(Author Note: From now on thinking is going to be denoted by a ' thought ' and context should tell you who is thinking, but if it is unclear then I will denote who is thinking.)
After grinding out his quests on Saturday, and Sunday. It was finally Monday, the day of the fight that Kenzo scheduled against Ryu. Ryu woke up, this morning he wasn't groggy, he made sure to get adequate rest so that he could wake up prepared for the fight.
Ryu was thinking to himself as he got ready for school.
'You know, he still hasn't told me when and where the fight is going to be, I bet Kenzo will tell me at school today, I'm just glad I have Kenji to have my back when the fight goes down.'
After eating breakfast and throwing on a fresh pair of clothes, Ryu rushed to school, at this rate he'd actually show up early. But as he was walking, he wanted to review his stats one last time to see how far he had progressed over the last week.
'Status'
[Host: Ryu]
[Level 9: 100/900 XP]
[Strength: 16 -> 17]
[Intelligence: 10 -> 11]
[Appearance: 13 -> 14]
[Agility: 16 -> 18]
[Health Status: High End of Average, your stats overall are reaching towards the end of the spectrum of average, this means that some people may start to look at you as slightly attractive or slightly talented.]
[A normal human's attributes range from 10-15 in each category.]
[Skills: Regeneration, Hyper Focus, Hyper-Extension, Examine, Enraged]
[Arts: Boxer Puncher Level 3, Muay Bouk Level 2, Kickboxing Mastery Level 1, Judo Mastery Level 1]
Over the past two days, the system had blessed him with good quests. He had gained one stat point from levels, and the other three were from the quests he had completed. His appearance went up only because of the one point he invested in strength. Furthermore, by practicing his form over the last two days he had leveled up in his Boxer Puncher art. This increased his stat bonus to a 20% increase.
'Not too shabby, I'm sure Kenzo is doing better on stats than me, but I'm sure I have him beat with arts, so we'll see how this goes. It's not like its life or death anyways, I'll just have to get bullied a bit more, right?'
With that passing thought, Ryu closed his status tab and entered into his school. As he was walking to the classroom the halls were oddly empty, he had never arrived this early to school, so this was a new sight to him.
'This place is like a damn ghost town before class, I would've never guessed.'
As he walked around, he saw a few people fiddling with their lockers, but other than that it was truly empty. He studied the fliers on the wall, advertising campus events, and clubs.
After walking around for a bit, he found himself in front of Mr. Ito's homeroom classroom. Despite the school being so large, most students only had one or two teachers. This is because the school district was in a poor area of Tokyo, so the school didn't get as much funding. This meant that despite having so many people going to his school, Ryu knew almost nobody outside of his homeroom, or even in his homeroom for that matter.
Ryu took his hand to the door handle and opened the door, looking inside the classroom, over half of his class was already there.
'I didn't know this many people showed up early, I guess I'm just an irresponsible student.'
Ryu laughed a bit to himself, in his head of course, after thinking about his irresponsibility.
With that he headed back to his seat, Mr. Ito noticed his unusual punctuality, he wasn't racing against the bell as normal. He raised an eyebrow while studying Ryu, but then looked back to what he was working on.
'I bet he's here early because of that fight I've heard about,' thought Mr. Ito to himself.
Despite having a multitude of anti-bullying measures, Kenzo was a star athlete for the school. So, despite the teachers having knowledge of the upcoming fight, they held it in because they knew the administration would do nothing to hold Kenzo accountable, unless he was caught fighting on school grounds again.
After he got to his seat Ryu put his head down on his arms and started to drift into sleep while waiting for class to start.
Ryu woke up to someone flicking him on the arm, it was Kenji. But oddly enough even though Kenji was there, class hadn't started.
"Bro, I was sleeepingg," Ryu said to Kenji exaggerating the word sleeping.
Kenji laughed before replying with, "Man, I just wanted to make sure you were okay, you have to be ready for that fight today." Kenji's voice wasn't that serious, but there was a hint of concern in his speech.
"Alright, alright, what are you doing here early, you never show up before class starts," said Ryu inquisitively.
"Just wanted to be here for you to make sure you were safe," said Kenji, in an oddly serious tone for his normal nonchalant persona.
"Thanks, man, I still don't know when and where it is," said Ryu.
"Well, he's not a very great planner I guess," said Kenji.
They both chuckled a little bit, then went silent as class was about to begin.
After they got through the first half of classes, Ryu entered into the lunchroom, ever since he had stopped being bullying by Kenzo he had sat with Kenji every day. Today some of the other members of the Student Government Association that had the same lunch sat with them. This was because there was apparently an important meeting coming up for the club that they had to plan out.
As they talked, Ryu mostly kept to himself, scrolling through things on his phone and eating silently.
Despite his detachment from the conversation, mimicking Haruko, Yoko kept stealing glances at Ryu, but he was too oblivious to notice.
As Yoko was staring at Ryu, she saw a large male walking up behind him, she recognized him as Kenzo. She personally despised the sight of him, he just exuded an aura that Yoko couldn't stand, one of arrogance and ego.
Since Ryu was so zoned into his phone, he failed to notice Kenzo's presence, but suddenly he felt someone tap his shoulder, and a piece of paper was set in front of him.
Once he looked over his shoulder, he saw Kenzo walking away laughing and talking with a group of girls.
'What a jerk, I guess he finally decided to plan out the fight'
As he turned back around, Yoko piped up and asked him a question.
"Is that about the fight?" asked Yoko.
"Yeah, how do you know about the fight?" asked Ryu, questioning Yoko.
"Well, the whole school knows, just please be careful, okay?" said Yoko, she blushed as she said the last part.
"I'll be careful don't worry," said Ryu returning his attention to the paper in front of him, he was too thickheaded to notice Yoko's body language.
As he looked at the paper, he realized it contained only an address and a time.
'4579 Felt St.'
'9:00PM'
This was what the paper read. Ryu was satisfied with the time as it gave him enough room to prepare. This was plenty of time, because he didn't receive a daily quest today, he assumed it was because today was the day of the fight.
Ryu didn't recognize the address, so he quickly looked it up on a GPS app on his phone. He located building that was denoted on the paper. It was an abandoned construction project that was barely half finished, it was a known hangout spot for criminals and local Yakuza members.
'Why the hell is he holding it here, well, who cares I'm still going to show up anyways'
Ryu thought this with a sense of determination.
After this he made his way through the rest of the school day, it was fairly boring with nothing important happening. He made his way home and sat down, strategizing about the fight. Today, Kenji came home with Ryu and strategized with him.