Friday, 12th June.

Yesterday, I managed to stop Kawaguchi from self destructing even further by distracting him with a cardfight.

I had considered losing to him on purpose to bring his spirit up, but I decided against it in favour of having a serious fight with him. It was a close match, but ultimately, I won.

Today, homeroom was slightly different than usual. The regular routine I had grown accustomed to had been shaken up by Kawaguchi's absence and my lack of interaction with Matsushita and Sakigamiya.

Despite it being his birthday today, Kawaguchi didn't come to school. After yesterday, he probably wanted to be left alone and didn't want the attention. He was at his lowest point mentally, and wasn't in the right mindset to celebrate.

Moreover, since making the exams were unnecessary at the moment, as Matsushita and Sakigamiya were still discussing whether or not they'd accept A Class's deal, I had some unexpected free time to kill.

Seeing that I was available, Yukina approached me with a smile.

"Hey, Yuu?"

"Hm?"

"I got an idea. Could you come with me?"

"Alright."

I followed Yukina outside the classroom. What was she up to?

Eventually she led me to the newspaper club room. I still didn't really understand what was going on, but I had faith she knew what she was doing.

Yukina knocked on the door.

"Coming!"

I could hear Isen's familiar voice on the other side. He opened the door hurriedly, looking at us in flustered surprise.

"Takanori-san, Kazuraba-san? Unless you two have a scoop, then sorry, but I can't talk right now. The club's on a deadline crunch!"

"Isen-senpai, get your ass back here!"

I could hear Sakuraba shout at him in the background.

"Give me five minutes!"

"Ugh! We're in this mess because of you! Hurry up!"

It seems the newspaper club was cutting it extremely close for deadlines this morning. They usually have the school paper out by Friday morning, so the fact they were still working on it on the day of release was concerning.

"I just have one question to ask. Please, Isen-senpai?"

Before Isen could protest, Yukina tilted her head slightly and looked at him with upturned eyes.

Isen squirmed, unable to resist Yukina's bewitching charm and pleading expression.

For a kouhai as cute as her, he was willing to set aside some of his limited time.

"Ah... make it quick, these stories won't edit themselves."

"Yay, thank you!"

Yukina clapped her hands together, making Isen smile slightly.

"I was wondering if you knew any students who attended Minanohara Middle School?"

So this is why she came here. Yukina wanted to ask Isen if he knew anyone from Minanohara. It was pretty smart all things considered.

It would make sense that the head of the newspaper club, which focused on finding out about stories and information about other students, would know a thing or two about someone's past through their research.

"Hmm, that one certainly does sound familiar. I can't think of any off the top of my head, so let me check with the others."

Isen went back into the club room to see if anyone knew. I could hear Sakuraba shout at him again for being irresponsible. Then, he returned to us with a list scribbled with students.

"A ha... you got lucky, one of our club members actually attended Minanohara. She wrote down some names for you."

Isen handed the sheet to Yukina.

As expected, Matsushita and Sakigamiya were written down. However, included on that list were three names we hadn't associated with the school before.

Ginga Meguko, Keisaki Shinpei, and Kouji Tenma.

Ginga must've been the one to write the names down, since she was part of the newspaper club.

What surprised me more was that Kouji attended this school. To think we were so close to someone else who attended Minanohara this entire time...

Although, that made me wonder why Matsushita and Sakigamiya seemed to ignore him in class. Despite coming from the same middle school, I've never seen the three of them interact with each other properly.

"Thank you, Isen-senpai! Sorry, we'll get out of your hair now."

"If you want to repay me, make sure to buy a copy of today's paper!"

Isen joked before frantically slamming the door on us. I could hear Sakuraba chew him out again. Poor guy.

"Finally... finally, we have some names!"

Yukina bounced up and down in happiness, clutching the slip of paper like it was a winning lottery ticket.

"Good job. To think it was that easy all along..."

I felt kind of embarrassed that I hadn't come up with this idea first.

"He he, yeah. If we ask these three, then we can start putting the pieces together for real."

"I'm assuming Ginga-san's busy helping Isen-senpai and Sakuraba-senpai with the paper right now, so let's ask her later."

"Sure. That means we'll have to ask Keisaki-san first then... since Kouji-san's not here today."

Yukina bit her lip anxiously, as visiting Keisaki meant taking a trip to A Class. If that happened, she might run into Yogen again.

"Keisaki-san works at my aunt's restaurant. I can pay him a visit after school."

To save her the worry, I made this offer so she could avoid Yogen. Plus, after what happened on Monday, I didn't feel like getting on Yahagi's nerves by waltzing into A Class either.

"Are you sure? It feels like I'm holding you back..."

"It's probably more advantageous to talk to him in that setting anyways. If we spoke in A Class, his classmates might overhear us and get suspicious on what we're doing."

I made up a vague excuse as to why talking to Keisaki was better at the restaurant, but it really didn't matter either way honestly.

"Yuu... thank you."

Yukina smiled appreciatively. It looked like she was going to reach out to me, but decided not to at the last second.

"Let's go back to class for now. The fact we've made this much progress from a few names is good enough already."

"Alright... but we better get this done soon. There's only about a week left until the finals."

Yukina gently warned me, but I was well aware of how close we were cutting it. Together, we returned to class.