Mind Games

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

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

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

After some back and forth, she asked about how the last question which he answered, during the Flash Arithmetic event, was a national level problem that couldn't be solved by some chance. He answered that she was misunderstanding something and that in the past, he had participated in national competitions and he was good at it. When asked why he didn't reveal it earlier, he answered that it was because of his personality that he wasn't certain if everyone would be believe him or not considering their opponent was Sakayanagi. Hearing him answer every of her question naturally, she felt there was something suspicious about him which she couldn't understand but decided not to broach the topic and promised herself that she would once again regain her strengths for what was to come next.