COTE 2V01 - Chapter 1

What Is The True Ability

In a certain year, and it was a long time ago when I have finally become familiar with the 21ST century.
Japan was facing a similar crisis as well, while the world was facing various problems.
Low birthrate and aging population, environmental issues, and decline in national power. Japanese society is in decline.
The government had begun to work hard on human resources development persistently, in order to rebuild them fundamentally.
And then, the existence of a high school, which was founded as 1 amongst that policy.
A boarding school, which has recruited various students from all over the country in order to nurture a world-class young generation.
‘Kōdo Ikusei Kōtō Gakkō.’
The exceptional characteristic of this school is the part where they don't particularly care about the students’ grades up to the junior high school.
Both male and female have various characteristics, and those students were selected according to the school's unique selection criteria.
Those who were good at studying, but bad at communicating. Those who were good at sports, but bad at studying.
Perhaps even those students who don’t seem to have any strong points, were put together and allowed them to receive an education.
That kind of mechanism was almost unthinkable in an ordinary high school.
Those students who have such diverse personalities, were made to live collectively and competed with other classes.
I suppose the school has the intention to cultivate the necessary aptitude of their students in order to survive in groups, and capable to compete in a competitive society.
And those students who were identified as unqualified people will certainly be expelled from school without mercy.
We couldn't survive in this school, if we were only good at studying or sports.
The 1ST grade is divided into 4 classes, from A-Class to D-Class.
Approximately 40 students were assigned to each class when we enrolled into this school. There were 160 people in total.
I will describe the part where this school was completely different from other high schools in more detail.
First of all, it will be a crucial issue, but the students won’t be able to get in touch with the outside world for three years until they have graduated. At the same time, we will be forced to live in the dormitories, and we were prohibited from leaving the school grounds.
However, the school boasted a vast area of land, and there won’t be any trouble for living, since the school even has rich facilities prepared for their students.
There were the huge commercial facilities dedicated to the students and the school personnel called Keyaki Shopping Mall, which have almost everything we need, from cafés to consumer electronics retailers, barber shops to karaoke.
It was possible for us to buy it online, even if there was something they didn’t sell.
Moreover, the money we need when we made purchases in our daily life was paid in the form called the ‘Private Points’, and we can use it in place of cash, as simple as ¥ 1 per point.
However, it doesn’t mean that this Private Points was provided to us infinitely.
The figure according to our ‘Class Points’ on each month X 100 will be paid to us as the Private Points.
In other words, it will be important for us to secure our Class Points first, in order to save the necessary Private Points for our daily life.
There are several ways to increase this Class Points, but the most common one is overcoming the challenge given by the school called the ‘Special Exam’.
Basically, 4 classes were competed with each other, where the top ranks will gain the Class Points, and the bottom ranks will lose their Class Points.
Those students in that class will receive the pocket money ¥ 100,000 in cash each month, if their class have 1,000 Class Points, and on the contrary, our Class Points will become 0 mercilessly, if we kept losing, and the Private Points paid to us each month will become 0 as well.
I suppose the inseparable relationship between the Class Points and the Private Points was also the mechanism to unite those students who have different ways of thinking by saving their Class Points.
In other words, we have to increase our Class Points, since it also has the significance to ensure our fulfilling school life.
However, the attraction of Kōdo Ikusei Kōtō Gakkō isn’t only that.
The school's biggest ‘Selling Point’ is to those who looked forward to the graduation in the situation where they were being a member of A-Class.
Those students, who had succeeded, can be admitted to go on to the university or get a job as they wish.
In the extreme, we were promised to succeed with the free pass, whether it was the university which boasted the most severe difficulty level, or a big top-tier company.
However, it doesn’t mean we can think optimistically too much.
Since it was obvious that we would be eliminated soon, if we didn’t have the true ability after we had succeeded.
Even so, I suppose there’s no doubt that it was a very attractive benefit.
I guess I had described the overview of Kōdo Ikusei Kōtō Gakkō here.
I── Ayanokōji Kiyotaka is a student who really attended this remarkable school.
And we will enter the 2ND year of high school from now on.
As of April 1ST, the Class Points of ‘D-Class’ in which I enrolled in, was 275 points. It was a situation where we received the Private Points nearly ¥ 30,000 each month.
By the way, the Class Points of A-Class led by Sakayanagi, who was currently in the 1ST place overwhelmingly, was 1,119 points.
After that, B-Class led by Ichinose, with 542 points.
And then, C-Class led by Ryūen, who was slightly behind that with 540 points.
There was a huge difference compared with the other classes, but I suppose we can say that the difference was still tight.
In 1 year from now, how much we can close the gap will be the turning point of the contest.