Volume 2-2 chapter 1 part 1

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2-2 chapter 1 part 1

1


Our Class D had just finished our first special exam after becoming 2nd years.

Although I injured my left hand in the conflict against Hosen, I managed to eliminate my risk of getting expelled. The wound which was the price would probably take a while to heal, but that couldn't be helped.

Under Tsukishiro's gaze, I left the reception room, and once the door was closed, I was able to breathe a little easier.

Like this, my daily routine of a carefree student would finally return...

But in the current situation, that kind of naive thinking wouldn’t suffice.

Besides, the environment right now has already begun to drift away from everyday life.

In the eyes of many students, being called out to talk with Acting Director Tsukishiro was an astonishing thing. As I thought about it, I had to accept the reality in front of my eyes, the reality that I couldn’t do anything about.

I could only conclude like this: I who had escaped to this school, would always be in chains. After all, the only way to be free of them was to get expelled.

"Looks like you've finished talking?"

"Well, yeah."

Chabashira, who stood waiting not far from the reception room, casually joined me.

I was a bit dejected, looking at Chabashira’s figure, but I didn’t let it show on my face.

Even now, Tsukishiro didn't know that I was working with the teacher of my Class 2-D, Chabashira, and Mashima-sensei of Class 2-A. In that situation, Chabashira was waiting here for me who had been called out by Tsukishiro. What was that if not unnatural?

By thinking it as Chabashira's duty as a class teacher to summon me, I guess it wasn't a problem; but this was Tsukishiro, so I couldn't rule out the possibility of this being one of his traps. Because of this, I honestly didn't want to meet up with her, and so I shut myself off and went.

In the position of an ordinary student teacher pair, it would be an unnatural act for the teacher to wait for the student,

If the situation was a little less tense, Chabashira's brain might be able to understand that.

She must have been influenced by the fact that I got a perfect score in math, and that I had made part of my strength public. I could understand that she was shaken up, but her actions were a bit rash.

If there's one point I can support her in, it'll be that me and her have a different evaluation of that man.

At least in Chabashira's eyes, the part about how he had a link with the father of a student in her class was more important.

After all, she didn’t know anything about the background of the White Room, so it was excusable.

It was only natural that our caution and warmness towards him were inadvertently different.

And such, I won't make any comments on that point.

The only thing I could do now was leave the scene as fast as possible, so I continued walking forward.

"From today onwards, you'll be a bit of a celebrity."

I was wondering what she would say, and it turned out to be something like this.

"I'm not too happy about it, but it was a necessary measure. I can only assume that this is within the area of tolerance."

"Ignore the students in the other classes, how are you going to explain it to your own class? You've always done your best to try to seem inconspicuous, but suddenly you score perfectly in that difficult math test. They won't leave you alone now. Have you prepared for this scenario beforehand?"

I ignored her words as I thought about what to do for the rest of the day.

My bag was still in the classroom, so I had to go back.

"There's no use in acting in advance. I'll start now."

The real crazy thing to do was to specifically tell my classmates that I was going to get a perfect score in math in the special exam beforehand.

"This is going to be hard for you. Prepare yourself to be bombarded with questions."

"I know."

If you already knew a bit about what was going to happen, could you just let me go now?

"Let's stop it here. If I'm walking with a teacher alone from now on, it’ll attract a lot of unnecessary attention."

I know, I know. Chabashira muttered as she headed towards the office.

She looked like she was trying her best to suppress her emotions, but I could easily tell that she was overflowing with joy.

She was probably the teacher who seemed to be the furthest away from the students than all the others, but in reality, she actually would be the closest. It was precisely because of her own regrets when she was a student that her hard-to-suppress feelings overwhelmed her and came out.

In front of the average student, her poker face would be sufficient...but to me, it was just a bit funny. Being easy to manipulate was an advantage, but now it was just getting in the way.

There was no point in wasting my energy on Chabashira, so I cast her into the back of my mind for the time being.

After that, I tried to call Horikita, and although it connected, she didn’t pick up.

I then tried sending her a simple text, but she didn’t read it.

"Can’t be helped, huh."

Right now, Horikita was the best way the problem could be solved, with her involvement in the mathematics duel and the matters relating to the student council in the first year.

Explaining the situation a bit would allow for improvisation to a certain extent. If possible, I would have liked to have talked to her a bit first, but it looks like I’ll have to do it on the scene.

I could already see my classroom

What would it be like in the classroom after my perfect score in math?

It would be ideal if almost all the students went back to their dormitories like normal.

As soon as I got back to the classroom, I could see that the scene in front of me was the exact opposite of what I was hoping for.

It hadn’t even been 30 minutes since I'd been called out by Tsukishiro.

Normally, most of the students would have left the school already.

However, even though the students remaining in the classroom were the ones who didn't have a club, there were still quite a few that remained.

Their objective went without saying. It had to be me.

For those who experienced the atmosphere of the scene and saw it with their own eyes, it spoke for itself.

Horikita, who didn't answer my call before, was also here.

Looks like Horikita assessed the situation better than I would have expected.

I didn't have time to express my gratitude, because as soon as I stepped in, a horde of students rushed over.

The one standing at the front was a member of the Ayanokouji group, Keisei. Contrasting the overjoyed Chabashira, his expression was somewhat resentful.

"I'm sorry I couldn’t talk to you when you called me out earlier."

Keisei was planning to have a chat with me right after school, but Horikita's appearance overshadowed that, so I first apologized for that.

"That isn't a problem. I take it you have time now? I have a few questions I want to ask."

Haruka and Airi, who were also from the Ayanokouji group, gathered around him.

Akito wasn't there, so I guess he had club activities, as I mentioned before.

And a large portion of the other spectators also pricked up their ears and watched the situation.

"You...what's with the 100 points in math? I checked the scores of all the other 2nd years with the OAA, and even Ichinose and Sakayanagi didn't get perfect scores. You're the only one in the entire year."

Normally, the atmosphere right now wasn't something that could be created by just getting a good score in an exam.

But this exam was completely different.

The more academic ability a student had, the more they could grasp the abnormality of scoring perfectly in this exam.

Maybe even those who were too low-leveled to understand it themselves had also recognized the abnormality of it from the students around them, leading them also to understand the situation

"About that-"

My eyes wandered over to Horikita, who was sitting in the front row, to ask for help.

"Well, let me explain this."

Normally by this time, Horikita would have returned to her dormitory, but she should have seen the situation with the remaining students in the classroom and decided to stay. An accurate judgement. Because of the fact that her attention was on me this whole time, I could see that she stayed back to try to help me smooth things over, so there was no need to confirm that.

To help gather the lines of sight, she stood up and stepped closer to me.

"I...was asking Kiyotaka the question."

To Horikita, who had stepped in as an unnecessary outsider, Keisei expressed his intense disgust.

"Yes. But, Yukimura-kun, I have the correct answers to your questions."

"...What are you talking about?"

Through using a deliberately mystifying expression, Horikita managed to gather the attention of Keisei and all the other students with a single sentence.

"Yukimura-kun and I- no, the entire 2nd year couldn't get this perfect score, so how was Ayanokouji-kun able to achieve that? Don’t you all think that's inconceivable?"

Horikita directed the question to Keisei, but everyone on the scene definitely had that question.

"That's right....To be honest, the inside of my head is in chaos. I said this before, right? The questions at the end of the paper were impossible to solve. But Kiyotaka did them all like nobody's business, and I just can't understand it."

In fact, when the exam concluded, I remembered that part of the class were extremely shocked with the content in the exam. Starting with Keisei and Yosuke, the students who had the best grades were discussing the extremely difficult questions. The topic had even spread over to the Ayanokouji group, and I remembered that I didn't give a clear answer as to whether I did it or not, and I vaguely dodged the question.

"Kiyotaka should know very well that nobody in the class could solve those problems. Yet we didn't even see him brag about how he solved them. Isn't that weird? It even makes it seem like he has something he can't reveal...maybe he did something bad, and knew the answers from the start, or something like that."

"He cheated… Of course, it's not surprising that you want to think that.

Horikita took Keisei's euphemistically phrased words and bluntly displayed them.

Keisei looked away in embarrassment, and Horikita continued to pursue the topic.

"In this situation, it's hard not to be suspicious. If I were a student who knew nothing, I would definitely feel the same as you, and believed that Ayanokouji-kun had been secretly cheating. However, that isn't the case here."

Horikita adjusted her breathing slightly, and glanced at the students who were watching her.

"I'm planning to explain the same thing for the people who aren't here now. To solve the mystery of Ayanokouji-kun's perfect score, we'll have to go back to spring of last year.

Spring of last year. In other words, the time in which we first came to this school.

"We switched seats, but do you guys all remember that before that, I was always sitting next to Ayanokouji-kun? Not long after school started, when I was talking to Ayanokouji-kun, I suddenly noticed that he was extremely good in academics...Even better than me."

"Better than you in academics? Hold on. I seem to remember Kiyotaka's scores being around average when school started. I'm sorry, but I can't see anything about it being worthy of special attention. Aren't his grades on the OAA all average Cs?"

Keisei's criticism which came from his clear memory of the past didn't faze Horikita.

"Of course. That's because my strategy was already in motion before the first exam was even complete."

As Horikita said that, she moved away from me, towards the lectern. This was meant to shift the focus of all the students, as well as to deflect attention away from me.

I did think that she would help me out, but the way she did it was better than I expected.

"From the very start he had the knowledge to get perfect scores in math. And knowing this before anyone else, I thought up a little strategy."

"...A little strategy?"

For Keisei, he wouldn’t have just one or two questions.

He had to be wondering how I had obtained that knowledge.

But anyway, Horikita decided to ignore that, and continued on with the topic.

Onto not how I had obtained that knowledge, but about why it was necessary to conceal my academic excellence.

Horikita merely treated it as a focal point to attract the attention of the other people onto this point.

"Last April, we of Class D were overjoyed to have received such a large sum of money. I'm ashamed to say that I was also one of them. But behind the scenes, I had a feeling something unexpected was going to happen. During that time, I asked Ayanokouji-kun, who sat next to me, if he could hold back in the exam. You could call this a soft tactic or a trump card. Of course, I told him to keep it at a level which wouldn't hold the class back. And that's how his academic ability got rated C by the school."

Horikita explained to the others that my utterly unremarkable academic ability that I've maintained up to now was actually part of a formulated strategy. Of course, if people carefully looked back at what happened a year ago, some would definitely notice inconsistencies. The fact that Horikita back then wasn't someone who could get along with others, what the exact time was when Horikita noticed that I was good at academics, et cetera. There were holes everywhere.

However, to most people, memories from a year ago were a distant past. Apart from the intense events that had been engraved into the hippocampus itself, the less memorable events were neglectable.

Only a handful of people were able to remember those events as if they were important family moments.

Most were like, "it seems like this really did happen" and used their imagination to fill in the gaps in memory.

Of course, for people such as Keisei who had a strong sense of mistrust, deceiving them wouldn’t be so simple.

He didn't let go of Horikita, and went after the part that wasn't so well thought out.

"...Your words are hardly convincing. If you had doubts surrounding the rules of the school, it would be better for the class as a whole for him to get higher scores from the start. Since he scored perfectly on this exam, getting an A or A+ in academic ability isn't impossible. Even one more person's grades could steadily increase the number of points of our class.”

Keisei expressed that he was completely unable to grasp the advantages of this soft strategy.

"That, huh. If we were only looking at the class points in front of us, that would be fine. But if he had gone all out from the start-what would be the state of Ayanokouji-kun now? No, to put it more accurately, what would his future be like?'

Faced with Keisei's mistrust, Horikita didn't run away, taking it head on, while improvising.

She was so eloquent that it was like she planned this all out from the start.

"What would his future be like…?"

As he didn’t understand, Keisei repeated the question, so Horikita started to elaborate.

"If we go by what Yukimura-kun said, and assume that Ayanokouji-kun had gone all out since April of last year. If that was the case, then by May, Sakayanagi-san, Ichinose-san, and Ryuuen-kun would definitely learn of his name. If they ignored the person who was the best in math in the entire year, he would become an obstacle to them sooner or later. It wouldn't be surprising if someone acted to try to get him expelled.”

"So you're saying, there might be people paying attention to him?"

"Correct. Anything can happen in this school. After all, there was even an exam which forcefully produced dropouts through inter-class voting. And in fact, at that time, Ayanokouji-kun was almost forced to drop out through Sakayanagi-san's strategy. Although that was during his normal state where he was coincidentally chosen to be a substitute, it's possible that it really was aimed at him."

Horikita was saying that according to the situation, the one who got expelled might have been me instead of Yamauchi.

"No, that's wrong. If Kiyotaka was serious from the start, the result is obvious even if Yamauchi and him were at different ends of a scale.

"Who knows. Yamauchi would have been more careful when making his moves to avoid getting expelled, and Sakayanagi-san's strategy would be more complex and elusive. Besides, Yamauchi-kun had at least made more friends than Ayanokouji-kun, so the things put on both ends of the scales would be different, and opinions would follow that change.”

If it continued on like this, it would end up as nothing more than arguing for the sake of arguing, so Keisei was unable to investigate this point in depth.

Even if you used the other exams, it was all pretty much the same.

"...So why are you revealing this now? If you reveal his strength without caution, then the results will be the same. Since you suddenly showed his strength to everyone now, he could also become a target for everyone.”

Keisei thought that there was no difference in the risks of going all out from the start and going all out now.

But it seemed like Horikita was expecting him to say that, showing no sign of panic..

"No, there's a huge difference between showing his strength a year ago compared to revealing his strength now. In the past year, the unity of our Class D had grown by leaps and bounds, and each of us has grown in individual strength. We've become able to make the right decisions."

I'm sure that if he looked back at himself a year ago, Keisei would have seen it the same.

"It isn't just Ayanokouji-kun. Let's say, yes…it's easier to understand the example of Sudo-kun who isn't here. This time last year, he was nothing more than a student that was hard to look at, undoubtedly the biggest burden to our class. But what about now? Although there's still remnants of his wild nature left over, he has improved dramatically. In terms of academic ability, he's growing steadily. And in addition to his already excellent physical abilities, his OAA evaluation in May is even higher than yours, Yukimura-kun."

Keisei was still on top in April, but with this exam, Sudo climbed on top.

The irrefutable fact of the overall OAA evaluation was placed right in front of Keisei.

"When we first entered this school, no matter if it was you or I, did we have the strength or willingness to protect Sudo-kun?"

For those students who were discussing whether or not they should abandon Sudo, who didn't even bother considering ways to save him, would they be able to seriously try to protect a fellow classmate? That's what Horikita meant. However, if Sudo was in trouble now, Keisei would definitely rack his brains along with the others to think of a strategy to protect him.

"But now, if someone has their attention on Ayanokouji-kun, we could now work together to protect him. That is how I have judged it. And that's why I've made Ayanokouji-kuns true strength public, and started to raise the overall strength of our class."

There were already some students that had accepted what she had said.

However, there were still more than half of the students who had a number of doubts in their hearts.

Then again, Horikita didn't have the material to be able to convince everyone.

Since this was a lie, it was unavoidable.

Of course, it wasn't like doing that failed to make the other classmates cease their attacks for now.

However, things would be different if we had a stronger backup.

After confirming that most of the attention was diverted to Horikita, I looked at Yosuke.

The boy sitting on the absolute trust of the class.

Although Yosuke was facing Horikita, he would occasionally pretend to look around while actually observing me. Then as he judged that he wouldn't be exposed then, he met my eyes.

Just like with the other students, there were a lot of things I didn't tell Yosuke. If it had been any other student, they would probably be just as suspicious to me as Keisei and the others were, and would join them in throwing harsh questions at me; But it was only Yosuke, so I had nothing to worry about.

He would give the highest priority to the thing that would bring the most benefit to the class as a whole.

In the current situation, even without needing me to say it, he was very clear about what he had to do.

"I've already gained a slight understanding of the soft strategy used by Horikita. On that basis, I have another question. Is Ayanokouji only good at math?"

"I can't comment on that at this stage.”

Horikita calmly responded to Keisei’s question.

"The student known as Ayanokouji Kiyotaka, has he exerted his full strength, or is he still holding back? No matter what the truth is, we can use it to constantly attack the other classes by hiding the real 'truth'."

"That-"

"So that's it. I'm clear with what Horikita-san is trying to say."

Yosuke, who had been observing from the start, helped Horikita out against Keisei, who wanted to continue pestering her.

He slowly made his way over to Horikita's side.

"I didn't get it at first, but I've been listening to the discussion, and now I understand. It's true that an enemy with unknown values can be dangerous. They will then send someone to gather information for more details. But if even our own class members don't know the truth, it'll be pointless for them to keep digging."

Yosuke added shallow reinforcements between the gaps in Horikita's statement.

Judging that Yosuke was her ally, Horikita quickly agreed.

"Yeah. He's bound to attract attention in the future anyway, so let's just make use of him till the end. Letting our opponents see him as an unknown factor should be the better course of action. There might be students listening outside right now. That's what the school's like after all."

Everyone took a sudden glance towards the hallway. Was the student known as Ayanokouji only good at math, or did his excellence extend to the other subjects? Creating doubts in the other class through the debate of how much of a threat I should be considered. When mixed with Yosuke's, Horikita's words immediately became heavier.

"Horikita-san really is good, isn't she? I'm a little touched."

Right then, Kei struck with a casual statement.

"Don't you think so as well, Shinohara-san?"

Then she sought agreement from her own friend, Shinohara.

I think she was trying to distract the others by elevating Horikita to decrease the focus on my strength. Kei, even if I didn't give her a signal or instructions like I did with Yosuke, instantly understood what she had to do and did it.

"That's right! I always thought that Horikita-san and Ayanokouji-kun were talking secretly, but it turns out that they're really just doing it for the class!"

When she first came to school, Horikita didn't talk to anyone but me.

This fact, in the end, turned out to be useful material.

If that's the case, then did it have a definite persuasion power?

The wonderful way of how Yosuke and Kei mediated in which nobody else could feel had an outstanding effect. The group mentality of "If Yosuke and the others think it's true, then it has to be" was also playing an indispensable role too.

"A strategy of hiding our strength…. That's true, the other classes must be quite shocked now.

Even Keisei, who had been suspicious up to now was no exception

"Although I don’t completely understand the situation of the school, I think that having an insurance plan is always good. I don't know if this is fortunate or unfortunate, but Ayanokouji-kun is poor at communicating, and doesn’t like to stand out. For those reasons, I also wanted him to hide it."

Horikita expressed that the strategy was possible because both of us were considering the same thing.

She then looked away from Keisei, and addressed the class.

“That's the story of how Ayanokouji-kun got a full score in math. Sorry for surprising you all."

Horikita survived beautifully in a situation where there was only one chance. But if they were left alone for a bit longer, questions might start sprouting up again.

"I think it would be better if we left it at that. As Horikita-san said, the walls have ears."

Yosuke closed the topic cleanly, and told the others that it would be bad to keep talking like this. The smarter the student was, the more doubts they would have, but the opposite was true, as the smarter they were, they more likely they would realise that we couldn't explain everything here. The proof of this was that even the never ending verbal onslaught of Keisei stopped.

In a way, you could say that this meeting diverted their doubts.

And thanks to Horikita's achievements which surpassed my imagination, it would be easier to use the extent of my abilities in the future.

Even if I showed my strength outside of mathematics, it could be explained by the fact that I had been concealing it. The preparation that she did here was crucial.

I really have to thank her for dealing with this remarkably even without knowing in advance.