The morning of January 5th.
I was gently awoken by the beeping of my trusty alarm clock once again.
Kimura had gotten used to it.
"The results of the exam are being released at 6:00 am," I said.
"I'm interested to see what's about to happen," he replied as he slowly got up.
The time was 5:15 am.
I pulled my blanket down. The room was heated, so there wasn't much of a difference in temperature. Kimura was scrolling through his phone, and I made my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth—it was our usual morning routine now.
**
At 6:00 am on the dot, both Kimura's and my phone vibrated.
-
National High School
All students who have been given an expulsion notice should report to the administration to finalise the required paperwork.
Your Result: Passed
-
"I passed," said Kimura.
"Same here."
"Well, that was to be expected, wasn't it?"
I opened my bank account and checked the amount.
-
Your Account
Current Points: 1
Owed: 33,788
Owing: 12,000
-
Maybe I shouldn't have cut it so close—oh well, it was fine, so it doesn't matter now.
"So what are you going to do now?" asked Kimura.
"What do you mean?"
"I have a feeling your class will be feeling a lot more empty today."
"It doesn't bother me."
"Ah, well, since we have nothing else to do, do you want to go to the gym?"
"Yeah, I'll have to borrow some points though"
"Alright, that's fine with me. Let's go!"
On our way out of the dorm, we noticed a large number of faculty staff going door to door like salesmen. However, it was pretty obvious that they weren't trying to sell anything. A small stream of students began coming out of the dorms. Some of their faces looked distraught—it was obvious that they had just been expelled. However, I noticed that there was a larger portion of students who seemed to not be saddened by the fact that they were being expelled.
I assumed that this had something to do with the situation in class 2-F.
We made our way toward the gym inside the sports centre.
We stayed there until 7:30 am when we decided that we'd return back to our dorms and prepare for classes for the day.
*
The class certainly felt a lot more empty than usual.
There were exactly eight other people in front of the board.
There was a girl who was crying on her knees as she looked up at the board. Her faint sobbing was distinctly audible in the nearly-silent room. Under her breath, I could hear her crying the name of someone.
"Sakura... Sakura... why did you do that for me..."
I moved closer and glanced at the board.
---
Class 2-A
1. Hasegawa Mio - 3,003 points
2. Fujiharu Sara - 1,267 points
3. Tachibana Emi - 1,189 points
(0 students expelled)
>
Class 2-B
1. Naegi Saka - 166,177 points
2. Kinoshita Chitose - 23,721 points
3. Ester Hamasaki - 20,611 points
(5 students expelled)
>
Class 2-C
1. Kobayashi Lucy - 5,143 points
2. Hiroto Kaoru - 4,901 points
3. Suzuki Touma - 4,315 points
(0 students expelled)
>
Class 2-D
ƥαṇdα- ηθνε|·ƈθm 1. Katsuki Andria - 4,210 points
2. Akasaka Uya - 2,370 points
3. Tamura Ritsu - 2,002 points
(3 students expelled)
>
Class 2-E (My class)
1. Ichikawa Mana - 3,324 points
2. Itsuki Akane - 3,027 points
3. Yamada Nendo - 1,870 points
(21 students expelled)
>
Class 2-F
1. Yogi Fukuda - 1,146 points
2. Kanako Hanae - 945 points
3. N/A
(28 students expelled)
---
It looked like my strategy had unintentionally gotten 16 extra students expelled from our class.
Takeuchi, Furukawa, Itsuki, Yamada and his friend, Hamasaki, Ichikawa, the sobbing girl and I were the only ones remaining.
This school was pretty ruthless with its expulsions.
Now that the class was so small, I wondered what the school was going to do—luckily, I didn't need to ponder that question for too long because I conveniently received a notification on my phone.
-
National High School
Students in a class with less than ten students are required to choose another class within two ranks of theirs to move to. The class they join must have more than ten students.
Class transfer slips must be handed to your homeroom teacher before 6:00 am on the 6th of January.
Note: Midterm exam difficulty will be scaled to the rank of your class. Higher-ranked classes will have more difficult exams. There will be penalties for getting a low score on the exams.
-
It looks like I'll be moving classes.
The homeroom teacher of Class 2-E walked in with a defeated look on her face.
"Everyone here, I just want to say something. This exam was designed to cull out the lower classes. This is part of the school's mission. I can't say anything more, but I will tell you this—I have enjoyed teaching you guys for the short period of time we were together."
After that, she took a seat at her desk and handed out class transfer slips.
When we returned to our seats, I was able to see that the girl who was crying was Honoka. It wasn't too hard to figure out what likely happened. Her friend probably gave her all their points to help her survive.
How tragic.
I looked down at the class transfer slip. There were a few random pieces of information I needed to fill out. However, the most important part was which class I was going to transfer to. The exam difficulty scaling meant it was not always the best idea to just pick the highest-ranked class. However, that didn't really matter to me.
The main thing was that I wanted to be in the same class as Ichikawa.
It was pretty easy to guess the atmosphere of the classes based on the point scores which were shown every morning.
After the second morning, I noticed that the top 3 students in class C had lost exactly 700 points. This was very interesting, as if the class was working together in order to get an invalid vote, each student would need to pay 700 points if they spread out the punishment.
This is because each student automatically loses 500 points for an invalid vote, and a minimum of 12 people must not vote for a vote to be invalid. The 12 people would lose an extra 500 points each. If they decided to spread the extra point loss between all of the students, then the 30 students would each pay 200 extra points. (12 x 500 = 6,000, then 6,000/30 = 200)
This leads me to believe that the class is very united. Otherwise, such careful cooperation and collaboration would not be possible.
Needless to say, I decided that Class 2-C was the best choice for me.
I filled out the remainder of the class transfer slip and handed it back to the teacher. However, just as I was about to do so, she quickly added another option.
"I've just received a message from the school informing us that there will be 30 more students admitted in order to make up for the unexpectedly large loss of students in the last exam. They will form the new class 2-E, so you can join those classes if you would like."
A surprising third option, however, they weren't really that optimal for me.
I wanted to join class 2-C because of their unity and altruism. I would be able to sit back and relax without having to worry about special exams and having to expend too much effort for the time being. If I stayed in 2-E or went to 2-D instead, there would likely be a rough road ahead of me.
"I'll stick with my choice."
"Alright, I'll put that through the system. Thanks, Mizuhara."
A few minutes passed before everyone decided on the class they were going to join.
"Are you going to 2-C?" asked Takeuchi.
"Yeah."
"Same. Furukawa, Itsuki, Ichikawa and Hamasaki are also going there."
We were dismissed for the day at that point. The teacher informed us that classes were cancelled for the day due to lots of changes needing to be processed.
It was just barely 8:30 am, and I had the entire day free practically. I also didn't have very many points to use for shopping and the like. So I decided to just return to my dorm and lie on my bed.
**
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