Honami Ichinose/Plot

Plot
Honami was first seen listening to the speech of Manabu Horikita who was the President of the Student Council at the time when he welcomed the enrollment of new first-year students to Advanced Nurturing High School.

Sometimes after the first semester of high school started, she met and befriended Kikyō Kushida who wanted to make friends with everyone including herself even if they're from a different class.

Later on, she was next seen walking through the school store with Chihiro Shiranami before spotting Kikyō, waving at her as they walked past one another. When this encounter was questioned by Kiyotaka who remarked that she was in Class 1-B, Kikyō responded that she and Honami became friends the day before, stating it was her goal to become close friends with everyone in the whole school.

In another instance, Honami is next seen breaking up the impending brawl between Kakeru Ryūen with a few students of Class 1-C and Ken Sudō of Class 1-D outside the school buildings. Seeing through Kakeru's lie of Ken starting the fight, she threatens to call security if they did not leave Ken alone. Though her involvement was ill-received by the boys, they complied with her order as Kakeru and his group left, Honami told Ken not to let Kakeru get to him before calming the spectators down and going about her business.

Honami next appeared in her Class 1-B where the homeroom teacher, who was suffering from a hangover, told them they would receive points the next day because of their passing scores in a mock exam. Honami and her friends celebrated this news since it was her tutoring sessions that came through in helping them pass. As she was hugged by her friends, she internally voiced her intentions of the class becoming part of Class 1-A.

The next day, Honami came by to greet her friend Kikyō and formally met Kiyotaka Ayanokōji after briefly questioning if they were a couple and being told that it was not the case whatsoever. Shen then asked them whether their class had been able to successfully received any points that month, causing the pair to ponder over the situation.

Volume 1
In the light novels, it was revealed Honami came face-to-face with Kiyotaka for the first time upon delivering a report to Chie Hoshinomiya that the Student Council wished to discuss matters with her. They did not have the chance to start their first conversation with each other as both she and her homeroom teacher hurriedly left to go to the faculty office immediately.

In her first side story, she and her classmates listen to their teacher Chie explained the setup of their unique school system, learning of its meritocracy and how the tests will influence the evaluation of their class later. Upon understanding this information, she asked a question to her teacher about whether it's possible to look at the exam results of the other classes based on her explanation to which the latter stated she got it wrong, reasoning how all classes can see the average scores publicly but not the individual scores.

After the teacher left, she explains to her classmates that they shouldn't easily judge or underestimate the lower classes as weak based on the exam result when the competition and ranking between them along with Class A can still be change not solely by academics alone but other factors as well. She also reasons that the lower classes have unfavorable circumstances to deal with in contrast to Class 1-B. Since they still don’t know how to increase the class points, Honami believes her classmates should use this chance to develop self-control and continue spending less points. Shortly after, she convinces her classmates to come together as a class and study for the mid-term exams at the library as the objective to increase their average score. Realizing she has too much on her plate to teach all her growing number of friends, Ryūji Kanzaki reach out to help Honami with tutoring some of them as well through creating two study groups, one at noon and the other after school.

When Ken of Class 1-D and Yamawaki of Class 1-C with his group were about to get into a fight in the library, she quickly intervened to diffuse the conflict before the situation escalated further into violence. She temporarily leave her classmates behind to stop their loud bickering because it was disturbing the quiet concentration of everyone learning in her Class 1-B's study session. Honami states that she had every reason to get involved in their dispute since the former happened to be using the library to study with her classmates and suggested they move their argument elsewhere so that their actions do not further ruin the decorum of the library. Honami further went on to state that she would report their actions to the school authorities threateningly as a warning if they did not stop with their quarrel. As a result, Yamawaki sincerely apologized for the inconvenience he had caused to her. Kiyotaka could not help but nod in admiration to Honami's final words, which were advising them that if they were planning to study in the library, they ought to behave as mature adults, before setting off back to where she was originally. Going back to the first side story, Honami return to her study session area and was inform that the Class 1-C boys are now afraid of her after she settled a past dispute between their classes. As a girl, Honami felt deeply offended to the point that she couldn't continuing concentrating on her studies with her classmates for the rest of her entire lunch break.

Later on, Honami met Kiyotaka again, but this time with Suzune Horikita present alongside him to talk about a recent brawl involving Ken. When Honami attempted to offer her input on the investigation, Suzune immediately suspected that she had come to them with an ulterior motive. Baffled by Suzune's suspicion towards her, Honami denies that by stating she was just curious of what had happened unbeknownst to her Class 1-B. She learned from Kiyotaka about the false complaint of Ken starting a fistfight came to be as was falsely filed by Kakeru's classmates. Honami decided to support Kiyotaka and Suzune by looking for a witness alongside them, reasoning that their two classes were not completely unrelated to each other. As a result, Honami exchanged contact information with Kiyotaka to show their mutual cooperation as allies.

Afterwards, Honami called for Kiyotaka to meet her outside of the school where she explained that she needed his help, as she believed someone might ask her out, to his confusion. She explained that she was asking his help because of her inexperience with romantic relations and a lack of interest in the admirer, and asked him to pretend to be her boyfriend after she received a love letter. Kiyotaka refused, stating that it would be better in telling the person the truth while she begged him to help her, as she didn't know how to answer the confession but the admirer Chihiro Shiranami shows up and sees them together. When asked what relationship they had, Honami tried "confirming" they were a couple but Kiyotaka bluntly stated that he and Honami were simply friends, which surprised her. He left, advising her to talk it out with Chihiro to show respect to the courage she gathered up to confess her feelings, leaving Honami amazed by his wisdom as she pondered over it.

Following his advice, Honami decided to be honest with Chihiro and did her best to turn her down gently as she revealed that she was not romantically interested in her. Honami and Chihiro mutually decided that they would go back to being friends, although, despite their agreement, Chihiro ran off crying as Honami met up with Kiyotaka again. She explained to him what happened before apologizing for dragging him into the mess, while he shrugged it off as she promised that she owed him a favour.

In the anime, she is later seen approaching Kiyotaka and Kikyō, asking if they were investigating Ken's case, after hearing rumours about it. She offered them aid as Kikyō thanked her but Kiyotaka tried to intervene, confused by her actions, though she stated she was not up to anything and reminded him that she owed him a favour, while winking at him suggestively. The display gained attention from Kikyō and the other students who wondered what exactly Honami owed Kiyotaka.

Honami and her classmate Ryūji put up a bulletin board to gather information about the three boys that were supposedly attacked by Ken. Based on the light novels, it was said that they were able to identify that one of the boys involved with Ken was Daichi Ishizaki and also that he had a history of violence on the locals. She and Ryūji showed this to Kiyotaka as they received some helpful clues about Ken's fight and deduced that it may have indeed been a set-up to frame him. When she tried to pay the person who leaked the source of the message, Honami saw that their identity was anonymous and became unsure of what to do until Kiyotaka volunteered to help. She then went up to him and he paid the person himself using her phone. At the same time, he noticed her unusually high amount of points, causing Honami to immediately reclaim her phone and walk off afterwards. But before leaving, Honami assures Kiyotaka that she would still help him again later.

Some time afterwards, Honami was asked to lend Kiyotaka points for a task he helped Suzune with and promised to pay her back after it was finished. Honami found out about the details of the plan and found herself amazed at Kiyotaka's intelligence and wondered how someone like him could have landed himself in Class 1-D, but Kiyotaka said it was Suzune's plan and gave her a vague answer about his intelligence. Unlike in the light novels where Suzune explains Kiyotaka's strategy as her own and covers for him, the anime adaptation shows just only Honami being alone without Ryūji present to learn about the camera strategy from Kiyotaka and not Suzune before rather than after it was carried out. Noticing that he didn't want to talk about it, she simply smiled at his answer before he got a call from Airi who was in danger.

Volume 2
In the light novels, when the meeting led by Manabu involving Ken's case came to an end, Honami and Ryūji greeted Kiyotaka and asked about what the results of the trial were. Learning that it didn't turn out as they had hoped, Honami insisted she and Ryūji would continue to look for more evidence that could support Ken's innocence or another witness to this matter. She was then met with Suzune who asked for Honami's cooperation in preparing her strategy. Suzune explains her strategy in full detail (the plan was devised by Kiyotaka) to blackmail and trap the the three suspects using the security camera as that was the only solution left to help Class 1-D protect Ken.

Later on, Honami and Ryūji both went and purchased the surveillance camera to use for Suzune's strategy with their private points. Then after that, she and him worked to install it during lunch while being assisted by another Class 1-D student known as the Professor (Hideo Sotomura) who cooperated with them on this front besides Kiyotaka and Suzune. Unlike in the anime where Honami wasn't a participant of the strategy, she instead of Suzune was the person who worked with Kiyotaka to corner and trick the three boys of Class 1-C.

With the surveillance camera installed ahead of time, she was able to reasonably talk the matter out with the three students of Class 1-C such as Daichi to withdraw their false claim as planned so that neither classes of 1-C and 1-D were punished for the incident. In order to prevent the three boys from contacting their class leader Kakeru for advice, she and Kiyotaka walked with them over to the Student Council room side by side and got them to successfully withdraw their compliant. Once Ken's case was taken care of as planned, she happily thanks Kiyotaka for giving her such an important role to play in Class 1-D's strategy against Class 1-C. After this, Kiyotaka uninstalls the security camera and hands it back to Honami, promising the latter that he would make sure to repay her with the private points she loaned him. Honami, on the other hand, felt it would be fine for him to have the private points ready for graduation.

Seeing that Kiyotaka was in a rush to rescue Airi, Honami followed after him, while he was using the GPS on his phone to trace and find Airi's location. Once they found Airi being sexually assaulted by her stalker, Honami and Kiyotaka took several photos with their phones' cameras repeatedly. This was while Honami and Kiyotaka were pretending to be a delinquent couple in front of Airi's stalker, intimidating the latter with threats of exposing him publicly to the point that he ran away in fear of losing his job. She learned from Kiyotaka that Airi had been an idol or entertainer by the name of Shizuku since her junior high days and was impressed by her reputation.

After the conflict was resolved, Honami informs Kiyotaka that Kakeru Ryūen was most likely the mastermind pulling the strings behind the whole Ken incident. She reasoned that this was because he was the person who had orchestrated a dispute between Class 1-B and Class 1-C before the incident with Ken happened. Honami believed that Kakeru was the same perpetrator who also had a hand in that incident to make Ken be set up as the liar, considering how ruthless and merciless his strategy was to instigate violence. Before leaving, Honami made a suggested Kiyotaka to reach out to her again in case his Class 1-D needed her to assist them again, which the latter would keep in mind.

Based on another side story, when Honami attempts to go on the elevator in the school's dormitory building, she ends up finding Kiyotaka, Kikyō, Suzune, and Airi already present there waiting before her and greeted them enthusiastically. Upon observing how rare it is to see a trio of four Class 1-D students together as a group, Honami curiously asked one of them what the topic of the conversation they were talking about before she chimed in. There, she happened to learn from Kikyō that they happened to be discussing of a two-week trip on where to go. When invited by Kikyō to join the four in their trip, Honami happily accepts the invitation to hang out with them. Looking forward to whatever trip they had planned in mind, she expresses her excitement on always wanting to get a chance of chatting with Suzune and Airi who are from a different class than her. However, Suzune said she had no part in going to the trip alongside them, to which Honami then raises the question if she already have plans of her own arranged beforehand. Hearing that she has nothing planned and is not interested in the slightest, Honami accepts the girl's reason for not attending as it is typical of Suzune's style. Despite that, Honami did not stop there and asked if Suzune were to ever change her mind and happened to have some time to spare during the trip, she kindly reminded the latter to contact the former. At the same time, Honami briefly touch on their previous encounter of how she had already considered wanting to give her e-mail address to Suzune. With this idea taken into consideration, Honami proceeded to take out a memo from her schoolbag and wrote down her e-mail address and handed it to both Suzune and Airi.

Witnessing how persistent Honami can be with her kind action, Suzune calls her a good person no matter how much she tries to ignore the former's kindness. When Honami is questioned by Suzune why the former does not bother to just simply leave her be and ignored her, she states that is because she feels like Suzune's way of speaking is not suitable for students that want to enjoy youth. While Suzune insists not to be worried that she was not enjoying her youth, Honami was suggested by the girl to avoid having a boring conversation with her as an effective way of time management. Understanding the cold shoulder Suzune is giving both she and Kikyō without an alternative way to convince her, Honami laughs it off and said that she can act a bit arrogant around them but does not think it is a bad thing to do and have as her personality. Honami tries to reason with her that although the latter have no need to take joy in youth, she believe otherwise as it is not something Suzune can be sure of thinking and accepting so easily. Honami further adds that while Suzune might not want to enjoy her youth, what they are doing at this moment in time by holding a discussion together was what their youth was all about. Thereafter, Honami grabbed Kikyō's shoulder and closed the distance with Suzune who was unable to refute her words stay silent. Honami rationally reasons with Suzune further, stating that since they are chatting about meaningless things while going to school from now, she points out a future where they will definitely think how this is part of youth later in their lifetime.

Realizing Kiyotaka who was absent-minded and quiet throughout their conversation until now stood still in his original position without following after them, Honami looks back and convey her concern for him. Seeing how all three of his classmates other than herself show worries for Kiyotaka, Honami felt satisfied and sent a bright smile his way, inquiring whether he was either experiencing May sickness or exclusion from their conversation. Intuitively grasping his feelings about the topic she have had with the girls of Class 1-D, Honami reassures Kiyotaka that he too is included as a page in their youth. After saying what needed to be said, Honami ran towards Kiyotaka, grabbed his wrist, and pulled it softly to her side, dragging him away with her to where the other girls are at while teasing the latter with playful words.

Based on how the anime adaptation handled this light novel scene, it was said that Honami and Kiyotaka had gathered together a security team and found Airi, just before she was being assaulted by a crazed stalker and only Kiyotaka was taking pictures of the stalker's action on Airi. The stalker attempted to flee after Kiyotaka confronted him but Honami blocked him as the police took the man into custody and she looked at him with a disgusted look before silencing his protests as he was taken away. She waved goodbye to Airi and Kiyotaka as she joined the police in handling the matter.

She later hangs out at the pool with some of her classmates and meets up with Class 1-D students. In the changing room, Honami was questioned by Suzune about the growth of her breast size, which she believes it been growing bigger since during her third year of junior high before asking about Suzune's curiosity as the latter gave a vague answer. Taking note that the dialogue here is anime original, Honami then started to tease Airi playfully for her close relationship and obvious romantic affections towards Kiyotaka, after Airi nervously explained that she came just because Kiyotaka invited her. In the light novels, Honami only went about greeting Airi respectfully without acting playful such as teasing the girl while carefully observing the latter for her slender body. Honami soon stopped right after Kikyō mentioned her own close relationship with him, to which she smiled about it, showing that she has no problem with it.

From the light novels, there was no mention of her friendly relationship with Kiyotaka but the fact that she was asked by Kikyō about any information regarding her classmate Ryūji. After she learned from Kikyō that one of her female friends in Class 1-D happened to bear some interest in Ryūji, Honami recognizes the same can be said with how he is also popular with the girls in her own class as well while informing the latter that the guy is not dating anyone as far as she knows. When Kikyō thought about telling her friend to contact him, Honami thinks Ryūji will like that but was unsure in the end, considering she doesn't have a keen understanding of what his feelings are but can tell that he is a person who says a few words and lacks the assertiveness. Later, she soon played volleyball with some of the students though is put off by the strangeness of the Class 1-D students such as Ken Sudō, Kanji Ike and Haruki Yamauchi. Soon afterwards, she bore witness to Suzune's speech to everyone at the pool, becoming somewhat surprised by the development.

Another anime original scene where during the cruise, both her and her homeroom teacher Chie got a massage together. At that time, she and her instructor discussed students of each class they should be the lookout out for as potentially powerful adversaries while doing so, Honami felt somewhat put off by her teacher's erratic behavior. When her teacher suggested looking out for Kiyotaka as one of those students, she seemed to see her teacher is right about watching out for Kiyotaka before wondering why he hides his amazing capabilities. After the ship arrived on a deserted island, she and her Class 1-B set up camp on a beach. In contrast to the anime, the light novels revealed her based camp was located further deeper inside the forest discovered by Kiyotaka and Suzune.

Volume 3
In her side story where it involves her midsummer time spent overcoming the Deserted Island Special Test with Class 1-B, it was said that Honami had already went ahead and had all of her classmates act and play according to their roles properly. As it was the second day of that special exam, Honami stood up appearing happily satisfied on being able to successfully complete her hammock which she personally made her own with the tied ropes arranged. Honami was then thanked by Chihiro for her excellent hard work on setting that up to which the former said that she can help out at any time with these kind of jobs, kindly reminding her friend to call on her assistance whenever she feels troubled with doing other stuff besides the hammock. After saying this, Chihiro took the initiative to link arms with Honami who felt her classmate's sudden action was cute, something like a little sister would do for her. Seeing how good she and Chihiro are still able to get along well despite rejecting the latter's confession, Honami was relieve and glad that it did not ruin the relationship which is their friendship. Following the day after her classmate's confession, she remains as close friends with Chihiro regardless of what happened in the past between the two, continuing to open her heart and talk to her like usual even during this exam.

When Chihiro questions whether there was anything she was not skillful in, Honami believes rather than herself being bad with sports, she was just not that good at playing it. Honami doesn't think her lack of skills with sports is considered fatal to her physique physically speed-wise, admitting in her mind that she is capable of maintaining a fairly fast running pace but the same could not be said with her state of equilibrium being the motor neurons. Because of this, Honami recalled a lot of times where she happened to threw or kicked a ball in the air while it moved very deviated and was teasingly mocked in the classroom for that horrible show of performance. After Chihiro lovingly praise her embarrassingly weak side as cute, Honami was left feeling flustered about hearing it come from her friend's mouth, remembering how the previous play she had with her classmates turn out. Meanwhile, Honami expresses how happy and nice it is to see that her male classmates in all directions are each enjoyably playing with the water together, looking to join in on the fun alongside them. However, Chihiro thought otherwise as it was an embarrassing sight to see, making Honami wonder if her friend has an insensitive side to her or was having some strong conflict going on with the boys in their class.

She tries to deflect Chihiro's criticism by complimenting the boys for the great work they did of fulfilling their given role within the class without panicking while being in an island, feeling the need to praise them as they rightfully deserve it. When the Deserted Island Special Test was first revealed to Class 1-B, Honami expected her classmates to become chaotic about it, but beyond her expectations, she was shocked to observe that everybody in the classroom pulled themselves together and calmed down thereafter. Thanks to that due to everyone staying united and positive in the face of possible hardships, Honami acknowledges the fact that she too was also able to bring out her usual strength and contribute to the class without problem. She thought to herself that her class is pushing and handling strong throughout the exam smoothly, not forgetting to cheerfully enjoy themselves with the time spent on this island while firmly holding onto their points. On the other hand, Honami was invited out by Chihiro to go alone together with her to the seaside and hang out there with just them and nobody else but the two only.

Realizing what a rare chance this is as stated by her friend, she adds to her classmate's suggestion that they should also invite the rest of the class to join them much to Chihiro's disappointment. Despite feeling disappointed by Honami's response to her offer, Chihiro humbly accept her leader's idea without complaint as she was okay with it. Seeing the strange reaction on Chihiro's facial expression and the comment from her that a romantic couple's world is better than what she suggested, Honami noticed that Chihiro has still not given up on her romantic feelings for her. Because Chihiro remains determined to make Honami fall in love with her, the latter starts to frantically panic and became unsure on what to do next until the former jokingly said it was a joke much to her relief. Honami called Chihiro as being bad for making her anxious and taking her words seriously. However, when Chihiro states that that there is no need to be anxious as she still has two and a half years of time left to make the girl she likes to develop feelings for her, Honami was unable to hide her own surprise and admire her friend's resolve to see it through to the very end of graduation.

Ever since the Deserted Island Special Test began after they got off the cruise ship, Honami would later on also allowed a student of Class 1-C, particularly Satoru Kaneda to join them after he had been thrown out from his own class' camp. When Honami was greeted by Kiyotaka and Suzune, she allows her class to enter in a cooperative relationship with their side during this exam and for the rest of the 1st year moving forward. Then, she showed Kiyotaka and Suzune around the camp and the pulley system in the well before giving them supplies for their camp and explained about the student from Class 1-C after Suzune pointed him out. In the light novels, she reasonably details the supplies her Class 1-B purchased one by one and how usage plus setup of it was handled based on where their camping site was at. Along with that, she also shared information with them about her investigation of Class 1-A's camp which was hidden in a cave. Excluded from the anime, she also happens to built a hammock, tying a string around a tree in the process to put it up. She egged both Kiyotaka and Suzune to take a seat on it but the latter declined to which the former proceeded to sit on the hammock herself. Honami then went to help her Class 1-B with the camp, bidding her company goodbye as she went off.

She was seen next with Ryūji when the two found the camp for Class 1-C abandoned. The light novels explained that they were hiding in the shade to spy on Class C but it came of as meaningless in the end as nobody from Class 1-C was present at their own based camp. They were later joined by both Kiyotaka and Airi who had been scouting the forest but had ended up at the beach. Honami bemoaned the fact that she did not even get the chance to discover Class 1-C's leader while Ryūji reminded her what the purpose of the test was, further agreeing with him that Kakeru's plan to have his class retired was apparently true after all. Honami was then asked by Kiyotaka what she knew about Kōhei Katsuragi and she informed him of his status as one of Class 1-A's leaders alongside Arisu Sakayanagi, even detailing how there appeared to be a leadership conflict between the pair.

On the final day of the test, her class chose not to guess the leaders of the other camps since their bonus points would be negated if they were wrong. When the results were revealed, Class 1-B was in second place while Class 1-D was first, leaving Class 1-C in last place and Class 1-A third. Honami was surprised at these results along with the rest of her class. After returning to the cruise ship, she went over her large amount of points before hiding her phone just as Ryūji sat down with her and they talked about the survival test. Honami stated that it was their class' loss even if it was second place, something he agreed with. She soon changed the topic by questioning him over what they had been told about private points and how they could decide what to do with them. It is also implied that she wanted to buy her way into another class in Episode 12 of the anime, presumably Class 1-A or 1-D and this is most likely feasible for her courtesy of her hoard of points.

Volume 4
During the Cruise Ship Special Test, Honami was placed in the Rabbit group by her teacher Chie Hoshinomiya which Kiyotaka Ayanokōji was also a part of, seemingly to spy on him and learn more about the extent of his true abilities. With nobody taking the initiative in the Rabbit group, she decided to do it herself and as a result, came out as the outspoken leader of the team overall. This was by Honami acting as the mediator, holding and facilitating discussions while deliberating on their options of who the V.I.P is among her group members. At the same time, she would tried to reason with the Class 1-A students, who were following a policy of strict non-contribution/participation to the discussions, but to no avail.

Particularly, she argues with Machida about the pros and cons of following Kōhei Katsuragi's "castle gate" strategy, saying that it was favorable only to Class 1-A since by adopting a passive stance, Class 1-A's position would be uncontested, as all the classes would receive the same amount of points. She explains how her strategy gave all the classes a fair chance to rise on the class rankings, that is, by deliberating over the identity of the V.I.P. Honami reasons that by accepting her proposed strategy which was in opposition to Class 1-A's, the lower classes would be able to have a chance at closing the gap of points with the upper classes. As a result, the students who had once agreed and aligned themselves with Class 1-A's strategy, were mostly either switching to Honami's side or taking a neutral stance due to the benefits of her strategy.

This, in turn, led to the Class 1-A students led by Machida of the Katsuragi Faction to isolate themselves from the rest of the group, making it difficult for Honami to narrow down the list of suspected V.I.P.s. She then suggested to the rest of the group to use their time in order to find out to which class the V.I.P. belonged, as a starting point throughout the beginning till the end of their first discussion period. For the second discussion period, Honami tried to collect as much information as she possibly could by openly and honestly conversing with the group members around her without the latter catching wind of her bait tactic.

During the next discussion period - the third, she played a card game called Daifugō with her group members to earn their trust. From this game, Honami hoped to learn the unique characteristics of her group and better understand the way of how to talk to them. After the game reached its end, Honami, accompanied by Kiyotaka head out to confront one of the leaders from Class 1-A, Kōhei, in the Dragon group to talk to him about his passive strategy. Upon meeting him, she asked him to reconsider his plan of action, attempting to reason with him that her group would not be able to get through the test without communication with his classmates who had refused to participate or contribute whatsoever. Unfortunately, Honami was unable to convince Kōhei but remains resolute in continuing to find a way of beating the test without giving up.

With Kōhei gone, she decided to meet Suzune Horikita, Kakeru Ryūen, and Ryūji Kanzaki and seek more information from them. Once in the Dragon group's meeting room, Honami learns from Kakeru that she was placed in the Rabbit group for an unknown reason as one of the teachers intentionally placed her there after deciding how the groups would be divided. She received a proposal from Kakeru that they work together to crush Class 1-A by sharing information among all three classes (B, C, and D) about all the V.I.P.s as a way to bypass the school's rules. Considering Kakeru's strategy to have high risk and low return, Honami turns it down as she was doubtful whether Kakeru really knew the identities of the V.I.P.s, and since Suzune was also reluctant in working alongside Class 1-C. Kakeru next propose to Honami that they should form a two-class alliance with only him without Suzune, which she also rejected due to his past actions of hurting people of her class.

After Kakeru left, unsuccessful in forming an alliance, Honami asked Suzune whether this test would help to build trust between students from different classes. Hearing her response of needing communication and cooperation, Honami reaffirmed her commitment that continuing the partnership between their two classes, rather than joining Kakeru's side was indeed the right decision to be made. She was even informed by Ryūji that it was impossible to get Kōhei of Class A to reconsider his strategy, explaining that he was in the same boat as her as neither of the Class 1-A students of their groups were cooperative. When Suzune left, Honami asked for Kiyotaka's help in getting everyone from their group to cooperate and reveal the truth, looking to play things accordingly by the book so that it increases their chances of victory. To narrow down the list of suspects and finding out who was not the V.I.P., Honami told Kiyotaka that she wasn't the one while the latter does the same though she felt guilty, seeing him tell her. She then asks for her fellow classmate Hamaguchi to show that he was not V.I.P. either, showing Honami's trust in Kiyotaka.

Throughout the fourth and filth discussion periods, she played the previous card game with the others again like the last time to get to know everyone in her group except for students from Class 1-A who stayed in isolation from start to end.

When the Rabbit Group was reaching its sixth discussion period, Honami was the first among the members to reach the meeting location - an hour before everyone else did, because she didn't want to be in her room where her friends were going in and out noisily. She went to the meeting ahead of time as it was a place that was peaceful and quiet to her. While waiting for the others to arrive, she gathered her thoughts on how to decide the outcome of the exam before accidentally falling asleep over the course of thinking for too long. The battle plan Honami had in mind was not needing to chase after two rabbits (V.I.P.s) at the same time as she would end up getting none in the process, which she firmly established to be the policies for confronting the Rabbit group. During her sleep, Honami quietly dreams about a world where she herself was hungry while chasing after and capturing moving foods like a dorayaki and a stromboli. After some "cute-sounding" music went off from Honami's phone like an alarm clock to wake her up from her nap, she was greeted by Kiyotaka who had arrived to the meeting place.

Remembering that she had rarely been together with Kiyotaka alone, Honami attempts to investigate him through dialogue, believing him to be harder to get an accurate read on when compared to others in her group. She seeked to ascertain his inner heart, what Kiyotaka thought, for what goal he was taking action, and so on. Honami had been questioning herself about the group distribution of this special exam, realizing the reason of why she had been sent to the Rabbit group instead of the Dragon group which she should normally be part of, as a class representative possibly had something to do with investigating Kiyotaka. The two chatted about ascending to Class A via the school's system which comes with the established hierarchy and merits unlike the lower classes as well as whether it was possible to accumulate twenty million private points, until everyone arrives.

During the final discussion period, she hears out Hamaguchi of Class 1-B's idea parallel to her own strategy that each person in the group show each other the school email message sent to them on their phone, as a way to track down the real V.I.P. At that point, she was able to completely see through Kiyotaka's plan of baiting and misleading the other students in the group into answering the wrong student as V.I.P. of their group. By calling Teruhiko Yukimura, who had been in possession of Kiyotaka's phone that had her contact number on it, she discerns and explains the phone-swapping strategy made by Kiyotaka as a double-layered trap he had set in motion. Honami noted how someone possessing her "phone number" while carrying out this extremely effective strategy was a detrimental weakness to that plan along with the SIM card being the deciding factor of it all. She had also noticed Teruhiko Yukimura and Kei Karuizawa's peculiar behavior and gestures towards Kiyotaka which made her think that she was likely the real V.I.P. during the exam, and that Morishige of Class 1-A had been the traitor. The moment she had found out that the V.I.P. wasn't in Class 1-B, she understood that a traitor from another class would be ready to betray them at any moment in time.

She knew Kiyotaka was not truly the V.I.P., remembering how he had secretly contacted Kei by pretending to meet up with his classmate Teruhiko. In the end, Honami had chosen not to do anything about revealing Kiyotaka's strategy or Kei being the V.I.P., leaving the test for the Rabbit Group to conclude. However, the reason behind Honami choosing not to expose Kiyotaka's lies was because she had figured out that would be enough to help her Class 1-B secure a win where both Class 1-A and Class 1-C had made a mistake with their choice as V.I.P. Not only that, but Kiyotaka had also seen through her strategy that she would try to find out who the V.I.P. was, borrowed that person's phone, and had another one ready before then stepping forward while claiming falsely to be the V.I.P. herself since he also had had the same idea but didn't actually use it. Because of this, Kiyotaka had to thoroughly reevaluate his image of Honami as cunning when she was able to successfully devise a strategy that led her to victory while avoiding the risks from affecting her Class 1-B. Through their conversation together, this proves to her that Kiyotaka is a very cunning individual but the latter lay the success of his strategy to Suzune instead.

Volume 4.5
At the last day of the summer vacations, Honami also went out for the swimming pool gathering between the classes. After changing into her swimwear, when Honami came to the pool, everyone's eyes were on her well-endowed figure. She greeted Kiyotaka Ayanokōji and started poking him all over his rash guard that covered his stomach, with her index finger, after asking him about the reason why he wore it. She praised Kiyotaka's slender and muscular hard body from his arms to his shoulders, saying he had just the right amount of muscle. Kiyotaka, being hyper-conscious about her bust, takes his leave to find the "other guys" of his class. Later, she accepts Class 1-D's invitation into their group, and goes to the pool with them along with her classmates after securing a place where they could privately hang out together.

From her side story, during that same day, Honami invited Kiyotaka out to swim with her in the pool. However, Kiyotaka declines her offer, stating how he was not really good at swimming and was one of the slowest in the class which she harbored doubts about, considering the structure of his body-build makes it look to her as something a very fast swimmer would possess. Nonetheless, the two enter the pool together to bathe themselves in water for comfort. Shortly thereafter, Honami splashes water at Kiyotaka while playfully provoking him to play along with her. After Honami repeated the action several times, the latter finally stopped resisting and gave in as he made his comeback by doing the same to her.

In addition to that, she talks with Suzune about the history, along with the structure of the Student Council, possible reasons for why the placement of students like her happened in Class 1-D and Miyabi Nagumo's infamous reputation, abilities, and his relationship with Manabu Horikita. She then proceeds to challenge Suzune and the latter's class to a volleyball match between Class 1-B and Class 1-D, where the loser would buy lunch for the winner, and after some persuasion through provocations from the former, Suzune accepts her proposition. She suggested this mock competition in the hopes of ascertaining Class 1-D's capabilities among their students in contrast to her own classmates to see which side was more ambitious and had superior teamwork. After a long match in the heat, Class 1-D emerged victorious, and true to her word, Honami treated them to lunch. The group later went on to buy ice-cream from the parlor, with Honami choosing a popsicle stick, and they parted ways thereafter.

Volume 5
During the Sports Festival, Honami had Class 1-B cooperate with Class 1-C led by Kakeru Ryūen as they were paired up together in the White Team. Before Ryūji set off to compete with Kiyotaka in the relay race, Honami informed him ahead of time that the latter was a pretty fast runner based on her past memory of him chasing down Airi's stalker. Honami participated in the Cavalry Battle Event, and managed to emerge victorious over the competition, alongside her Class 1-B team and Class 1-C team.

During that event, she acted as Class 1-B's General while actively supported Class 1-C, moving to blockade the path leading to Suzune's side that Kei, Satsuki Shinohara, and two of their other classmates attempted to go to. Honami helped prevented students of Class 1-D from getting in the way of Class 1-C who had been using their four horsemen, including Mio Ibuki to go after Suzune and attack her relentlessly and simultaneously without any support from her teammates. Honami's Class 1-B team fiercely battled it out with Kei's Class 1-D team and won in the end by finishing off the remaining horsemen of Class 1-A's team with the help of Ibuki's Class 1-C team. In the three-legged race, Honami partnered up with Sō Shibata and was seen greeting Kiyotaka and Kikyō, her opponents before the match begins. Due to her and her classmates' efforts, she was able to lead Class 1-B to first place for the relay race against the two and Class 1-C among the first years.

In her side story, during this sports festival, when she and Sō met up with Kiyotaka Ayanokōji and Kikyō Kushida for the race, it was revealed that Honami had focused her gaze on Kiyotaka rather than his partner, subconsciously calling out his name and greeting him first before Kikyō. She secretly remembered the results of Kiyotaka's competitions, believing his abilities to be average at best yet she sensed there was something special about him. She thinks Kiyotaka made people including herself felt like he was average but he was actually unfathomable, before quickly resuming her focus attentively back on the relay race so as to not be distracted by his presence any longer. Having seen his tricks and demeanor in the last exam previously on the cruiser ship, and all of his actions so far, her impression of Kiyotaka being an ordinary student you could find everywhere in this school, began to change ever since.

Volume 6
After the Sports Festival came to an end, Honami went on to have her Class 1-B make a joint study group with Suzune Horikita and Class 1-D, arranging to meet up for a study session in the library area, in preparation for the Paper Shuffle Special Exam. She tutored both Kiyotaka and Maya Satō when the latter asked for help in studying. Once that task was over, Honami was asked by Suzune, with Kiyotaka also present to have a private meeting just among themselves. From that meeting, Honami reaffirmed her commitment that she was willing to lend a hand to any friend or ally who seeked her aid if they happened to be in trouble. Honami admits that no matter how the other person acted in her class, she'd be on their side regardless of how much they contributed to Class 1-B. If someone from Class 1-B despised her, Honami believes the best option for her was to avoid contact with that person as much as possible and keep them from disliking her even more.

Nevertheless, she would still go out of her way and support them since they were a member of Class 1-B regardless of their hate directed towards her. Honami told Kiyotaka Ayanokōji that within her power, she was willing to assist by lending private points without a fixed limit to a friend from a different class from her own as long as there was a good reason to justify it. In other words, a problem's nature or intensity that her friend was facing did not matter or mean anything to her, though she remained uncertain, unable to answer properly on who to help if the choice was between either saving someone from her class or a friend from a different class, acknowledging that one of them would be hurt because of her decision. At the same time, Honami reasons that she would not help Kakeru of Class 1-C like she would with her friends unless there was something the former could gain in return for doing so. Upon being called a good person, Honami decided to end the conversation right then and there with them, giving her final remarks, stating how she was not as pure-hearted as everyone thought she was and as much credit as Suzune was giving her for being. Feeling somewhat shaken emotionally from that discussion with Suzune and Kiyotaka, she finally parted ways, saying her goodbye to the two before quickly heading out to meet up with Chihiro and her other classmates.

Later, a false rumor had spread of Honami going around collecting private points illegally, against the school's rules, and Kakeru Ryūen was suspected of being the one to have spread the rumor. She was confronted by him about validity of the allegation, accusing her of lying and hiding evidence to save face. Honami argued with him that she had no reason to reveal all her cards to him as evidence, like the amount of private points she had and how she had got them because she had not acquired them illegally. She also told Kakeru there was no point to having him be the one to report her information to the school since if the points were prove to be fraudulent in the end, then they would disclose that kind of information to the public anyway. Doubting that he would ever trust or accept her words, she considers clearing up the misunderstanding by reasoning with the teachers instead, in private, rather than to him publicly. Honami made it her objective to explain everything in great detail to the school officials about how many points she had in total within her possession at the time, and how she was able to obtain them through a legal way. After offering a reasonable explanation to them, she left the investigation on the school to prove her innocence of the supposed fraud accused by him. Once the school's investigation concluded, Honami was cleared of all suspicion after they issued an official notice that there was no fraudulent activity in which she was involved.

In her side story, during Mid-December, on the day the results of the Paper Shuffle were released, she called out to Ryūji Kanzaki about their defeat against Class 1-A, as Class 1-B had lost by two points. She knew this was to be expected considering how smart Class 1-A was overall while Ryūji believed there was still time for their own class to recover and make a comeback. She talks with him about the Sports Festival rankings, understanding that Class 1-D was rapidly becoming a lot stronger to the point that they had risen to Class C much faster than she had anticipated. She reached this conclusion after having carefully analyzed Class 1-D's coordination and deemed it to be superior to that of Class 1-C's. Despite Kakeru and his classmates having fallen to Class 1-D by the time the next semester arrives, Honami still planned to keep her guard up around him. This is due to the fact that she could not tell what he was thinking when the man happened to be working behind the scenes for his class as well as not forgetting the trouble he had caused for her class in the past.

When Honami was asked by Ryūji what she planned to do after Suzune Horikita and her classmates had climbed up to Class 1-C after defeating Kakeru's class and were likely to set their sights on Class 1-B next, she said that they would continue to maintain the status quo of their cooperative relationship regardless, until Class 1-B finally ascended to Class A. She believed that it was ideal and easier for Class 1-B to come up with a strategy if they were to face off against Suzune and her classmates one-on-one as final opponents at the very end than deal with hard, tricky enemies from the other classes. She reasoned that each and every time they had fought against Arisu, Kakeru and the others, the amount of stamina it consumed from their own class was intense over time. Nonetheless, she had no intention of underestimating the lineup of Suzune's class in contrast to the other two powerful classes. Not only Yōsuke Hirata and Kikyō, who were supporting Suzune, she also assumed Kiyotaka might also likely possess a certain degree of ability on backing her up as well. Ever since the end of the Sports Festival, she felt that the result of Kiyotaka's relay showed the heights of Class 1-D's potential with mysterious and unpredictable elements from their side along with leaving a strong impression of him. After being surprised at Kiyotaka's running form and also the focused breathing while rescuing Airi from her stalker, she considered the possibility that it might not just be him alone in Suzune's class to worry about, and figured there could be other strong talented individuals besides Kiyotaka who were just as much of a threat as him in power. She started to look within Suzune's class for students that were not standing out, still hiding their true abilities from everyone until then.

She and Ryūji part ways soon after, as the latter tells her that he would do everything he could to help their class rise to Class A while telling her not to try and push herself. Honami was then greeted by Sō Shibata who seemed disappointed at himself for not trying hard enough to help them score more marks to beat Class A in the Paper Shuffle Exam. Observing the state he was in, she attempted to cheer him up by having herself and her classmates including Chihiro Shiranami to hang out and play together with them in Keyaki Mall to put behind Class 1-B's loss to Class 1-A. On the way to Keyaki Mall, she and her friends encountered three members of Class 1-A being Arisu Sakayanagi, Masayoshi Hashimoto and Masumi Kamuro. Honami received a request by Arisu that the latter was in search of her help with confronting a problem she could not solve on her own and that she did not know what she should do to fix it, even with the help of students of Class 1-A. Honami reluctantly accepted Arisu's request, not sure whether that was a lie of needing her help until she could first talk to the latter in private about it. In her head, Honami thought that if Arisu was indeed in need of support from her, the former would do whatever she could to assist the latter, no matter what. As a result of this exchange, the two proceeded to share their address and contact information with each other. After Arisu and her classmates take their leave, Honami was told by Sō and her friends that they were concerned for her not acting more cautious around the members of Class 1-A but she simply thought it to be a normal consultation.

Volume 7
Once the battle between Class 1-D and Class 1-C ended in the victory of the former over the exam Paper Shuffle, it was revealed that both Honami and Arisu Sakayanagi were apparently accompanying each other on a stroll. Just as the two were thanking one another for being able to have a productive one-on-one discussion, she came across the Ayanokōji Group, greeting them and then congratulating them for their class win over Kakeru's class. She laughably play off Class 1-B's loss to Class 1-A by a slight margin of two-point difference while Arisu sees it to have been a close match where both sides were almost even. Because Class 1-D will ascend to Class 1-C during the third semester, she has come to recognize that her Class 1-B is possibly next in line to deal with their class and plans to be on her guard against them. Realizing that Kiyotaka's friends doesn't seem to kindly welcome a small talk with her any longer, she and Arisu proceed to leave soon after.

Volume 7.5
Ever since she had met up with Arisu Sakayanagi between Class 1-B and Class 1-A and the two's talk, Honami chose to spend some of her quality time during the holidays together with her to answer the latter's request for assistance. Although whether she knew this or not, Honami was approach by Arisu who was searching for the former's decisive weak point and strategically plotting her offensive way to conquer her and the people of Class 1-B through it. Based on the discussion Arisu have had with Kiyotaka, it was implied that Honami partly revealed the secret of her own past to the leader of Class 1-A without meaning to do that. This was highly indicated when Honami was still hanging out with Arisu and indirectly giving away hints of her secret for the latter to keenly catch on and grasp details of the former's weakness. Due to Arisu's cold reading ability, it is revealed that she was able to force Honami to gently open up her heart to her and be honest with Class 1-A's leader, letting an enemy from a different class outside her own to hear of the secret in detail.

Volume 8
During the Mixed Training Camp, Honami appeared exhausted after working to decide on which one of her classmates would be grouped with whom for that exam due to quarrels breaking out as they had to be paired with students of different classes. When one of her classmates Asako conveyed their concern that someone like herself from their class may get expelled for dragging everyone down with her, Honami reassures the former that she would be fine as long as she put in serious effort but advised all present in the conversation that they needed to be on guard of the looming danger of expulsion nonetheless. Honami consoled Asako that if something bad were to ever happen to her, she and her classmates would make sure to save her no matter the situation the latter was in. Once the girls' chat was over, in the cafeteria, Honami relaxes a little by leaning on the wide table with her upper body before quickly noticing Kiyotaka Ayanokōji's gaze on her to which she then greeted him. She had a small talk with Kiyotaka, briefly explaining the level of difficulty about how some girls from her side expressed their likes and dislikes even to each other before the latter parted ways with her thereafter as she failed to draw information out of him.

After he left, Honami mumbled to herself that even though Kiyotaka and his classmates climbed up to Class 1-C, she harbored doubts if all of Suzune Horikita's accomplishments were the only things that explained the success of their class, for she had heard no feats of him. She pondered who had leaked information of her massive amount of points to Kakeru Ryūen, suspecting the person to be either from Class 1-B or Kiyotaka himself. The thought of an ally who normally was not supposed to be her enemy becoming one was what trouble Honami to have an inner conflict with herself as that meant she had more people like Kiyotaka to protect outside her class to a point where she was unable to keep up with saving them all. In the end, she remained uncertain whether Kiyotaka was a threat to her class, understanding at the very least that he was positioned perfectly but not sure of how much influence the latter had on his class.

The following day after she was able to organize her group, Honami went on to cheerfully and energetically jog around the campus grounds. While in the middle of her jogging, Honami happened to noticed that Mei-Yu Wang was lagging behind her, out of breath, in their run together. Observing Mei-Yu's growing exhaustion, Honami decides to slow down her own speed a bit, coming to the decision that she would move at the same pace as her friend, along with Hiyori Shiina who catches up to them. She recalled partitioning the groups multiple times and how she was the only Class 1-B student in her group without any connections or ties to the members around her. For that reason, she was looking to forge new relationships with the students from different classes like Hiyori, who she hadn't been able to talk to until they had became part of the same group this special exam. The one thing she vows to avoid is her group not making the cut and an expulsion occurring. Since she was in that group, Honami could not afford to "play favorites", and chose not to put herself forward for the role of group leader but let Hiyori lead them.

When Honami was asked by a girl from Class 1-A if she had had a boyfriend before, the former embarrassingly denied it, while also admitting she had no experience on romance. Honami felt unsure if she herself was a "high-standards" type or not but panic set in for her upon being questioned whether she had any romantic interest in a boy like Miyabi as far as that rumor went. Honami gave clarification to her group members that she did not like anyone at the time or saw Miyabi in that kind of way. Nevertheless, Honami admits that before her time in high school, there was once an upperclassman she used to hold admiration for but before she could come around to seeing him as a member of the opposite sex, he already ended up graduating. Honami did not engage much in the topic of romance any further after the members tease her not to take anything they said as serious, telling her that she was free to brush a question off if she did not feel like answering. Honami's honesty on the other hand, lead herself to reveal to her new friends that she had been confessed to five times in the past, including during her elementary school year and from Chihiro Shiranami who she had rejected during high school itself.

When they start thinking she was incapable of lying to others including them, Honami said that that was not always the case as she was willing to sometimes make up lies of her own to misdirect others when it involved a special exam for the sake of her class. With that said, Honami admitted she would still try her best as much as possible to not tell lies as it could hurt people and considering how bad she was at lying to begin with. Honami's new friends found her way of thinking strange as lying was usually a normal way to avoid hurting people and not the other way around. However, reflecting back at her past action of shoplifting, Honami knows lying to avoid hurting people's feelings would only serve to delay the inevitable and make the bad things crop up more and more.

Later on, Honami asked Kiyotaka about his honest impression of the Mixed Training Camp Exam to which the latter replied that it was a little tougher than previous exams they had gone through, since it likely contained a high risk of expulsion. Hearing him mention the risks involved in the exam, she brought up the 'leadership' system in a group, that becoming a leader was a very risky thing to take up, despite needing it to win. Honami voiced her concern that she wasn't the least bit scared of losing either class points or private points but rather, a friend, who she was ready to sacrifice everything for. She questioned Kiyotaka what would he have done if someone from his class were about to be expelled, which he ponders over too, without giving a clear answer. Honami complimented Kiyotaka's smartness and intuition, thinking he might happen to know something regarding expulsion and the 'after' of that. After the discussion concluded, Honami bid farewell to Kiyotaka as well as her two female friends who had wanted to hang out with her but the former turned the request down as she was not feeling well and wanted to be alone for the rest of the day.

Volume 9
When Arisu began implementing her strategy of spreading various rumors regarding the background of Honami, causing her to become the center public attention of the incident, orchestrated by students of Class 1-A. She began receiving many malicious accusations, like having a history of engaging in violence, compensated dating, drug usage, theft, and robbery. Honami would end up getting encircled by her fellow classmates and friends alike as a way of protecting and shielding her from the constant slanders and defamation she was receiving. At first, she pretended that the harsh rumors did not faze her in the slightest and tried to remain positive and strong in front of everyone talking about her, continuing to chat with her friends and cheerfully calling out to people as she went along regardless of the negativity surrounding her. She told her classmates to not feel bothered by the rumors about her or take it to heart, refusing to affirm them, or denied them altogether. As a result, Honami would neither give her say on the matter nor report anything about it to the school, not planning to ask for any help or cooperation from her classmates to catch the perpetrators.

Rather than look to sue the party responsible for circulating the rumors of her and damaging her public reputation, on the grounds of defamation and libel, Honami instead preferred to use a different plan to counter Class 1-A's strategy. She would rather choose to stay silent and ignore the slanders, hoping the rumors would go away on their own as mere suspicions and people would lose interest in them. However, as the rumors grew worse each passing day without a clear resolution, they eventually started taking a heavy toll on Honami's mental health over the course of time to the point where they even affected her leadership on the Class 1-B as her classmates began taking actions behind her back. This was apparent when she wasn't present around with one of her classmates, Ryūji anymore, to prevent him from almost getting into a hostile fight with Masayoshi Hashimoto of Class 1-A as he attempted to forcefully stop the suspected perpetrator of the rumors through violence in her stead. Against Honami's order, her classmates of 1-B including Ryūji had been excessively thorough with trying to help the former out by finding the origin of the rumors and seeking information from the 2nd and 3rd year students. This, in turn, led to the discovery of the fact that people of Class 1-A had been the ones who had spread the indirect attack on Honami.

On Friday, four days after Ryūji's confrontation with Masayoshi, despite being harassed with unpleasant rumors, Honami was able to stand firm against the allegations made to defame her. Just as according to the strategy she had lay out for herself while dealing with Class 1-A, eventually, students began to openly speak in support of her stance on the matter. They reaffirmed their confidence in Honami and started circulating : "The rumors really were just rumors." "She was totally being framed." and "They were all lies." Since all the rumors about Honami had an expiration date, Class 1-A's plan to defame Honami had ended up failing miserably at the end. She had successfully managed to get through Arisu's strategy by simply remaining silent. In a way, everyone began to shift their attention from the rumors about Honami to studying earnestly for the upcoming final exams.

During this time after school, another incident occurred involving Honami, which she could no longer stay strongly resistant in fighting back, as she knew it to be factually the truth when compared to the false rumors from before. It began on Friday, February 11th, the day when the letters declaring that Honami was a criminal were discovered in the students' mailboxes which had caused a commotion about her to resurface again. Not only her classmates, Honami also found a letter in her mailbox that said she herself was a criminal, deeply troubling her to the extent that she had to reread the content inside over and over again until it finally shattered the last of her resistance of withstanding the rumors. Honami was informed and contacted by Mako Amikura of Class 1-B about how the recent rumor letters had been in every 1st year's mailbox and that she and her friends were present to comfort the former. Besides Mako, Honami was also asked by the rest of her classmates to not put up with the personal attack on her anymore and that they should talk to the teachers about it to help them look for the culprit who had been behind it all, refusing to let the unknown attacker get away with this without punishment or be easily forgiven. Yet Honami told them to be at ease, saying that that kind of attack wouldn't be enough to hurt or break her, but her friends believed otherwise, fearing that the horrible rumors about the former would keep on spreading everywhere across school if she didn't thwart the culprit's strategy. While maintaining a smile, she then apologizes to her friends and classmates for the inconvenience the rumors about her had caused her classmates and asked not to worry about them.

This letter which stood out among the many stoked the flame of the rumors to reemerge once again from the ashes as everyone in the school started to hear more about the incident seemingly regarding her. It could be understood that whoever was responsible for sending out the previous rumors was convinced that Honami would not report anything to the school, just like with the recent ones of her being a criminal. That is, the perpetrators including Arisu determined that no matter what she and her classmates did moving forward, Honami would choose to continue staying silent regardless of the bad outcomes negatively affecting her. If the person who had been spreading the rumors of Honami knew the truth, eventually more and more specific rumors would emerge until she admitted to it publicly to everyone including her classmates. When Honami does not take action against the letters that contained the rumors, the school also wasn't willing to take action for her sake if she did not file a report to them for help to track down the perpetrators. Later, the latest rumor which she acknowledged to be true about her, finally made Honami to revert back to her shut-in nature by avoiding class and staying cooped up in her room for more than a week. In addition to that, she who was is in low spirits at the time also seemed to be in terrible shape, struck with an illness that left her being sick with a fever, oversleeping and feeling hungry during her string of absences from school. To take care of her health, she took the time off to recuperate from her sickness. According to Kiyotaka, this cold of hers came as a result of her recent mental trauma and the weakening of her own immune system. On the other hand, many students were speculating that she had faked her sickness intentionally to avoid the rumors that had been spreading about her until Kiyotaka visited her to learn that that was not truly the case at all, after seeing her sorry state. Honami was well aware that the speculation about the legitimacy of her illness had already begun to spread.

When a group of her classmates attempted to go out of their way and lend their ears to Honami behind the door to her room, she politely turned them down, because she was having a hard time with the cold fever, and did not want her friends to get any way near her while feeling ill and have them keep their distance far away from her, who was at home to rest after giving a warning beforehand. Some of her friends had been freely giving Honami space without bothering her, thinking that she was depressed. However, she was confronted by Kitoyaka outside the door to her room, where Honami then proceeded to let him in to hold an important discussion with her privately while wearing a face mask to cover her coughs from leaking out of her mouth. Although Kiyotaka apologizes for his intrusion, she was content with letting Kiyotaka into her room so that he could see she had actually caught a fever and that it was not really just a lie for skipping class as some students believed it to be. Before the discussion began, she hands Kiyotaka a mask for protection from herself, worrying he may catch her cold if left unchecked. She admits going to the infirmary earlier that week of February and revealed the fact that Kiyotaka was so far the first person to have been able to meet up with her face-to-face in her room since she had gotten sick. Honami expressed her thanks to Kiyotaka for visiting her out of concern, thinking that she might have likely worried him for her absences from her classes due to the rumors as of late. During their short discussion together, it was revealed that Honami had several exchanges of phone messages she had been engaged in with Horikita about her fever as the latter was also worried about her well-being. Before he leaves her room, she makes sure to remind him ahead of time to wash his hands thoroughly after he reaches back. Prior to Kiyotaka's visit, she was said to have been airing out her room earlier by utilizing a humidifier to prevent the air from getting too cold or dry. Honami did this to increase the humidity of the room's temperature to easily create an environment she was in where the cold virus would become inactive, weaken her fever and lessen the odds of infecting any visitors, particularly Kiyotaka who recently visited her.

For some days, she ignores even Ryūji, Sō, and other close friends who made many attempts to contact her via text message, phone call, and email. On February 18th, when it had already been five days since her health had taken a turn for the worse, Honami was visited by Kiyotaka during the middle of the day on a weekday. She turns Kiyotaka away, telling him to see her again at another time later while apologizing for making the latter worry over her. Honami chose not to answer all his questions like those regarding the letters of the rumors, but with the exception of some questions that struck at the heart of the matter such as her attendance to school, which she seemed to be tentatively willing to respond. Kiyotaka spared some alone time with her sitting quietly by the door of her room that separated him and Honami for as long as until lunch break was over for him, before leaving. He did this kind of visit while skipping classes to visit her persistently everyday for two weeks straight. He tries to start a conversation with Honami like-how the month of February was already ending soon and that once they overcome next month's special exam, they would officially become second-year students. Kiyotaka even went as far as to use the proverb 'When the heat has passed, you forget about the shade of trees', to incite a reaction from her, wondering if becoming second-years means that their special exams will become even stranger than they are right now at the time. After hearing enough, she at long last elicited a response towards him, asking Kiyotaka why he unlike her classmates was not bothering to ask her about her past. Hearing how bad his human relations are that he won't appeal with his emotions unlike with her friends, Honami then proceeded to sit right next to him on the other side of her door that keeps them a distance apart to listen further of what else he had to say to her.

When Kiyotaka admits that he had been stopping by her door every day, waiting for her to tell him everything once she was fully ready to do so along with already being aware about her crime, Honami couldn't help but express her shock and ponders how he knew about it. Honami was egged on by Kiyotaka for the first time to confide her own troubles and weaknesses to him which she wouldn't do with her classmates and friends openly, allowing him to hear and reach her wounded heart out on a personal level. This was the special moment where Kiyotaka volunteered himself to be her door which Honami could use as an outlet to what she had kept bottled up deep inside her mind until then without having her needing to face or touch him directly. She wonders if it was fine for a pathetic criminal like her to be given the chance of forgiveness, to which Kiyotaka replied she had the right to. As a result, while laying the blame on herself for not consulting anyone prior to him, she confessed her sin to Kiyotaka of being a former shoplifter in the past and how it all began after her third year in middle school and what led to her recent action of her self-isolation. Honami even told him of how her secret was shared to her upperclassman Miyabi and how Sakayanagi had approached the former, informing her about the existence of another shoplifter that had gone through the same experience as she had. Even when afternoon classes had already begun, Kiyotaka just continued to sit there and listen to Honami voice her problems without any attempt to meaninglessly give words that would comfort, console, or even reprimand her. While so, Honami sobbed quietly on the other side of the door as he heard her. In a way, before Arisu could destroy her spirit, Honami had it broken apart by Kiyotaka first after acting constantly pushy from previous visits to now in pressuring her to yield with force. Finally coming to terms with herself as her worst enemy, she was able to successfully stand up, move forward and face head-on Arisu's relentless aggressive strategy by returning back to school and confronting Class 1-A with friends and classmates supporting her. This was the entire exchange held between Honami and Kiyotaka that took place before she completely opened her heart to her friends.

On February 24th, Honami finally came back to school again. Arisu, accompanied by Masumi and Masayoshi then promptly responded by making a move on the Class 1-B leader through an aggressive face-to-face confrontation with the former in her classroom. When Arisu stated that she had come there to save Class 1-B from their leader, Honami could not help but wonder what she meant. Meanwhile, Honami was surrounded by her fellow classmates tightly, trying their best to prevent and protect the former from getting in close contact with the Class 1-A's leader, Arisu, who had been instigating the rumors. Arisu tried to cast doubt among Honami's classmates like Ryūji to stop blindly trusting their leader and asked if it was really the right choice for them to let someone as bad as Honami to be their Class 1-B's bank, who had control over a huge amount of their private points without knowing anything about her past. In response to Arisu's words directed at her, Honami decided to distance herself from both Chihiro and Mako, reassuring the two that she would be alright without them near, to deal with Arisu up close. After closing the distance between herself and Arisu, Ichinose proceeded to face not towards the Class 1-A's leader, but to all of her classmates present in the classroom from the teacher's podium. She immediately bowed her head and apologized to the class much to the shock of her friends like Sō, revealing to them that one of the rumors spread in the past few weeks had not been as baseless as they presumed it to be.

At the same time, Honami said that the rumor of her being a criminal was after all true, which she truthfully admits by opening about her past to them which had involving shoplifting. When accused by Arisu of planning to steal Class 1-B's private points to graduate from Class A, Honami refutes that possibility ever happening after acknowledging her crime, as she was against betraying the trust and interests of her classmates. Hence, Honami adamantly refuses to give in to Arisu's demands of returning all Class 1-B's private points to her classmates and stepping down as their leader. No longer controlled by her past or afraid of Arisu's words, Honami resiliently stood up to Class 1-A's leader without running away from her crime, reasoning that because she has never been persecuted for it, she had no effective reason to atone for her past action. After overcoming her past and pushing Arisu back, Honami turns to her classmates and asks if they were still willing to accept her as their leader, to which they positively agree on her leadership to continue. Before Arisu attempts to belittle her any further, it soon came to an abrupt end when the Student Council President Miyabi and two teachers-Chie and Sae Chabashira intervene in the conflict between the two, saving Honami the trouble of clearing up all the rumors that had not just been affecting her, but the other classes as well.

Later on, after the situation with her rumors had been resolved and taken care of, Honami secretly went to Keyaki Mall during nighttime just as it was about to close down for the night. Although Valentine's Day was already over and the special corner was removed, she still went out of her way to visit a chocolate shop, and had trouble deciding on which gift to give Kiyotaka. When Honami was found by the clerk looking for Valentine's chocolate, Honami asked how the latter knew, to which he responded that her face was a dead giveaway of what she was after, seeking to give a present to the boy she liked. Honami frantically tried to deny the clerk's statement, believing that she only owed Kiyotaka a lot and needed to find him a gift of chocolate to offer as thanks for coming to her rescue. Excluding her little sister, she had never given anyone anything before in her lifetime and this chocolate was going to be her first gift to Kiyotaka which she saw as strange considering how it ended up being Valentine's chocolate. Honami asked the store clerk's recommendation on what kind of chocolate to gift Kiyotaka, to which the latter said that it is a matter of her own intuition to just go with the one she personally thinks and preferred as the best for him. With that reasoning, she was able to come to a decision and choose what chocolate to give Kiyotaka as a gift. Honami was even suggested by the clerk to attach a message card to this gift with the words, that said 'I love you' to Kiyotaka which she embarrassingly rejected, thinking it was a bad idea and figured it would only leave him feeling confused, all the while falsely convincing herself that she didn't view him in a romantic way and considered the chocolate to be nothing more than a thank you gift.

On the morning of February 25th, the day on which the school's end-of-year provisional exam was to be held, Honami spotted Kiyotaka from a distance while on her way to Class 1-B and hurriedly chased after him. After catching up to Kiyotaka, she soon approached and greeted him face-to-face with an energetic smile, asking if he had properly studied for the exam, to which the former did beforehand. When Kiyotaka compliments Honami for holding her own against Arisu, she wan't sure but thought Class 1-A's leader was right that she was just acting shameless in front of her classmates. Honami expresses her gratitude to Kiyotaka for helping her get back on her feet, realizing that without him being there for her, she would've ended up self-destructing like last year and falling apart under Arisu's attack. Furthermore, Honami reaffirmed to Kiyotaka that only she herself could confront her past moving forward with her life knowing that her sin would never go away regardless of how long she waited for it to disappear. Honami was even reassured by Kiyotaka that if she ever were about to lose sight of herself again, she could talk to him first about her problems through a one-on-one private consultation next time. Moved by Kiyotaka's words that he was willing to hear her out, Honami was happy to depend on him and accepts his help for whenever she would be in trouble with herself again.

However, as they were from opposing classes and in competition with each other, she told Kiyotaka that he may end up regretting his actions of helping her on day to which the latter figures that might be the case and asks her to keep this matter between the two of them a secret from Suzune at the very least. Ready to ensure it was their secret for only just them to know and nobody else, Honami and Kiyotaka proceed to walk together to their respective classrooms. Along the way, she meets up with her senior upperclassman Miyabi, not harboring any hate towards him whatsoever for exposing her secret to Arisu. She conveys her gratefulness to him, thanking him for allowing her a spot on the Student Council through his recruitment, promising to keep doing her best and looking forward in working with the latter. After she and the Student Council President part ways, Honami returns to Kiyotaka's side and nervously offers him her Valentines' chocolate as a gift much to her embarrassment, reasoning that this was just to show gratitude to her savior. When Honami tells him that she was not forcing herself to do give him the gift, Kiyotaka gratefully accepts her Valentines' chocolate, as she wanted him to.

During the time period following the end term exams, some time before the results were revealed, Honami would spend time merrily talking and hanging out with two of her friends while walking together. When more of Honami's other friends came running and calling out to her and her friends from behind, she turns to look and happens to naturally notice Kiyotaka's presence. Noticing how uncomfortable he was around them after observing his face, she did not call out to Kiyotaka immediately but left with her friends out of consideration for him. After she finished conversing with her friends, she parts ways with them soon after and waits alone for Kiyotaka to leave the convenience store. Once he exits from the store, she calls out to Kiyotaka, waving and teasingly telling him to come to her side if he was wondering what she was doing, standing among the trees. She wanted to have a private talk with Kiyotaka, egging him to hurry up and sit down under the tree shade, where she was at before their hiding place got discovered under the shade of leaves. Honami told Kiyotaka that she was being considerate for him since he couldn't engage in a conversation with her as long as her friends were present, hence the decision of why she was the only person here with the latter. She talks to him about the end-of-year school exam and how everyone in her class was doing well and wished the same for the other classes. Along with that, because they had already been friends with each other for quite a while, she also figured the time was ripe to get to better know Kiyotaka's background by asking questions. When it came to the point of asking which middle school Kiyotaka had gone to, he refrained from answering as it was a secret, which Honami understood and did not pry any further, realizing she had gone too far by asking personal questions to him. Hearing Kiyotaka say negative things about himself and that he was a "shady existence" in his own class, she thinks otherwise and instead praises him on his laid-back personality. This side story ends with Honami making a promise with Kiyotaka that she was going to come and hang around in his room at a later date and time, curious of how his room looked like.

Volume 10
When the next special exam- The Class Poll was announced in March, Honami made a "selfish" request to her classmates asking them all to continue to get along with each other until after school, the day before the exam, without any explanation, but everybody in her class complied with her request. Although the students of Class 1-B naturally felt a bit uneasy about it, they still faithfully honored Honami's request since they trusted her words for making that kind of decision. She even promised to them that if they did not manage to come up with a way to avoid the expulsion by the day of the vote, their class would draw three random names in a lottery to put up for expulsion. She did not bother talking about who the praise votes should go to, and just hoped the rest would play out on its own. With that simple plan as a last resort, Honami decided to set out and do everything she could to save one of her classmates from facing expulsion by most criticism votes. Noticing that she did not have the required number of private points to stop an expulsion from happening, Honami secretly went to her colleague and senior Miyabi for assistance, hoping to procure some from him as he had enough to guarantee her classmate from expulsion. However, the condition Miyabi set in exchange for him loaning the difference of private points required to Honami was for the two of them to get into a relationship by dating the former as his girlfriend. The other condition was that he was not willing to lend the points to her class if her classmates did not use the points they already had spare. These were the two conditions Miyabi put forward in exchange for his cooperation. In other words, under Miyabi's conditions, she had to scrape together each and every private point she could get her hands on, including the ones from her classmates as well. Honami puts Miyabi's deal of lending points to her on hold, explaining that she needed some time to think it over before deciding to go through with it, which he allows.

The next morning, Honami wanted to meet and talk to Kiyotaka so badly that she decided to wait for him outside the lobby until he arrived. She embarrassingly lay herself low in hiding to not surprise Kiyotaka, but act like, she just suddenly came across him by coincidence. After around ten minutes of waiting, when she finally saw Kiyotaka's back, Honami walked up to the latter and awkwardly greeted him, not sure of what topic to start off their conversation, until she brought up the recent cold weather that was unusual for the month of March. With that subject reaching its end too soon, she tries to start a new topic like if he was planning to go to school with someone to which the latter said he was not, ending that kind of talk quickly. As Kiyotaka was normally alone in the mornings while walking to school, she took the chance to walk together side by side with him. Noticing that Kiyotaka was aware she was not her usual self in front of him, she realizes that talking with the former first while thinking about Miyabi's deal firmly proved to be the right choice after all. She talks it out with Kiyotaka about how the upcoming Class Poll was the most difficult special exam she had ever face by far at the time, having to be forced to decide on who and which among her classmates and friends would be expelled.

When Kiyotaka asked her if she was planning to be the one to drop out of school in her friend's stead as the one to be expelled, Honami quickly denies it, but later gives in and says that it would be something she was willing to do. However, Kiyotaka doubts Honami's words as her face described otherwise-that she was fully considering to prepare to make such a choice if needed to. Accepting that Kiyotaka had seen through her intentions, Honami requested him to keep it a secret from her classmates, reasoning that she felt like she had to fight for her friends, and bear responsibility for the risk on her own. On the other hand, she expresses her concern for Kiyotaka and volunteers to give her praise vote to the latter even if it meant little in decreasing the probability of getting expelled, which he turns down and says it should not be wasted on someone unimportant like him. Nonetheless, she felt her vote for him was more or less justified as he was someone who she felt worthy to give the praise, to which the latter says that he would consider reaching out to her about it later when he was ready to agree to it. She finds the school's new exam to be terrible as it was telling students like herself to make the decision of having someone to be expelled, regardless of the praise votes. In the end, she couldn't tell him further about her problem with Class 1-B's situation as he was from another class and that in any type of exam, there were times where they just were not able to collaborate on matters. Their conversation eventually comes to an abrupt end when one of her upperclassmen, Nazuna Asahina, stops by to greet the two. Since Nazuna hinted at wanting to have a private discussion with Kiyotaka about something, Honami understood her senior's intentions and left his side to head to class while saying her goodbyes to him thereafter.

That night, past eleven, Honami was invited by Kiyotaka over to his room, which she found quite unusual to be contacted by him that late. Honami express her gratitude upon reaching there and takes a seat on his bed, mumbling to herself that she could feel her own heartbeat pounding uncontrollably, being alone with him in his room. She asked him why the two of them couldn't talk to each other on the phone, to which the latter reasoned that it was because he wanted to confirm some stuff with her directly face-to-face that was difficult to convey from a distance. When asked by Kiyotaka what she was planning to do for the special exam based on their morning conversation, Honami stated that she had been busy putting a lot of thought into how to overcome the test without anybody in her class being expelled. She admitted to him that there was already not much time left before having to give a definitive answer to Miyabi's deal, which she could have to accept, so she was getting a bit anxious and was hesitant at the moment to accept it. After water began to boil in the kettle, which Kiyotaka had put on the stove, she was given a cup of hot chocolate by Kiyotaka to drink as they continued their talk. Once Kiyotaka brought up the topic that she was seeking help from Miyabi, Honami acknowledged it as the truth, as it was not something she could hide from him any longer, deducing that Nazuna must have told him about the Student Council President's deal and the conditions he had set for her. She realizes how ridiculous the conditions are in so many ways, informing Kiyotaka that Miyabi had more or less prohibited her from disclosing anything about her deal to anybody including her fellow classmates or else the deal would be off the table. However, because Nazuna was the one from the president's class who had told Kiyotaka, Honami tells him that she was probably safe for the time being as she should be able to continue thinking over Miyabi's deal without any problem through her upperclassman's action. Since Class 1-B already had at about fifteen million private points, Honami told him that she only needed a little over four million left to gather the required twenty million for nullifying and preventing her classmate's expulsion. It would usually be impossible for someone like Honami to borrow points and go out with the Student Council President but since he'd considering lending her the points, it only made sense that Miyabi was in a position of power, and could demand something from her in return. If it meant having Miyabi lend his points to Honami at the cost of herself dating him in exchange, she pretty much felt it was the only guaranteed way to save everyone in Class 1-B yet doubts floated in her mind involving her genuine feelings for Kiyotaka. Although Honami was very happy to see that Kiyotaka appeared concerned for her, it was noted by him that her expression remained clouded in doubt to whether agree to Miyabi's deal or not, still hesitating and struggling mentally to reach a decision due to the inner conflict happening in her heart. Feeling troubled, Honami honestly told Kiyotaka that she wouldn't have wavered with her decision on Miyabi's deal in the first place if she hadn't had a chance to speak to him first about it beforehand. She asked for Kiyotaka's perspective concerning Miyabi's deal and what he thought she was trying to do. He believed Honami's strategy was a method available to her and her alone that could prevent a classmate from being expelled due to Class 1-B's unity and the massive amount of points saved up along with the fact that she had joined the Student Council and made connections with president Miyabi to strike a deal with him. When Honami asked him if he looked down on her for what she was about to do, Kiyotaka said that there was no need to but thinks giving up a lot of the private points she had accumulated for rescuing one of her classmates from expulsion was not worth it.

In her side story, it was revealed that though she been in the rooms of several boys from Class 1-B before, staying and hanging around alone with Kiyotaka at his room late at this hour was a first for her to experience. With the topic of their conversation coming to an end, she begins drinking the cup of hot chocolate before heading back to her room. Prior to her leaving, she asked Kiyotaka if he happened to be someone amazing, to which the latter asked her why she thought of him like that and told her that that was not something he himself was fully aware of until she had outright said it for confirmation. Hearing his response, it only served to convince Honami that Kiyotaka was more than he let on, making her realize the latter to be even more amazing than what she had initially thought of him before, if what he said was true. Because she understood that Kiyotaka was an individual who possessed great intelligence without realizing it himself, she had trouble coming up with an example or with the right words to explain how great he seemed to be. Reasonably so, that could not help but wonder why he was not a person her class should be far more cautious and wary of than both Suzune or Yōsuke Hirata who were leading his class. Considering that he was not only a threat but also a formidable enemy her class' objective to aim for Class A, she was spiritually assaulted with the feeling of something tightening inside her heart and averted her gaze from him. Understanding that she would be unable to spend time and laugh together with Kiyotaka like this anymore, Honami prepares to convince herself that it was a painful fact she had to accept and remember in the future due to the school rules of being in separate classes. Pushing that aside later, she wanted to experience the special moment they had together in his room at the time to talk to him just like a normal girl would. While pondering what the strange feeling was when she was in his presence, Honami notices that the time she spent talking to him was not the same as before but different, and could feel her heart beating softly.

On Friday, the day before the Class Poll supplementary exam, she got permission from Nagumo to reveal everything about the deal, with the slight exception of the details concerning the two dating. Later, all the students of Class 1-B stayed back after school. As Honami stood at the teacher's podium in her classroom, she addressed that she was grateful for them for fulfilling her request of getting along with one another until even that time ever since the exam was first revealed to them. Seeing the unrest and concern her classmates had with this exam, she reassured them to be at ease, vowing not let anyone of them get expelled. Yet it wasn't enough to lower her classmates' anxiety and suspense but instead only served to end up arousing their suspicion on her, to which Honami spoke again to reaffirm her certainty that she had been thinking of a plan in mind to prevent expulsion. She explained the details surrounding her strategy excluding the conditions of Miyabi's deal, planning to utilize twenty million private points to override their classmate's expulsion with the combined amount of private points from both their class and her own private dealing with the Student Council President.

For this to happen, she persuaded her classmates to give her with all the private points they had saved up till then to make the strategy effectively work so that everyone could be saved. Without even bothering with the full details of Honami's plan backed by Miyabi, the girls were the first before the boys to follow suit immediately in transferring over their points to her. Since Honami was roughly four millions short of points, Ryūji inquired her how she would make up for such a large difference, to which she revealed that her upperclassman Miyabi was willing to supply the rest of the amount required after explaining her class' situation to him. When Ryūji and his classmates became curious about the repayment plan that comes with charging the class by interest rate, Honami waved their worries down, saying it wouldn't be unreasonably high as she didn't believe anything could be replaced with one of their classmates. She told them that their class' repayment period was three months, and there was no interest required to be paid with it. As a result, the class was amazed by the Honami's strategy, and everyone was fully supportive and on board with her plan to stop the expulsion of a classmate, lavishing praises for their leader while she mentally resolved herself to protect her friends.

Later that evening, Honami contacted Miyabi on the phone about their deal, making a final confirmation of everything in preparation for tomorrow's exam as the deadline was that midnight, for her to accept it. At that point in time, it was revealed that she had 15,956,981 private points according to her phone and needed 4,043,019 millions more. Feeling uneasy, she nervously questioned if Miyabi happened to like her which he admitted to be the case as he had, after all, come up with the idea of them dating as a condition for the deal. She felt fear and anxiety creeping in and weighing on the back of her mind, whether to finally agree to their plan or instead ask for more time to think it over. Upon ending the call with Miyabi, a little after 9 PM, she spent some time alone in her room trying to deeply maintain and steel her resolve of protecting her classmates by considering the benefit of the deal without letting her feelings for Kiyotaka get in the way, all the while, in order to save her friends, telling herself in her mind that she needed to strongly put up with the one-sided relationship with Miyabi as his girlfriend. Even if Honami did not feel romantically attracted towards the president, she understood that agreeing to date him would painfully make her lose a part of herself. In the end, Honami continued waiting until the designated time of the deal to end in hopes that she could find another way out.

That night, just past 10 PM, Honami visited Kiyotaka;'s room, answering the latter's invitation to come there again for reasons not revealed till she came across both Daichi Ishizaki and Mio Ibuki who were also present in the room, before her. Quickly understanding why those two were in his room, she understood that the three of them were there together solely because their interests happened to align, considering how both sides wished to save someone important to their respective classes from expulsion by selflessly sacrificing the points they had on them without a sense of greed. Because Kiyotaka was acting as the intermediary and middleman between she and them, she was able to successfully obtain 4,043,019 million private points from Mio who had pocketed the huge amount from Kakeru. In return from accepting the exchange instead of Miyabi's deal, Honami promisingly fulfilled her end of the bargain by appealing to everyone in her class and asking them to cast their praise votes for Kakeru to guarantee the two he was no longer in danger of being expelled. Kiyotaka, who had been acting as a witness to this negotiation between Honami, Daichi, and Mio recorded the contents and transaction of their deal as evidence in the event that one side breached the agreement, confirming the trade went smoothly without any hitches. This was a sure-fire strategy proposed by Kiyotaka that was a one-of-a-kind as it could only be used once. It was made possible because both classes had what they wanted from each other as Honami, who had the intuition to amass her classmate's private points since day one in her class, and Kakeru, who had continuously hoarded private points over time courtesy of the contract he had made with Class 1-A. According to Kiyotaka, it was the ultimate power play that could only be put into action because of the shared circumstances surrounding the three. In the following volume, it was revealed that Honami had asked the class to keep the deal she made with Kakeru's Class 1-D a secret among them, which her classmates obediently followed suit.

When the Class Poll special exam reached its conclusion, the result posted on the school's bulletin board revealed that nobody in Class 1-B had gotten expelled and that Honami had received the most praise votes which were 98 overall, earning her a protection point as a reward from the exam. Unlike with the other classes where each of them lost a student respectively due to expulsion by most criticism votes, Honami's class was the only one that did not end up with anybody on their side getting expelled thanks to the twenty million private points she paid to override it. She made a phone call to Kiyotaka, informing him that Ryūji had chosen to volunteer himself to receive the criticism votes from her whole class. Once she and her classmates had cast their vote on Ryūji, it was announced that he'd be expelled once the results came out. Following that, she paid the full twenty million points and negated his expulsion. Although there were some difficulties, everyone in her class managed to get through the exam safely. She expresses that losing points was merely temporary as they could still be regained, compared to losing a friend which was permanent as it was impossible to recover a lost classmate. Nevertheless, due to the significant loss of private points, Honami;s class was now financially in a worse condition compared to Kakeru's, for the time being till April, when the private points would be distributed for the month. Despite this, the fact that her classmates were safe, Honami couldn't help but express her uneasiness on the possibility that there may be more, similar exams like the Class Poll from then on but vowed to continue fighting for her classmates and their class goal.

Due to Kiyotaka's intervention by providing her a better alternative than the deal suggested by Miyabi, Honami became indebted to the former as she now owed him a favor, to pay back. Honami conveyed her gratitude to him saying that his deal was like a lifesaver to her as she personally did not want to go through something as painful as dating Miyabi, saying it would have been something she'd regret later if she had accepted the deal and dated the president. Because Kiyotaka's assistance, Honami felt relieved from the bottom of her heart-that not only did she save her classmate from dropping out, but also saved herself the trouble of going out with Miyabi as well. If not for either Miyabi's deal or Kiyotaka's help of allowing negotiation with Daichi and Mio to give her the points, she had had two possible plans in mind to pick from that she considered carrying out. The first was that she would sacrifice herself to be expelled, while the second was to hold a lottery by fairly drawing lots to pick a random student among them to be expelled no matter their talents, without them needing to play favorites and decide. Honami had preferred the second option as the first option was not really a choice one can make as she wanted to stay and fight to the bitter end. Honami explained to Kiyotaka that since nobody in her class actually wanted to be expelled and did not want to see their friends disappear either, her classmates agreed to have this plan set up beforehand if she could not find a deal to gather the four million private points. Fortunately, it never came to pass, thanks to Kiyotaka's help. She expressed her thanks to Kiyotaka but the latter said that her gratitude should be directed to Kakeru and his friends instead of him for willing to negotiate with her. With that out of the way, the two soon ended their call and hung up, with Honami promising that they could talk again later.

Volume 11
When the Event Selection Exam was first announced, Honami had been genuinely interested in battling against Class A. With the upcoming exam closing in, Honami and Daichi were contacted by Kiyotaka before school ended for the day, telling the two that he wanted to have Suzune's Class 1-C be the one to compete against Class 1-A in this test under the guise of his class leader's supposed request to her. Since she owed Kiyotaka a favor for helping her beat the previous exam, Honami conceded and agreed to his request, with the support of Daichi who had had plans to challenge Class 1-B anyways. Reasonably so, it was decided that she had to arrange a match with Kakeru's Class D instead of Class A as Kiyotaka wanted it to be, regardless of whichever side pulled the slip with a red circle that allowed them to choose an opponent. During the day of deciding the class matchups for the Event Selection Exam, Honami was selected by her classmates to become the commander for the competition. Honami and her homeroom instructor Chie Hoshinomiya arrived at the multipurpose room, like the the commanders and their respective homeroom teachers had been instructed to, within the special building that served as the central headquarters for the special exam. After Tomonari Mashima explained the instructions about how to proceed forward with the Event Selection Exam, it was determined by Satoru Kaneda who drew the red circle slip that Honami would be facing off against Kakeru's Class 1-D, as they had planned. Before this took place, Honami naturally was a little bit cautious about the identity of the opposing commanders she would be dueling against. However, when Satoru showed up as the commander of Class 1-D after the class matchups were decided between the two, she probably ended up dismissing the possibility of Kakeru ever making his return. In her head, the process of elimination had happened, concluding that the special exam would be a competition between the students like herself who had gotten their hands on protection points, from the previous special exam.

At the start of lunch break, on Thursday, Honami accompanied by Ryūji tried to calm down her classmate Sō who appeared visibly upset with Kakeru's Class 1-D, using a persuasive tone to convince that their action was just merely a coincidence. Once the Ayanokōji Group came across her and her classmates arguing, Honami openly invited them out for lunch with her friends. When Ryūji interjected on why she would offer something like that to them, Honami briefly explained that their classes were not even competing with each other during this exam. In the end, the group couldn't refuse her invitation and accepted due to how energetically welcoming Honami had been as she walked together with them to a nearby café to hang out at, while avoiding eye contact with Kiyotaka along the way. She even went out of her way to consider paying for whatever the Ayanokōji Group chose to have as lunch but the latter declined out of consideration for her class which would likely be low on private points. To prevent further speculation from Kiyotaka and his friends about why Sō had been angry, she judged that it was better to be upfront with them, telling the Ayanokōji Group the details of what had been happening to their classmates as of late. She explained to Ryūji that there was no reason for their class to keep quiet concerning the matter as it wouldn't make any difference even if her classmates believed in the possibility that someone from Kiyotaka's Class 1-C was involved in this to which Sō agreed with her point over the latter. To Honami, if she let the Ayanokōji Group leave after having seen Sō's angry outburst, she was aware that rumors would begin to spread by them about the scene as it could end up signaling to Class 1-D that their aggressive strategy was working on her classmates. Hence, Honami revealed to them that ever since the exam started, members of Class 1-D like Albert Yamada had recently been targeting a small fraction of her fellow classmates in different places wherever they went, without using violence but an intimidation and stalking tactic.

As to why Kakeru's Class 1-D was going to great lengths to repeatedly harass, pester, and follow her classmates around, Honami figured that perhaps the former was looking to put pressure on them and wear them down for as long as they could until the competition between the two classes began. Ryūji backed Honami's reasoning further with his analysis, that because this type of exam played out in their class' favor at the most basic level, it was not unreasonable to say that Kakeru's Class 1-D would continue to harass their classmates right up till the limit of the school rules allowed them to. She and Ryūji suspected that rather than the commander of Class 1-D being Satoru, it was likely the handiwork of Daichi for coming up with such a strategy. Honami suggested to both Ryūji and Sō that they would have to maintain their unity by continuing to focus their efforts and time on working together, choosing the right ten events, and do their very best on the day of the exam. Instead of creating countermeasures against Class 1-D led by Satoru, Honami looked to overcome her opponent's tactics by not making it seem if their strategy had any negative effects and consequences on herself or her classmates while they consistently planned ahead. In other words, it was Honami's intention to use the strategy of relying on the strength of her Class 1-B to make it through the Event Selection Exam and beat Class 1-D, going face-to-face with the truth, without being deceived by false information. With that said, Honami told them to keep the matter of Sō's outburst a secret so that it does not spread any further than only their group alone, who knew about it which they complied on doing. With the discussion coming to an end, Honami thanked them and then took the opportunity to lock eyes with Kiyotaka for the first and only time throughout their lunch. She casually brushed a strand of pink hair away from her face to blow a faint scent of her new citrus perfume his way in order to captivate him. Not long after following such gesture, she quickly looked away from him, returning her gaze directly back to her classmates.

A week later, on a morning before 7 AM, Honami woke up early and finished her walk to school. Once she was back, Honami stumbled across Kiyotaka putting his White Day gift in her mailbox and awkwardly greeted him when he was done with doing that, talking to him without meeting his eyes, keeping her gaze fixed at her locker. Seeing her reaction, Kiyotaka moved out of the way so that Honami could go to her mailbox and check her mail. Reluctantly, Honami nervously accepted Kiyotaka's gift realizing how serious he was in giving it to her while apologizing, saying that this unexpected situation was not something she was used to experiencing before. To change the topic and remove the awkward atmosphere between them, Honami was asked by Kiyotaka whether anything new had happened with that problem concerning Kakeru's Class 1-D they had talked about last Thursday. Honami told him that she had gone and questioned everyone immediately after they parted ways since that day, but found that the only victims to Class 1-D's attack were the three people Sō had told her about. However, that quickly began to change when the following day (Friday), she described how the number of victims tripled all of a sudden to 9, thereafter increasing by six. Last day, she got reports saying that three more boys and three more girls were being followed around or harassed just like the others, now totaling of around nine people overall been affected by Class 1-D's harassment. She listed her classmates' stalkers being Daichi, Kyōgo Komiya, Albert, Reo Kondō, Mio, and Kishita, planning to pursue her investigation further on Monday. When Kiyotaka asked her what she would do if the problem got larger, Honami admitted that there was not much for her class to take action against Class 1-D unless their stalkers committed to violence physically. She hoped her classmates do their very best on putting up with their enemy's aggressive tactics, while providing the victims with emotional support. Seeing how quiet and lost in thought Kiyotaka was, Honami uneasily asked him if there was something wrong with her approach to which he believed everything should be fine considering the possible implications of Class 1-D's strategies on them.

On the other hand, she revealed to Kiyotaka that her class had finished deciding on what the ten events would be for them after taking into account a solid grasp on their classmates' strengths and weaknesses, finalizing everything the day before after mixing in some possible events that they thought Class 1-D might not be good at. When Kiyotaka told her that he was leaving all the preparations to Suzune including his duties as the commander for his class, she expresses her shock at the amount of faith he had in Suzune, handling his duty so casually. Honami starts to believe that Kiyotaka was implying he could handle everything without any problem, no matter what events or rules Suzune ended up choosing for him. Not fully convinced by Kiyotaka's explanation of becoming commander and relaying his duties to his classmate, her doubts were soon put to rest when she learned from him that it was Suzune's idea of having his class go up against Class 1-A since it gave them the best chance of winning. Having reached the end of the conversation, Honami and Kiyotaka stood together waiting for the elevator to pick them up. Realizing that she had forgotten to use her citrus perfume after having her unanticipated encounter with Kiyotaka in the morning, Honami regretted not preparing for the moment beforehand, as the former continuously twirled a strand of her pink hair with her index finger while standing next to him. Not long afterward, the two of them boarded the elevator, which promptly arrived on the fourth floor first, where Kiyotaka's room was located. As soon as he stepped out of the elevator, Kiyotaka turned around and locked eyes with Honami for a brief moment, catching her off guard by surprise, causing her to frantically bid her goodbyes and setting off to move to her floor. It was described that in the sudden panic, Honami began to mash the close button several times over to quickly shut the door to the elevator where she was in to escape his eyes on her and his gaze on her much to the former's nervousness around him. Later, on the day before the exam, she learned some of her classmates had gotten into a dispute with Class 1-D, which had negatively impacted them the next day. Although a complaint had been filed to the school, neither Honami's class or Class 1-D had been penalized as it was nothing more than a verbal argument between the classes.

On the morning of the day of the Event Selection Exam, Honami headed over to the special building and went to the designated location where commanders and their homeroom teachers, including herself, had to assemble. There, while waiting outside the multipurpose room for all commanders to gather, she was met with Arisu who proceeded to have an idle chatter with her before Kiyotaka arrived and they simultaneously greeted him. Since they still had to wait on the last commander to arrive which was Satoru, Honami continued her conversation with Arisu who thought it was possible for Class 1-B to reach Class A. When Honami was called by Arisu to be lucky to have a weak Class 1-D led by Satoru as her opponent for the special exam where victory was nonexistent to them, she said she did not think that to be the case believing they were still tough adversaries that she shouldn't underestimate. Seeing how slightly inconsiderate and unsympathetic Arisu's words were about her confident attitude, Honami tries to not let it get to her head saying that she had also come there prepared with a strategy, ready to win against Class 1-D as the exam had Class 1-B's strength which was unity and cooperation, which played an important part.

The moment Kakeru, rather than his classmate Satoru arrived at the scene of their discussion, Honami could not help but be left shockingly dumbfounded by his sudden appearance which she was not expecting at that point in time since she had heard he had supposedly stepped down as class leader a while ago after losing to Suzune's class and falling to Class 1-D. Feeling a sense of unrest growing on her mind after seeing Kakeru appear before her, Honami demanded why he was there instead of Satoru to which he states that because his classmate was absent, he would be substituting himself as commander in his stead. Learning that Satoru would not participate in any events as he was absent in the exam as penalty of being commander while Kakeru was present, she realizes that this was his way of throwing her off. Since Kakeru was in a disadvantageous position with his back up against the wall, where he did not possess a protection point to cancel his expulsion along with the absence of Satoru which worsened things for him, she worries that this may be a bad omen to her class knowing how underhanded he was willing to go through to secure a win. With all the commanders finally present, she and the rest of them proceeded to enter the multipurpose room to begin the exam and the class competitions.

While Class 1-A and Suzune's Class 1-C were off competing somewhere else, Honami silently watches her Class 1-B emerge victorious in the fourth event but still felt distraught that something was amiss due to Kakeru's perfect composure despite being on the losing end. Out of the four events that had been drawn in the lottery till then, three of them had been suggested by Honami's Class 1-B. However, those four events hadn't ended up playing out to her class's advantage as expected, when it was revealed that the score was tied with two wins apiece between her side and Class 1-D led by Kakeru. During the third event that happened prior, she bore witness to her Class 1-B's defeat at their own game that was supposed to have played in their favor, being none other than the Chemistry Test itself which they lost to Class 1-D on. It was said that Honami lost her presence of mind ever since her defeat in the Chemistry event. She felt distressed by how some of her classmates were not participating in the events on time due to falling terribly sick, experiencing stomachaches along with showing symptoms of mental instability. She asks Class 1-A's teacher Tomonari Mashima if her classmates returned from the bathroom yet but the latter replied they had not, much to her own unrest and uneasiness increasing, unable to suppress the anxiety that was kicking in. She desperately tried to regain her confidence, telling herself that, as long as she continued to fight hard for her classmates' sake during this exam, Class 1-B wouldn't come out losing.

When Kakeru lay the suspicions on Honami for why her classmates are not present during the middle of an event when it is about to begin, she can't find a good reason to refute his reasons even though she had no involvement in them being missing. After the next event was revealed to be Karate suggested by Class 1-D, she had already tasked three of her classmates: Sumida Makoto, Watanabe Norihito, and Yonezu Haruto with practicing that game ahead of time but they only understood the rules of the bout for the most part. As a result of the fifth event, her Class 1-B suffered two staggering back-to-back losses where it has been one of the quickest and most decisive ones so far. Honami tried to make use of her powers as the commander to call for a rematch, but it still didn’t manage to change anything whatsoever about their defeat as the result remain the same like last time. At this point in time, she quietly realize that Class 1-B didn't have any more leeway left because if they were to end up sustaining a loss in the sixth event as well, they would lose the entire special exam. Once it is revealed that the sixth event happens to be Judo which is one of Class 1-D's strengths, Honami lost hope of Class 1-B ever coming out on top in this test. Since her one classmate she selected to face Albert in the Judo event wasn't around, Honami couldn’t even make the choice to nominate someone else from her class anymore while the time ticks away until they automatically lost the match by default. The exam came to an end as it is set in stone that the overall win-loss ratio is 2:5 for Honami's Class 1-B, which in turn made her lose not only her protection point alone but a lot of class points too. During the following volume, it was said that in the week after the exam, her classmates would all advised Honami to appeal to the school multiple times by filing a complaint, but she chose not to.

Volume 11.5
After the end of year's Event Selection Exam, the results of that match with Kakeru's class were still weighing on Honami's heart ever since that day her class suffer a miserable defeat by losing badly against them. In the morning, before 8 AM, Honami woke up early and use her phone to send Kiyotaka a text message of their plans for the day, offering an invitation to meet him and Suzune sometime during their spring break. Particularly, she wishes to hold a talk with Suzune and Kiyotaka about both their classes' final examination of their 1st year, the Event Selection Exam. Although she have already collected some information regarding the exam result, Honami still prefers to go out of her way to further know more about the details of their 3 wins and 4 losses against Class A from them face-to-face. Since they're becoming 2nd-year students very soon, Honami had made it her intention of arranging such meeting was to also focus on the status of their classes' cooperative relationship as an alliance moving forward. When she is notified by Kiyotaka that he and Suzune are available at any time, it was decided between Honami and them that their meeting would occur at 10 AM within the morning, at the cafe on the 2nd floor of Keyaki Mall.

Before the appointed time of the meeting, Honami arrived seemingly early at the entrance of the cafe more than ten minutes ahead of schedule while waiting on Kiyotaka and Suzune to come and reach out to her. This time around unlike last time, she had readily cover herself under the scent of citrus perfume upon use beforehand since Kiyotaka will also be present with Suzune during their arranged meeting place. When the two arrive while Kiyotaka being the first to call out to her, Honami lied to them saying she just recently reach Keyaki Mall herself and chose to put the entire cost of their food expenses on her tab. When Kiyotaka asked her out of concern if she will be financially fine with handling the whole payment by herself, Honami reassures him that it isn't a problem for her as she still have three thousand private points left in her deposit. As Kiyotaka expresses his curiosity of how she got this much to go by when their points are supposed to have been reduced to zero, she revealed to him that this money she has in her possession was after selling her precious hairdryer to Class 1-A's Nishikawa. Honami told him that she needed to sell one of her belongings so she could survive in March. She had also convinced her classmates and friends to do the same as her until April when private points are redistributed to them. With that said, she tells Kiyotaka not to hesitate on ordering whatever he wants with her private points, gently pushing his back to go ahead and savor this treat from her. Once the three of them grabbed their food from the pickup area, she and the two proceed to leave the counter to sit on the seats in the corner side of the cafe.

As they eat, she depressingly talks to them about how Kakeru has completely outsmarted her with his unpredictable strategy which was the major reason for Class 1-B's defeat in the Event Selection Exam. Upon recalling the way she lost to Kakeru's class, she heave multiple sighs at herself deeply and tells the two that Class 1-B's failure to beat the exam was due to her lacking the ability as the commanding tower to adapt to an unexpected situation. Feeling heavily responsible for her class's loss, Honami admits that at the beginning of the exam, she and her classmates thought that the commanding tower of Kakeru's class was most likely presumed to be Satoru. However, when it is revealed that Satoru wasn't the commander all along, she said it messed up their class's rhythm and strategy to the point that it negatively affected the outcomes of their scores going forward while they were dealing with Kakeru's tactics rather than him. In other words, while thinking about how her class would square off against Satoru before the start of the class competition, she explained that Kakeru's sudden appearance in his classmate's place was what causes her state of mind to fall into chaos at the sight of him being secretly involved in this exam without her noticing until he revealed himself. After which, she then proceeded to ask Suzune about the excellent results her class were able to successfully achieve, falsely believing Kiyotaka's words that his class leader was the one who requested the right to target and fight Class 1-A. When Suzune sincerely apologizes for not letting Class 1-B have a chance to battle Class 1-A in that special exam, Honami said that was not her fault to begin with as it is her own responsibility. Hoping to learn from Class 1-B's defeat under her leadership, Honami understood that she herself needs to deeply reflect on figuring out a more stable strategy that could lead them to victory next time.

From there, Honami began exchanging key information with Suzune about the different battle strategies each one of the two classes used on their respective opponents to each other in detail of how she had failed. Particularly, Honami explained the events that she chose for Class 1-B and the events that Kakeru pick for his class along with the order of what events were chosen, how her opponent went about doing them through a method of brute force that plays to their strengths, and where she won and where she lost. When Suzune inquires how Class 1-B even lost to Kakeru's class in the first place despite drawing four of their favored events yet two of them happen to end up in their losses, Honami states the reason for why she was unable to excel them is because her classmates were attacked and pressured mentally through their enemy's tactics of aggressive stalking and intimidation. Honami added further, making mentions of how several of the competitors from her Class 1-B failed to exert their full strength in those events due to sudden physical discomfort on the day of the exam. When Honami states how she remember her classmates feeling unwell on the day prior to the exam that they bumped into Daichi at the karaoke place, Suzune questions her why she did not bother to report Kakeru's trap to the school. Honami felt it wouldn't matter or do her class any good by addressing the issue with a complaint. Honami was offer assistance by Suzune to investigate, but she declines reasoning that there is no concrete evidence that indicate Kakeru's class did something to Class 1-B and wants to use this incident as an important lesson. She states how her class still have some ample time left to restore their strength and adopt future countermeasures in the event that such incident may happened again during the crucial periods of both her 2nd and 3rd years. She explains to Suzune that her class is taking their losses in the exam seriously through deciding to make good use of this failure, and not repeat the same mistakes twice in the future.

After Honami is done explaining Class 1-B's strategy and what happened in the class battle between herself and Kakeru on her side, she then listens to the two explain their class's strategy against Arisu and Class 1-A from their end. Although she already knew about the results of their battle, Honami believes it was still a great showing of power by his class despite them not emerging victorious in the exam. The reason for that is because it proves to Honami that Kiyotaka's classmates besides Suzune are slowly getting stronger over the course of time, to the point where they could no longer be taken lightly anymore. Hence, Suzune informs Honami that her class is putting an end to their partnership agreement with Class 1-B as an alliance, which the latter was already expecting it to happen and is mentally prepared for. She considers and evaluate how closely small the gap between the two classes are now in terms of class points along with the fact that Suzune's class has gain the most points the fastest than everyone else throughout the year. Due to this, Honami instantly realizes it is only a matter of time that they will no longer be cooperating as allies and soon return to being enemies next year in order to compete for the position of Class A.

Although Suzune was ready to dissolve the cooperative relationship between their two classes, Honami disagree at the mere thought of doing so right away as she does not want to see their class alliance gone for good and wishes to continue maintaining it. For that reason, Honami attempts to close the topic by wanting to discuss this again at a later date when the differences in class points between their two classes reduce some more but Suzune refuses to let such subject slide so easily and insisted that their partnership ceased. Witnessing Suzune's resolve to reach Class A no matter what, Honami couldn't help but feel shaken up by her declaration as she was unable to change her mind. After she quietly accepted her statement with conviction as their cooperation was a temporary truce, Honami look at she and Kiyotaka in the eyes one final time, stating to Suzune that their classes are enemies moving forward in the 2nd year without a shadow of any hatred or bitterness in what was said by her. Upon firmly shaking each other's hands, Suzune and Kiyotaka then part ways with her thereafter when they're finish with their morning meals. Meanwhile, Honami decided to stay behind after they leave, sitting by herself in the cafe during the meantime to contemplate on what to do next for the day, such as calculating the strength of Suzune's class and sorting out her feelings.

During noon time where it started to rain heavily with the precipitation exceeding 30 mm, Honami have already exit the cafe but chose to remain in Keyaki Mall to continue thinking and reflecting over her thoughts since the meeting with Suzune and Kiyotaka. Within Kiyotaka's range of sight from a distance, she appears alone leaving in the middle of a rainy weather without an umbrella. Before long, Honami slowly walk forward in the torrential rain, embracing the fact that she would be wetly soaked in water droplets. Rather than go to the path of the dormitory area, she instead heads out along to the opposite direction of that location, which is towards the school. At some point, Honami eventually stopped moving and stood still where she is at, before then turning her attention to the sky above her, restlessly lost in her own train of thoughts until Kiyotaka called out to her. Although he told her she will catch a cold from continuing to stand in the downpour, Honami kindly tells Kiyotaka to head back first before her. Honami reasons that she would like to see herself get soaked a bit in the rain water and does not mind the possibility of catching a cold, feeling the former had every reason for wanting and deserving to be drenched in that poor weather. According to Kiyotaka, he thinks that Honami is getting soaked by the rain in order to try and distract herself from whatever she was feeling about her problems.

Sensing that something was off with the way she phrase such reasoning, Kiyotaka lowered and closes his umbrella letting himself be covered in the same rain as Honami and standing by her side much to her shock. Honami could not ignore his peculiar actions, worriedly inquiring why he would do that to himself to which Kiyotaka said he just simply enjoy getting wet standing in the rain like her. Confused by his responses, she insisted Kiyotaka hurried home since he has an umbrella which he said it won't make a difference if he's already this wet from the rain. Understanding that he will not bother to leave her behind if she stays in the rain, Honami eventually succumb to his words and decided to head back to the dormitory together with Kiyotaka. In spite of going along with him, she refuses to take his umbrella offer to her by Kiyotaka because using it now while she is already drenched feels pointless in the end. While walking back to the direction of the dormitory, Honami heave a deep sigh on the fact that she always end up showing her weak sides to him, thinking it is so lame of her to let Kiyotaka discover her in this sad state and situation. Honami thought by being strong and capable in the face of others, she could come off as being decisive and resilient but wasn't able to successfully do that around Kiyotaka which unnerved her. When he reasons that perhaps she is showing her weaknesses to him is because she happened to trust him, Honami didn't disagree but thinks it to be the apparent truth, accepting Kiyotaka's words to have meaning towards her action. Realizing that Kiyotaka is indeed trustworthy to her, Honami apologizes to the former upon learning why he is always by her side whenever she is depressed and letting him hear her complaints without concealing them. When Kiyotaka volunteers to hear out her complaints all she wants like last time when she feels trouble, Honami shakes her head at the thought of allowing this, thinking it is not okay to show off her weakness and lame side like that.

After a few minutes had passed by, she and Kiyotaka were able to reach the dormitory. Before stepping foot into the lobby, Honami requests Kiyotaka to go on ahead to his room first while she plans to remain at the entrance to think and reflect on things to which the latter refuses to leave her by herself. Surprised and confused by his unyielding defiant attitude, Honami strongly tells Kiyotaka once more she doesn't want to return to her room, fearing that that thinking alone in there will only make her become more depressed than she already is. Left with no other choice but to use a different method on Honami, Kiyotaka coaxes her to hang out in his living room where she can have someone to talk to such as him without feeling too depressed. Though she tries to turn down his invitation due to herself being wet, Kiyotaka refute saying that the same could be said with himself and won't leave her side until she accepts. In the end, upon seeing how stubborn he is around her, she decided to give up and accept his invite. With that argument settled, both she and Kiyotaka then proceeded to enter the dormitory's lobby area together and shortly afterward boarded the elevator. Not long after the two ascended up to the fourth floor, Honami follows Kiyotaka inside his room, which he guided her to sit on the floor while he turned on the heat function of the air conditioner to dry her clothes and lower the cold temperature. At the same time, also handing Honami a towel he took out from his cabinet that she could use to wipe her wet clothes clean with as Kiyotaka readily begins the consultation with her without delay.

During the consultation, she openly revealed to Kiyotaka what she was thinking about, what she was worrying about, along with everything related to her troubles. Initially, she was reluctant and wanted to reject his proposal to help her, fretting on the fact of how she has been overly reliant on him for dealing with her own problems as of late. Honami understood that she herself received the most help from him more than anyone else and couldn't bear the thought of asking for his emotional support twice, thinking of how showing her weakness to Kiyotaka will be unsightly. Though she tries to sway him to stop with assisting the former as he should've understand her very well personally, Kiyotaka shows no intention of stopping as he insisted on hearing out her own troubles as Class 1-B's leader. Upon listening to how far he will go out of his way for her, Honami covered her face with the towel, refusing to be honest with herself and let him read her expression. When Kiyotaka said it was a mistake on his part for forcibly and forcefully asking her to reveal her thoughts if she is unable to trust him, Honami denies that and admits he is the most trusted person to her more than anyone she is friends with. Being reminded about her own past experience with naively giving away her secret to Arisu by Kiyotaka, Honami tells him that she wouldn't want such a terrible problem to happen to her ever again like last time. Once Honami becomes more aware of her situation she is in, he stops pursuing further on talking about that topic and drop this kind of discussion aside for her sake.

While Honami no longer suffer from a crisis again for the same reasons as before, she told Kiyotaka that it will be different predicament to her when it involves him who she is dealing with. Hearing this from Honami, Kiyotaka reminds the fact that he is not her classmate but her class's enemy to which the former states she does not want to use such word so easily especially towards him who she harbors the biggest trust for. Although Kiyotaka called himself being an enemy the truth, Honami thinks otherwise when she is unable to accept what he said as true, going so far as to rephrase her sentence stating that while he is not an ally anymore, he can still be deemed trustworthy regardless of what happened to their class alliance. In the meantime, Honami receives a cup of hot cocoa from Kiyotaka just as they done wrapping up that part of their consultation. When the heavy rain finally subsided and the sunset glow began to set in, Honami watches as this scenery unfold for a little bit before then turning her attention back on him with faint smile. After a while, Honami opened herself up to Kiyotaka and slowly started to talk about her feelings towards Class 1-B. Honami admits that when she was first assigned to Class 1-B and met her new classmates and friends there, she was absolutely confident in her victory at first. Honami acknowledges her own conceitedness back when some people called her out on it, but she figures her confidence was due to being blessed with excellent companions and how that feeling has not changed even now. Honami felt the only miscalculation was her turning out to be the leader, believing that if only she took better action in making good decisions, Class 1-B would definitely be in possession of more points than what they have since the end of the Event Selection Exam.

After speaking with Suzune during that meeting, Honami told Kiyotaka that his class leader along with Arisu and Kakeru has grown a lot as a person and class leader throughout their first year, which she could not say the same for herself. Feeling pessimistic after having lost some of her self-confidence from the match with Kakeru in the recent exam, Honami nervously asked questions to Kiyotaka about her abilities, inquiring him on his honest opinions whether she can still hope to stand a chance of winning in future class competitions after their second year starts. Rather than being given immediate answers, Honami was vaguely encouraged by Kiyotaka to continue fighting together alongside the classmates she needs to put her trust on, telling her to never stop advancing no matter what happiness, sadness, and hardships she may end up experiencing. Hearing Kiyotaka's word of advice, Honami can't help but doubtfully wonder if this will be her answer, uncertain if she still be able to think like that one year later. Becoming extremely uneasy and anxious, Honami admits she is fearfully afraid to find out what he will tell her in a year from where they are now. Honami could not bring herself to accept that as an answer to her question. In addition to that, she would weakly and confusedly mumble questions while looking down at herself on what she should or can do next. When Kiyotaka approaches Honami and sat by her side, she reacted to his sudden action and lifted her head back up to see his face immediately, unable to turn her gaze away from his eyes but look at them directly.

Remaining dazed by Kiyotaka's movement on her, she lets him have his way with her anyway without running away from it, allowing him to lightly caressed her wet hair, cheek, and lips one by one. Because of Kiyotaka's physical touch, she felt her body's trembling lessened and soon her shaking lips had also calmed down, leaving Honami to feel awestruck at how strange and mysterious he is to be able to do that. While staring at him with her moist eyes and not bothering to escape the stroke of his palm, Honami is asked to meet up and talk with Kiyotaka again next year on this very same day much to her confusion, inquiring him about the meaning behind that question. After he explains why, she understood that it will only just be between the two and nobody else but themselves around for the private one-on-one meeting. Kiyotaka then took his distance from Honami and tells her that in the coming year, he doesn't want her to feel trapped by confusion and uncertainty and she should instead keep moving forward with her life like how she had done so far. She feels unsure of accepting his promise due to concerns of what will become of her and for their two classes. However, when Honami was told by Kiyotaka that it does not not matter to him what will happened then and is only interested in seeing the change she brought to herself after, the former decided to accept his promise with her bright, cheerful demeanor returning to life. Due to her renewed resolve, not only will she wait until the promised day arrives to hear the answer he could not tell her this time around, Honami also confirmed and promised to him that she will go on to fight with all her strength and overtake Class 1-A during their second year.

On a certain day during spring break vacation, with the second semester just around the corner, Honami visited a tree area filled with cherry blossoms that are blooming due to the season moving away from winter and had herself sat besides it. There while sitting on her own right beneath the cherry blossom tree, she spotted Kiyotaka within her vicinity and cheerfully called out to him in a positive tone, waving her hand at him to get his undivided attention on her to where she is at. When Kiyotaka asked about how her day has been, Honami informs him that she recently gone to school in order to check out the student council for a bit since her fellow second year students in that group said it will get busier from here on out. After handling her tasks as a member of the student council, Honami left school and on her way back home to the dormitory, decided to do some flower viewing along the way and hence, explains why she is present in this place before him. Meanwhile, she happily look right above the sky and expresses her elation at the possibility that the small flowers of cherry blossoms, Omuro Ariake do in fact exist as it is intertwining in front of her. Not long after the two meet and greet each other, Honami tells Kiyotaka there is a perfect spot she found where they can hang out at to enjoy the beautiful view, prompting him to sit next to her. Shortly thereafter, he sat down at the spot beside her by her side to watch this pretty landscape taking shape, looking straight up ahead at the sky in amazement as the cherry petals dance and scatter around in the air. As they temporarily ignored the upcoming class exam that is soon to appear during the start of their second year for this special moment, Honami admits to him how nice it is every now and then for them to appreciate and participate in a flower viewing from time to time. While Honami and Kiyotaka both continued gazing up at the beauty of the cherry blossoms in the sky, the two went on to talk together about the most casual of things as the side story about her concludes.

On the final day of her spring break vacation, Honami met up with two of her fellow classmates being Chihiro and Mako as they made it their plan to go to the Keyaki Mall together as a group. Before the two accompany her, Honami felt refresh as it had been such a long vacation in which she would often frequently spent most of her time off shutting herself in her living room and thinking alone. Seeing how it has been a long while since they last walk side by side with each other, Mako expresses her concern for the health of Honami to which the latter said she is feeling fine and well. Afterward, Honami apologizes to Mako for having to turn down her invitation so many times, stating that she had been busy thinking about strategies for the second year and how to proceed from there. Honami would then be suggested by Chihiro who was quietly listening on her conversation with Mako that she should consider thinking and discussing with them as well rather than do it by herself. Hearing how worry they are for her, Honami reassures her two friends that she will make sure to consider relying on them both, telling her classmates that if something bad were to happen to her, she will talk to them about it. Although she said her true feelings to her classmates, she in her mind did not want the two to appear concern for her or be the one to share troubles to them unnecessarily. Because Class 1-B was losing a lot thanks to her bad decision during the final exam, Honami understood that she needs to choose her words very carefully and precisely while talking to them without causing worry from them by what she said. Reasonably so, Honami told them the vacation she had on spring break got her fully charged and one hundred percent ready to tackle the next exam.

Reflecting back on her whole spring break, Honami acknowledges that her vacation with Kiyotaka was unique and one of a kind as it had given her new energy that revitalize her fighting spirit unlike anything she been through before. Though it was a bit different from the previous ones where she usually went out and played with her friends, she did considered her time spent with meeting and talking to him to be a far more remarkable and meaningful experience than being with them. Recalling how her depression vanish from spending time alone with Kiyotaka and what had transpired on that day whereby exposing her weaknesses to him in his room, Honami felt the hot warmth starts to grow on her chest and thought that she can still put up a fight against the other class leaders. Due to Kiyotaka for not allowing the worst case scenario to happen to her where she lost the will to fight onward in future class competitions and exams, Honami believes she would not be standing strong with her friends without him. While sorting out her feelings, Honami thinks of Kiyotaka not only as a treasured friend but also someone who is more than very important to her as well. When she could not bring a part of herself to muster up the next words to appear in her mind, Honami understood she cannot forget the fact that the two of them are part of different classes respectively and could no longer mingle and meet with each other anymore after their class alliance is dissolved. Nevertheless, she starts pondering over the possible chances of herself and Kiyotaka being in the same class together, understanding that if he was on her side then all her worries would be gone from her mind and she could confidently challenge Suzune's class without feeling hesitate to do so.

Upon realizing that her thoughts are taking a turn for the worst, she frantically shook her head to dismiss the possibility of being with Kiyotaka altogether, refusing to dwell on it any further. After doing this to calm down her feelings and keep it buried deep within herself, Honami was worriedly called out by Mako for the strange head-shake movement she did a moment ago to which the former apologizes about and that it was nothing. Because she was becoming too relaxed around her close friends, Honami decided to get her act together and dispel her thoughts on Kiyotaka for the time being as her classmates were looking forward to meeting her in the Keyaki Mall. Honami figures she will be able to have some more proper time to think about it later once the situation has cooled down. Moving alongside her friends to their meeting place, she resolved to keep herself keenly focus on the first period of their class's 2nd year for now. Honami recognizes that even though they are still in Class 1-B at the moment and have almost no more leeway left, she intend not to remain on standby regardless but follow through with the same goal she had retain ever since the entrance ceremony from last year when they all stood line in line for. This side story ends with Honami anticipating that a new war will come for Class 1-B, beginning tomorrow where they're now officially second-year students.

2nd Year Volume 1
Starting April 1st of her 2nd year, it was revealed that Class 2-B, led by Honami, has about 542 class points overall and following only just barely behind it was Class 2-C, led by Kakeru, with 540 class points in total so far.

During the Partner Exam, Honami put forward a request to the school about holding an official meet-and-greet event with the first-years for her Class 2-B to manage. After the school accepted her request by allowing her to do as she pleases, Honami posted a message in the global chat the school had provided for students to have in their phone app, making complete use of it to notify the new first-years about the meeting she been preparing to arrange between her Class 2-B and them. According to the post made by her, Honami had her message centered on about how she was given permission by the school to hold a meet-and-greet gathering for the first and second-year students in the gymnasium for the day from 4:00 to 5:00 PM, asking them to participate alongside her class if they can spare some free time on their end. Though a majority of the students did not go because of confidence in their academic abilities, only a handful of less than half of the first-year students invited to this gym agreed to her invitation to join Class 2-B in the meet-and-greet event. As the person responsible for making the meet-and-greet event possible, Honami later attended this meeting in the gym hosted by her and half of her classmates from Class 2-B who were present there to welcome the new first-year students. Particularly, the students of Class 2-B she brought along in that meeting place were considered the more sociable type of classmates in her group who happen to be academically secured and influential. Observing how difficult it was for her classmates to approach the first-years and convince them to pair up with Class 2-B, Honami decided to avoid bringing up the topic of the special exam in the first place and thought about a different strategy to earn their trust. For that reason, she instead opted to primarily focus her time and efforts on trying to become best friends with the first-year students through first introducing herself and sparking up casual conversations with them as a starting point from there while backed by her Class 2-B.

In other words, rather than prioritizing the rewards and benefits of the Partner exam, she's focusing her priority on building up trusting relationships through mutual trust between her Class 2-B and the first-year students who are academically low and in need of assistance. Through this sort of strategy that is exclusive to her, Honami places more emphasis on saving and helping out the weak first-year students instead of winning the exam for Class 2-B. She had already ditched the idea of taking the top spot in the Partner Exam and was planning to fight to prevent any of her own classmates and the first-years from being expelled. Understanding the objective of this strategy from the start, she is aware of the fact it was never going to be easy for the first-years to open their heart to her or her classmates right away. Honami did not consider rushing through the process behind her strategy whatsoever but wait patiently for as long as she could until the first-years can finally take action for themselves. She approached and talked to the first-year students with a gentle smile on her face, slowly melting away the walls of ice that had closed off their hearts. Not long after doing this, it only took a few minutes of close observation by Honami while watching them that they start to begin developing and deepening friendly relations with her fellow second-year classmates. Both she and her classmates enthusiastically were able to draw and influence the first-years into their fold regardless of their Academic Ability rating as a way of providing salvation to the weak and vulnerable. As a result of this meet-and-greet session that took place successfully without any problem, Honami's actions had help both first and second-years alike reaped several benefits from the talk. Furthermore, leaving a good positive impression on the freshmen, Honami's name and face have now start to grow well-known and infamous amongst many of the first-year students who gathered before her Class 2-B in that meeting over the course of the time spent chatting there.

Once the meet-and-greet event concluded, it was revealed that the first-year students had later carefully considered their options and decided to form pairs with Honami and her classmates. On Wednesday, the third day of the Partner Exam, it was said that fifty-six pairs have been formed in total where over thirty percent of students had already decided on who their partners are which many of these had to do with the work of Honami. In particular, Kiyotaka confirmed that a lot of the first-year students with low Academic Ability ratings had since found a partner and paired up with the people hailing from Honami's class. Excluding Class 1-D, Honami's strategy effectively works as intended to be when she was able to get all her classmates to pair up with most of the students of other first-year classes with a D rating or lower which saved them from possible expulsion. For instance, a majority of the Class 1-C wherein which thirty out of their forty students had signed partnership contracts with Honami and her classmates of 2-B after attending the meet-and-greet she set up at the start of the week. While Arisu and Kakeru were busy attempting to build up trusting relationships with the talented, academically capable first-year students using their reputation and private points, Honami who doesn't have a lot of points at all anymore like she used to having a year ago been trying to instead build up her own trusting relationships by becoming a beacon of hope through saving and protecting the weak. After the special Partner Exam is over, the official class ranking changes as Honami and her classmates have drop down to Class 2-C with 539 class points while Kakeru and his classmates have risen up to Class 2-B with 565 class points.

2nd Year Volume 2
Beginning May 1st of her second year, the difference in class points between Honami's Class 2-C and the new Class 2-B led by Kakeru Ryūen, whom she was in competition against, was only 26 points. Honami thought it was possible to catch up even without a special exam, as points could still be affected by other possible factors like student absences or tardiness. She understood that over the past year as a former freshman, the small point differences created from everyday actions accumulated and ultimately affected the class points by a lot. However, when Kakeru and his classmates rose to Class 2-B, she realizes there were no more holes left found in his class from such everyday actions that would have decreased their class points over time as they stopped missing out on attending school. From that point on, Honami could sense how strong-will Kakeru and his Class 2-B has grown to become when compared to last year.

During the morning time of 7 AM, on that same day, Honami and her right-hand man Ryūji plans to go to Keyaki Mall and hang out with their classmates. On their way there to the entrance of the mall, she happened to spot Kiyotaka within her vicinity from a distance and called out to him. When she asked Kiyotaka if he happened to be waiting on someone at the moment, she learned that he is going to eat with his circle of friends which is the Ayanokōji Group, telling him she is doing something similar as well with Ryūji and her band of classmates. She later proceeded to bring up the topic regarding his recent exam result, lavishing wonderful praises to Kiyotaka for being able to achieve a perfect score in the math test. Although Honami didn't bother questioning Kiyotaka about why he hid his real strength until that exam, her classmate Ryūji refuses to stay quiet. As he couldn't bear to hide his own displeasure with the results, Ryūji tells Honami and Kiyotaka of how he shouldn't be able to score the highest points in the exam based on his current stats in the OAA app. When she hears Kiyotaka's reasons for hiding his math skills was due to a decision made by his classmates after they hold a discussion with him, Honami understood the intent behind his action without question. However, since Ryūji did not want the matter of him hiding his abilities up to now be ignored and told her that he is a bigger issue that pose a threat to Class 2-C than they initially thought, Honami refuses to agree with her classmate believing it was the choice of his class rather than by Kiyotaka for keeping their ideas and strategies a secret from them. Despite Honami having criticize him for making such terrible remarks about him, Ryūji has no intention of retracting his words of concern for their class as he dislikes what Kiyotaka is doing, not easily accepting that he was merely following the instructions of his classmates.

Honami was reminded by Ryūji that she should be aware of the fact how it's not at all easy to be able to solve that one extremely difficult question to get full marks for his math test, indirectly cautioning her to be more wary of Kiyotaka moving forward. Before Ryūji could pursue any further with his critical comments concerning him, she states that Kiyotaka is by no means Class 2-C's enemy much to her dissatisfaction on how he someone who she trusts the most had been poorly treated by her classmate. Ryūji tries to refute what she said as wrong, saying that because the alliance between their two classes are no more, Kiyotaka and Class 2-D are in fact their enemy from this moment on but Honami reasons that there is no actual point in starting a needless dispute with him over it. Yet Ryūji thinks otherwise as he figures it was actually necessary for both she and him to gauge the true strength of Kiyotaka who they don't have't much info on to go by to reach a definite conclusion. While she acknowledged that Kiyotaka being good at math all along is something he kept hidden along with the rest of all his other abilities still not revealed, Honami doubts this would be enough of a reason to view him as an enemy or a threat. She tries to explain to Ryūji that there's a limit to each subject test score being maximum of 100 points respectively and how the highest grade is an A+, reasoning even if Kiyotaka were to obtain full marks in all of them altogether, she thinks there's not much of a large gap to close between he and Arisu. Taking her analysis into consideration, she tells Ryūji that their overall scores in Class 2-C are still much higher than it. In order to overcome the point gap created from Kiyotaka after using his true strength, Honami states they will just have to make up for such difference with their class as a whole.

Though she tries hard to reassure Ryūji that Kiyotaka is not someone the two of them should fret over, the latter cannot help but harbor doubts whether or not his abilities on the written tests are the only things they should be warily worry about if his true strength goes beyond the academic areas. In the end, she decided to stop the argument right then and there with Ryūji, telling him that he knows this is not the kind of discussion topic they should continue to be talking and bickering about heatedly among a crowd of people which the latter realizes and understood the place they're in. Upon ending the conversation with Honami to calm down, Ryūji quickly sets off on his own to enter Keyaki Mall before her, leaving she and Kiyotaka alone together to talk in private about herself and her classmates. With him gone, she politely apologizes to Kiyotaka about Ryūji's hostile behavior from earlier, given the sad situation where her classmates lost their position as Class 2-B and was recently demoted to Class 2-C. Due to the failure of the class's fighting style that requires a new change in direction, Honami wonders if she herself happened to be in the wrong. When asked by Kiyotaka if she remembers his words to her, Honami said she do by needing to stick with her classmates and go forward without ever stopping. Since she recalled his statement to her, Kiyotaka informs Honami that there may be other students who are going to want to change her class appearing henceforth, besides Kanzaki who felt dissatisfied with her ways and want to stop her. She was advised by Kiyotaka to consider the possibility of her classmates betraying the class as they will be doing whatever they can to bring forth better changes than what she could give them. Through Kiyotaka's words, she understand that the previous Class 1-B, the group of classmates who only she been protecting a year ago, that class does not exist anymore in her second-year of high school.

As a result, Honami decided to take his advises to heart, agreeing with him that she needs to maintain priority and focus on trusting her classmates, putting their safety first and continuing the fight no matter what happens in the future. After solemnly vowing to him that she will be the first to sacrifice herself when it's time to protect all her friends in the class from the matter of expulsion, Honami was met with words of dissatisfaction by Kiyotaka who voices his complaint that he has no intention of ever letting her go and be expelled for their sake. In Kiyotaka's mind, just from the look of Honami who gazes at his eyes directly, what she received was a bright light that will never fade away after he went as far as lighting a blazing fire inside the depths of her pupils. Shocked by what he said to her, Honami becomes embarrassed and nervously mumbles to him that she will definitely do her best to stay in school. Trying to change the mood and topic of the conversation, she compliments Kiyotaka to be a really amazing person for managing to get a perfect math score on that hard exam. Although he downplays his math skills as his only redeeming feature at the school, Honami still sees it to be something incredible which Kiyotaka is capable of doing, calling it as a weapon that won't lose to anyone else. When he delivers respect and a praise back to Honami for also having her own powerful weapon as well, Honami seems clearly unsure about what to make of that, not thinking it as strong as he makes it out to be though she wishes that would be nice if it were the case. Soon afterward, Honami proceeds to go inside the entrance of Keyaki Mall, bidding farewell to Kiyotaka beforehand as she can no longer afford to stand out with him in this crowd of people while also feeling bad for having kept Ryūji waiting on her during their talk.

During one particular day, Honami received a invitation by Arisu Sakayanagi on such short notice to have a face-to-face meeting privately with the latter at the cafe in preparation for the Uninhabited Island Exam that is set to occur in the summer without some time to think it over. However, since it was already the Friday of the first weekend after the group formations had started, Honami decided to accept Arisu's invitation anyway and went to the designated meeting place where the latter was waiting for her there. Upon arrival, Honami was then questioned by Arisu on why she accepted her sudden request to which she said that it was because she had nothing special planned for the day. Realizing this is not the reason what Arisu wanted to hear, Honami explains why she herself doesn't harbor any hatred or resentment towards the former for exposing her past and betraying her trust. She doesn't think what Arisu did was anything excessive, telling the latter that it helped her reflect on what happened during middle school and come to terms with the shameful act. To begin with, Honami understood that was her own fault for not asking Arisu to keep her past a secret, believing the former is not in the right to blame the latter for revealing it. If anything, Honami recognizes that openly disclosing her past to someone was a mistake she made and had taken responsibility for. When Arisu calls Honami a good person for that reasoning, she becomes a bit embarrassed by the sudden compliment while scratching her cheeks lightly and averting her eyes away from the leader of Class 2-A. Hoping to move on from that conversation topic, Honami insists Arisu to get to the main subject of their discussion for the day. In turn, Arisu decided to get to the point of the meeting to which Honami sees whatever she is about to say as a warning, began mumbling to herself that please there by mercy behind the leader of Class 2-A's words.

Although Honami is not comfortable with the direction of where the talk is heading towards, Arisu went and said it anyway concerning the current predicament before the Uninhabited Island Exam starts, that Class 2-A was naturally feeling the danger of Kakeru Ryūen's Class 2-B approaching them again. After Arisu states her concern of the possible situation to happen soon for Class 2-A, Honami who is the leader of Class 2-C was then proceeded to be asked by the former about her thoughts on that potential problem looming in the horizon. In more ways than one, Arisu had mercilessly pointed the other worst dilemma besides Class 2-A where Honami and her Class 2-C were also being left out in the cold from both Class 2-B led by Kakeru and Suzune's Class 2-D. Hearing Arisu's blunt statement, Honami's mind went blank for a moment unable to answer momentarily and then started fanning herself with a bitter smile on her face. After getting some time to process what Arisu said, Honami admits and acknowledge the fact that it is true about the state of Class 2-C feeling excluded and ostracized from the two classes is not a good sign. While Honami accepts how formidable Class 2-B is and thinks there was still a way to beat and overtake them, Arisu disagrees with her thinking. Honami was told by Arisu that Class 2-B haven't been causing any problems lately so far, unlike with the previously disruptive strategies Kakeru had used for them before so this left the former to rethink what the best way to go about overcoming the rival class. In other words, Honami's attempt to have Class 2-C catch up to Kakeru's Class 2-B through daily life is pointless since that is not their weakness anymore and her only hope now is to come out on top in Uninhabited Island Exam and future special exams. Reasonably so, Honami agreed with Arisu's implications about Class 2-B, and can see that Kakeru is indeed a troublesome, tricky opponent for the former to face off as she tends to confront her problems head-on. Quietly listening to Arisu's words, Honami knows it is not an exaggeration by Class 2-A's leader to say he is her Class 2-C's greatest nemesis within the class competition. Despite her wish to avoid fighting such an aggressive, unconventional foe who is a rule breaker, Honami knows she can't do that if he stands in the way of her Class 2-C reaching the position of Class A.

Let alone hope to defeat Kakeru, Honami told Arisu that Class A's leader is not one to be easily defeated either as the two of them are at large a threat not just to each other but to her Class 2-C as well. When Arisu brought up another threat which was Class 2-D who is gaining steady momentum as they're close to overtaking Class 2-C by a difference of over 200 class points, Honami agreed while conveying her awareness and wariness of them, not overlooking or underestimating their growth within one year. Honami mentions how Suzune Horikita and her classmates of 2-D are rapidly gaining strength at a fast pace and in terms of individual strength, some of them wouldn't lose out to anyone else in the other classes including the former's own. Honami was informatively reminded by Arisu of how there were other talented individuals from Class 2-D to watch out for like their hidden trump card being Kiyotaka Ayanokōji and Rokusuke Kōenji whose strengths and limits are still a mystery apart from Yōsuke Hirata, Kikyō Kushida, or Ken Sudō who they already knew much about. Hearing what Arisu has to say to her, this made Honami feel and ponder the same as the leader of Class 2-A about the thick layer of students in Class 2-D that had yet to show off or reveal all their unknown potential abilities. After Arisu touch on how Suzune was the leader who brought the people of Class 2-D together and led them forward, Honami had to once again reaffirm her predicament of having been kept in the dark, taking keen notice of both her rival's excellent academic and physical abilities along with her recent membership to the Student Council. Arisu states it is only a matter of time left before Honami and her Class 2-C will eventually soon lose their given position to the growing might of Class 2-D overall led by Suzune who are seeking to climb above them. While Honami does accept Arisu's evaluation of Class 2-C and Suzune's Class 2-D to be true for now, she tries to argue and refute with her own reasoning but the leader of Class 2-A immediately thereafter stops the former in her tracks from talking back. When Arisu guesses what she will say next by downplaying the value of effort and friendship as nothing more than abstract concepts, Honami simply cannot utter another word as the leader of Class 2-A took the words out of her mouth, leaving herself to swallow back what she was going to say as an argument upon being seen through by the girl.

Remaining speechless and silence by that statement, Honami was attacked further by Arisu who states it is almost nigh impossible to win with simply believing in these kinds of vague things no matter how hard the former tried to make such abstract values work successfully as it will failed in the end. Honami continues to get belittled and denigrated by Arisu who explained that three of the four classes (A, B, and D) have been clearly improving and increasing their strength over the course of the year, while the same cannot be said with Honami and Class 2-C as the latter does not see much growth happening in hers. Honami weakly tries to resist Arisu's harsh criticisms by the fact that there were some sign of growth happening with she and her classmates of 2-C since last year like the others. Arisu didn't argue against Honami's words that the latter and her Class 2-C has grown but felt it was a matter of how much, highly implying their changes and improvements are too little and minuscule to compare with Classes 2-A, 2-B, and 2-D. Honami tries to put up a strong bravado, telling Arisu that she and Class 2-C won't be losing to neither her nor the other classes. Arisu not believing a word she says, counters her statement saying that if Honami had looked at the OAA and analyze carefully, it's obvious at first glance that Class 2-C is the one who has grown the least among the four classes when comparing the overall abilities of when they were 1st years to 2nd years. Arisu thought Honami would've already done this level of analysis and reached the same conclusion like she did, which causes the former to cast her doubt on whether the latter knew the facts all along and pretended not to notice or check it due to being afraid to face the reality of Class 2-C's situation. Being driven into a corner by Arisu who came off as aggressively critical on she and her class, Honami recalled the time where she was alone with her and how the two of them are like that of a child and an adult arguing back and forth. Honami felt it was only natural that she the child would end up being refuted by the grown-up, unable to give her own say in the adult's argument due to Arisu having rationally block off her rebuttal with facts and not feelings.

On the other hand, the criticism on Honami was not without respect by Arisu as the latter calls the former to be a smart individual who is not by any means weaker than her if they were to fight fairly on even grounds. At the same time, her own inability to act decisively due to her weak foresight was also what got exposed by Arisu who states that whenever Honami is in unfavorable and unlucky situations outside her strategic control, she would failed to make total use of her true strengths to the fullest effectively. Honami was unpleasantly bad-mouthed by Arisu for falling silence the moment her weaknesses were attacked continuously, failing to resist and fight hard to the very end even if she is in a disadvantageous situation when compared to the two leaders of Classes 2-A and 2-B. Under a barrage of verbal assaults one after the next, Honami could do nothing but feebly accept her cruel words to be the harsh truth. Once again, having said all the facts to prove Honami is not in the right, Arisu confidently declares that she stood no chance in winning against any of the three classes due to how very small her Class 2-C's growth has been. Hearing enough of the argument, Honami asked Arisu if this discussion was what the meeting was all mainly about finding fault with her and why she is invited to the cafe. Arisu said that is not truly the real reason and purpose Honami is given an invitation in the first place, explaining that she could've persisted with this kind of conversation anywhere else that is not related to the meeting. Finally deciding to get to the main point of the meeting, Honami was then asked by Arisu to work on cooperating with her between their two sides, Class 2-A and Class 2-C much to the former's disbelief and astonishment.

Still bewilder by the sudden proposal, Honami was suggested by Arisu once more to consider the latter's offer as this is the only way for the former to catch up to Class 2-A. Before she could completely give her own input on the proposal, Arisu tries to reason with her that a cooperative relationship between their two classes is not a bad idea for either side to have, remarking the old fact that Honami was once committed to a similar type of relationship with Suzune of Class 1-D when they were still 1st years. Seeing that Arisu was able to perfectly deduce how her class alliance with Suzune had ended due to recent achievements of Class 2-D having a lot of incredible momentum going on for them when it comes to accumulating the most class points the fastest than any other classes last year, Honami understood this happen solely because of her own negligence with her classmates as they fell down from Class 2-B to Class 2-C. With everything correctly pointed out to her, Honami couldn't deny what she said, admitting that partnerships don't always last forever. When Arisu revealed why the alliance with Suzune came to an end is due to one of their conditions for the partnership was not viable anymore, Honami agrees that requirement was what establish the good class relationship, cease their hostility and kept both Class 1-B and Class 1-D in the past from uselessly competing with each other as back then, the difference of class points was too large of a gap to overcome. At this moment in time however, where the huge disparity of points is no longer a thing when Class 2-D happened to be nearly closing in on Class 2-C by a small amount, Honami was able to discern why Arisu is reaching out to her in the same manner now as she had with Suzune a year ago. Due to the new difference in class points between Class 2-C and Class 2-A as well but with the fact that it is a big disparity rather than it being little, Honami was approached by Arisu to come together and form an alliance under the agreement of two class leaders.

Looking at it this way, it made Honami feel utterly sad to hear that what Arisu suggests to her as a partnership offer is not a happy proposal, making the former thinks that Class 2-C is not worthy of Class 2-A's caution but an insignificant existence to the latter. Arisu bluntly and mercilessly said that was why the alliance was possible between their two classes as it met one of the requirements for fulfilling the partnership conditions. While such crude words struck the mind of Honami, she remained outwardly composed and smiling in the face of Arisu's intolerant remarks towards her. Though emotional denial was easy for Honami, she could not easily ignore the cruel reality that her class was being pushed down into desperate straits. Honami points out that she is not so sure how establishing an alliance with her Class 2-C will prove beneficial for Arisu or Class 2-A. Arisu reasons that it was for the weapon Honami possesses known as "trust" that she wants and could care less about the shortcomings of her fighting strength as it is important to have in creating an alliance. Honami is reminded by Arisu that "trust" is something she can never used to betray others with later as the latter felt confident she is not the type who will turn her backs on an ally. Despite what Arisu said, Honami however informs her that Class 2-C is currently in a bad situation where they don't care much about the weapon being "trust" anymore. On the other hand, Arisu cast her doubts if Honami and her class will really go as far as to relinquish their "trust" and throw it away after spending one year of building up such a weapon and developing it. Honami was informed by Arisu that if Class 2-C's betrayal occur, it will be the latter's own fault for having misjudged the former. Even if this proposal of an alliance was a trap, Honami did not consider being trusted by Arisu to be a bad thing for she or her Class 2-C and is more than willing to consider the merits and benefits of joining hands with Arisu. As a result, Honami egged Arisu to continue being specific with the details on her proposal of an alliance as the former decided to be all ears on hearing out what the latter had to say until the end of their meeting.

Seeing that she was ready to make a compromise and move forward with her proposed partnership, Arisu begins the explanation to bring Class 2-C led by Honami under her banner and work alongside Class 2-A collaboratively. When Arisu reveals there is an annoying rule for the upcoming Uninhabited Island Exam where only students of the same year may form a group and the rewards is divided equally among the classes, Honami was cognizant of her words that even if the best members from each class are selected to form a group, it would not create a large difference in class points won at the end of the test. Honami deduced that both Class 2-C and Class 2-A will inevitably have to build a winning group from their own respective class. However, she worries that by having Class 2-C work together with Class 2-A, the gap wouldn't narrow down or change much whatsoever between the two classes due to the class points being split equally between them. Honami was reasoned by Arisu that the former should at least be able to gain up on Kakeru's Class 2-B and widen the gap between Class 2-C and Class 2-D without difficulty through this partnership deal. Honami argued with Arisu that her Class 2-C will end up losing their chance in this exam to catch up to Class 2-A. By considering the benefit behind the offer, Arisu reminded the fact of how Class 2-C needed it to restore their stable position, telling Honami that this should be her first priority to prepare for the 2nd and 3rd semesters. Trying to refuse Arisu's offer won't do any good for Honami or her Class 2-C as the leader of Class 2-A doubt they can surely win the exam and reach the top on their own without an ally to collaborate with them. She tries to speak back in rebuttal but Arisu stop her by saying that if Honami were to suffer another loss again to the other classes, Class 2-C will drop down to Class 2-D after having already lost their position as Class 2-B not too long ago. At the same time, Arisu adds to her statement that Class 2-C will also end up in an extremely difficult situation where they could possibly lose a lot of class points as well, making Honami's aim for Class A nearly impossible to reach in the long-term if she chooses not to agree with her proposal.

After hearing all that and unable to refute Arisu's words, Honami can't help but resume her silence once more in contemplation over the deal. Since she is still acting uncertain and hesitate about the offer, Arisu believing this explanation isn't enough to clear up any suspicion on herself comment that there are not many opportunities available for Honami to work with others such as Class 2-D and Class 2-B. However, Honami is cognizant that these two classes besides Class 2-C is also not looking to join forces with Class 2-A either as they seek to catch up to Arisu. Meanwhile, Arisu speculate that if both Class 2-B and Class 2-D were planning to cooperate, the only option would be to form an effective alliance of three classes rather than two to challenge Class 2-A as that way, strong groups on their side can be created. Listening to Arisu's concern, Honami admits to her that she herself did once thoughtfully muse about putting together a strategy of trying to form an alliance of three classes to topple Class 2-A before. Arisu deliberately and falsely tells however the strategy for the three classes to form an alliance is not realistic or possible to begin with, attempting to convince Honami that this is the truth when the two of them had not received any invitations to a similar kind of meeting about a partnership deal since the day the rules were announced. Honami clearly knew that Arisu is doing everything she can to make the alliance between their two classes happened because the latter is afraid Class 2-A can't compete well on their own alone against the possible unified strengths of three classes altogether with Honami at the helm of such likely negotiation for cooperation.

Hence, Honami was discouragingly told by Arisu that if the three classes were to come together and create a group, the class point rewards would be divided evenly among themselves and still won't do anything to threateningly hurt Class 2-A's position who has the highest amount of points above them. To prevent her from considering of making an alliance between Classes 2-B, 2-C, and 2-D, Arisu particularly tries to dissuade Honami that even if she were to do her utmost and secure 1st place, the point disparity will only be decreased by 100 points, the same can be said for 2nd place by 67 points, and with 3rd place by just 33 points for each and every one of all the three classes involved in the cooperation. Factoring in the scenario where all the second-year classes of 2-B, 2-C and 2-D took all the top three spots, Honami is cognizant that the point difference between Class A and the three classes would be lower by 200 points overall which isn't small but felt it will be hard to monopolize due to the third-years and first-years against them. While thinking about whether to have Class 2-C allied with Class 2-A or not, Honami states her concern that if she and Arisu group up, both Suzune and Kakeru would do the same thing as they're doing now by also grouping up as well. Another thing which Honami had went out of her way to inform Arisu of is the fact that some people in her class have already went and form groups before this meeting took place. Nevertheless, Arisu expected something like that to happen ahead of time as she had been waiting for Honami to bring up how the groups like the ones in Class 2-C start to be formed. In the current situation where none of the classes want to ally with one another on a class level, Arisu propose that she and Honami select just the main forces from Class 2-A and Class 2-C to form the strongest group within their alliance together.

Unclear as to what she meant by having to gather their main forces, Honami questions her to elaborate further in detail, learning that Arisu is in a special position where she is allowed by the school to participate in this exam despite her handicap of being unable to move around the inhabited island last year. Reasonably so, Honami learns that Arisu is participating in this upcoming second-year Uninhabited Island Exam as a 'semi-eliminated' student,' which was said to be different from other students whom are eliminated from the start of the exam when they're unable to participate due to ill health. Not understanding what it means for the leader of Class 2-A to be semi-eliminated, Honami was then given more information by Arisu that although she cannot walk around the island freely because of her legs, she still have the right to remain at the starting point and compete within the same rules as everyone else are. Realizing the implications behind the leader of Class 2-A's words, Honami became aware of the bigger picture whereby she can reach out to Arisu and rely on her when seeking help like asking the girl for advice, and if there's a difficult problem, the two can solve it together. However, such a strategy between the two is not without a downside to it as Arisu states that if the only person left in the group is just herself and not Honami, at that point their group will be eliminated since she who is in a crippled state was unable to gather points for them, causing them to drop down in ranking over time during the exam from beginning to end. With all things considered including Arisu being able to take part in the exam, Honami immediately understood that the leader of Class 2-A would play a big factor in functioning as the brain of the group formation, while recognizing that a tool to communicate from a far distance will be required to get in touch with her along the way.

As negotiations are underway, Honami was permitted by her to freely choose from among the four students of Class 2-A, whom are Masayoshi Hashimoto, Hayato Kitō, Masumi Kamuro and Arisu herself to include within the alliance's strongest group. Through this information sharing between the two classes, it was revealed that these four aforementioned are undoubtedly the main fighting forces of Class 2-A while as for the main fighting forces of Class 2-C, there are Honami, Ryūji Kanzaki, and Sō Shibata. All of the students that had been listed including Honami herself had not yet formed a group of their own, and were observing how the situation will work out for them especially when an alliance of Class 2-C and Class 2-A is being planned. Noticing the strong lineup of students, Honami acknowledged that while it's true how physical strength is a necessity to have on the uninhabited island, she remark on the possibility of there being no guarantee when and where the two classes will be able to merge as they want after the special exam begins. While Arisu expresses her confidence that getting the big group together is not impossible to do no matter what the difficulties may be, Honami on the other hand surmises differently, ruminating to the leader of Class 2-A how she really feels about the girl's real reasons behind suggesting the creation of this alliance.

Honami who was defending herself all this while until now proceeds to turn the tide around by going on the offensive in their discussion by remarking how Arisu don't want the three classes to fight together, more than she originally thought, keenly deducing Class 2-A's leader is worriedly afraid about the prospect of Class 2-C's alliance happening with Class 2-D and Class 2-B instead of them. Honami admits that while Arisu can hold trust in her and Class 2-C, she cannot overlook the fact how the most important thing for the latter is preventing Class 2-B, Class 2-C, and Class 2-D from working together to catch up to Class 2-A than anything suggested so far in this partnership deal. Particularly, she is sharply aware that Arisu cares less about any of the lower classes possibly attaining more than 300 class points in this special exam as the latter is far more fearful and concern over the possibility of an alliance of Class 2-B, Class 2-C, and 2-D being made possibly by her. Honami goes on to say that even though the amount of class points Class 2-C could get will decrease if they win together alongside Arisu and her classmates, she strongly emphasizes the idea of how there is no formal promise that such a development would not appear in the future where the three classes would continue to help each other no matter what the alliance with Class 2-A is. In turn, Honami, who had been relentlessly pushed back by Arisu's words earlier, attacked the leader of Class 2-A with her own heartfelt feelings, leaving the leader of Class 2-A feeling a bit surprise that the former was able to make a counterattack and counterargument after everything the latter said. Upon strongly steering the argument back to her advantage whereby she took control of the conversation flow, Honami once more boldly argues that an alliance between the three classes to force Class 2-A out of their top position is not impossible to start forming, reasoning if that turns out to be successful, Arisu would be forced into a bitter battle from now on. Due to Honami's argument coming off as meaningfully powerful, Arisu admits that she seems to have underestimated her after realizing how the leader of Class 2-C was not just on the defense with her words but offense as well.

Acknowledging her words, Arisu asked again for Honami's cooperation as Class 2-A's objective is to primarily have the latter's class work together with them, leaving Class 2-C's leader to carefully think over and decide on whether to accept her proposal or not. Honami was also offered a special condition suggested by Arisu that if the alliance between their two classes is made, three people's worth of deposits from Class 2-A will be given to her as payment for cooperating with them. In short, Honami could use a total of 3 million private points to save three of her classmates from Class 2-C who are at a high risk of expulsion in the upcoming Uninhabited Island Exam. Honami was told by Arisu whereby if Class 2-C happened to receive the penalty of expulsion later on during the exam, they could always use this up to pay the price for their relief and avoid some of their classmates from being expelled in the process. Arisu is cognizant that Honami wouldn't want anyone from Class 2-C to drop out more than any other class, considering that this should be a proposal of great help beneficial to her who cares about her classmates a lot. Fearing rejection from Honami, Arisu held out her hand to the leader of Class 2-C in hopes that she agreed to this proposal. However, Honami was not easily swayed by her words of persuasion and asked Arisu to sacrifice some more than that suggested amount, demanding at least five people's worth of private points from Class 2-A to give over to Class 2-C before agreeing to such an alliance. Honami asked of this from Arisu in order to feel completely reassured the price is actually high enough to protect her classmates of 2-C. Seeing that she needs to cough up a higher cost for this alliance to work out as planned, Arisu caved in to Honami's pricey demand promising to finance it specially, just for her while regarding the leader of Class 2-C being greedy. Not before long, Honami finally shook hands with Arisu to show her approval and acceptance of the cooperative alliance between their two classes being established. Since they've already went and completed the contract behind this alliance proposal, Honami reveals that even if Arisu had not offered to loan her the deposit of private points, the former would have still chosen to join forces with the latter in the end anyway.

While the main goal of reaching Class A remains important for she and her classmates, Honami avows how the previous Class 2-B dropping down to Class 2-C is also a grim reminder to herself to not let them afford to fall even lower and plans on regaining back the class's stabled position first. The one thing Honami wants to avoid and prevent at all costs from ever happening is her own classmates losing the morale to succeed in the class's main goal. She knows that if Class 2-C were to also fall down to Class 2-D after having already lost their position of Class 2-B, her classmates' motivation to rise higher would be heavily diminished. Since she can go on confidently fighting reassured due to obtaining the promised points through the creation of this alliance, Honami had immediately began thinking and working with Arisu to form the best strategy to go forward with the combined strengths of Class 2-C and Class 2-A. Alongside Arisu, Honami deliberates on maximizing the alliance's chances of winning first place on the exam through thoughtfully giving the main forces of Class A the "More People" card to use as their battle strategy for forming a group of seven members. At the same time, the two allies also share their wariness of how formidable Kakeru and Suzune are as leaders from each of their respective classes, understanding the battle ahead of them will be difficult as their common enemies are not to be underestimated. Once the meeting is over with, it was revealed that both Honami and Arisu have their main forces consolidated, readily prepared to challenge Class 2-B and Class 2-D along with the first and third-year classes. Kakeru Ryūen of Class 2-B mentions in his meeting with Kōhei Katsuragi and Kiyotaka that the group Honami was in happened to be with Sō and Arisu. In addition to that, there were Class 2-A's Masayoshi, and Masumi, whom had formed a group with one of the best students from Class 2-C, Ninomiya under Honami's permission upon allying with Arisu. Along with that, it can be said that Honami had also permitted her classmate Asakura of Class 2-C to freely hand over the "More People" special card to Masayoshi of Class 2-A as part of the class alliance's battle strategy that was planned out beforehand in preparation for the Uninhabited Island Exam.

During the last day for forming groups, Honami was approached by Takeko Nishino of Class 2-B who reaches out to the former, imploring her for help on finding a partner from Class 2-C as the latter is unable to find anyone in her own class to team up with. Honami humbly accepted Takeko's plea by allowing Hitomi Tsube of Class 2-C to group up with her despite the girl being from Class 2-B.

2nd Year Volume 3
When the Uninhabited Island Exam began, Kiyotaka Ayanokōji encounters Masayoshi Hashimoto and Masumi Kamuro of Class 2-A alongside Ninomiya of Class 2-C before quickly parting ways with them thereafter, while deducing that if the three were following Arisu Sakayanagi's instructions, then sooner or later, they would probably join up with their ally group led by Honami herself and form a six-member team together.

Once Kiyotaka met up with both Kakeru Ryūen and Kōhei Katsuragi of Class 2-B, he told them of his strategy to stop their classmates' possible expulsion, the kind of plan wherein which will lead to a direct confrontation with the first-year students using their people of Class 2-B, Honami's Class 2-C, and Class 2-A led by Arisu. Upon successfully getting the two to cooperate in his grand scheme of things, Kiyotaka asked Kakeru to relay and explain the same details of this battle strategy he had told them to Honami so that she can work together with them too while he seeks out Arisu for help to make the plan bear fruit.

According to Arisu, both Honami and Sō Shibata of Class 2-C are giving their all by putting forth their leading efforts for her sake who continuously remains at the same starting point of the Uninhabited Island Exam ever since the exam started. While she is the brain of their group, Honami and Sō on the other hand are her arms and legs that move to act accordingly on carrying out the battle strategy they had planned together as a class alliance. Since Arisu could not move together with her group due to her pseudo-retired state, Honami and Sō Shibata could only earn a maximum Arrival Bonus of two points per designated area without the physical strength and stamina from the leader of Class 2-A to assist them in their endeavors. While so, Arisu of Class 2-A also informs Kiyotaka that she, Honami, and Sō of Class 2-C in her group are still eligible for earning the Early Bird Bonuses as the school had graciously decided to make an special exception for them. Thanks to that exemption given to Arisu's group, Honami and Sō were properly able to receive the arrival rewards on time even if she is not present with them or participating in the tasks. Arisu recognize that at the moment so far in this exam, the group comprising of she, Honami, and Sō was said to have been ranked lower than the other top ranking groups. Kiyotaka noted that though the group of Honami, Sō, and Arisu wasn't part of the top ten at the time, he figures it was probably safe to presume that they had already went and achieved fairly decent results thus far regardless of where they're at for now.

After Kiyotaka meets three members of Class 2-C who were camping together, it was said by them that Honami was having a lot of frequent talks about Kiyotaka as of late in Class 2-C. Honami's action and behavior catches the profound interest from some of her own fellow classmates whom grew attentively curious regarding the current development of their relationship and whether there had been any new progress between them so far. In other words, Honami is lately been dropping his name pretty much all the time nowadays that they've grown accustomed to hearing it come out of her mouth quite often on various occurrences. Particularly, her three classmates: Hamaguchi, Minamikata, and Andō of Class 2-C had the impression that the relationship between both Honami and Kiyotaka of Class 2-D would at the very least be at the stage where 'they're more than just friends, less than lovers.' Some of Honami's classmates including the three aforementioned are positively supportive of her growing relationship with Kiyotaka even if they're separated in a different class or grade, believing it won't stand in the way of love and the two dating each other.

Since Hamaguchi, Minamikata, and Andō of Class 2-C were able to prepare a considerably large amount of canned food and abundance of cooking supplies that help ensure their group a week to survive for as long as possible, Kiyotaka bet his chances this was all part of Honami's ideas she had thought over in her mind beforehand. Kiyotaka deduces because all three members had the card that gave their group 50% more provision points when the exam started, Honami made some uses out of it strategically and beneficially for Class 2-C, knowing how her classmates will never act greedy and selfishly. Hence, thanks to Honami's strategic planning, Hamaguchi's group was allowed by her to keep the cards they have and obtain 22,500 provision points rather than a usual group of three who would've had 15,000 to work with normally. As it would be extremely difficult for her three classmates to move about the map with such a heavy amount of items like gas stoves, cooking utensils and such they have in their possession, it was implied by Kiyotaka that Honami had them explicitly tasked with holding onto these things for the time being. Kiyotaka keenly guesses that Honami wanted to have some sort of system set up and put in place for her classmates so that they can helpfully share useful cooking tools with each other. Having already considered what the rules of the special exam are and how it worked such as when the school had officially stated that students were permitted to share food with other groups without consequences, Honami didn't let this chance slip past her and chose to use it effectively to her classmates' advantage.

So, in that sense, Honami figures it will be smart of her to have these three students come together as a group prior to the day of the exam starting and make them play the role as kitchen keepers of Class 2-C once they arrived at the uninhabited island. Tsubasa Nanase, a new first-year student found Honami's strategy to be exceedingly interesting after carefully analyzing the way in which her upperclassman's classmates had been handling the food and tools skillfully. However, to Kiyotaka, Honami's strategy for this undoubtedly came with its own set of problems as leaving her classmates to stay back and importantly guard the food and supplies can end up running into other several issues like scoring points for the exam. Kiyotaka was concern that in the worst case scenario, Honami's classmates would be missing out on the tasks of designated areas nearby by remaining standby in the same place and position too long without bothering to obtain points from there. Although the penalty for missing out on designated areas could be mitigated by a single student who do the heavy lifting of doing the tasks, he believes Honami's classmates will still gradually get outpaced by the rest of the competition at some point over time, leading to inevitably finding themselves standing on the doorstep to expulsion. However, because of the very huge amount of private points Honami had gained for Class 2-C by partnering up with Arisu and Class 2-A under an alliance, her three classmates were not the least bit worried about their chances of being expelled whatsoever as she have the minimum funds to prevent that from happening to them.

Two days earlier, on the fifth day of the exam, Honami's group which includes Sō and Arisu had successfully taken first place in a Task that allowed groups to increase their maximum size, successfully earning the right to have three more people added in her team. And on the sixth day of the exam, Honami and Sō spend a provisional point to use the GPS Searching feature, looking to merge up with Masayoshi's group who has Masumi and Ninomiya on his side. However, not long after they came together as a bigger group than before, Honami found herself in deep trouble the very next morning the following day after the sixth.

On the seventh day of the exam, just past 7 AM, Honami ended up accidentally damaging her wristwatch and felt bother by whether or not to continue heading over to the designated area with her group members. Honami tried to test out the functions of the watch that was fastened on her right wrist to see if the tool can still be workable and usable regardless of the damage sustained to it. By this time however, Honami had done everything she could think of in her mind to try and fix the damaged wristwatch, noticing along the way that it was no longer working properly as it used to be. While the device is not responding to her clicks anymore, this even indicates to Honami that her wristwatch is indeed completely broken beyond repair, confirming to Sō that such permanent damage happened somewhere during the early morning of the day when she fell flat by the river and hit the device on a rock. For starters, despite her foremost efforts on attempting to repair the tool, she had not been successful in getting the GPS and heart rate monitor to function at all. In addition to that, nothing showed up on the map when she tried to confirm where her current position is at on her tablet either. By keeping around an unusable watch, Honami is cognizant and certain that she would not be able to help her companions with the objective of earning points from any designated areas or Tasks for the time being. Due to the dark cloudy sky appearing to show how a rainy weather will likely occur soon during the day, Honami figures now is the right time to have her broken wristwatch be replaced with a new workable one that she can used.

Grateful on the fact that they are not on the other side of the uninhabited island, Honami then tells her companions like Masumi, Masayoshi, and Ninomiya to go on ahead to the first designated area D5 and task of the day. Meanwhile, Honami have made it her plan to travel all the way back to the starting area of the exam and have her acquire a new wristwatch with usable functions to replace the broken, unworkable device that she has on her. Honami and her fellow group members together were currently located in the southwest of area E6. Though returning to the starting area would only take an estimate of about two hours to make it there, the group members felt it would be fairly dangerous for Honami to make the safe trip on her own with a destroyed watch that had its GPS broken. In other words, she have to move in pretty much the opposite direction of the starting area from where the rest of her group members are going to. So not only would she have to miss out on the valuable Arrival Bonus, but the entire group would be badly affected too since they'll also lose out on the chance to earn any Early Bird Bonuses as well. Though Honami understood what she had to do, the former instead looked back at the three people, Kamuro, Hashimoto, and Ninomiya, whom were waiting to depart behind her began to state their thoughts on what needs to be done. Honami was advised by Masumi along with Masayoshi and Ninomiya that if she were to head out right now, she might be able to make it back in time later for the third designated area to complete the task alongside them as a group. While Honami felt happy that the three did not held any sort of blame against her for holding them back, she cannot help but harbor some feelings of guilt that began to well up deep inside of her.

Upon giving her formal apology to Masayoshi's group for the inconvenience she is causing them, Honami was volunteer by Sō to accompany the former on her way there which she apologetically accepts to have him go with her as a guide since he has a working GPS watch. After Sō's self-nomination, Honami buckled down and together, the two of them hastily set off toward the south where the starting area is located at, feeling concern that she can't keep either Masumi, Masayoshi, and Ninomiya waiting for them on the opposite direction and wants to return to their side as fast as possible. Henceforth, she accompanied by Sō spent the next hour or so restlessly and tirelessly walking south along the river until they arrived at area E9. Beginning 8 AM, once she and her fellow classmate finally stepped foot onto the sandy beach, the starting area was close at hand for the two to reach within a matter of time. All Honami needed to do now was push westward and she would eventually turn up near the port (starting area) which would only take less than half an hour left to go. However, since this meant that the round trip would take around an hour to move back to where the former was at last time with Masayoshi's group in E6, Honami tells Sō to return first and go to the next designated area before her as she will be fine alone to take care of the rest from here on out. Sō expresses his doubt and the danger of leaving Honami on her own, reasoning that the forest is like a maze and the dark cloudy sky doesn't make her situation any better if it begins raining. Despite what Sō said to her, Honami states that she herself should be able to make it back to the port from where the two of them are currently positioned in without getting lost.

In order to convince him, Honami explains further that if their group seeks to catch up to the top ranking groups, they can't afford to miss out on even a single point because of her. Honami told Sō to consider about how if she and him were to stick together for too long until the possible rainy weather appear before them, both of the two will end up getting caught in a terrible situation and won't be able to meet back up with the others. Though it was somewhat greedy of her, Honami felt strongly that Sō should continue going after obtaining as many points as possible with Masayoshi's group rather than letting herself be the only one to slow him down from doing so. Honami reassures Sō that as long as she focuses on walking a straight line to the port, she will remain safe and won't get lost on the way there, hoping and wanting to get him back onto the field swiftly so he could earn his points for their group. As the one holding everyone in her group back with the Early Bird Bonus, she thought this was the ideal course of action to take in minimizing their burden that she guiltily placed on them. Having fully persuaded Sō to go his own separate way from her, Honami also made a promise to him that she won't do anything foolish like recklessly pushing herself to move in the rain once the raining happens, vowing not to overwork herself and wait it out until the bad weather clears up. After promising to her classmate that she will be careful of not getting herself injured and retired in the process, Honami proceeds to wave her hand back and forth at Sō, urging him to hurriedly meet back up with Masayoshi, Masumi, and Ninomiya.

With the general directions Sō had given her still fresh in Honami's mind, she resumes her walk into the forest and began searching for the starting area of the port. Even if she cannot make it in time for the next designated area, it did not bother Honami in the slightest as her resolve was to get back in time for the third designated area was what drove her to keep pushing forward continuously. Originally, Honami thought that she would be able to ask another group for help if the need arose where she got lost. However, as time went by while walking alone in silence, Honami realized just how naive her line of thinking had truly been when she had not once spotted a single person so far since splitting off from Sō, realizing there is nobody around present in the area to reassure her that she was going in the right direction. After quietly trudging forward for about ten minutes straight, Honami notices that the already-poor visibility of the dimly-lit forest she is in gradually began to deteriorate before her eyes as the grey clouds lining the sky had become even thicker and darker than before. As a result of the weather taking a turn for the worst, Honami began having trouble maintaining a walk in a straight line due to how dense the thicket of trees had become over the course of time, an obstacle standing in her way of moving carefully. Realizing how treacherous the path ahead of her is turning into by struggling to work her way around the thicket of trees left and right, Honami eventually began to lose confidence in herself that she was walking straight at all as time went by. Seeing how tricky this maze of a forest was proving to be for even Honami to overcome, Honami started mumbling to herself why she feels like everything's been going horribly wrong for some reason.

Due to how bad the situation is turning out to be for her, Honami lets out a quiet laugh of self-derision crept past her lips, thinking there is no other way out of this obstacle. Honami had no choice but to keep pushing herself to move forward in the direction of where the port was at which she believes is theoretically only be a couple hundred meters away from her. She continued walking for twenty more minutes or so before finally coming to a stop, at a complete and utter loss for what to do next in this predicament. Doubting her judgement and abilities to access the situation, Honami starts worrying if she made a mistake along the way during her journey as the former figures she should've been able to arrive at the port by now yet wasn't still there as far as she could see and tell, wondering that she had perhaps taken a wrong turn at some point. Honami anxiously mutters her own confusion at what she had been doing and tried checking her tablet again, but just as before, her current location didn't show on the map. Honami understood well enough that even if she attempted to head back the way she came from prior to leaving Sō's side, there was no guaranteeing that she'd be able to do so by specifically returning to that exact position. Honami was not usually the type of person to make imprudent choices like this, but ever since the time she and her classmates got demoted to Class 2-C, she recklessly found herself becoming more and more impatient without remaining calm and composed. Despite her growing impatience back then and now, she had still successfully managed to form and bring together a formidable group at the request of Class 2-A's leader, Arisu. In order to maintain equality with Class 2-A, Honami felt more than ever before to demonstrate her competency so that Class 2-C doesn't look any weaker than them but as equally powerful as them.

Although she had no idea where she was or where she was going, Honami had an obligation to keep pushing forward without stopping. After deciding where to go and which direction, Honami attempts to dispel the anxious questions running through her mind and head mentally by steeling herself to take a right step forward. Hearing a faint noise nearby, Honami stop moving momentarily and deliberated over whether or not to shout out, excited by the prospect of running into somebody else but decided not to go through with it in the end considering it may likely have been the work of a wild animal. Thinking that she might as well just go and take a look for herself, Honami quietly and carefully try to begin moving toward the source of the sound. Not before long, while in hiding, Honami secretly came across the figures of two people: Tsukishiro, the school's Acting Director, and Katsunori Shiba, the homeroom teacher of Class 1-D. Upon finally finding them out there besides her in the dimly-lit, maze-like forest after not having been able to meet anyone for a long while, Honami let out a deep, prolonged sigh of relief to herself since that means she could now ask the pair for their help in telling her the directions to the port. However, just as she was about to reveal her presence and call out to the two adults, Honami stopped herself in her tracks immediately from leaving her hiding place, feeling a bit hesitated and worried that she might end up making a careless decision again as last time. It was upon Honami instantly coming to the sudden realization how that foolhardy attempt to make a move on them by her was in fact the same naive line of thinking from before that had gotten her into this type of situation in the first place.

Even though Honami's wristwatch getting broken unintentionally was an accident to begin with, it did not really change the fact that she was still currently active in the middle of an ongoing special exam, casting her doubt whether these grown-ups will really lend her a hand at this time. Considering the strict nature of how following the rules of the exam works around here, Honami felt it did not seem very likely that the pair would openly give her directions to the port (starting area) even if the former reasonably told them that she had lost her way, harboring uncertainty whether the school officials will believe whatever word she say as true. While it would be one thing if her wristwatch had broken due to some technical issue, given the fact that she was the one who had broken it, Honami thinks the two adults would try to chalk it up as her own responsibility and have the former bear the consequences for her action. Reaching to that conclusion, she figures her precious chance to get out of the forest would slip through her fingers as a result of such possibility happening and hence, decided to continue staying in hiding from Tsukishiro and Katsunori Shiba. Doing so this way, Honami wants to hold onto another method to escape her situation by waiting on the possible chance to appear where the grown-ups will eventually head back to the port from where they're now positioned in. This was an idea that surface in her mind, thinking it might be the best decision for her to just quietly and discreetly follow after them and observe their movement until they reach near the starting area. In other words, to avoid the worst-case scenario of confronting them face-to-face, she hinges ideally on the pair to either just go back to the starting area from where she is at with them or if they ended up heading off to an upcoming Task site instead, where other students are likely to be present and appear in.

After thinking about it for a bit longer, she ultimately settled on tailing them from behind while making sure to carefully maintain her distance with the two. Since both Tsukishiro and Katsunori seemed to be immersed in an unknown conversation of some sort as they walked together, Honami figured that it would be relatively hard for the two adults to notice her presence near them. Even in the off-chance she did get caught by these grown-ups, Honami felt it may not end up becoming a very big deal as long as she feigned ignorance of accidentally overhearing whatever they were talking about between them. When the sound of their voices reverberated clearly throughout the quiet, tranquil forest, it allowed Honami to somewhat make out most of what Tsukishiro and Katsunori were saying like how the teachers of Class 2-A and Class 2-D, Tomonari Mashima and Sae Chabashira are highly suspicious of the two. Since Honami was not the very least bit interested in the contents of their conversation, she did not bother to listen in very closely about what they are discussing, choosing to instead remain focus primarily on staying concealed in the meantime while the adults move in front of her. However, when they suddenly mentions Kiyotaka Ayanokōji and his involvement with the actions of the two teachers, it caught Honami's undivided attention, leaving her to hold her breath back with newfound interest on their discussion upon hearing her crush's name came out of the Acting Director's mouth. Although the name of Kiyotaka being brought up by the Acting Director was unexpected for Honami, she can feel that listening to Tsukishiro's words about him at this moment in time subconsciously made her heart to start throbbing and beating.

Growing curious of where their conversation is heading into concerning Kiyotaka, she keenly listens on what else they have to say next, learning that the Class 1-D homeroom teacher, Katsunori had been manipulatively altering the logs and records to prevent both himself and Tsukishiro from being traced by the second-year teachers who are wary of them and not on their side. Furthermore, Honami was also able to overhear the two deliberating on whether they can succeed in cornering Kiyotaka and forcing his expulsion to happen along with them remarking about the White Room much to her confusion over what that is. Despite straining her ears to try and comprehend what had just been said, Honami could not quite accurately make out all of the words that was mentioned in their statement, but could only distinguish some of them. Kiyotaka's name together with the word 'expulsion' ceaselessly echoed throughout the back of her mind, pondering why two adults like the Acting Director and a first-year teacher are talking about something like that among themselves rather than by students. Desperate to find out just a little tiny bit more of their conversation, Honami unconsciously and carelessly began to close the distance between herself and the two grown-ups, a distance she otherwise knew she ought to continue maintaining but did not do so in the end. Because the sound of the gale wind had picked up strength and drown out their voices, it was apparent why she had chosen to move further to where the two figures were at in order to clearly hear out and discern the discussion. Once she got closer to the two, Honami happened to now faintly hear what sounds to be that Tsukishiro and Katsunori had their secret plan already set in motion of getting Kiyotaka to disappear in I2 during the last and final day of the Uninhabited Island Exam where everything finally comes to an end for him. Feeling pretty certain that they would not have been able to hear her muffled movement in the middle of them talking to each other, Honami continuously crept closer upon hearing what will happen to Kiyotaka that day. With Honami coming close enough to make out the gist of what was going to be said by the two, the Actor Director then sharply looks back behind him at her hiding place and notices that somebody was tailing after him and Katsunori.

Sensing danger of having been found by them, Honami's intuition tells her to hurry up and instinctively make a fast run for it before they can capture her. This in turn, compels Honami to turn her back away from them and flee the scene as fast as she could shortly thereafter without a moment's hesitation after having carelessly expose her presence. After trying to rapidly sprint forward in action and widen her distance from the two, it was not before long that Honami ended up stumbling upon a major setback that was slowing the former down. Due to her own backpack weighing far too much for herself to carry in the midst of escaping the two adults, this badly hampered Honami from increasing her running speed. As a snap judgment, without a moment to spare, she swiftly unbuckled the fasteners and strongly hurled it into the thicket. Honami was aware that if Tsukishiro and Katsunori were to get their hands on her backpack, they'd be able to easily pin down her identity by looking at the tablet inside, but she was at the time far too frantic to act with that level of foresight. While she was certainly confident that the the pair hadn't seen her face yet, there was no shred of doubt in Honami's mind that they must have already realized that someone unknown to them was eavesdropping on their private discussion. At that same time, Honami also begun to keenly notice that their entire conversation they were just now having was something she was never supposed to hear or be allowed to catch wind of. To Honami, it was like a deadly premonition, one that sends a chill down to her very bones and spine as she continued to run for her dear life. Fearfully, Honami wonders whether or not she could somehow escape their pursuit safe and sound just fine without getting harm, telling herself in her mind that they wouldn't possibly dare come and chase after her until the very end of the forest. In more ways than one, while charging ahead and feeling very proud of her speed, she tries to affirm herself countless times repeatedly, believing that neither Tsukishiro nor Katsunori will travel so far and wide in great lengths to track and hunt her down. However, what Honami heard from behind, was the sound of twigs breaking and leaves crumbling underfoot by her pursuers who had no intention of ever letting her slip away unscathed.

With her own life put in imminent danger, Honami could care less about which direction she is heading to since it didn't matter to her anymore where she go as long as she could successfully flee without getting capture by them. Reasonably so, Honami just kept on running and running for however long she can without stopping to rest, ending up completely lost within the forest, and losing further control with each and every mindless step she took. Ever since she develop the strange, almost surreal feeling that came with bearing witness to such adult conversation that should not be seen by a student like herself, it had also became an important driving force to her that encouragingly drove her forward without looking back. Honami's eyes had been glued to the path straight ahead within her line of sight as she ran tirelessly, sparing not even a single glance to where she had been placing her feet. So, in the midst of Honami's delirium, her foot inevitably got caught on something, sending her tumbling and toppling down to the forest floor. When she looked back what had happened to her, Honami saw the obstacle: a large tree root protruding up and out of the ground that was the apparent cause for her falling over. Although there was a sharp, biting pain in her knee due to her fall, Honami endured it painfully, doing whatever she could to try and stand back up on her feet again. Just as she slowly began to put strength and weight back into her legs to run once more, a large hand reached out and clamped down on her left shoulder from behind. Honami immediately froze in place where she is at, becoming extremely surprised to the point where her heart nearly stopped for a moment, and dreadfully looked over her shoulder and understood that it was none other than the Class 1-D teacher, Katsunori himself who got a hold on her.

Intimidated by Katsunori's powerful gaze who stood towering over her, Honami sank back down to the ground the second time out of fear and resignation. With her rear end now on the forest floor, Honami tried desperately to scramble backward, but couldn't as there was simply no escaping his discerning eyes fill with indecipherable emotion. When Katsunori questions her if she happened to be the second-year student Honami Ichinose from Class 2-C, the latter uneasily admits that she is confirming what he said as being true. When inquired by Katsunori as to why she is here alone in the forest with him and the Acting Director Tsukishiro, Honami nervously states that her wristwatch is broken and was going to get it looked at for repair or have the device be replaced. Hearing Honami's reason, he begins to understand why there aren't any GPS signals including her own detected nearby but still has no intention of letting the former freely. Considering the consequence and punishment for her action, Honami was told by Katsunori that it doesn't really matter how much she overheard even if it was only a couple of words here and there, as the fact of the matter remains is she got herself involved with them by eavesdropping on their talk. To both himself and Tsukishiro, Honami was intimidatingly warned that it just means she was an unlucky bystander to find herself drag into their circumstance unintentionally. Terribly frighten out of her wits, Honami timidly asked Katsunori if she will be penalized for it under the school's rules and penalties. However, she learned from Katsunori that it has nothing to do whatsoever with whatever regulations the school has set for them to follow in this exam as it is a different matter entirely altogether that requires herself getting disposed of immediately by he and Tsukishiro. At that point in time, Katsunori slowly began to reach out for Honami, planning to physically assault her with violence until he was stopped by Tsukishiro who reminded him to avoid acting a bit premature by resorting to such violent methods.

The Acting Director Tsukishiro, who having shown up slightly late with Honami's backpack in hand, spoke up to rein his subordinate back in before turning to peer a look at her with an ominous smile on his face. Shortly thereafter, Tsukishiro approached her and Honami was then formally inquired by him if she happened to hear anything important during their discussion to which the latter anxiously and falsely said she did not as an attempt to lie her way out of the situation. While it had only been a few bits and pieces, Honami had indeed overheard their unsettling conversation, refusing to honestly reveal the truth to them, worried that the two may be do something terrible to her if she knew what it is they're talking about. No matter what she chose to say in response to his interrogation, Honami knows they were not likely going to believe her anyway regardless of how much she tries to spin the truth around to her favor. For this reason, Tsukishiro tells Honami his evaluation regarding what she say that he is not so naive as to easily trust those words of hers at face value without question. Tsukishiro explains to Honami that because he and his colleague are adults, they always have to assume the worst and act accordingly to deal with removing the problem before them. In other words, Honami was reminded by him that he have no other choice left but to proceed forward under the premise that she herself heard everything they were talking about in their conversation from beginning to end. After saying all that, he proceeded to crouch down on the forest floor to match her gaze with his own, belittling Honami that accidental as it may be, she still learned what they were planning on doing with Kiyotaka. It was the kind of information which should've never been able to reach her ears in the first place, but here they are now conversing about what she heard from their private talk, leaving Tsukishiro and Katsunori wondering what they need to do next with her to prevent their secret plan from leaking to the school.

Once more, Honami frantically tries to reason with Tsukishiro that she didn't heard anything they said during their conference but her words were cut short by him who interrupted her, declaring what she told them as untrue and reminded her what he was interrogating her for was done under the firm premise that she did. Being told of this, Honami could only swallow back her bated breath in deep shock. When Tsukishiro intimidates the girl that he and Katsunori are considering the idea of perhaps roughening her body up a bit until she finally forget the memory of their conversation, Honami cannot help but cowered in extreme fearfulness at the scary thought of what might possibly happen to her next based on what the former had said just now. Due to the Actor Director's ruthless words, Honami became increasingly more than horrified over the prospect about what will become of her fate in this island. For instance, this was upon understanding the possibility that she will most likely be forced to retire from the exam competition against her own volition thereafter if the two agreed to commit a vile act as laying a finger/hand on her. After giving Honami a fright for her life and seeing how she reacted in sheer terror, Tsukishiro smiled again and stood back up before jokingly telling her it was a lie. Honami was vaguely reassured by Tsukishiro worries that as long as he remains the Acting Director who is entrusted with continuing to protect this school, he would never truly say something like that to her or follow through with such idea. Tsukishiro admits that he too would prefer to avoid using a violent solution with Honami if at all possible which therefore lead to his next statement as a way to guarantee the safety of her life.

Henceforth, he had chosen to offer the latter a special proposition and condition where the two grown-ups like himself are willing to reach a compromise with Honami, whereby they overlook her action without punishment or consequence as long as she upheld her promise. Such condition behind this proposal arranged by Tsukishiro is that if Honami were to ever tell a soul about any of what she heard in their private conversation, he will personally see to it that a group composed entirely of Class 2-C students retires from the exam and be expelled. Shockingly devastated by the proposal imposed on her, Tsukishiro threatens Honami in a way where he will target a specific group from her class that doesn't have the private points they'd need to save themselves against expulsion as his hostages in the event that she revealed their plans to anyone, be it to anyone of the teachers or even a fellow student like Kiyotaka. Despite what he said, she felt unsure whether to believe Tsukishiro can actually come out successful in forcing her classmates to be dealt with mandatory expulsion, thinking it might well have been an empty threat. However, clearly understanding what she was thinking, Honami was warned by Tsukishiro further that it's not an impossible job for him to complete, reasoning he's in a high position of power as their school's Acting Director to make such a thing occur. Through Tsukishiro's words, Honami was scared stiff of the fact that he is the one who holds strict control and power over the rules for the exam manipulatively, threatening her about how the task of fabricating a justification for her classmates' expulsion would simply be a trivial thing to work around without issues on his end. Not only that, but Tsukishiro tacitly reminded Honami that there's no telling what might happen to she or her classmates during this ongoing exam, where they are participating on an unsupervised, vast deserted island.

Though Katsunori was not without complaint, as the former voices his displeasure on the mere idea of allowing Honami to have such leniency, stating to Tsukishiro that he was better off exorcising his authority as the Acting Director right then and now. He explains that if Honami were to silently be dispose of and disappear from this entire island, he expresses his confidence that neither Tomonari Mashima nor Sae Chabashira would notice it occurring behind the scene in their grand scheme of things. Katsunori comments that unlike with Honami, those two second-year teachers are only cautious when it comes to matters concerning what happened to Ayanokōji rather than her. When Katsunori took out a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket and states that he alone will physically handle Honami himself with his own hands, she knew it was the end of the road for her. Any and all hopes that Honami had of getting away from the two were long gone by now after seeing Katsunori's terrifying resolve to finish her off clean without leaving evidence like fingerprint behind through wearing his protective gloves. This in turn, convinces Honami that she was left with no other choice but to wait for her sentencing while watching on hopelessly and helplessly in the sideline as the two adult men continued discussing the matter of how to deal with her. Based on the mortified look that seemingly shows on her face, it became clear to Honami that she couldn't even begin to imagine what Katsunori intended to do once he wears the gloves. Without a further ado on wasting any more precious time, Tsukishiro set down her backpack he was holding onto for a while throughout their interrogation in front of Honami before stepping away again to indicate to the girl that she is permitted by him to get off scot-free instead of agreeing to use Katsunori's vicious method.

Before dismissing her, Tsukishiro informs Honami that the port (starting area) is located about 150 meters straight ahead of where the three of them are at, telling her to hurry up and get moving quick. Overcome with a sense of panic, Honami hurriedly put on her backpack, desperate to get away from the two grown-ups as quickly as possible. After the girl is fully-prepared to depart, Honami was sternly advised by Tsukishiro that it is not her enemies that she should be looking out for and protecting, but her own classmates first as the main priority above all others. Heeding his words nervously, she nodded her head in response to his final warning one last time before then promptly setting off in the direction of the port that Tsukishiro had specified to her without a moment's delay.

2nd Year Volume 4
After reaching the port (starting area), Honami gets her broken wristwatch checked by the school officials. Not long afterward, she remove that device from her arm and handed it over to them, swapping it out with a new workable wristwatch that possesses usable functions like the GPS. At that same place where she had turn in and exchange her previous tool, Honami also had a rendezvous with Arisu there who acutely noticed that the leader of Class 2-C was acting unusual and different than how the former was before. When Arisu was still having a light conversation with Kiyotaka on trivial topics during the time after the 13th day of the exam, she happened to inform him about how Honami's mental state as of late for the last few days had been a little strange to say the least. On the day of the first graders' attempted attack against Kiyotaka, it was revealed by Arisu that Honami had went off by herself and disappeared at sunrise.

According to Arisu, it was said to have been a voluntary action on Honami's part to do something out of the ordinary and that the latter had seemed to be behaving a bit weird recently for a past few days already ever since she made a return back to the starting area that is the port. Apparently when Arisu did a GPS search earlier, Honami was found in the same area as Ayanokouji, albeit on the opposite edge. Furthermore, Arisu discloses to Kiyotaka of the fact that Honami lost one point in the morning. Since none of the other group members in their team were using GPS search at the time, she deduces that it was clearly the work of none other than Honami alone who used it in order to track down a certain someone. Arisu discerningly speculates on the possibility that she might be looking for the whereabouts of Kiyotaka most likely but he has no idea of why she would have any business with meeting him face-to-face. Since Arisu's group was in 4th place within the team ranking, she felt it was very bad timing for Honami who is also part of that same team to go AWOL (absent without leave) during the 14th day of the special exam which is the one and only time left to participate in the designated areas and tasks.

In her side story, Honami admits she almost overlook the fact that she should have known how important the final day of this special exam would be now that it is around the corner, considering and remembering what was going to happen to Kiyotaka. And reasonably so, as soon as the morning hour came, Honami had chosen to leave her group led by Arisu behind and set off dashing inside the forest to search for Kiyotaka. Although Honami has no clue how long she has been running for, it can be said that the former was beginning to lose patience and endurance with herself. Unable to resist anymore with the self-restraint, she came to a decision and ended up choosing to spend a point in using the GPS search from her wristwatch to specifically find and pinpoint where Kiyotaka was at during this morning. While thinking if Kiyotaka was anywhere near I2 on the last day of the exam, before shortly checking his location, Honami hopelessly pray to herself, pleading the device to let it be revealed to her that he might be located somewhere in the south. Contrary to her making such a wish, Honami looked at the results on her wristwatch and found out that he was present in the northern part of the island rather than being at the southern side as she hope for. Nonetheless, Honami's intuition was telling her that Kiyotaka was definitely planning to head out over to I2 at the moment, on the last day, understanding the Acting Director Tsukishiro is manipulatively leading him there alone in that isolated location where only he and Katsunori Shiba are at waiting for his arrival before cornering the target student. Based on the Acting Director's words she heard from Tsukishiro and how influential he is in affecting the exam to the point of fabrication, the conversation Honami overheard between him and Katsunoari before still lingered in her ears and can't get out of her head mindfully.

Just by thinking about the cruel idea of what they are planning to do to Kiyotaka, she could not reign back her emotions for him any longer, refusing to follow through with Tsukishiro's proposal to her. As she has made up her mind to not turn a blind eye to the grown-ups' action, Honami stops herself in her tracks out of ragged breath and soon fell down on her knees to the ground momentarily. Honami remarks on how she has been running single-mindedly and desperately so far in the wild while feeling as though the former is almost at her physical limit and wits' end. Not before long though, Honami promptly erase those thoughts after noticing she was already way past that stage of giving up on her pursuit of Kiyotaka who is trying to venture to I2. Honami adamantly steeled her resolve, vowing and wanting to meet up with Kiyotaka no matter what as she felt it was of great importance to confront him in-person and warn the latter about Tsukishiro's plan. She felt it was the only thing on her mind supporting her two legs. With exhaustion kicking in and putting a heavy toll on her body physically, she began to have the thought of wanting to lie down on the forest floor and rest, unable to keep these sensation in-check from slowly taking over her. Letting that sense of urge get a tight hold on her, Honami shut her eyes closed and threw herself into the pitch darkness as a sign of resignation to give in to the growing exhaustion. Although she feel the exhaustion dissipating slowly through attempting to take a breather and sleep, Honami reminds herself that she has no time to go and do something like that. As a show of resistance, Honami proceeded to move forward with her own fingertips to grasp the earth, letting the sand on the ground to become stuck beneath her fingernails. By doing so, it helps Honami discover a way to keep herself awake from the discomforting sensation of fatigue and resume her run.

Incapable of being able to muster up all her strength to stand properly, Honami reaffirms once again that she cannot afford herself to falter or be allow to fall asleep during the middle of daylight not when Kiyotaka was in danger of being expelled from the school's exam by Tsukishiro and Katsunori. On another note, she gravely recognizes the dire consequence of abandoning her precious classmates and friends for the primary goal of chasing after Kiyotaka, choosing to find a way of protecting him first out of concern instead of prioritizing them over everyone else which she failed to uphold her belief. Knowing she unquestionably deserted her companions to fend for themselves on their own, Honami more or less understood that she betrayed their trust to come this far in order to reach Kiyotaka's side. When Honami questions herself for what reason and purpose of why she had committed the act of betrayal by forsaking them over him, the former profess that she does not really know a clear answer to such question. Reflecting it even more, Honami starts asking herself further inquiries if she has what it takes to rescue Kiyotaka from the evil clutches of Tsukishiro and Katsunori and ponder on the notion of what it means to save someone like him from them. The last question on the back of Honami's mind is if whether or not somebody like herself alone is capable of possessing the power to even pull off something remotely as that through coming to his aid. Honami admits that although she doesn't know anything such as what's going on or happening between Kiyotaka, Tsukishiro, Katsunori and the second-year teachers behind the scenes, the former wonders if it was alright for her to warn him to please be careful, but felt unsure whether that was even important to say to his face. After deliberating over her thoughts, Honami has come to the realization that the actions she had been doing until now have no substance to them.

If so, it didn't seem to make sense to Honami as to why she was covered in sweat, so tired as the former recall running for her life back then when trying to flee from Tsukishiro and Katsunori. To her, what she does were nothing but never-ending questions and answers that continue to remain floating in her head. After traveling for some time and moving enough distance, Honami then immediately spotted Kiyotaka on the other far edge of the river, that happened to be at the opposite direction of where she was at after stopping herself in her tracks upon coming across his stature from afar. Just as she thought after finding him and observing his movement momentarily, Honami can tell and determine that Kiyotaka was indeed heading towards the area of I2. Honami tries to holler her voice at him but couldn't bring herself to make the call. No matter how much she try to raise her voice, no word comes out from Honami's mouth. Exhaustion, surprise or impatience. This was due to Honami's own voice being blockaded by a torrent of feelings surfacing in her mind at the same time. Despite that however, even though she didn't manage to calm down her racing mind, Honami loudly cry out to Kiyotaka in a way so that he could be able to hear her from the opposite side and capture his attention. After squeezing out the one word that allowed Honami to call out his name, it was enough to successfully reached Kiyotaka's ears from a distance as he stopped moving to I2 and looked back at her on the other side. Right then and there, what Honami proceeded to declare next was that she came personally here to meet him herself. After saying that, Honami reconfirmed her resolve once more that it was all for that sole reasonable purpose alone she had the strength and willpower to run this far close in catching up to Kiyotaka and meeting him privately.

Shortly later, Honami tells Kiyotaka she will be coming over to his side at any moment now. Even though she should not have been able to run and walk for much longer anymore after wasting nearly all her energy, Honami was still able to somehow manage in getting her feet to take a step forward while thinking to herself that she just wanted to see and meet him all this time. For Honami, Kiyotaka being there by her side is already more than justifiable enough to be the only thing presently supporting her in front of the former after bumping into him at long last as she was feeling eagerly yearning to stand right next to him up-close.

From his point of view, the direction of where Kiyotaka heard Honami's voice was originally from the northern edge of the river he had just gone around not too long ago. Over there was Honami, who appeared to be seemingly covered in mud, looking at him, gasping for air. With them nearly close by to each other, it was revealed that the current area both Honami and Kiyotaka are together in was H3. Much to his confusion, Honami should have been in E3 by now according to the information of what Arisu had told him beforehand. At this point, the time was after 10 AM if the sun started to rise at 5:30 A.M, Kiyotaka discerns that perhaps Honami probably had to walk alone endlessly for 4 and a half hours from where she was before to reach H3 where he stop at. Stammering to say the words, Honami tiresomely notifies Kiyotaka about why she had chosen to arrive at H3 was due to her main objective of seeking to see him all this while. Before long, Honami tells Kiyotaka that she will be moving to his position at this moment in time to rendezvous with him as the former speaks. Even though Honami looked like she could barely speak due to exhaustion, Kiyotaka can tell at a glance that she was still able to gather the strength in calling out to him from across the river. Seeing her say all that, Honami ran staggeringly along the river from north to south at where he was. Because her backpack was in the way of being too heavy for her to carry on much longer, Honami had decided to take swift action in leaving behind all her personal belongings there where she was before. Upon making such choice to lower the huge weight that was weighing her down slowly, she can now then proceed to quickly pick up speed to reach Kiyotaka in no time at all who is within the southern edge of the river.

Noticing that the place where Honami was walking on was deemed pretty dangerous to him, Kiyotaka sprint into action immediately and turned back the way he came, and hurriedly met up with her. Kiyotaka acted out of consideration for Honami's sake, considering how difficult it should be to walk over to his side with her remaining strength that was almost close to hitting it's limit. Since he could not allowed himself to freely let Honami exert herself anymore like that, he volunteer to cross the river to the north in her stead. As a result, it took about no less than at least five minutes for both Honami and Kiyotaka to meet up with each other along the river, and then walk to a place where they could congregate the start of a meeting. Honami felt elated that she finally managed to catch up to Kiyotaka and suggests he stay put and wait for her to come to his side, feeling responsible due to calling out to him first that she kept chasing after the latter like this.

Just as she was about to move to his side, Honami lost her balance and accidentally let her feet fell. However, before she stumbled frontwards to the forest floor, Kiyotaka caught Honami in a hug successfully to prevent her fall from transpiring. Noticing that she can no longer grasp control over her footing anymore, she embarrassingly apologizes to him for what just happen and attempts to weakly laugh it off, pondering upon realization about why her own legs aren't obeying her. Honami panicked at the inappropriate action of disrespectfully laying a finger and hand on Kiyotaka. She wanted to leave his touch, but her knees couldn't respond to her intention of moving away from Kiyotaka and does nothing except trembled wearisomely, as if she couldn't stand up in the correct position but do so improperly towards him. When inquired by Kiyotaka of what's going on with her, Honami cannot help but looked up at him, and spoke, desperately trying to sort her thoughts on the situation out. Responding to his inquiry, Honami lustily proclaims to Kiyotaka that she have something she would like to tell him about, no matter what to which he asked her what the former meant by that response questioningly. Honami tells him that she have always been feeling deeply troubled with herself in recent occasions to protect her friends and classmates. She questions the strength of her own firm determination to continue protecting and looking out for her companions during this exam when a special someone else more dearly important to her has become a greater priority than them. In spite of making that resolve to fully assist them, Honami cannot help but still remain overly concerned about the safety of Kiyotaka's well-being regardless of the protective feelings she had for her classmates and friends.

According to Kiyotaka, throughout the course of the two-week special exam, he and Honami did not once have a consistent point of contact until this face-to-face meeting ultimately occur between the two where they met one another for the first time in a long while. She distressingly tells him about her previous wristwatch broke a few days ago and how she wanted to go back to the starting point to change it for a new functional tool but ended up encountering Acting Director Tsukishiro, and Katsunori Shiba along the way before that could happen. Honami was so tired that her breathing hadn't even stabilized yet, as she stuttered along those lines. Filled with a sense of dread, Honami warns Kiyotaka that if he happened to be safe on the last day of the exam, the latter will then be called upon to go to the designated area I2 alone by himself and be buried by those two adult men. When Kiyotaka confirmed with Honami desiring to protect her fellow classmates yet was threatened by Tsukishiro who vows to eliminate them if word got out to the public that she overheard the grown-ups' plan, she nods her head in surprise at his guess as he deduced it correctly. To backup his statement, Honami also adds that if she were to try and tell something like that to him, Acting Director Tsukishiro would make his move to have her classmates drop out of the exam and school altogether. In defiance of that threat handed down to her by Tsukishiro, Honami admits she can't bring herself to turn her back on Kiyotaka no matter what the Acting Director say to have her go along with their proposal. Despite her deep concern for Kiyotaka, he advised Honami should've given up on him and let him get expelled from the start for the beneficial sake of her class winning in the future. She was told by Kiyotaka to protect her classmates foremost rather than someone like he who sees himself as an enemy from a different class, telling Honami that there was no need for her to care about the consequences of her action concerning what may happen to him if she did not inform him of Tsukishiro's plan.

Even though Kiyotaka told her that she should not have tell him such details in order to maintain protection of her classmates from Tsukishiro and Katsunori, Honami thought differently on it when the girl shook her head strongly to express her disagreement after hearing what he said. Honami obstinately states how she will never come to that decision of hiding information from Kiyotaka or leave him be to get expelled by Tsukishiro and Katsunori, proclaiming he is not the person she would dare to view as her enemy in the first place. After rejecting Kiyotaka's opinion of how he see himself, Honami began clutching his shirt near his chest in denial. Regardless of what Kiyotaka said by thinking he was an enemy detrimental to she and her class, nothing could change the feelings in her mind about him who Honami had already set her heart on. Honami becomes more bolder with her choice of words, revealing to Kiyotaka the true reason behind why she chose to go out of her way in order to save him as it was because of her own romantic feelings for him only that push herself to act for his sake and benefit. Shortly before it happen however, Honami's two hands on Kiyotaka's chest that was clutching his shirt tightened once more as a mean to strengthen her hold on him in preparation of what she was going to say next. As a result of her unintentional action where she was unable to keep control of her feelings toward him, Honami accidentally blurted out her confession to Kiyotaka. Upon confessing to Kiyotaka that she likes him romantically, Honami suddenly realizes the implications of what the words she just say are, not expecting to say it out loud for him to hear. As soon as those words came out and Kiyotaka heard everything that was said, Honami awkwardly averted her eyes away from him, as if she was trying to hide the expression on her face and forget her confession.

Finding an excuse to amend her words, Honami tries to reason with Kiyotaka that whatever she told him was not completely true, becoming shockingly uncertain and perplexed as to why she went and confessed to him like that out of the blue. She herself didn't understand her embarrassing action and demeanor, falling into a state of panic, shaking her head repeatedly to remove the thoughts popping up in her mind. Feeling frantically flustered about the revelation that was told by her, Honami once again asked herself what she just say to Kiyotaka while in shock still, not yet remembering and understanding the things she admitted openly to him a moment ago. When Kiyotaka asked Honami if he can give his comment about the confession, she nervously asked him not to answer as she have yet to say any word of it, telling her crush that she remembered wrong as an excuse to get away from that subject. Once Kiyotaka thanked Honami as a show of gratitude and respect for her confession, she becomes increasingly surprised by his way of responding and handling it. Appreciating the fact and sentiment of what she had done to help him out, Honami learns from Kiyotaka that if not for her informing him about Tsukishiro's scheme with Katsunori in the area I2 ahead of time, he wouldn't been able to know for certain what could have possibly become of him or happen to his life, had he gone there unplanned and unprepared. After Kiyotaka asked her if she truly mean to stand by what she just confess as the truth, Honami can't help but stutter of what to properly say about that confession, acting anxious and tense whether to clear up that matter as a misunderstanding. Hearing how unclear she was with her words, Honami was told by Kiyotaka to rectify the confession, or else it will turn out to be his own fault for misunderstanding the fake feelings she play him into thinking and assuming as genuine.

Seeing that Kiyotaka believes her feelings are likely nothing more than a mistake on her part, she soberly states the confession was not actually a misunderstanding whatsoever, admitting the honest fact that her romantic feelings of love for him are indeed the real deal. Honami initially wanted to deny her feelings towards Kiyotaka at first, but the former felt that she could no longer keep on running away from this unquestionable truth or lie to him anymore about what they are. Having earnestly acknowledge how her love for Kiyotaka is heartfelt, Honami proceeded to once again admit in a faint, hoarse voice that she truly like him as a person of the opposite sex. Honami apologizes to Kiyotaka for not honestly recognizing her own feelings about him sooner, telling the latter how she was thinking over it and eventually came to just noticed this herself after confessing not once but twice. Kiyotaka also became honest with Honami, admitting he was a little surprised by how she feel and think that kind of way towards him. Due to his words, Honami could not help but offer her apology once more, telling Kiyotaka that she is sorry about how her own feelings for him must've seem like a pain to him. However, Kiyotaka believes otherwise as it was nothing of the sort to belittle her sentiment for, reasoning to Honami that he is not in a fair, stable situation at the moment where he can give an answer to her feelings. Honami depressingly thought it was his indirect way of saying he rejected her feelings, believing her words of confession alone are not deemed worthy enough of Kiyotaka's affection and attention or be reciprocated back. To prevent Honami from falling into despair and losing her chances of hope during the middle of an exam, Kiyotaka reassures Honami that's not what he meant, stating that there is still a few things that has to be addressed first before he revealed his true thoughts to her confession. Honami was reminded by Kiyotaka that he doesn't think someone such as him can answer yes or no in this predicament while dealing with Tsukishiro, and Katsunori.

In short, Kiyotaka doesn't have the right time and place to respectfully respond to Honami's feelings now not when there was a dangerous exam still ongoing that had yet to come to an end. Although he states it may not seem like an acceptable reason for keeping her confession on hold, he tells her that's the best logical answer he can give her for right now as he is busy with finding a way to save himself from facing the likelihood of expulsion. Understanding the intent behind him coming to that decision, Honami nodded in acceptance, neither disdainful nor dissatisfied with the reason he had explained to her out of consideration for his own personal problem he needs to prioritize in dealing against. When Kiyotaka told Honami that he will continue planning his travel to I2 anyway regardless of Tsukishiro's scheme as he has things that still have to be done there, she voice her discontent on the idea of endangering himself while pleadingly begging him not to go. Despite her warning that it is too dangerous to head there, Kiyotaka comforts Honami saying if he doesn't follow along with whatever Tsukishiro had planned for him, he won't be able to successfully protect either she or her precious classmates. It's because Honami herself had been so deeply troubled about choosing between Kiyotaka and her classmates that she understood his motivation to take action for her well-being as a way to ease the former's stress. Honami was suggested by Kiyotaka to use the time she has available to get some rest, and then later rejoin her group led by Arisu Sakayanagi, which the former agrees to take into consideration, taking his trusting words to heart. Before he begins setting off to go to I2 where both Tsukishiro and Katsunori were waiting for him over there, Honami receives a gentle head-pat from Kiyotaka who patted her head in order to comfortably cheer her up due to the sad state she's depressing in.