Mind Games

"Mind Games" (心理戦) is a short story from Melon Books' store privilege for volume 11.5 of You-Zitsu light novel series, together with other three short stories.

Summary
Chasing after Ayanokouji, Matsushita arrived at the corner she had seen him disappear when suddenly he appeared before her. Surprised by the sudden appearance, she let out a small voice but quickly realized that he knew that she was trailing him. Matsushita felt that feigning ignorance wouldn't work in her favour and decided to acknowledge it. While wondering if people usually noticed when they were being followed, she felt that Ayanokouji wasn't normal and became wary of him.

She thought that she couldn't lose if it were mind games and started to ask him questions to assess him. But he either handed over all her queries back to her or gave ambiguous answers which disturbed her rhythm. Then she thought that asking about his unusual meeting with the chairman would give her time to calm down and then she would again be able to use her strengths.

After some back and forth, she asked about how the last question which he answered, during the Flash Arithmetic event, was a national level problem that couldn't be solved by some chance. He replied that she has misunderstood something and that in the past, he had participated in national competitions and he was good at it. When asked why he didn't say anything about it earlier, he replied it was because of his personality that he wasn't sure if everyone would believe him, considering their opponent was Class A. His answers all seemed natural but something felt suspicious about him which she couldn't understand and was about to question him about it but decided it was best not to broach the topic then. She promised herself that she would once again regain her strengths for what was to come next.