Mid Terms and Basketball

all known haruma mispells have been corrected. please comment if you find anymore.

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It's been about a week since the Golden Week event, and nothing about the murder and more kidnapping. Today, the ninth of May, was the beginning of midterms, and everyone showed up to his class, yes, even the delinquent sitting in the background. 

Once the teacher began the test, he found that the questions the teachers were asking the students were on his test. he knew the phase where it is important to listen to the teacher, but this was rare. 

'really, I know that the test is easier than the ones in the city, but seriously. I read all the textbooks, but all I really needed to do was only need to listen to the teacher. Why did I even try.' Haruma complained inside his head about the difficulty of the test. His intelligence would not be pushed here, so he quickly answered all the questions on the test and then waited to be able to head home.

This quickly became the norm for Haaruma during the midterms, which caught the attention of nearly everyone in that class. The students were jealous of how quickly he answered them and how confidently he seemed. The teacher was surprised but quickly accepted it because of the information on his transcript they received.

This week-long and boring week for the students was not the exact reason for Haruma; students began to relax, setting a new mood for the school.

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After finishing the exams, Haurma went to the 2nd floor to talk with his seniors. When he opened the door, he noticed Yosuke stretching and saying something along the lines of ''it's finally over.'' As Haruma walked over, Yosuke stopped stretching, and he made it next to Yu and in front of Yosuke.

" Whewwww! What a load off! I bet every student feels like this after exams are over!" Yosuke exclaims with a happy expression that he was freed from the very pits of purgatory. which Haruma raises an eyebrow, and Yu gets a thoughtful expression on his face. However, this was cut short by the residential karate lover.

"Hey, quiet down!... So, what did you write down for number seven? the one about what "that" referred to in the sentence." Chie says to shut up the loud Yosuke and then proceeds to ask Yukiko about the exam they just took.

"Umm... I put "her sorrowful expression," Yukiko says, trying to remember that question on the exam, which Chie, in turn, panicked because she put down a different answer.

(seriously, how do you mix up her ''sorrowful expression'' and ''the rice cakes on top of the table'')

"Rice cakes...? Wait, was that what the story was about?" Yukiko said with a face that was plastered with confusion.

"Alright, I'm giving up on composition. I'm gonna bet it all on geography," Chie says with a sorrowful face.

"What did you choose for the tallest mountain in the solar system?" Chie asks while looking at Yu.

""Olympus Mons,"" Yu and Haruma said at the same time. This surprised the second year because they were not expecting the answer to come from Haruam, who didn't even take the test but knew the answer.

"oh, seriously!? I chose the wrong one...wait, how do you know that answer? You weren't even here for it." Chie said in surprise and then in a demanding voice while pointing at Haruma.

" I have swiped your textbooks from Yosuke and then put them back when I was done with it. plus I remember everything that I see."Haruyma said in a bord tone. Yukiko then agreed with Yu and Haruma about the correct answer, which, if not counting Haruma, would have been enough because of the ridiculous amount of studying Yukiko puts into her schoolwork

"Whoa, you too!? Then it's probably the right answer. Also, don't think you off the hook for taking my textbooks!" Yosuke says while sending a glair towards haruma.

"Would it make a difference if I didn't take it for like a day or two?" Haruma shoots back. This got Yosuke to quiet down because he never even noticed his textbooks were gone because he really didn't study that much.

*sigh* "Boy, I can't wait for our grades to be posted out in the hall where everyone can see 'em. Geez... Wait, how did you do on the test, Haruma?" Yosuke said to Haru that the group quickly joined in.

"it was... completely boring, like seriously, I didn't even need to read the textbooks," Harua said with a sigh of frustration which pissed off Chie and Yosuke because they knew how hard last year's test was, and to hear someone say it was super easy was frustrating to them. However, this was cut short because of a loud student talk about a TV station that was going around filming here.

" they're probably just doing more stuff about that hanging corpse case." the friend of the student who is spreading rumors said.

" no, it's not that. Do you know the highway nearby? They're gonna cover those biker gangs that hang around here. A friend of mine goes to the biker meetings sometimes. I heard it from him." the more intelligent-looking student explained. (I am not kidding. His title in the game is intelligent student)

"Dude, what're you doing hanging out with a guy in a biker gang? Well, anyway.. whaddya think about tomorrow's group blind date? We were gonna meet outside, but... It's gonna rain soon, right? Won't it be better to play it safe tomorrow, too?" his friend said back, which, in turn, the team then went back to their conversation with this new piece of information.

"biker gang?" Yukiko asked in confusion

"Oh yeah... They raise a ruckus from time to time. I guess your place is too far away to hear 'em," Chie said to the confused Yukiko.

" I don't hear them. where do you live to hear them." Haruma asked the group, to which Yosuke responded.

"We live right by the road. the noise can drive you insane."Yosuke said, which he added by spreading more rumors about guys in the school are part of this gang.

"Yeah, I know there are some rumors about a first-year student here who's a total hellraiser. One of the guys working at Junes said the dude's been a legend ever since middle school. Although... Was he in a biker gang...?" Yosuke said, fueling the flame of this so-called legend in their school. Haruma immediately thought of that one delinquent-looking student. 

" D-Did you say he was a legend?" Yukiko said with a cheerful expression. Which in turn, got everyone to look at her funny but was cut short by Chie trying to make Yukiko understand what Yosuke was saying about the first-year.

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After that conversation, a little while later, I was approached by Yu and another student, the soccer star named Daisuke Nagase.

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As Haruma was hanging around the library to read more things he could just memorize and never have to think about later; he was approached by his sempai and another student.

"so this the guy Yu," the tough guy says while looking over at Haruma. From looking at his face, I could tell he was impressed by what Haruma could only assume was his body and not like the usual looking like a piece of meat but more of like a coach seeing a new student and wanting them for their team.

"ye, this is Haruma Amamiya, but Haruma, do you mind if we request something for you to do?" Yu asked his underclassman, and Haruma said something along the lines of as long as it is illegal. 

"We want you to play a basketball game with the team." the now-introduced Daisuke said towards Haruma, who in turn started to think about something.

'basketball huh... I remember playing that in my first life, and I only really played streetball, but I got bored with it really quickly after no one could bet on me. Really, I tried that with every sport I found but gave up after getting good at it. I know the rules, and if it's just this one time, I don't really see a problem. I can kinda sense an arcana coming from this guy, but not a real one;.. it must be someone important to the real Aracana.'

"Sure, I played it as a kid and knew most of the rules. when do you need me to get ready?" Haruma said. In turn, Daisuke got ecstatic, but Yu scratched his head and said something along the lines of it starting in 30 minutes.

"huh....." Haruma said while getting his things ready for the game.

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-Haruma pov-

You must be asking how did the game go....well...

(flashback)

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After getting dressed and getting informed, the reason why this game was happening was disappointing. 

' I understand they are doing this to cheer up a friend, but seriously, the team never plays against anyone. This is their first game! I know Daisuke and Yu could see and feel my annoyance with them, but I kept it in so I could just use it on the other team. I normally would play offensive, but if we are doing this to cheer up their friend, I'll play passive and support.' Haruma said in his head, getting angry. Why is there even a team if they never face off against anyone?

As he walked out of the changing room, he wore the high school jersey, and to his displeasure, it showed off more than he wanted. His lead but firm muscles didn't have anything hiding them, so everyone who saw him would know he wasn't just a nerd but had muscles.

As he lined up with Diaskue Yu and another student, Daisuke looked over and said something along the lines of him, knowing that there was more than meets the eye under those baggy clothes.

"ya, I get it, but where is the other team?" haruma said, trying to divert the attention off of him.

"Are they not here yet...More importantly, is Kou here yet?" Daisuke said, completely falling for Haruma's trap. At that moment, the star of the basketball team, Kou, had decided to walk onto the court and was surprised that a soccer player was on the court.

"Daisuke? This is the gym, not the field, you know, and who are you.?" Kou said, first addressing Daisuke, who, for some reason, still had his running suit on and not a jersey.

"I'm on that basketball team today, and so is this guy. Say hello to that transfer student that came around the same time Yu was here," he said, explaining why they were there. This, in turn, confused Kou, but was confused even more when another school basketball team walked up to us and started toak when the game was gonna start. This got Kou to be confused, but when Daisuuke explained what was going on, he was confused but somewhat excited.

"huh!? Wait, we don't have enough players!" Daisuke countered by counting all the Yasoinaba students that were on the court, saying there were five here. This got Kou worried because there was a person he didn't know, and there was Diaskue, a dense but energetic person who played 'soccer.'

" Look, I know you think that no matter how hard you train, you're not accomplishing anything. But you can't do it all by yourself. You've got us. And you've got the rest of the guys who showed up today. Don't forget that.

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-Yasogami High rooftop-

(Yu pov)

after that intense game, Daisuke, Kou, and I camera up to relax on the roof. The sunset and the wind were a really nice touch for us to cool down. It's a shame Haruma didn't come with us because he wanted to check if he won something on a raffle or something like that. 

As all of us were resting on the roof. Me and Diasuke were sitting down while Kou was sitting down and just staring up into the sky.

"We won... huh," Kou said, blatantly trying into the sky trying to get a hold of his feelings right now.

"ya, we won. We even had a large gap between theirs and ours," Dakuke said with an ignorant grin on his face.

"I'm not gonna name names, but there was a guy on the court that didn't even know what travel was," Kou said, and I could guess he was trying to start something with Daisuke. Well, I can't blame him. He did turn over the ball a lot, which I could tell was affecting even haruma.

This, of course, got Diasuke to stop that stupid grin on his face and become annoyed, but Kou kept on adding on to him by repeating what he said earlier, which ticked him off even further.

"Man, even after dropping a pearl of wisdom like that..."

"Shut up, dammit! Look, the whole reason we set up this match was for--"

"Haha, I know. It was all for me, right? Yeah. I feel...better. I won't know how to say it, but... I don't feel so alone anymore. Does that make sense? Well, that game was nice; I got to see what an actual team could do. that other guy was named Amamiya, right?" Kou said, which I could understand. If someone like Haruma just went in for one game and paid like he did, I would want to know about him.

"ya, his name was Haruma Amamiya, I think, but really, all he did was play support and only shot five threes, but he made them all. he also had the most assists in the game." Daisuke said with an excited smile and voice.

"If we didn't have him, I don't know if we would have won," I said to the group, which they all agreed to. After this, Kou began to talk more about the situation that had been put in.

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Another scene that popped up was that Haru won the raffle for that custom motorbike, which Haruma now has to get a license for.

The bike was registered as a 400cc bike, so haruma will have to use some of the allowances for it. He read the book the DMV offered, but really, it was basically easy for him to remember. But then again, reading is not as effective as actually riding it, so I'll have to figure it out later.

Also, another thing that happened was him earning the top score for the freshmen and a perfect score that put him on top with the rest of the people who got a perfect score.

But back to the bike, it was just like he guessed: it was a cruiser-type bike. However, it was almost completely custom-made. Sure, it looked like bikes from 2023, but it was in 2011. haruma could not even guess what model it was based on. 

Personally, it looked too good to be put into a raffle, and something was undoubtedly going on. He wore a custom bike with a helmet and jacket that fit him. Ya, someone was indeed going on, which he would need to look out for. On the other hand, the helmet and jacket didn't look bad. It even suited his taste.

Whatever... after that whole fiasco happened, I went to my dungeon. Really, it was just a palace that did truly take form as a palace. However, it did not collapse, which could mean a number of things, but the best theory I could get was a palace was a parasite. When defeated, the metaverse would destroy it to stabilize the world. It is kinda like a dungeon in just an extra part of the world, kinda like a thing of hair, while a parasite is an ingrown hair. 

Something he discovered was the fact that once he gained his persona and reentered the TV world, those shadows became monsters like the ones he was used to seeing in p5. so least it wasn't different than the normal things he knows about. he did gain a fire and two attack-enhancing abilities. Although the fire attack was not as effective as his cleave or dismantle, he was able to use it without his persona.

More about his abilities dismantle was not just a 9-hit combo, but it seems just like the original ability to cleave it adjusts to the level of danger, and no, it is not strength, but danger. The best way to describe this is mob shadows. It adjusts to a 2-3 multi-hit combo, but from red shadows, it can differ from 4-6, and for bosses, he can assume 7-9 because of the last one. It increased by three, and by that logic, he can think he just got lucky and got the high end for that combo.

'I don't know if it will increase if the dungeon's level increases. That can be tested later.'

He gained the skill agi, which is what he remembers is a light fire attack. This made me question why he gained fire ability before a curse, for he has the king of curses. But that got him thinking.

'Sukuna was a human before the curse, and what he remembered from the manga was that he never explained Sukuna's technique, but I do remember a theory about his technique being something that involves cooking appliances, which made some sense. They explained it with more evidence to support this theory, but it does explain if that's the reason why I did not gain a curse skill before the fire on.'

The other skill he gained was tarukaja, which increased his or an ally's attack for 20 seconds, which is not a lot of time, but he figured it might increase if he trained it more. The other strength-enhancing skill he gained was power charge, which increased his next physical attack by around 200ish%. He hasn't been able to truly identify the true percentage because nothing really survives that combo of traukaja with power charge on a dismantle. It really hits almost anything, but his dungeon is growing stronger, so he believes it might not be long before he can test his theories.

When he got back from his adventuring, he made some dinner and turned on the news because it should rain tomorrow if the weather channel was correct. As he was watching the news, a new report appeared on the channel.

"Young men recklessly riding their motorcycles, disturbing the peace of a quiet rural town. Our special report took a turn for the violent when one of the apparent leaders attacked the camera crew!" the person talking was more than likely the interviewer asking questions; however, she might have some problems with that.

 "the hell are you punks doing here!?" a bleared-out face said towards the camera crew. When Haruma looked up from his meal, he saw a tall man with blond hair, a necklace, and his high school uniform with the Roman number 1.

' that looks and sounds like that one kid in my class.' haruma thought to himself, although anyone could guess that because the interview does a terrible job of blurring the face of the interviewer, plus they did nothing to blur his accessories nor his uniform.

"This ain't a show! Get bent!" the boy said, and the story quickly shifted to explaining other things.

' why do I feel like he will join us and will be the Ryuji of our group?'

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The next day, he didn't do much except talk with his group about checking the midnight channel because of the rain that would be raining all night long.

After he finished all nighttime activities, they turned off his TV and began to wait for the midnight channel to turn on, and to be expected, the TV turned on, and it was a blacked-out figure that appeared there. He could already figure out who it could be because of the figure being shown letterly the previous day.

The day after, the group gathered to discuss who that could be, but Haruma decided to hold his theory because guessing randomly, even with good guesses, doesn't cut it. 

They then decided to make Junes the official meeting place of the investigation team, but Haruma did offer his place if they needed it. Yosuke did admit his envy of Haruma because he got a ''sweat pad'' to his description.

Nothing happened after that until it started to rain. Haruma turned off his TV, and he saw the figure swung around and seemed to be bashing things.

'well, at least I should give my theory to them and see what happens,' haruma thought to himself before calling it a night.

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After the end of school the next day, the group gathered in the classroom that had everyone but haruma in it to discuss the events of last night's discovery.

" the one who was on last night...It's THAT guy, right...?" she said, which was understandable because how was the murderer going to shove a big guy like Kanji into a TV?

"Kanji Tatsumi, huh? He definitely didn't look like the social type." Yosuke said because of their plan to warm Kanji, he would take that as a threat and fight them.

"Now, there's an understatement. Isn't he really scary? Did you see the news special the other day?" Chie asked

"yeah, I saw it. hell, I think most likely everyone in town saw it." Yosuke said to the group

"You mean the special on biker gangs? I watched that too. he wasn't like that when he was younger, though..." Yukiko added on. This, on the other hand, got the attention of Yukiko from the whole group as they now were asking her questions because she seemed to know him.

It seems, according to Yukiko, that his family runs a textile shop, and her family was customers for years, so she was acquainted with his mother. Then she thought it was a great idea to go with him by going to the shop right now. Everyone agreed because they wanted to ask if anything strange might have been happening around him.

As they were walking to the shop, haruma could be seen with a blank stare as an annoying character popped into his head with similar features as kanji. He really doesn't want to hear ''for real'' ever again.

' I wonder if he will try to beat me up... huh... I wouldn't mind a good fight.' haruma thought to himself while walking to the textile shop.

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When they arrived at the shop, they, of course, talked to the lady, whom haruma could assume to be Kanji's mother, and asked about things and even discovered that this place had a connection to the lady who was the first murder victim. However, the thing that caught his attention was the young boy. 

The boy was asking questions to the woman, but after he left, we saw him asking questions to Kanji in the middle of the road.

'Normally, I would not second guess a person's gender, mostly because I was from 2023, but the thing that is confusing me was 'he' had no Adam appeal.' haruma thought to himself. However, something that was interesting was the fact that Kanji tried to scare off the entire group when they tried to spy on the boy dressed in a blue suit and Kanji. And yes, scared the group, which apparently didn't apply to haruma as everyone, but he ran away.

Kanji attempted to sacre haruma, but that didn't work. Then that moved to him trying to push him, but that quickly changed by haruma grabbing him, and then, to Kanji's surprise, he was flipped and ended up on his but.

" if you had asked nicely and not yelled and e then punched me, I would not have done that. Bye" Haurma said to a stund kanji.

After a little bit, he met back up with the group, to which they apologized for running away without him and thankfully didn't know that he manhandled the delinquent. They then came up with the plan to follow him after school, which was risky because, one, he knows them to a certain degree, two he may not even show up, which was the biggest probability, and three, the rumors that might spread that they were waiting for the delinquent and haruma didn't even want to know what high-schoolers might come up with.

What they didn't expect was when Kanji met up with that boy dressed in a blue suit. haruma also looked again, and much to his surprise, there was no Adam's apple. This was confusing him, but he figured it was just so small that he could not notice them. he dared not think of the other possibility.

The day went around with haruma, yu, and Yukiko staying around the shrine while Chie and Yosuke were spying on him. Haruma decided he needed to work more or understand the new motorcycle he got, so he said to Yukiko and yu that he needed to leave before Kanji would eventually scare off the group. Something that caught Haruma's attention while he walked down the hill was a green delivery truck. This did not seem out of place, so he ignored it.

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While he was reviewing everything that happened over the past few weeks, he was prepared for the image on his television. Currently, there is a near-naked version of kanji and almost gay version of him. haruma could not think of one work except for three words.

"what the fuck"

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Hey, another update, which, if you can't tell, I am trying to do on Tuesdays, and I even set up extra for you guys to get this one out. 

In this chapter, if you cant tell, I skipped over a lot of in-game dialogue, which, in my opinion, I didn't like because I really enjoy when I can describe and try to bring the game into a novel interest it begin something that doesn't flow right, but I digress.

You guys got to see that he has an extremely high intellect, but was that a surprise with the way I was building him up? Remember, he was a genius in his previous life and was considered one in this life. as that, together with eidetic memory, turns into something stupid. Now that does not mean he won't fall for things like cockiness which can be seen in his response to kanji.

Also, he won the raffle for the bike. What a coincidence, right? 

The bike I tried to get a decent description on was the Yamaha xv950, which was released in 2013, so I had to make it a custom bike that got put into a raffle. Plus, it looks better than those scooters that the group rides.

I tried to give a decent list of haruma abilities revolving around his skills in the TV world, and I really do think, looking over the final product I have in mind, I will need to hold off for him getting any more skills if I don't want him winning every battle by himself.

Also, kanji got his ass manhandled, like seriously; he got fucking flipped. Now, you might say Kanji is stronger, or he has more experience fighting multiple people. However, haruma has been fighting shadows by himself, so he has been reacting to things way faster than a fist, and he knows a decent amount of fighting styles, so Kanji won't bet him in any fight except for endurance. Like seriously, that man can pedal for days.

I hope you guys enjoyed this. I had to stay up late for this and probably only have around three hours of sleep for college classes today. 

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day.