Suzune Horikita

Appearance
Suzune has long black hair with one braid tied with a pink bow as well as gradient red eyes. She is always seen with a stern look on her face. She has a slim but well-endowed body which makes her stand out as being beautiful, even attracting the attention of Ken Sudō and Kakeru Ryūen.

She usually wears the standard school uniform. Outside of school, she wears a striped sundress and a sun hat. She was also seen wearing a white bikini by the pool and a red tracksuit as seen when the first-year level underwent the survival test.

Personality
Suzune is a serious, intelligent girl who rarely displays any emotion and generally seems unfazed by most things, as proven when she remained unmoved after being threatened by a boy from Class 1-C. She comes off as a rather cold and distant person to her classmates due to lack of communication with them as well as her tendency to distance herself from them and to look down on them. Because of this attitude, she is openly honest about many things, which is shown when she admitted having no friends as she thinks that friends would only drag her down, but this began to change as the series progressed.

Suzune possesses an antisocial outlook, which has led her to hardly talk to anyone except Kiyotaka Ayanokōji upon meeting him and to not trust anyone, especially those who tried to befriend her such as Kikyō Kushida. However, unlike Kiyotaka who initially wanted to make friends, she was the opposite of him as she disregarded it, thinking that it was nothing more than a distraction and only thought of getting promoted to the Class A. It is strongly suggested by Kiyotaka and her brother that her attitude and inability to work appropriately with people or her tendencies on focusing too much on her goal was the reason she was placed in Class D.

Suzune is a hard person to convince, as she refused to accept that she was placed in the Class D and set a goal to ascend to a higher class. This goal, however, was refuted by her brother, who told her that she has no knowledge of her lack of character, which is substantially holding her back and should just leave school. She refused to believe that friends were needed to help her though she did convince Kiyotaka to assist in reaching her goal. When Kiyotaka pointed out that her isolation towards others could be why she was placed in Class D, she quickly denied it but appeared to briefly ponder it being a possibility.

While she is generally composed, her fear truly surfaces when she is in the presence of her older brother, who is also the student council president. This is displayed when Suzune does indeed express a sensitive side of sorts towards some issues. She greatly admires her brother, but at the same time, feels inferior to him due to his accomplishments compared to her shortcomings. Suzune was shown to shake in fear of him, as seen in their secret meeting when he nearly attacked her in Episode 2. This was seen again in Episode 5, where she found herself unable to talk during Ken Sudō's hearing and was only able to snap out of it due to Kiyotaka's intervention

Despite her disdain and cold attitude, it appears she can be a caring person as displayed when she sacrificed 50,000 points to save Ken from being expelled after he failed a test. Suzune explained that she did so to further her own goals but this event and her previous attempts to help him study suggest otherwise. Later, Suzune also defended Ken's case, and while she did criticize him, she firmly declared him to be innocent in the incident. Suzune then displayed this attitude in Episode 7 where she was shown smiling after looking at the email Kiyotaka sent her. Due to the time they spent together, she came to trust Kiyotaka, as she made him one of the two boys in charge of guarding the boys' tent during the uninhabited island exam, after stating that she couldn't believe Yōsuke Hirata by himself. Her trust in Kiyotaka is also displayed by trusting him after discovering she was sick and unable to continue participating in the challenge.

During the final days of the survival test, Suzune appeared to have grown in character as she came to acknowledge the hypocrisy of her previous views of Class D as she realized her actions were the same as that of Class C during her fight with Mio. After she was taken down by Mio and found by Kiyotaka, she finally admitted that she needed allies. Once the survival test was over, in the anime, she thanked Kiyotaka for his help in gaining Class D' trust after giving the credit of their victory in the island challenge to her. This time, she displayed a rare moment of affection, as she was both flustered and shy in thanking him while unable to look him consistently in the eye.

Background
Since grade school, Suzune always has top grades in class and being a paragon student. She was never tardy or absent from class during her three years of middle school and was said to have gone to the same middle school as Kikyō Kushida.

Her goal is to get her brother's (Manabu Horikita's) recognition and acknowledgement of her abilities which was the primary factor that led her to enrol in the same school as him. However, after being sorted into the "worst" class which is D, she was shunned and humiliated by him which strengthened her resolve to overtake the highest Class, Class-A.

That aside, Suzune is an accomplished student, both in academics and sports, comparable to the likes of those in higher classes. However her main Achilles' Heel was her anti-social attitude and beliefs that others were holding her back. This supercilious attitude that patronises other has prevented her peers from getting close to her and even harbour disdain towards her. This led her to be a loner for the next nine years, never seeing the error of her ways and repenting. That is before she attended high school, where she made some valuable "acquaintances" and "allies." but blatantly never considered any of them as friends except for one.

Abilities
Suzune has proven to be gifted with superior overall abilities as she excels in both academics and physical fields.

Academic Abilities
Suzune is very dedicated and diligent in her studies, having nothing else to do. This is further proven in her undying commitment in reaching Class A, which she believes that she should've been placed into from the start because of her good grades and hoping that her brother would finally pay attention to her.

Intellectual Abilities
Unsurprisingly, Suzune is very intelligent and consistently maintains good grades throughout her journey in school. Sae Chabashira revealed in Volume 1 that she got the third-highest average score out of the first years in the entrance exams. She is also noted by Honami Ichinose, a student from Class B, to be one of the few people in Class D to keep an eye on due to her potential. However, her condescending attitude and weakness makes her easily susceptible to the attacks of other classes, and was only saved by Kiyotaka who intervened on her behalf many times before she was defeated. She still doesn’t believe in the purpose of fostering good relationship and only does so to further her goals.

She also has an analytical side to her, as shown when she studies people by their habits or fragments of their personality to see their true depths. For instance, she deduced that Kiyotaka Ayanokōji had a hand in helping their class pass their tests and how Kikyō Kushida appears to vehemently dislike her, despite having a 'friendly' persona to everyone. She was also able to see how Kiyotaka hides his true talents after hearing her brother Manabu Horikita and their teacher explain that there is more to him than he lets on. She admits that she is nowhere the the league of Kiyotaka in this department after being defeated by him time and time again and always seek his perspicacious insights whenever trouble arises. She is mature enough to understand why Kiyotaka doesn’t want to show his true capabilities and allows him to use her as a meat-shield for his accomplishments to build up her own reputation in the class.

Physical Abilities
Suzune was stated to be an above-average swimmer when questioned by Kikyō Kushida at the school pool where she also said that she is skilled in martial arts during the hearing for Ken Sudō, but the full extent of her capabilities is unknown. She proves herself skilled in the art of grappling as she easily flipped Haruki Yamauchi with no difficulty. Her fighting skills are further shown when she engaged Mio Ibuki in a fight, earning praise from her before being knocked down, though Suzune's ill condition held her back in the fight. She may be an accomplished fighter but is nowhere near the best as seen when she was easily defeated by an injured and fatigued Ichika Amasawa.

Name Etymology

 * The name Suzune  consists of kanjis that mean "bell" (鈴) (suzu) and "sound" (音) (ne).
 * Suzune's surname Horikita  consists of kanjis that mean "moat" (堀) (hori) and "north" (北) (kita).

Trivia

 * As Class D is a class for people with defective traits, Suzune's defective trait is her antisocial behavior and refusal to work with others.
 * Suzune ranks #2 in "MF Bunko J Heroine Contest 2017 in Melonbooks" with 13.8% of the votes.
 * For the 2nd Year arc, when asked about her aspirations for the next year, she answered  "To aim for Class A with all of my classmates, taking one step at a time and move forward."