Hori stopped dead in his tracks. He looked at Hirano, and then he slowly turned his head to look at Reine. His sharp eyes were entirely cold. He instantly understood.
"I see," Hori said.
He didn't yell. He didn't make a scene. He simply turned around and walked straight out of the cafe without saying another word.
Hirano's bright smile faltered. Her shoulders slumped slightly as she watched him disappear into the afternoon mall crowd.
"Well," Hirano said, her voice a little tight, though she quickly forced a softer smile back onto her face. "I guess that was a little too pushy of me. I'm sorry for dragging you into this, Asakura-san. I really thought he might stay if you were there."
"I didn't think it would work anyway," Reine said. She took a seat across from her anyway, since she was already there, and ordered a black coffee.
---
The next morning, Reine was sitting at her desk before the homeroom bell rang. Hori walked in and took his seat to her left. He stared straight ahead at the whiteboard, his posture as rigid as ever.
"Do not do that again," Hori said. His voice was cold, meant only for her.
"Do what?" Reine asked flatly.
"Act as a middleman for Hirano," he replied.
Reine looked at the side of his face. "Are you two not getting close? She seems to like you."
Hori scoffed quietly. "Of course not. If I were you, I wouldn't trust that girl. She looks dangerous."
Reine rested her chin on her hand. A popular, overly friendly girl being labeled as dangerous was a slight contradiction to her public persona. "What do you mean?"
"Look at her," Hori muttered, his eyes narrowing slightly as he glanced toward the front of the room, where Hirano was currently laughing with a group of girls. "She is close with every single person in this class. And all of them are sharing their secrets with her."
Interesting. Reine kept her expression completely blank. "How do you know that?"
"I accidentally overheard her listening to a secret on two separate occasions," Hori said, his tone dripping with distaste. "I was just walking past the empty stairwells. And a few days ago, when she tried to force a conversation with me, she actually asked if I had a deep secret I wanted to share with her. It is completely unnatural."
Reine let out a slow, silent breath. An excessively friendly girl who actively collects the personal vulnerabilities of her classmates. It was highly probable she was hoarding that information to secure her position at the absolute center of the class's social hierarchy. If you hold someone's secrets, you hold their compliance.
"I see," Reine replied simply.
---
The rest of the month passed in a blur of noisy classrooms, sleeping students, and completely unchecked behavior.
Kato Kenji, seated to her right, continued to play his video games, occasionally whining about a difficult level, perfectly blending into the background as an ordinary, harmless idiot.
Then, the calendar finally flipped.
---
One month later…
It was May 1st. 8:00 AM. Everything changes drastically.
The homeroom bell rang throughout the academic building. The students in Class 1-D were still chatting loudly, a few of them standing out of their seats and laughing, when the instructor walked into the room.
She was not alone.
A male staff member in a standard grey facility uniform followed half a step behind her. He was pushing a small, wheeled utility cart. Arranged neatly on the top tier was a closed laptop, a compact printer, and a fresh ream of paper. Resting precisely next to the printer was a heavy, metallic device that looked like a dry seal .
A ripple of confused whispers spread through the front rows. The students paused their loud conversations, their eyes darting between the grim face of their teacher and the strange administrative equipment on the cart.
The staff member parked the cart beside the podium, plugged the electronics into the wall outlet, and stood at attention, his face completely blank.
From her seat in the back row, Reine observed the setup. Her amber eyes systematically registered the laptop, the blank paper, the printer, and finally locked directly onto the mechanical lever of the dry seal. She simply stared at it in the ensuing silence.
The homeroom teacher stepped past the equipment. Ignored the cart completely.
She did not tell them to sit down. She did not ask for quiet. She simply walked straight to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and unrolled a large poster she had brought with her. She used magnets to pin it firmly to the board.
The room slowly quieted down as people noticed the grim, entirely unbothered look on her face.
"Take your seats," the teacher said. Her voice wasn't loud, but the sheer coldness of it made everyone scramble back to their desks in a panic.
"Today is the first of the month," she said, smoothing out the edge of the poster. "This means your initial evaluation period is over. The results of the conduct exam have been finalized."
Beside Reine, the air around Hori Seiji shifted.
He did not join the complaining. Instead, his posture went completely rigid. His dark eyes narrowed into sharp slits, locking directly onto the teacher. His jaw tightened so hard a small muscle fluttered in his cheek.
Reine watched him out of the corner of her eye.
He figured it out, Reine thought, watching his expression darken. He finally remembered the single piece of paper from the first day. The 'good conduct' guidelines.
The instructor ignored the noisy classroom completely. She tapped the poster on the whiteboard with her knuckle. A confused murmur ran through the class.
"Wait, what exam?" Kariya asked, leaning forward in his seat with a frown. "We haven't taken any written tests yet. Is she talking about the entrance exams?"
"I didn't study for anything," Sugimoto muttered, looking around the room in genuine confusion. "Did I miss a day?"
"Is it a pop quiz?" Matsui asked, sounding slightly panicked. "Because I seriously didn't prepare for anything today."
"Um, Sensei?" Hirano raised her hand half-way, trying to keep her friendly smile intact. "I think there might be a mistake. Our schedule didn't have any exams listed for this month."
The classroom noise started overlapping as panic set in.
"Did anyone get a study guide?"
"I swear if this goes on our permanent record..."
"Is she serious right now?"
The teacher ignored the noisy classroom completely. She tapped the poster on the whiteboard with her knuckle.
"This school grades on an absolute merit system," she said. "I told you in the very first day that your value is calculated based on your worth. These points determine your standing, your privileges, and your future in this facility. Here are the results for the first month."
Reine looked at the board. The poster was a simple, stark table.
Class 1-A: 3,760,000 SC points.
Class 1-B: 2,600,000 SC points.
Class 1-C: 1,960,000 SC points.
Class 1-D: 0 SC points.
The classroom stared at the board in complete, stunned silence.
"Zero?" Hirano whispered, her eyes wide with shock.
"You have been evaluated," the instructor said, her cold eyes sweeping over the panicked faces of the forty students. "And the system has determined that Class 1-D is entirely worthless."
The instructor stopped talking. She crossed her arms and leaned back against the whiteboard, offering absolutely no further explanation.
The silence held for a few agonizing seconds before the whispers started.
"SC points?" Kariya muttered, squinting at the board. "What does that even mean? Is that exam score? Game Credits?"
"Look at Class A," someone in the front row whispered nervously. "Three Million, Seven Hundred Sixty? How did they get that many points in one month? We haven't even had midterms."
"Why do we have zero?"
"Did we miss a deadline for something?"
"Sensei," Hirano said, raising her hand with a trembling smile. "I don't understand. If we didn't take any written tests, how were we graded?"
The teacher did not answer. She just stared at Hirano.
Beside Reine, the air around Hori Seiji shifted.
He did not join the complaining. Instead, his posture went completely rigid. His dark eyes narrowed into sharp slits, locking directly onto the teacher. His jaw tightened so hard a small muscle fluttered in his cheek.
Reine watched him out of the corner of her eye.
Finally, he figured it out. Took him long enough, Reine thought, watching his expression darken.
"Wait," Matsui Chiaki said from the middle of the room. Her usually bubbly, airheaded voice was entirely flat. "The second day. She handed out that single piece of paper right before she left."
People turned to look at her.
"The conduct guidelines," Kariya said slowly, his eyes widening in horror. "She called it a practical assessment."
"Sleeping in class," a girl near the window gasped, covering her mouth.
"Messaging through the phone," someone else whispered.
"Talking during lectures."
The whispers collided and merged into a sudden, loud realization. They hadn't missed an exam. They had been taking it every single minute of every single day for the last month. And they had failed completely.
"Are you kidding me?!" Sugimoto roared. He kicked his desk, sending a harsh metallic scrape echoing across the room. "You never said we were actually being graded on that! You just handed out a paper and left! The other teachers didn't even care when we talked!"
"He's right!" Hirano stood up, her friendly demeanor entirely gone, replaced by desperate panic. "That is completely unfair! You should have warned us that our daily behavior was tied to our class standing. How were we supposed to know the rules were actually strict if no one enforced them?"
The instructor's expression did not change. "Ignorance of the code is not a valid defense for violating it. Pathetic."
The classroom erupted into complete chaos.
Sugimoto kicked his chair backward, shouting curses at the whiteboard.
Hirano was momentarily shocked. Kariya was standing on his toes, loudly demanding that the instructor show them the actual grading rubric.
Several girls in the middle rows were already crying, burying their faces in their hands. Having a grade of Zero was never experienced by them even in middle school. They are afraid of their parents and for their future if they get failing grade.
The noise was deafening. Students were arguing with each other, pointing fingers, and desperately trying to blame the people who had slept or played games during class.
It was a total breakdown of order. Hirano was waving her hands, trying to calm everyone down, but her voice was completely drowned out by the screaming.
The instructor simply watched them panic, her face completely blank.
In the middle of the shouting, the overhead fluorescent lights in the classroom suddenly flickered.
Then, a sharp, electronic chime cut through the noise.
Ping.
Reine looked down. The embedded LCD screen on her desk, which had been emitting a neutral white backlight for the entire month, was changing.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
The sound echoed rapidly from every single desk in the room.
Sugimoto stopped yelling. Hirano froze in place. The arguments died instantly as forty heads snapped down to look at their desks.
The text COHORT: UME | ROW: 8 | COL: 4 did not vanish. It remained permanently anchored at the top of the glass.
However, the screen's background color shifted. It cycled rapidly through the school's upper rankings—flashing gold as the cohort name changed to KIKU, green for TAKE, and blue for RAN—before finally locking back into UME with a deep, harsh red background.
Right below her cohort label, new text appeared on the screen: _______.