The Story Where I, the Strongest Mercenary, Was Reincarnated as a Bullied Introverted High School Student ~ When I Was Freely Enjoying My School Life, for Some Reason the Girls Around Me Started Glancing at Me~ - Chapter 39: Public Execution Of The Bullies

Right after Kanzaki became a suspect, Char deliberately muttered something loud enough for everyone around us to hear.

“But it’s surprising that only Kanzaki-san’s fingerprints came up. I totally thought all three of you, Mita-san and Serizawa-san, were impersonating Jinta together.”

“W-we don’t know anything about it!”

“Y-yeah! Kanzaki must have sent them on her own!”

“Hah!? Don’t screw with me! You guys were having fun thinking up the messages too!”

Mita and Serizawa fell right into the trap and sold out Kanzaki to save themselves. However, their argument proved more powerfully than anything else that the data Char had exposed was true.

Char looked down on Kanzaki and the others with a chuckling laugh.

“I’ll say it again: ‘To send messages like this, they must be people with bad personalities who are disgusting and wretched’. Of course, this wasn’t about Jinta.”

Bang!

I heard the sound of a desk being hit from the seat next to me.

“W-wait a minute! Then what!? Those terrible messages sent to me that day, you guys were the ones who sent them all to me!?”

Yamashiro stood up, unable to hide her agitation.

“Why!? Why did you do something so terrible!? Then Fushimi wasn’t bad at all!”

Honestly, from my perspective, Fushimi’s mistake was handing over his phone to Kanzaki in the first place. But I was curious too about why they had targeted someone like Fushimi.

Mita and Serizawa, wanting to blame everything on Kanzaki to escape responsibility, began explaining.

“Kanzaki said she ‘wanted to get back at Momoka’.”

“Get back…?”

“Momoka, you turned down a confession from a soccer club senior named Fujima before, right? He was the guy Kanzaki confessed to and got rejected by.”

“S-so what about it?”

“Right after that, you got interested in Fushimi, didn’t you? So Kanzaki said, ‘I don’t like that only Momoka gets to be happy, so let’s mess it up for her’.”

Panicked, Kanzaki made a rebuttal that wasn’t really a rebuttal.

“Y-you guys were saying stuff like ‘Momoka acting like a good girl is annoying’ and ‘it’s irritating how she’s the only one who’s popular’ too!”

The reason was far more trivial than I’d imagined. Fushimi Jinta had been completely collateral damage. Well, I guess that was how high school conflicts started.

“F-for such a reason, my first…”

Yamashiro muttered that and glared at the three gals while trembling.

Just then, the bell rang signaling the end of the first period. The bright chatter of students could be heard starting from the hallway.

Yamashiro let out a big sigh.

“Fushimi, there’s a lot I want to apologize for. My attitude until now, getting you involved because of me, everything… But my mind is blank right now. Could you give me a little more time?”

I spoke honestly while getting my phone back from Char.

“Whatever, it’s just that I (Fushimi) was an idiot for getting tricked. So Kanzaki and everyone else can do whatever they want. It’d just be annoying if you came to apologize now anyway.”

Besides, I wasn’t really Fushimi Jinta on the inside. More importantly, I checked to see if anything weird had been done to my phone. With Char, it wouldn’t be strange if she’d installed a piece of spyware or two.

When Yamashiro left and exited the classroom, the other students also moved away from the scene. As Kanzaki, Mita, and Serizawa also tried to hurriedly leave, Char spoke to them.

“Jinta says that, but I haven’t forgiven you.”

Hearing Char’s voice, the three stopped in their tracks with a start.

“Of course, right? You put my boyfriend through terrible things. ‘Rinarina’-san, ‘Maiko’-san, ‘Remy’-san?”

Called by mysterious names, the three turned even paler.

“Y-you… why do you even know that much…”

The three began breathing heavily as though they were hyperventilating, breaking out in a cold sweat. It was incomparably worse than before. Just knowing their secret social media account names shouldn’t make them panic this much. They were probably doing something criminal like excessive compensated dating or prostitution. Those were probably their working names for that activity.

Char put on an angelic smile, but demonic curses came from her mouth.

“College entrance exams, job hunting, marriage. You’ll have many important moments ahead of you. Please be careful not to accidentally have past crimes leak out and ruin everything at such times.”

That was Char for you. Normally, she might have done a public execution right here, but this was worse than that. Char held information that could completely destroy their lives. The three would have no choice but to live in fear from now on.

“Ah… aha… ahaha.”

“Charlotte-sama… um…”

“W-we won’t interfere anymore…”

“I’d be happy if we could all get along from now on!”

Char smiled sweetly.

(Even though it’s their own fault, this is brutal…)

I put my hands together in my heart.

◇◇◇

After that, I had to sit through classes until lunch break while feeling stares from those around me. Among the students who had bullied me due to misunderstanding, some seemed to feel a degree of guilt. Similarly, those who had pinned some crime on Fushimi were now nervously watching Char rather than me.

Dojima didn’t care about any of that and was just irritated at losing his chance to beat me down. For him, he just wanted someone who wouldn’t fight back. The facts didn’t matter.

When lunch break came, Char held the small lunch box I had made for her this morning and said:

“I’m sorry, Jinta. I’m invited to have lunch with Ami-san.”

“Oh, go ahead.”

My sister Ami belonged to the ‘advanced class’ at Shigemichi High School. There was about a 30-point difference in deviation scores between Ami’s ‘advanced class’ and our ‘general class’. In other words, they clearly distinguished between smart people and idiots. In fact, from the perspective of advanced class students, we probably weren’t much different from zoo monkeys. The ‘general class’ was treated roughly by the school too, and problems occurred so frequently that they wouldn’t properly deal with something like bullying.

(Well… I guess I’ll eat on the rooftop.)

As I left the classroom with the three-tiered lunch box I’d made this morning, my phone rang. Since I’d just gotten it back from Char, I braced myself wondering if it might explode, but it was apparently just an incoming call. The caller was… Kanai from my part-time job. Come to think of it, she went to the same Shigemichi High School as me. General class, of course. Remembering that, I answered the phone.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Ah, Fushimi! I-if you’re free for lunch! Could you come to the bench in the courtyard…?”

“Why?”

“W-whatever! I’ll wait for you first! Come, okay!”

Receiving this mysterious summons, I headed to the courtyard bench where Kanai was waiting.