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Classroom Of The Elite Volume 1 - Chapter 30
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When lunchtime came, I jumped to my feet and headed toward the cafeteria with purposeful strides.
“Where are you going?”
Kushida had noticed me rushing out of class and followed. She popped up before me, stopping me in my tracks.
“It’s lunch. I thought I’d go to the cafeteria.”
“Hmm. Mind if I go with you?”
“I don’t really mind. But there are a lot of other people you could ask, you know.”
“It’s true, I do have a lot of friends to eat lunch with, but you don’t have anyone, Ayanokouji-kun. Even though you’d usually reach out to Horikita-san, you haven’t talked to her today. The other day, didn’t you say something was bothering you about what happened in the faculty room? What was it?”
Kushida, as usual, was quite observant. To be honest, I hadn’t wanted to do this with anyone, but I decided that Kushida was probably fine. I’d come to learn her secret by sheer coincidence. She wouldn’t do anything stupid.
“I can tell you if you promise that you won’t tell anyone else.”
“I’m good at keeping secrets.”
Kushida and I headed to the cafeteria together. We navigated our way through the crowd and finally reached the meal ticket machine. I bought tickets for two portions but didn’t line up at the counter. Instead, I went to the side of the vending machine and looked at students perusing the menu.
“What is it?” Kushida tilted her head and looked puzzled when I began studying the machine.
“This might answer what was bothering me.”
I continued observing students as they bought lunch sets from the ticket machine. After I’d observed about twenty students, my target appeared. He purchased his meal ticket and walked to the counter with heavy, plodding
footsteps.
“Okay, let’s go,” I said.
“Hmm? Okay.”
We quickly exchanged our tickets for our meals and sat down in front of the heavy-footed student.
“Um, excuse me. Are you an upperclassman?” I asked.
“Hmm? Who are you?” The student regarded us calmly, a look of complete disinterest on his face.
“Are you a second-year student? Third-year?”
“Third-year. Let me guess, you’re a first year?”
“I’m Ayanokouji, from Class D. You’re also in Class D, aren’t you?”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
Kushida looked at me with surprise, as if asking, “How did you know?”
“Because he’s limited to eating the free meals. It’s not very tasty, is it?” I asked. He was eating the free vegetable meal set.
“What do you want? You’re really irritating.” He took his tray and made to stand, but I stopped him.
“I want to ask you something. If you listen, I’ll show you my gratitude.”
“Gratitude?”
The cafeteria’s hustle and bustle drowned out my voice. The students were all engrossed in chatting pleasantly with their friends.
“Do you still have the problems from the midterm test from the first semester of your first year? Or, if not, do you happen to know someone from your class who does?”
“Do you even understand what you’re asking?” he said.
“It’s not particularly strange, is it? I didn’t think it was against school rules to study using old test problems.”
“Why are you asking me?”
“That’s simple. I believed I’d have the highest chance of success if I worked with someone who doesn’t have any points. Honestly, that free vegetable meal doesn’t look good. Of course, things would be quite different if you actually liked eating the vegetable set. What do you think?”
“How much are you going to pay?”
“Ten thousand points. That’s as high as I’ll go.”
“I don’t have the old test problems, but…I know someone who does. If you want him to help you, though, you’re going to need to offer at least 30,000 points. If you’ve got that, you’re fine.”
“I’m afraid that 30,000 is a no-go for me. I don’t have that much.”
“How much do you have?”
“Twenty thousand.”
“Then 20,000… no, 15,000 should do. Nothing under that.”
“15,000, huh?”
“If you’d go so far as to ask for old test problems from a stranger, then you must be pretty desperate, huh? Well, the school will mercilessly expel any student who gets a failing grade. None of my classmates are even here anymore.”
“I see. I understand. I’ll pay the 15,000 points.”
“Then we have a deal. Of course, I’ll have to ask you to transfer the points in advance.”
“Fine, but if you do anything to stab us in the back, I won’t forgive you. Even if you’re an upperclassman, I’ll do anything and everything I can to make sure you’re expelled.”
“You’re a freak. Fine, I get it. Besides, when you transfer points, there’s always a record of it. If rumor spreads that some first-year students ripped me off, it’d look bad.”
“All right then. Since I’m paying you 15,000 points, can you toss in a little bonus? I want to see the answers to the surprise test that we took after being admitted.”
“All right. I’ll toss that in, too. I think that your concerns are pointless, though.” It seemed he understood what I was after.
“Thank you very much.”
After we made our deal, he quickly left. He probably didn’t want to be noticed.
“Hey, Ayanokouji-kun? What you did just now. Was that really okay?” Kushida asked.
“It’s no problem. School rules allow point transfers, so there was no violation.”
“You might be right, but isn’t getting the old test problems cheating?”
“Cheating? I don’t think so. If the school didn’t allow it, they would have outlined it in the school rules to begin with. Also, I felt more confident after seeing that third-year student. That is to say, it’s not unusual for students to barter points like this.”
“Huh?”
“My request didn’t particularly surprise him, and he accepted quickly. This probably isn’t the first time he’s negotiated like this. Not only did he have the answer sheet for the first-year midterm exam, but he also had the answer sheet for the mock test we took after being admitted. If he saved those, it’s clear why.”
Kushida’s eyes widened in shock.
“Ayanokouji-kun, what you did was unexpectedly daring.”
“It’s just a bit of insurance to prevent Sudou and the others from getting expelled.”
“But, if the old test answers are useless, then it will have been for nothing. I mean, the past test questions are old, aren’t they? They might be completely unrelated to what’s featured on this year’s test.”
“The problems may not be exactly the same, but there will definitely be similarities. I noticed a hint on that last mock exam we took.”
“A hint?”
“You noticed the really difficult problems alongside the simple ones, right?”
“Yeah, I did. The final questions, right? I didn’t understand them at all.”
“I did some investigating, and I found that those questions were on the second- and third-year students’ tests. In other words, a first-year student generally wouldn’t understand how to solve them. Wouldn’t it be pointless for the school to purposefully throw us problems we can’t solve? Those questions aren’t there simply to measure our academic ability. Now, suppose that the problems on the mock test we took were exactly the same as the problems on the old mock test. What would happen?”
“If I’d seen the old test, I would have been able to answer every question,” she said.
The same thing would likely apply to the midterm exam as well. Shortly thereafter, that third-year student sent me a message with an image file attached. It was the old test questions. First, I checked the mock test. The key was whether or not the last three problems were the same. Kushida must have been curious as well, because she drew closer and tried to peek at my phone.
“Well? Well?” she asked.
“They’re the same. Every single word is identical. The test from that year and this year are exactly the same, in every way.”
“That’s amazing! So, if we show this to everyone in class, that would mean an easy victory! We should show this to all of our other friends, not just Sudou-kun!”
“No, we’ll hold off. We won’t show it to Sudou and the guys yet.”
“Wh-why? You went to all of the trouble of using up so many of your points for this!”
“If they learn that the old test questions would be effective, their motivation to study would go up in smoke. We need to be wary of overconfidence. After all, even though the mock tests were identical, it’s possible that the questions featured on the midterm this year might not be the same as last year’s.”
These old test papers were insurance.
“Okay, then how will you use them?”
“I’m going to release them on the internet the day before the test. We tell everyone that the problems from the old test are generally the same as the ones on the new. Then what do you think will happen?”
“That night, everyone will be hunched over their desks, frantically trying to memorize all of the problems!”
“Exactly.”
The students with a poor grasp of the basics probably wouldn’t be able to memorize everything in a single day. However, we weren’t shooting for perfect scores this time around. The crucial thing was to avoid failing. If we got greedy, we might end up digging our own graves.
With this plan, we could probably get everyone in Class D to pass.
“When did you come up with the idea to get the old tests?” she asked.
“I considered it when we learned that the test material was going to be different. However, I had a hunch back when they first told us about the midterm exam.”
“Huh?! Way back then?”
“There was something very peculiar about the way Chiyabashira-sensei told us about the test. As our homeroom teacher, she had a clear understanding of everyone’s grades and academic performance. Despite that, she seemed absolutely certain when she told us that there was a way for us to pass this test. In other words, she indicated that there was a surefire way for us to save everyone.”
“And that’s…the old test papers?”
“This might be related to why Sudou, Ike, and Yamauchi were admitted to this school despite being academically poor. Even if they couldn’t get good grades by studying ahead, perhaps there were other means of addressing the problem, a backup plan they could use to avoid expulsion.
This meant that it was possible for anyone to get a near-perfect score if they could get the old test papers. That’s what I took from the situation, anyway.”
“Ayanokouji-kun, you really are an incredibly observant person, aren’t you?”
“I’m just cunning. Besides, I didn’t believe that I could pass the midterm without some help. I was just looking to make things easier for myself.”
“Hmm.” Kushida grinned like some gears were turning in her mind.
“I have one more favor to ask. Could you please tell everyone that you got the old test papers, Kushida? I want you to say that you got them from a third-year student you’re close to.”
“That’s fine, but…are you okay with that, Ayanokouji-kun?”
“I like to avoid trouble. I don’t want to stand out. Besides, our classmates trust you, Kushida. I think it would be better if you told them.”
“I understand. If you say so, Ayanokouji-kun.”
“Thanks. Don’t say anything else, though. We need to avoid drawing too much attention.”
“Okay, we can keep this secret between us.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
“Don’t you feel that a strange bond of mutual trust forms between people who share a secret?”
“I don’t know about that. I sure hope so.”
“Thank you,” replied Kushida.
I didn’t really know what she meant by that.
…—————-…
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