Light Novel Volume 1/Summary

This is a long summary of the first volume of the Light Novel series.

Chapter 1
An old woman had boarded a crowded bus and did not have an available seat. A businesswoman noticed this and asked a high school student who was sitting in the priority seating section of the bus whether he would be willing to give the old woman his spot. He pompously rejected the request and started to banter with the businesswoman. After the atmosphere in the bus had gotten more intense, a female high school student attempted to help convince the boy to give up his seat. After being rejected again, she asked all the passengers if anyone would be willing to give up their own seat for the old woman.

Sitting in another section of the bus, Kiyotaka Ayanokōji thinks about his stance on the event that just occurred before him. Not wanting to get involved with troubling matters and partially agreeing with the reasons that the boy gave for not giving the woman his seat, he doesn't give his own spot up. Looking next to himself, he noticed that the girl next to him came to the same conclusion. After a long silence, a woman gives up her seat and the bus ride proceeds normally. The bus arrives at Advanced Nurturing High School and as Kiyotaka is departing from the bus stop, he is stopped by the girl he sat next to during the ride. She asked him why he was looking at her, and the two discuss the event that happened on the bus.

Kiyotaka gets to his classroom and, after failing to make connections with anyone, discovers that he sits beside the girl that he had met on the bus. The two speak a bit and watch as various other students come in, including the boy from the bus. The homeroom teacher arrives shortly afterwards and introduces herself as Sae Chabashira. She gives some handouts and speaks a bit about the rules and policy that the school has, and proceeds to give out student ID cards. She explains that these cards contain points that are used as the currency across campus, and the distribution of these points is done monthly in quantities of 100,000.

Sae speaks a bit more to the class and ends homeroom, telling the students to attend the opening ceremony in one hour. The students begin speaking among themselves and preparing to leave. A male student, Yōsuke Hirata, speaks up to the class and proposes that everyone do introductions, while also introducing himself to the class. Kokoro Inogashira, Haruki Yamauchi, and Kikyō Kushida all introduce themselves to the class. Yōsuke prompts the next student to introduce himself, and receives some backlash against the idea as he is rather unrestrained and easy to provoke. This conflict causes many students get up and leave the classroom, including Suzune. Introductions continued and Kanji Ike and Rokusuke Kōenji introduced themselves next, followed shortly after by an awkward introduction by Kiyotaka.

After the opening ceremony concluded, Kiyotaka decides to stop by the convenience store. He runs into Suzune and the two talk for a while about the peculiarity of the school and the rule system. After talking for a bit they notice the boy from earlier arguing with the sales clerk due to having forgotten his card at home. Kiyotaka helps him pay for his goods and introduces himself. The three of them talk for a little bit until Ken and Suzune get into an argument which causes Suzune to walk off. Kiyotaka and Ken stay out front of the store to eat their meals until a group of older students come by to hassle them away from where they are eating. There is a small argument, but the older students leave after taking pity on them after learning that the two of them are students from class 1-D.

Chapter 2
The following day, students of class 1-D begin to start slacking off, and surprisingly, Sae does not attempt to stop them from doing so. Kiyotaka laments about his inability to make strong connections with anybody in the classroom so far and is chided by Suzune about it. Class ends and Kiyotaka is pulled aside by Kikyō Kushida. Kikyō was looking to learn more about Suzune, who had been refusing to become acquainted with her. Kiyotaka states that he was only barely acquainted with Suzune himself and after chatting a bit more, he leaves.

Later that day, after hearing about the upcoming club fair for first-year students, Kiyotaka decides to invite Suzune to go and look at the clubs with him. After bantering back and forth for a while, she inevitably decides to join him and take a look with the excuse of watching him fail at making friends. In the gym, the duo listen to various club representatives give out introductions to their clubs to try and entice the students into joining. This carries on for a while until only a single student was left. The student takes control of the stage and intimidates the first year students into silence before introducing himself as Manabu Horikita, the president of the student counsel. He states that the student counsel is looking for new students to fill the openings from the new school year and that only exceptional students will be considered for the spots.

After Manabu leaves the stage, Suzune is left unable to speak. Ken Sudō, Kanji Ike, and Haruki Yamauchi show up and start to talk with Kiyotaka. They talk for a little bit about clubs and invite Kiyotaka to a group chat that they had started. He gladly shares his contact information with them as Suzune quietly leaves the group without saying anything.

Chapter 3
About a week later, Kiyotaka listens in on a group of boys in the classroom. Kanji and Haruki had arrived early and are excited to begin swimming later that day in order to see the girls in their swimsuits. Kanji and Haruki talk about a plan that they've set up in conjunction with another student Hideo Sotomura to record and rank the cup sizes of the breasts of the girls in the class. Suzune arrives and begins to banter with Kiyotaka when Ike suddenly invites him to join them in placing bets on who has the largest breasts in the class. Kiyotaka joins in with them in order to get closer to his classmates.

After lunch, the swimming class is beginning and some the girls of the class avoid Ike and Haruki's plan to rank their breast sizes by staying away from them. Suzune shows up and banters with Kiyotaka for a bit. She noticed Kiyotaka's fit body and asked if he worked out at all, to which he denies stating that its due to genetics. Kikyō comes up and tries to start speaking with Suzune. Suzune coldly rejects speaking with her. The teacher starts the swimming class and eventually instructs the class to compete with each other in a 50m freestyle separated by gender.

The girls raced first over two races. Suzune came in second overall and Kikyō came in fourth. A girl named Kayano Onodera took first place. After they were done Suzune went and chided Kiyotaka. Kiyotaka expressed his interest to just not be last place. The boys had 3 races that would be decided with a final, with Kiyotaka taking 10th place, Ken taking 2nd place, Rokusuke taking first, and Yōsuke taking 3rd. Kikyō came up to Kiyotaka after the races to comment on the finals and also complimented Kiyotaka on his body shape, to which he denies just as he denied to Suzune.

Chapter 4
Kikyō and her friend invite Suzune to go with them to the cafe after school. After a swift refusal, Suzune includes to say that she should stop inviting her out. Kiyotaka witnessed the event and chided her for it. As he is leaving the classroom, he is pulled aside by Yōsuke who is concerned due to Suzune's loner attitude. Kiyotaka redirects him to telling her this straight to her face. Kiyotaka left the classroom and found Kikyō waiting for him on his way back to the dorms. She vocalized her desire to become friends with Suzune, and was looking for help from the only person who appeared to be close to her. After attempting to resist, Kikyō's begging surpassed his resistance and he reluctantly agreed.

Kikyō proposed the idea of having Kiyotaka invite Suzune to Pallet, a very popular cafe on campus, where they would then unexpectedly run into Kikyō. Kiyotaka suggests that they enlist the help of Kikyō's various friends to make the encounter more believable, to which she agrees. He accepts the overall idea and invites Suzune to go to Pallet with him after school, and after a bit she accepts to go with him.

After heading to the cafe, they order food and sit down at a immediately vacated table, and shortly afterwards the table next to them opens up as well and Kikyō sits down and notices them. After saying hello, Suzune immediately notices their scheme and confronts them. Kiyotaka realizes he's been caught and admits the scheme while Kikyō upfront states her desire to become friends with Suzune. Suzune plainly states for her to stop trying and that she will be angry if she continues to do this, also saying that friends are unneeded. Kiyotaka shares his sentiment with the idea that friends are unneeded, as he states that he had never had a friend before coming to high school.

Suzune denies the similarity between them, saying that she was a loner by her own will, whereas Kiyotaka was one due to inability. She states that she had been alone the last nine years, so if she's alone for the next three nothing will be different for her. She gives a final warning to Kikyō and then leaves the cafe. Kikyō expresses her desire to still become friends with everybody and the two discuss the value of friendship a bit more.

Chapter 5
Three weeks after the start of the school year, behavior in the class has been getting progressively worse and worse, with students being tardy, skipping class, speaking loudly across the room, sleeping, and using electronic devices during classtime. The teacher made no pauses to the lesson and continued like normal despite the bad behavior. Ken, Kanji, and Haruki had gotten labelled as "The 3 Idiots of D-Class". Kiyotaka starts to look at his cellphone where he learns that Kei Karuizawa was apparently dating Yōsuke Hirata from the group chat he was invited to by Kanji.

The next period, Sae Chabashira come in and announces that there will be a surprise short test today that will not be reflected on the student's report card. Kiyotaka looks over the questions and realizes that there are a few extremely hard questions mixed in with the usual questions and senses something amiss about the test.

After lunch, Kiyotaka was having lunch with Ken, Kanji, and Haruki as they were talking about which girls they liked. They stated that they believed that Kiyotaka was dating Suzune, to which Kiyotaka denied. They speak about relationships for a while until the conversation turns to their monthly point balances. The majority of the group had already blown through most of their points and were excited to get a refill for the next month. Kiyotaka went to a vending machine and noticed the selection option for a free water, which caused him to recall that the cafeteria had free meal options as well that he saw many upperclassmen partaking in.

After class later on, The 3 Idiots of D-Class invited Kiyotaka to go out with them for the evening, saying that Kikyō would also be coming. She showed up having invited Yōsuke, Kei, Nene Momo, and Chiaki along with her for the evening. The awkward group left to go look around campus and they ended up going to a clothing store. They talked a bit about relationships until the group's conversation turned into one about the monthly point balances. As everyone expresses their opinions about the school's point balances, Kiyotaka begins thinking about how the school determines merit of the students and why the school would be willing to give out so much money to students who don't produce results.