It’s now spring break, so there’s not a school uniform to be seen. Ayanokouji has a cozy cup of coffee with Shiina, who we haven’t seen in a while, and she gives him the gift of a new volume of a book series she knows he’s into.
When Kei arrives, answering his summons, it’s the same time Shiina is taking her leave. Then Ayanokouji pretends to have forgotten what he wanted her for. Kei, rightfully miffed, takes off.
Ishizaki, with Ibuki in tow, tries to recruit Ayanokouji to join their class, as he and Ryuuen would make an unbeatable pair, but Ayanokouji declines. Even if they got enough points to transfer him, he’d rather Ryuuen remained his enemy than his ally.
He then finds a rain-soaked Honami waiting outside, invites her in to dry off, and gets her to promise she’ll spend the next year giving it her all. She now trusts him implicitly, but he won’t hesitate to deal “the killing blow” if she falls again.
Lest we forget what school we’re at, Ayanokouji has Shiina relay an invitation for Ryuuen to meet him in the same cold storage where he defeated him last season and won Kei’s heart in the process. Ryuuen can’t believe Ayanokouji lost to Sakayanagi, and suspects it was due to something out of his control.
He also launches his best surprise attack, but Ayanokouji easily reads it and blocks. Taking up the mantle of Ryuuen’s mentor, he tells him he has potential, but has to learn how to cover his tracks better.
Ayanokouji himself has left enough of a trail of competence that more of his classmates are starting to catch on. After Kei leaves their booth at a restaurant, Satou admits to Matsushita and their other friend that Ayanokouji turned her down flat, that she thinks Ayanokouji likes Kei, and that Kei likes him back.
Matsushita encounters Ayanokouji in a dark ally with Tsukishiro (who issues a challenge for him to out the White Room subject who’ll be in the next class) and confronts him on the fact that he’s actually quite a bit more capable at athletics and academics than he lets on. She also knows he set Hirata right. He tells her he doesn’t want to stand out, but if Class A is the goal, she urges him to give it his all going forward.
Matsushita also asks about Kei, whether she likes him because she knows about the full extent of his ability, and what their actual relationship is. Ayanokouji is pondering this and considering calling Kei when Suzune calls him and issues yet another challenge: if she beats him in the next round of written exams, he’ll give it his all as their class aims for Class A. If she loses, she must join the student council she’s been avoiding.
An impatient Kei comes to Ayanokouji’s dorm, wondering what the heck has been up with him. She also says Satou is starting to ask questions about them, and he adds that Matsushita is too. At this point, Kei is worried that her plans to get a boyfriend will be ruined, since everyone will get the wrong idea about her already being with someone.
She’s about to storm out in frustration when Ayanokouji grabs her arm and calls her by her first name, then asks if she’ll date him. He pulled the stunt with Shiina to see if she’d get jealous, and doesn’t want her to become someone else’s boyfriend. She asks if that means he likes her, and he says he does. She agrees to date him, and when he asks, she admits she likes him too, as much as she “hates to admit it.”
Ayanokouji draws her into a hug, and suddenly Kei has something she seems to have been wanting all this season: a romantic relationship with Ayanokouji. Mind you, he’s doing this as a practical exercise: he believes Kei can grow more if she dates him, and he believes he can learn more about this thing called romance if he dates her, something he never learned in the White Room.
It’s your standard calculating Ayanokouji, seemingly simply taking his manipulation to the next level. But while a part of him considers Kei one more “textbook” to study and then discard once he’s learned all there is to learn, another part of him wonders if that’s really how things will go down in the future.
Dare I hope that maybe, just maybe, Ayanokouji’s Grinch-like heart could grow a couple of sizes? That he might one day experience happiness? With Kei in his arms, it might be possible. And yet, even when he prays that while holding her he’s smiling, we see that he’s not. Clearly, he has a long way yet to go … and so, apparently, does Classroom of the Elite.
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