CHAPTER 423: CHAPTER 322: ELEMENTARY SCHOOL RAGING DRAGON

Fushimi Roku pushed up his glasses with his middle finger, taking on the posture of a dean criticizing a child, and said earnestly, "Isn’t it possible that the problem lies with you?"

"This is such a typical bureaucratic approach. Any time there’s a conflict, they turn around and blame the victim," Taira Sakurako retorted, choosing to argue instead of reflecting or complaining.

"Wasn’t it you who started the conflict?" Fushimi Roku countered.

"There’s nothing to be done. Breaking the rules always comes with growing pains; reform requires blood and sacrifice..."

Taira Sakurako changed roles again, transforming from an elementary school assassin to an elementary school revolutionary.

The bangs on her forehead were flattened by a brick, sticking to her forehead, making her look like a two-dimensional senior who would say ’Ohaiyo, kouhai.’"

"Are you treating everyone else as imaginary foes?" Fushimi Roku shook his head, resembling a forty-year-old uncle at a drinking party, sighing in a world-weary tone, "With my six years of elementary school experience, I can responsibly tell you that this won’t work."

"So what should I do?" Taira Sakurako intended to learn her lesson and seek advice from her senior. If she remembered correctly, Fushimi Roku had successfully graduated from elementary school, a champion of elementary school mastery.

"You have to see school as a small society, your novice village for honing yourself. Elementary school is Level 1 novice village, junior high is Level 5, high school is Level 10, and college is a Level 50 small dungeon—ultimately, your goal is to reach the max-level Earth OL grand dungeon."

Fushimi Roku gestured with his hand like climbing stairs, continuing to enlighten the novice Taira Sakurako in the school of life: "Do you understand now? In a dungeon, you can’t provoke the NPCs. The class teacher is like an NPC, responsible for giving out dungeon tasks, and all you need to do is complete them diligently, engage in some healthy competition with your peers within the rules, and you’ll become a qualified elementary school student."

Saying this, he patted Taira Sakurako’s backpack, making her head bob up and down: "Improving your favorability with the NPCs helps with tasks; otherwise, you’ll be attacked by the NPCs; they’re a higher level than you, and you’ll end up suppressed like Monkey Sun."

Taira Sakurako had an epiphany in her heart, but she had never played RPG games, so these abstract concepts were still only partially comprehensible to her.

To help her understand the concept of NPCs and dungeons, Fushimi Roku decided to buy an SFC console, an MD console, and several game discs before going home... there were quite a few good games in 1991, like Final Fantasy, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda, SimCity, and so on.

Afterward, Fushimi Roku leaned against the wall on one foot and imparted elementary school secrets to Taira Sakurako for over half an hour. Until the first class ended, he was still not satisfied, feeling accomplished in educating Taira Sakurako. No wonder the older generation always says life is incomplete without having children.

The class teacher had just finished the class, opened the classroom door, and Fushimi Roku immediately stood up straight, placed one hand on his hip, and pointed at Sakurako’s nose, assuming a scolding posture:

"I heard everything just now. How could you say such things? Who taught you to talk to a teacher like that? It’s so disrespectful—"

"Calm down, calm down..."

The class teacher hurriedly reassured, stating that children often speak without a filter, advising Suga-kun not to take it too seriously—Suga Michihiko was the fake name Fushimi Roku had given himself.

Fushimi Roku remarked that kids these days really lack home training, clearly having problems with their family environment.

As soon as he finished speaking, the class teacher turned around, inquiring whether Taira Sakurako’s parents were available, preferably to come to the school after class today to discuss some situations with Sakurako’s parents.

Taira Sakurako planned to reveal Fushimi Roku’s secrets, determined to bring him down with her; Fushimi Roku stood behind the class teacher, continually winking and signaling her, indicating that out of respect for his teaching and imparting of knowledge, she shouldn’t expose his identity at this time.

"He... uh, she gets off work at five..."

The first day of school and already being called to have parents summoned left Sakurako’s carefully planned operation a complete failure, leaving her in an especially bad mood.

"Alright, you head back to class first. I’ve arranged a seat for you," the class teacher patiently instructed, "Don’t use that tone again, don’t swear at your classmates, can’t claim to be an underworld member, don’t threaten your classmates... understood?"

Taira Sakurako wanted to ask why not; she wasn’t aiming to argue back; she genuinely wanted to know why. Fushimi Roku stood behind the class teacher, mouthing at Sakurako not to argue back, not to inquire, repeatedly forming the letters NPC with his mouth.

"NPC... She’s an NPC..." Fushimi Roku stood behind the class teacher like a ghost, silently repeating the phrase.

Sakurako experienced a sudden realization; it turned out the class teacher wasn’t making demands but issuing quests—NPCs don’t need reasons for issuing quests, players just need to comply.

She nodded obediently, saying, "Understood."

Quest successfully accepted.

"Eh..."

The class teacher was a bit surprised; she hadn’t expected Taira Sakurako to yield, having assumed she was a mischievous little girl. Now it seemed Taira Sakurako wasn’t inherently bad... perhaps just not very adapted to a new environment.

Everyone has their middle school crises of stupidity; she could actually understand that.

But calling the parents was still necessary; the class teacher at least needed to confirm what kind of family environment the child lived in.

The class teacher praised Taira Sakurako for recognizing her mistakes and being a good child, then dragged Fushimi Roku back to the office, continuing to probe whether this handsome substitute teacher was single.

Taira Sakurako put down her backpack, watching the two leave. She leaned against the door, sneaked a peek, and found all the elementary school students in the class staring at her, along with a few boys leaning against the windows peeking at her from behind.

Taira Sakurako jumped with fright, quickly stepping back two paces. She was very uncomfortable with the gaze of strangers; those clear eyes were like flashing magnesium lights, making her heart race and face flush.

"You’re scaring her!" a girl shouted.

She wore two small pigtails, her eyes were big, her face a bit babyish, and she would reveal sharp little canines when talking.

"No way! I didn’t do anything!" retorted the boy leaning against the window.

"You totally did! Go away!" The girl with the snaggletooth waved her hand, blocking the way in front of Taira Sakurako, gesturing for the boys to go play somewhere else.

"Snaggletooth is butting in again!" the little boys jeered.

The snaggletoothed girl’s good friend joined the fray. Four or five little girls and three little boys were arguing noisily, chattering incessantly. Taira Sakurako couldn’t believe her peers were so noisy and was also amazed at how low their attack abilities were.

"Blah blah blah blah!!"

"You dared to blah me! I’m going to blah back at you!"

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah..."

"..."

Taira Sakurako watched the elementary school kids’ spit battle, feeling deeply shaken for a moment.

She reflected for a moment and thought her approach of bringing knives and bricks was indeed a bit too aggressive—considering the situation, she only needed a water gun to rule the campus.

The ten-minute break passed in a flurry of ’blah-ing’, with neither side achieving victory until the bell rang for class.

The so-called ’blah blah attack’ was basically making faces at each other, sticking out one’s tongue while making a ’blah’ sound, expressing a strong sense of mockery. It was the main attack method used by city elementary school kids.

Every student’s desk corner had a name tag, and Taira Sakurako dodged the spit, finding her seat in the third row, near the window facing the playground.

The second class was arithmetic, taught by an old-fashioned middle-aged man who earnestly taught the little ones addition and subtraction.

The first grade curriculum was very simple, mainly requiring kids to grasp the concepts of numbers, their expression methods, and calculation methods, including comparing quantities, counting correctly, expressing numbers and order, understanding the size and order of numbers, accurately calculating single-digit addition and subtraction, and getting a basic understanding of simple two-digit addition and subtraction...

The specific problem was that the teacher drew two more apples on the blackboard, adding to the three apples already there, asking how many apples in total.

For the first twenty minutes of the arithmetic class, Taira Sakurako doubted whether the other students in the class had a similar brain anomaly as hers, like a cerebral palsy, cognitive error, or something of that sort.

Not until the latter twenty minutes did she realize that her peers were just idiots, hence the arithmetic teacher gave such silly problems.

The reason she came to this realization was that during the random test, the snaggletoothed girl sitting next to her handed her a slip of paper.

"What is 13+17 equal to?"

Such a simple sentence, yet the snaggletoothed girl even used phonetic spelling for one of the words in it.

The arithmetic teacher noticed the snaggletooth girl’s small action, snatched away the note, criticized her for cheating, and said loudly: "I know, two-digit addition and subtraction are difficult, but you are top students at Waseda Industrial School, destined to inherit your parents’ businesses, so you must work harder than ordinary people..."

Taira Sakurako glanced around, seeing all her classmates frowning and pinching their little fingers while doing arithmetic. The boy who had been leaning against the window earlier had taken off his shoes and was using his toes to count, looking truly lacking in intelligence.

"..."

She spent twenty seconds completing the test paper, which had only ten questions designed with pictures for easier understanding by kids.

——Does the fact that I regard these idiots as rivals mean that I’m an idiot too?

Taira Sakurako fell into deep self-doubt.

The arithmetic teacher saw her sitting idle, came over to glance at her paper, and found she had completed all the answers correctly. He thought to himself that she truly lived up to being a specially recruited student, indeed very smart.

And thus, the class went by.

The arithmetic teacher extended the class by five minutes, marking all the test papers, and handed them back for the students to take home and get a parental signature. The students let out a collective wail, which the arithmetic teacher slapped the desk to silence, loudly criticizing: "Why all the noise? Do you think these questions are difficult? Sakurako got full marks! Look at your own problems!"

With that, he announced the end of the class and left with the teaching materials.

For a moment, Taira Sakurako keenly sensed hostility, especially from that dumb boy, who was gripping the test paper with both hands, looking particularly unhappy with her.

The snaggletooth girl leaned over to sneak a peek at the boy’s test paper, then laughed: "Hahaha! Shota scored a zero!"

The girls finally seized their chance for retaliation, loudly jeering: "Zero Shota! Zero Shota!"

The little boy couldn’t take it anymore, abruptly stood up, his face crimson and tears brimming, he pouted and ran out of the classroom.

The snaggletooth girl shamelessly took advantage, standing in the hallway with her hands on her hips, taunting: "Zero Shota’s running away!"

The group of friends felt that chasing after him to insult further was a bit much, considering they didn’t do well either, one of them quietly asked: "How many points did Mayu get?"

"Also zero points," the snaggletooth girl whispered: "Don’t tell anyone else!"