Survival of the Fittest? Not a Chance

(Original female protagonist. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.)

“This school is a carefully engineered game of society.”

When I entered Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School, all I wanted was an ordinary high school life. But everything here kept telling me one thing: naivety is a sin.

On the third day of school, I faced expulsion for “theft.” Security footage, eyewitness photos, a mass text confessing to the crime: every piece of evidence pointed to me. The school announced, “You are the first student, and perhaps the last, to be expelled within three days of starting school.”

In my darkest hour, I called a number that should not have existed.

Only after the crisis was over did I understand the truth about this school: the 100,000 points were bait, the freedom of its rules was an illusion, and the A, B, C, and D class system was a set of shackles. Class points that started at zero, special exams full of covert rivalries, classmates who suspected one another... Everything was designed to cultivate “the people who will support Japan’s future.”

And I, Kirishima Haru, a “frail boy” who only wanted to make friends but always reached for an expensive bottle of medicine when he coughed, had no choice but to start observing, calculating, and struggling.