed when you defeated Nagumo Masaru, would you really worry about a bunch of cowardly middle school students?"

"Yes. You can vaguely imagine, right? I did nothing, and I couldn't do anything. I was afraid of becoming a target, afraid that my current happy environment would be destroyed... I've always ignored Sugimura, whom I used to be close to."

Hirata scratched his hair in regret. "I was just deceiving myself, thinking that one day everyone would get tired of bullying and stop, that one day Sugimura would stop coming to school and the bullying would disappear, or that someone would help him. I was just thinking about these selfish things."

Unexpected, yet reasonable.

This approach naturally results in a vastly different image from that of Yosuke Hirata during his advanced development.

But considering that Hirata was only a second-year junior high school student at the time, just around 14 years old, it seems quite normal for him to make that choice.

After all, not everyone has the courage to stand up and confront mob violence.

Even many adults can't do this, so why demand so much of a junior high school student?

"So, what happened to that guy named Sugimura in the end?"

"That day is still deeply etched in my mind. When I returned to the classroom after morning soccer practice at school, Sugimura was waiting for me with a swollen face. To be honest, I felt terrible standing there. He was my childhood friend, but he seemed like a completely different person to me."

“I even thought that if I got involved with him, I would be bullied and suffer such cruel things. Sugimura must have seen my ugly inner thoughts. He didn’t say anything, but it was as if he was confiding in me… That day, he jumped out of the window in class.”

"Jumped off a building?" Shun Aragaki's brow twitched, unsure what to say. "Is there any hope for him?"

"The doctor seems to have diagnosed him as brain dead, and now his parents believe that Sugimura will recover and are waiting for him."

"But now I don't know if he's alive or dead. I always feel that what happened that day was a bit unusual. I now think that it might have been a dream or an illusion, it just felt so unreal. It was only when Sugimura jumped that I realized something: that I had driven an important friend to his death in order to avoid trouble and protect myself."

Aragaki Shun: "..."

It sounds rather tragic; it seems that this incident triggered the change in Hirata Yosuke.

But he felt nothing else right now, only one perplexing thing that he couldn't help but wonder about—

"That guy named Sugimura, so he has parents?"

Since his parents are still alive, and seem to be the kind of people who love their child very much, and continue to spend a lot of money and patiently wait for his recovery even after he was brain dead... how did he end up like this?

Shun Aragaki couldn't understand why, even if parents shouldn't interfere with their children's social interactions at school, they couldn't help with transferring schools?

Or perhaps, because Sugimura was too competitive, he returned home without saying a word and concealed his ordeal so that his parents didn't discover what had happened to him?

Perhaps because he had no similar experience, he just couldn't understand it.

Hirata Yosuke was taken aback by the question. After a wry smile, he didn't know how to explain it, so he simply ignored the question and continued:

"Sugimura's suicide shocked me deeply. During that time, I didn't know what to do and was in a daze all day. But more importantly, I was affected by the aftermath."

“I think this whole commotion will subside after he attempts suicide by jumping off a building. After such a heavy sacrifice, there will be no more bullying at the school.”

"But I was too naive. After this incident, I witnessed the unfathomable darkness of human nature."

Hirata trembled, clenching his fists with gritted teeth, his eyes filled with a flickering killing intent.

"The new target of bullying has become a classmate of mine."

He suppressed his emotions and began to mutter to himself as he exhaled.

"It's unbelievable! Such a terrible incident just happened, and now new bullying has emerged. People who were just bystanders are now being treated the same way, and some of the students who didn't participate in the bullying have even joined the bullies."

Aragaki Shun: "..."

Rubbing his temples, the boy had lost count of how many times he had been speechless.

"No, they've driven someone to jump off a building, so why are the bullies completely unharmed and able to continue getting away with it?"

"I don't understand, Sugimura's parents saw their child brain dead and did nothing? And your lousy school, such a terrible incident happened, and the school administration had absolutely no intention of improving discipline? And what about the law enforcement officers? Didn't a single one call the police?"

Are they sure they live under the same blue sky?

Why was Hirata able to recount so many memories that shattered his logic?

"...You don't understand!"

Hirata Yosuke gave Aragaki Shun a deep look and said in a somber tone, "Aragaki-kun has never encountered any setbacks in the past. There are some incomprehensible things that you simply cannot imagine until they actually happen."

"But that's the truth. After Sugimura jumped to his death, the bullies paid no price. They treated him like a broken toy, quickly forgetting his sacrifice and looking for the next target to bully."

Aragaki Shun: "..."

I just hope I'll never understand this kind of thing in my entire life.

This school has just too many amazing people with all sorts of bizarre experiences!

“The scope of bullying expands without limit. If the lowest-ranked student in the class is no longer there, the student who was second to last will automatically become last. In a sense, this is a natural law.”

"I can't let that happen again, I feel I absolutely have to stop it!"

Shaking his head, Shun Aragaki gave up trying to analyze Hirata's past experiences using normal logic.

Once he shed his mind, he became a simple listener, occasionally asking a question when the other person needed it, allowing them to continue talking.

"And then you start taking action?"

Hirata nodded. He nodded more than once.

"In order to prevent this mistake from happening again, I took a certain approach."

Hirata slowly raised his head and looked directly at Aragaki Shun.

"To put it simply, that method is to use terror to control the class."

"Terrorist tactics? Is it a matter of violence against violence?"

That seems to be the only way.

That's a bizarre school that wouldn't change even if they used bullying to drive someone to suicide.

In this situation, the only option is to use even stronger violence to stop those who bully the weak and fear the strong.

"Yeah. I'm not as good at fighting as Sudo and Ryuen. But there aren't many people in the world who can seriously beat someone up. When I seriously raise my fist, no one will fight back."

“I became the only person in the class at the highest level, while all the other students were at the lowest level. That’s how I wanted to eliminate bullying from the class.”

“Whenever a dispute arises, I intervene and inflict equal punishment and pain on both parties. My behavior is no different from bullying, but this method does bring a brief period of peace to the class.”

Aragaki Shun: "?!!!"

What kind of bizarre method is this?!

To prevent school bullying, whenever a dispute occurs, both the bully and the bullied are beaten up.

Damn it, this is just a case of chuunibyou (middle school syndrome), wanting to defeat evil in the world single-handedly, or even become the greatest evil himself!

And you call yourself "the only person of the highest rank"? Who taught you to use this method to stop school bullying?

Rubbing his temples, Shun Aragaki really had a headache.

"So, to prevent someone from being bullied, you're the one who gets to beat up the bullied person again? You're really something else."

Hirata is a genius for coming up with such a solution, both in terms of force and logic.

"I don't understand... Never mind, you can continue. I don't want to ask questions right now, for fear of being corrupted by your logic."

Seeing Shun Aragaki's shocked expression, Yosuke Hirata couldn't help but feel a sense of self-mockery. In the entire advanced training system, there must be very few people who could trouble him like this.

"In the end... I ruined the entire grade. They all lost their smiles and just spent each day like emotionless robots. It was quite a big deal in the area where I lived at the time... It almost became a criminal case."

The leader of Class A bluntly stated, "The strangest thing is that something like this hasn't been treated as a case yet!"

It is obvious that in Hirata Yosuke's hometown, not only are the junior high schools corrupt, but the law enforcement agencies are also corrupt, and everything is in a terrible state.

And you actually managed to suppress and ravage the entire grade with your personal strength?

I remember that Kikyo Kushida also managed to cause the collapse of a class by using secrets.

From this perspective, Hirata's destructive power far surpasses that of his opponent.

Putting aside other aspects, I acknowledge that punching power.

"How did the school ultimately handle it?"