Chapter 023: Is This Exam Really Only for Deducting Points with No Way to Add Them?
For the ordinary students of Class D, information is important, but if they have to spend their own money on it, it suddenly becomes far less vital.
It went something like this:
"Who needs to buy exam questions? It's just a month-long test. We have 1,000 points to lose. Besides, didn't they say the exam has already started? Half the month is already over, so whether we have the questions or not isn't important anymore."
"There's no way we could lose all 1,000 points in one month—oh wait, there's only half a month left! No way we lose it all now!"
And so, Class D ultimately failed to scrape together the 400,000 points required to purchase the special exam questions for this month.
Sigh.
It was truly lamentable.
This news was leaked to Ichinose by a student from Class D named Kushida Kikyo.
And as for this Kushida Kikyo...
Hikigaya felt like she was an "old acquaintance."
'Kushida is actually a very interesting person. Back in middle school, she directly caused an entire class of students and even the subject teachers to go on strike. That level of destructive power is worth acknowledging.
However, she didn't necessarily do anything "evil." She simply wants to live amidst praise and adoration, so she has been wearing a mask in class. But pretending to be the person everyone likes is no easy feat.
Eventually, she couldn't hold it in anymore and exposed all the inner thoughts, hidden feelings, and secrets of her classmates—how certain students liked her and how she felt disgusted by their confessions; how one student loathed another; or how someone had stolen something; who was cheating on whom; who was dating three boys at once; who was sleeping with a teacher; and even those involved in compensated dating)...
Her initiative in telling Ichinose about the happenings in Class D probably wasn't even about leaking intel; she likely just wanted to say something bad about Horikita-san.
After all, she's probably suffocating from holding it all in.
Because even though she caused her middle school class to collapse, she's trying the same old trick at Advanced Nurturing High School to start over. But then she discovered Horikita is from the same middle school and is worried her dark history will be exposed by her.
So she chose to try and get on Horikita's good side first. By building a relationship, she could ensure the other doesn't speak out of turn. And by constantly approaching her despite the cold shoulder, if Horikita eventually did expose her dark past, others would just mistake it for Horikita being spiteful because she clearly hated her.
It's a good plan, honestly.
But having to spend these past ten-plus days taking the initiative to butter up Horikita only to be ignored is a form of torture for her.'
"Ah... that—" Beside Hikigaya, Ichinose Honami let out a cute sound.
Ichinose found that as long as she stayed by Hikigaya-kun's side, she could hear all sorts of inside information about different classmates.
Especially the dark history of Kushida-san from Class D she heard today. Looking at that middle school class situation, it seemed like from the teachers to the students, not a single person was normal.
Looking at it that way, her own past... didn't seem quite so exaggerated.
Ichinose had made a major mistake in middle school; she had stolen a hair clip from a shop as a birthday present for her sister.
Although she returned the clip, knelt before the owner, and received forgiveness, she carried it as her own sin, frequently suffering under the weight of her conscience. But now—though it was highly unethical—she felt that compared to the experiences of Kushida-san's classmates, her past seemed a bit like "small potatoes."
'However, Kushida has two classic plotlines in the original story.
The first is that when the pressure becomes too much, she goes to a deserted area with a railing to kick it and scream curses. As long as someone witnesses that, they can quickly get a handle on her.
The other is that despite being a regular "problem girl," she was put on the expulsion list by all the "White Room" students in this school. Yet, by the time the White Room students were almost all expelled, she was still perfectly fine.
In a way, she achieved the feat of "defeating" the White Room students.'
But now was not the time to think about Kushida-san from Class D. In the original story, Kushida didn't care about the rise or fall of Class D; she cared more about how to get Horikita Suzune, who shared her middle school, expelled.
To that end, she was even willing to betray her class.
And facts proved her precautions were correct.
Although Horikita didn't "know" her personally, she had heard rumors about her.
But if Kushida didn't jump out so proactively, Horikita wouldn't have bothered with her. After all, in Horikita's code of conduct, she is a lone wolf. She doesn't pay much attention to the people around her.
Thus, Kushida-san is the type who "the more she does, the more she messes up," and things actually wouldn't have turned sour if she had done nothing.
"However—"
Hikigaya looked at the current status of the four classes in his small notebook: Class A at 940 points, Class B at 810 points. Classes C and D were both at 0.
If nothing unexpected happened, these numbers would basically be the final results of the special exam for the remaining half of the month.
The initial value was 1,000 points, but Class A only lost 60. Since they knew the conduct assessment content on the first day of enrollment, it wasn't surprising they achieved this score.
Class B only "awakened" after his transmigration, so they lost some ground during those first ten days.
If they could hold onto an evaluation score of 810 points by the end of the exam, it would already be an excellent situation for Class B.
But...
The current class representative of Class B was Hikigaya-kun.
As a transmigrator with other ambitions, he didn't want to focus all his energy on class competition, but he still had to maximize the advantages of that competition.
Like playing a game where you have two missions to complete: you first grind one of them to the absolute limit.
So.
He still wanted to raise Class B's evaluation score a little higher.
But...
He looked at Class C, whose score he had already crossed out. The only things he could manipulate were deductions—or, like Class A, trying to be as disciplined as possible to minimize losses.
However, for this conduct assessment, was there really no way to add points?
Vaguely.
A conversation he had with Horikita Manabu earlier came to mind.
'"While points can indeed be used as money and many things have a clear price tag, within the school's power structure, another organization exists alongside the Student Council: the Board of Directors.
And the Chairman of our school is a quite tolerant man."'
The conduct assessment tests the students, so their every word and action are important and become the standard for evaluation—that cannot be changed.
But what if there was a problem on the school's side that interfered with the exam?
As a tolerant and responsible Chairman, he would surely have to make some kind of gesture, wouldn't he?
Therefore, perhaps the status quo could be broken.
In the original story, there indeed existed a plot point involving an oversight by the Board's management.