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“Not bad, Nogami-san,” Harutaki said, clapping softly, a teasing smile on his face. “You got halfway there.”

Halfway!?

She was sure he was mocking her.

“Let’s call it ‘Hoshikawa’s Mouse.’ There’s a fifty-percent chance the radioactive material kills the mouse, but until you open the box, you’ll never know if it’s alive or dead. People, by nature, prefer outcomes that favor them. They want to believe the mouse is alive.”

“So those who want it to live will never accept the pessimists’ argument. And even if one day science lets us peek inside the box and we see the mouse’s already dead, they’ll still find ways to ‘prove’ that reality must align with what they wanted all along, ”

“Wait, isn’t that just Schrödinger’s cat?”

Nogami suddenly cut in, interrupting his explanation.

“I like cats, so switching it to a mouse, no problem, right?”

Mice weren’t nearly as cute as cats, and in his eyes, they had no “mouse rights.”

“In any case, if you outright deny what people believe to be true, the result will most likely be backlash, maybe even severe enough to turn things in a direction neither of us wants.”

“In that case, I just have to prepare a truth they’ll love to believe in, right?”

Saying that, he opened another trending post on the school’s anonymous forum and showed it to Nogami.

“Everyone’s heard the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf from Aesop’s Fables. What we need to do isn’t to deny the rumors about your compensated dating, it’s to prove that the rumor-spreader himself has a problem.”

“You’re going to expose yourself?”

Harutaki: ?

“What do you mean I’m going to expose myself...?”

He gave her a flat look, exasperated. It was like the moment she realized she could rely on him, her brain just completely shut off, a rather horrifying discovery.

“I never said I’m the rumor-spreader.”

“Then you...”

The girl paused, then clapped her hands together in sudden realization.

“You’re going to make up a fake target, someone who doesn’t exist, and make them the rumor-spreader!”

“A group made up of the majority will always be foolish. That might sound harsh, but once people go online, once they become what we call ‘netizens,’ they do turn into a foolish herd, like sheep, needing a shepherd dog to lead them to pasture and back to the pen.”

“There are so many rumors about ‘Nogami Izumi’ floating around. The only one that looks remotely credible is the post that started all this bullying and flaming. Once we guide the majority into thinking they’ve uncovered flaws in that post, all we need to do is pave the road to the ‘truth’, a truth that favors us.”

“In other words, I’ll become the next victim of cyberbullying... and also the shepherd dog leading the herd toward the truth.”

“And then?”

Nogami gazed at him with eager curiosity, like a child tucked under the covers waiting for a bedtime story.

“Bullying, online or offline, never truly ends. It just moves on to the next target. Unless the victim does something dramatic enough to overshadow the narrative, even death might not grant them peace.”

“Have you ever played Old Maid?”

Since the game Pass the Parcel was mostly a China-exclusive thing, he picked a more globally familiar one, Old Maid(Baba Nuki).

“As long as you pass that Joker card to someone else, you win when the game ends. The last person left holding the Joker? The sole loser.”

“So you’re planning to make that fake rumor-spreader the one holding the Joker in the end?”

Now that she could finally follow his line of reasoning, her excitement started to rise, as though she were the one controlling the game now.

“Not just that. We’ll need a little underhanded trick, something that makes you look like the victim, so that all the onlookers are driven by sympathy to attack the so-called ‘bully.’”

“You... what are you planning...?”

“What do you think about bugs in the shoe locker? Imagine opening your locker in the morning and seeing insects pour out. Everyone would scream.”

“If you dare do that, I’ll kill you!”

Her number-one fear, no contest, was bugs. If Harutaki actually stuffed her shoe locker full of them, she’d probably shove those same shoes down his throat.

“Then nails.”

“...”

Since she didn’t object, Harutaki immediately finalized the “bullying” method.

“The beauty of this plan is that both the rumor-spreader and the one who ‘planted the nails’ are fictional. No one’s going to step forward and confess to something that could get them sent to the police station for re-education.”

“In the end, real-life bullying will fade once the weakness disappears, but the frenzy online won’t calm down that easily. The internet has no memory, well, what that really means is that people’s attention spans are short. Drown them in a new flood of trending topics and they’ll forget what came before.”

“You’re planning to make a new trending topic to divert their attention?”

Nogami easily picked up on the nuance in his words.

“Given I can’t throw the blame on some innocent bystander...”

He pointed to himself, grinning.

“Guess I’ll just have to sacrifice my reputation.”

“You really think you’re some kind of saint? Idiot...”

She muttered the insult under her breath. But with no better solution and no knowledge of how to handle this kind of thing, she couldn’t bring herself to object.

……

In the school cafeteria, Harutaki sat alone at a table. Under the occasional glances from nearby students, he ate his tonkotsu ramen in complete composure, even treating himself to a plate of salad on the side, he was in a good mood, after all.

Self-sacrifice?

What a joke.

Was Hoshikawa Harutaki the kind of noble hero who’d sacrifice himself to save strangers?

Not even close. What a fake, self-righteous line of crap.

Thinking back to the speech he’d given Nogami, he couldn’t help but chuckle.

Slurp.

A mouthful of noodles soaked in savory broth slid past his lips, bouncing lightly between his teeth, perfect flavor, perfect texture.

He might sometimes help the unfortunate out of sympathy or a fleeting sense of decency, but the moment that “kindness” came at too high a personal cost, he’d cut it off without hesitation.

If it came down to the classic “two people drowning” question, he’d always save his parents, no matter who the other person was, no matter what benefit it brought him. Even if it meant his own life. But only for his parents.

Maybe someday he’d meet someone he’d be willing to die for, a lover, perhaps, but that was hardly today’s concern.

The reason he planned to “take the fall” was simple: it was a gesture, for Nogami, and for her parents behind her.

As long as the fallout stayed contained, what parent could still come after him, the poor boy who “sacrificed himself” to help their daughter?

Narrow-minded people couldn’t sustain a prestigious family, let alone hold power.

Ironically, it was the petty, low-ranking types who were always the most troublesome, the kind of people who looked down on others from the same rung. Like how the ones most likely to sneer at job applicants weren’t the executives, but the HR staff.

Why do people love to bully others, anyway?

The world generally had two kinds of such people.

The first were like Nogami, those who saw those weaker than themselves as playthings, finding joy in their suffering. Rare in real life, but they existed.

The second were the ones with no real strength of their own, those who insulted or trampled on the weaker just to feel superior, to satisfy their fragile egos.

Those ones? They were everywhere, both in real life and online.

Social media hierarchies, gaming elitism, app platform snobbery, somehow, using a different app or playing a different game automatically made you “lesser.”

“Haah...”

What a bunch of pathetic lowlifes, he thought, and also, his palate must’ve really changed after his “rebirth.”

He’d planned to finish the soup too, but after one sip, the saltiness hit so hard he abandoned that thought completely.

After lunch, he dropped off his tray at the return counter, strolling leisurely toward the school building. The warm spring greenery swayed gently in the breeze.

Once Nogami’s problem was handled, he’d keep a healthy distance from her.

That was the plan.

With Golden Week approaching, he figured it’d be a good chance to get closer to Shihou.

He hadn’t seen any messages from her lately, not on LINE, nor from her Twitter alt account “Kinako.” Relationships took maintenance; even lovers grew distant without contact.

He’d been so caught up helping Nogami lately that his social life had been reduced to bare maintenance.

He still hung out with Ren, Haruto, and Miho during PE or lunch breaks, but when it came to Shihou... there wasn’t much of a reason to approach her at school.