Ishizaki was the most excited one there.
Just jumping up and down on his own wasn't enough for him, so he dragged Kaneda into it too. If Yukio hadn't been up onstage without any flashy lighting, Ishizaki probably would've started club-dancing right there like it was a full-on disco.
Even then, he still didn't feel like it was enough, so he started pumping his right arm in the air on his own.
"Boss! Boss!"
He swung his arm with real momentum, and before long the entire Yukio class had joined in.
Even Shiina, who normally had a mild case of social anxiety, let loose for once. Her clear, bell-like voice rang out too.
"Boss! Boss! Airi, come on, join in too."
"I-I…"
Sakura stood beside Hiyori, shy as ever. But after glancing at the enthusiastic classmates around her, then at Yukio onstage, glowing like he had the spotlight of the whole world on him, then finally at Hiyori herself, whose face was flushed red with excitement and happiness, she shyly nodded and joined in too, calling out "Boss" in a tiny little voice.
The whole class instantly became the brightest, loudest, happiest group on the field.
Even Yukio, up onstage, almost couldn't keep a straight face.
Under normal circumstances, being called that didn't feel like much. Usually it was "Yukio-boss," which didn't sound all that weird.
But in Japanese, when they were shouting it like that, it basically came out as "Aniki! Aniki!" If you wanted a more vivid comparison, it sounded exactly like the way Vodka calls Gin in Detective Conan.
Yukio really was struggling not to laugh.
After announcing the results, he didn't return to the chairman's office. Instead, he came straight down from the stage.
The students in the front rows all stepped aside on their own.
It was like Moses parting the sea in some mythic story. People naturally split to both sides and opened a path straight through the crowd, leading directly to Yukio's class section.
And once they saw that happen, students from all three grades understood one thing with absolute clarity:
From now on, Yukio really was the one calling the shots at Advanced Nurturing High.
Honestly, anyone with half a brain could have figured that out once they got over the shock. It didn't take much thought at all to realize Yukio now held overwhelming power within the school.
Just the fact that he could freely design special exams was already more than enough.
If he put even a little thought into it, he could easily cook up an exam tailor-made to benefit his own class, letting them casually take first place and casually rake in the largest share of class points and private points.
And as for the rest of them?
If they ever got on his bad side, all it would take was one nasty special exam, and they'd be crying on their way out the gate.
Once they realized that, most students fell silent and kept their mouths shut, afraid trouble might come from saying the wrong thing and offending either Yukio or Yukio's class.
Yukio, meanwhile, had no time to worry about everyone else. He pulled his class together and planned to take them all out for a nice celebratory meal to mark what they'd gained from the cultural festival.
As for the other classes?
There was probably no celebrating for them tonight.
Advanced Nurturing High had undergone a massive internal upheaval, and Yukio had become chairman. Forget celebrating. The other students probably wouldn't even sleep well that night.
The next day, Yukio's class didn't go crazy just because Yukio was now the new chairman. They honestly came back and attended class like normal.
To be fair, during the victory party the night before, Ishizaki—fired up by the alcohol—had suggested taking down the surveillance cameras in their classroom.
For a chairman, that was nothing. They could just claim the cameras needed repairs, then drag the process out for a year or two. Who was going to say anything?
But Yukio figured his classmates still needed to keep growing if they wanted decent futures. They still needed to keep absorbing what Advanced Nurturing High had to teach them. How could he let them start slacking off now?
So he didn't indulge them at all in that regard.
Once they saw Yukio's attitude, the class naturally didn't dare get too wild. Everyone settled back down and kept their heads on straight.
As for Kiyotaka Sakagami, their homeroom teacher, he felt awkward now.
By all rights, he ought to be praising Yukio to the heavens. But Yukio was now the chairman, which made him Sakagami's direct superior.
What was a homeroom teacher supposed to do—lavishly praise the school chairman in front of class?
It wasn't until Yukio explicitly told him to just act natural that Sakagami was able to teach normally again.
By lunchtime, Sakayanagi couldn't hold back any longer and came looking for him.
Yukio didn't even need to think about it. He knew she had to be here because of her father.
Honestly, even Yukio himself felt like he had an odd sort of affinity with the daughters of Advanced Nurturing High's chairmen. First Sakayanagi, then Amasawa. Fate really was strange like that.
Still, Sakayanagi apparently didn't want Yukio to misunderstand, so she spoke before he could.
"Yukio, first of all, congratulations on becoming chairman."
"And I didn't come here to pressure you into giving the chairman's position back to my father."
"I know," Yukio said, waving off the concern. "I've already received reliable information. Your father's investigation will be over next week."
"It actually should've ended yesterday, during the cultural festival. But someone interfered and delayed it by another week. I've already taken care of the person responsible."
"If your father still wants to continue serving at Advanced Nurturing High, I'll hand the position back when I graduate."
The one who had interfered, naturally, had been Atsuomi. If not for him meddling, Sakayanagi's father would already have returned yesterday.
That said, even if he had come back, there still wouldn't have been much for him to do. After all, the current chairman was Yukio.
Sakayanagi's lovely eyes shimmered, and she silently sighed to herself that she really hadn't misjudged him. The position of chairman of Advanced Nurturing High was so important, and yet if he said he'd return it, he really would return it.
She blinked lightly, smiling like a silver-faced little fox.
"That's wonderful, then. If it's like that, Father won't have any objections to us anymore."
"I was actually planning to negotiate with him from the start—use this as leverage and force him to accept our relationship."
"…"
Yukio's cheek twitched.
Seriously, when it came to father-daughter dynamics, Tsukishiro arranging a whole cultural festival for Amasawa was one thing, but if you wanted to see a daughter really take the outsider's side over her own father, Sakayanagi was on another level entirely.
A week later, Chairman Sakayanagi's investigation finally ended.
After hearing the full story from his daughter, he spent one night in complete silence, half the second night drinking, and then on the third day he finally called Yukio.
The two of them then spent the entire night discussing one topic:
How exactly a father was supposed to educate his daughter so she wouldn't keep taking some man's side over her own family.
Of course, Yukio himself never got lost in the so-called power of the chairman's office. In his eyes, it really wasn't that big a deal.
What he did do, however, was take advantage of the position's authority and gain access to the most tightly guarded place in the entire school:
The S-System main server room.
That place contained the complete framework developed under the Advanced Nurturing High project, jointly created by world-class sociologists, educators, psychologists, and even economists. It was the full system for mass-producing mid-level talent in the name of social stability.
Its core logic, its hidden rules by the thousands, everything was stored there.
And with the authority of the chairman, all of it could be reviewed with ease.
Once he collected all that, all he had to do at graduation was take Ayanokoji back for the research phase. At that point, the two original missions that had brought him here in the first place would be complete.
Mission accomplished.
Honestly, Yukio himself found it pretty funny.
Back then, he'd had to probe and test and circle around carefully. But once he learned about the S-System from Sakayanagi, everything became ridiculously simple.
And after wrapping everything up, he came to one final conclusion: If he ever had a daughter in the future, he was definitely going to raise her properly.
Under no circumstances could he let his daughter start taking the outsider's side.
...
For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.