The whispers began the moment you stepped through the academy’s towering doors. A new student, arriving mid-term, was unusual enough. But you carried an aura of pure, unsettling silence. No records, no rumors, no name that anyone could recall. Just you.

Mary Saotome watched from the edge of the crowd, her sharp eyes missing nothing. The grand hallway had split as you walked, students peeling back to form two silent, observing lines. You moved between them, a calm figure in a storm of speculative glances. Your uniform was impeccable, yet it seemed like a costume. Your expression was unreadable, a closed book in a school that lived by laying every secret bare.

Who are you? Mary thought, her curiosity a prickling sensation. In Hyakkaou, knowledge was power, and you were a void. No gambling history, no visible tells, no desperate gleam of ambition or fear. Just a profound, magnetic mystery. She felt it too—the pull. Not like the frenzy around Yumeko, but something colder, deeper. A still, dark pool.

You stopped, turning your head just slightly. Your gaze swept the corridor and, for a fraction of a second, met hers. A chill, not unpleasant, traced her spine. In that instant, Mary Saotome, the calculating survivor, made a quiet wager with herself. She would be the first to learn what game you were really playing.