Chapter 68

Chapter 68

"Well she wouldn't garner such a reputation if she wasn't so deluded and self-important, would she?"

While I couldn't deny that, I felt that it still didn't justify such harsh words.

"But still, Horikita has feelings just like everyone else."

Lelouch paused briefly before replying.

"See?"

"...huh? See what?"

Kururugi looked at Lelouch with confusion, while Sora burst out laughing, apparently catching on.

Lelouch grinned at him. "Even you, who is so righteous and good-hearted, assumed that I was talking about Horikita even though all I said was 'Bitch-san.' What do you make of that?"

Shiro, Light and even Ryuzaki started laughing too, while Kururugi just buried his face in his hands, embarrassed.

After the laughter died down, the discussion continued back onto the topic regarding our proposition to Class E.

"It'd be nice if we could get Kōenji's cooperation. He would most likely accept our offer." Sora pondered aloud.

"Yeah, except that he would never actually take an exam seriously," Light countered.

"Plus he dropped out yesterday." I added.

"What? Really?" Kururugi asked.

"Yeah. When I went on my roundtrips to all the spots yesterday, I noticed that Kōenji was absent every time I stumbled upon Class E. I asked Kushida about it, and she told me that Chabashira-sensei had informed them that he'd dropped out early in the morning, while everyone was asleep." I elaborated, telling them what I'd learned from Kushida yesterday.

"He must've gotten fed up of sleeping on the floor." Ryuzaki surmised.

"Yeah. Kōenji isn't the kind of person to really care about the exams, but he must've thought that the thirty-point penalty would also affect his standard of living, which is why he didn't drop out immediately. I don't blame him for changing his mind, though, considering the conditions at the Class E camp." Lelouch said.

Personally, I was surprised that Kōenji decided to stay on the island for even one day. I would've thought he would dismiss the exam as 'too insignificant for a perfect existence to work up a sweat concerning himself about,' but I guess I was mistaken.

"Can we just take a moment to appreciate Ayanokōji getting his information from Kushida? Must be nice having a girlfriend in another class."

Sora chose to pick out the most unnecessary detail possible, and poke fun at me. His knack for noticing every detail wasn't always a good thing, it seemed.

"She's not my girlfriend," I denied.

"Hmm, but you two found some time together on this desolate island where nobody would ever know if you did something... Friends with benefits, then?" Lelouch asked.

"No, that's not true, either."

"But you're meeting up with her in secret on a deserted island, where nobody will ever see you..." Light pondered aloud.

Where did he even get the part about secret meetings from?

"Ah, I got it!" He exclaimed enthusiastically, filling me with a feeling of dread. "You must be paying for her 'services!'"

"I'm not paying for her 'services.'" I denied that instantly, as well.

"She gives you them for free?" Ryuzaki chimed in.

"I'm not going to win here, am I?" I sighed.

I fell silent and let them continue with their farce until they were done. Things continued in this manner for quite some time, before everyone eventually exhausted the list of things to joke about.

"So anyway," Sora said, causing everyone to start giggling again.

"Ahem. Anyway, so what's the plan regarding Class A?" He asked once everybody had regained their composure.

"Leave it to me," Lelouch said. "We'll make a deal with Class E. I'll get it all sorted, as class representative. Besides, I'm the only one who hasn't done anything of significance so far this exam. It's about time I do some work."

Now that I thought about it, that was true. I, obviously, was the one who executed the spot-occupation strategy, and had taken on the task of renewing them all for the rest of the exam. Meanwhile, the collective efforts of Ryuzaki, Light, Sora and Shiro were what allowed us to deduce Class A's leader.

Kururugi had trailed Shiina and confirmed that Ryūen was the leader, and was also going to follow her again tomorrow, on the sixth day, in order to find out Class B's leader.

In other words, Lelouch was the only one yet to make a meaningful contribution.

"Okay then. Don't disappoint us, Lelouch!" Light cheered him on.

"Yeah. If you do, we'll have to punish you." Sora grinned sadistically.

"Uh, right, wouldn't want that..." Lelouch muttered.

We all decided not to question what he'd do, and just leave him to it. He was unlikely to fail, after all.

"By the way, do you think that every other class has decided that Ayanokōji is the leader yet?" Ryuzaki adopted a thoughtful expression.

"To be honest, none of them will have a reason to not guess me as the leader." I answered confidently.

I'd assessed each and every class' leader, and came to that conclusion. The only one who had the intelligence to figure that something was off was Ryūen, but his arrogance would cause him to not consider the possibility of being out manoeuvred. He hadn't matured enough to be a true opponent yet.

"I suppose so. The only other students with the ability to see through our plan are Ryūen, Sakayanagi and Kōenji. Two of them aren't here, and the other is too full of himself to notice our little trick." Sora agreed.

"Speaking of... What do we make of Sakayanagi?" Light asked.

"No idea. We know that she's intelligent, complicit, and innovative. We can make deductions about her character and such, but we won't know her strength until we fight her." Lelouch replied.

From the rumours we'd learned from our intelligence gathering, I developed some minor interest in Sakayanagi, although I also thought that she probably wouldn't be anything special.

"Well, if she truly was a threat, wouldn't she have been placed in our class?" Kururugi speculated.

"I've actually thought a bit about that, and I came to the conclusion that maybe not." Sora answered.

"Huh? Why?" Light asked quizzically.

"Well, put it this way. If they put every single competent student in our class, there wouldn't be a competition left. Our class is an experiment, one conducted to see how we'll fare in a battle against the other classes while we have just seven members. There has to be someone for us to battle against, though. Sakayanagi in Class A. Ichinose in Class B. Ryūen in Class C. Kōenji in Class D. All four of these students have some kind of strength, whether it be intelligence in Sakayanagi's case or unity in Ichinose's. I believe that these top-tier students were intentionally left in the other classes so that we can fight the classes lead by them."

The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with Sora. If all the other class' leaders were in our class instead, this special exam would've been a breeze. Without a competent student leading them, the other classes would get crushed with little to no resistance.

"I see. It's certainly a good theory. No way to confirm it, though. There's also the possibility that they were all merely judged as not good enough." Ryuzaki said.

"That's why I never mentioned. It's pointless to think about things that have no relevance, and that can never be confirmed."

No matter how the classes were sorted, the fact was that this is the result. Even if we figured out how they were sorted, we wouldn't gain anything from it.

"Well, if anything, I hope your theory is correct. I'll be so bored if nobody can put up a decent fight. I might even transfer to Class E myself, as a challenge." Lelouch joked.

"You'd need 20 million points for that. Good luck getting that amount." Light retorted with a chuckle.

"Speaking of, we're doomed if we ever face a guaranteed expulsion. There's no way we can fetch the sum required to negate it." Sora said in a slightly complaining tone.

"I suppose they want to see whether we'll be able to make deals and stuff with the other classes to get the amount or not. Just another experiment." Kururugi sighed.

"How the hell would we even do that?" Exclaimed Light.

"I don't know. Maybe we could use that favour that Class E owes us?" He suggested.

"Yeah, right. As if they could get 20 million points." Lelouch scoffed.

"If we got a similar contract established with the other three classes, though, we'd only need to ask for 5 million from each." Sora suddenly dropped his complaining demeanour and took on a serious thinking look.

"That's true. After this exam, we should consider trying to set up such contracts." Ryuzaki said, biting his thumb.

"The best way would be to manipulate the future special exams in a way where they'd need our help. That way, we could secure a contract with each class one by one." I added.

It wasn't unfeasible that every class would have at least 5 million points saved up after around 6 more months. If we could set up contracts with every class, then we'd ensure our safety as long as the first unavoidable class expulsion happens after that time frame.

"This is all assuming that there will be an unavoidable class expulsion, though. What if there isn't?" Kururugi pointed out.

"You can never be too careful. Remember that, Suzaku." Lelouch replied.

"It's unfair that we get so much less income than the other classes, though, even when we have more class points. Like, all the other classes have 40 students in, which means that even Class E is getting 348,000 private points per month, which is more than we get, even though they have less than a quarter of our class points! I guess that's the purpose of the experiment, though." Sora whined.

Then, Light asked an interesting question.

"Do all the other classes have 40 students, though?"

"Hm? What do you mean?" Sora asked, tilting his head to the side.

"Well, put it like this. We can't have all applied to this school at the same time, right? Which means that the fifth class wasn't always considered. In other words, initially, one or possibly more of us were allocated to one of the usual four classes. It was only after the rest of us applied that the school decided to create a class for us."

"I see. What you're saying is that there should be a void left in the other classes, an empty space that we occupied before we were moved to this class." Sora nodded in understanding.

"That's not the case, though." Shiro interjected. "I've memorized all of the first-year students names and faces. There are definitely 167 students total."

"Which means that every other class does indeed have 40 students exactly. They must've accepted some extra students after moving us to fill the gaps." Lelouch concluded.

"That means that they must've accepted some students they wouldn't normally have admitted. After deciding to create Class E, they couldn't have been left with a lot of time to find replacements. They would've had to accept students they wouldn't normally consider, to ensure that they didn't fail to fill any gaps." I deduced.

"So the school must've accepted some applicants that they normally would've rejected," repeated Light, before he thought of yet another question. "But wait, what even is the requirement to get accepted by this school? It can't be based off of ability, otherwise Class D wouldn't be designated the 'defective class,' but that contradicts the fact that we had to do entrance exams."

"Maybe each class has a different requirement? Like Class A could accept the students that did well on the exam, while Class D the ones that did poorly?" Kururugi theorized.

The part about each class having a different requirement was actually a solid theory. It was surprising that it came from Kururugi.

"But there are smart students in Class D, and there's also stupid people in Class A. So that doesn't add up. Plus, if they just judged ability based off of the exam scores, Shiro and I wouldn't be here." Sora said, slightly sheepishly.

"Huh? Why? Did you bomb the exam?" Light asked.

"No. We decided to spell out a message by manipulating our exam scores, with each score corresponding to a letter. Obviously, there's only 26 letters in the alphabet, so 26 was the maximum score either of us got." He explained.

"I see... What was the message?" Lelouch asked.

"Secret."

"Tch."

"So, what was the point of the exams, then?" Kururugi pondered.

"Perhaps they're only a cover. A front to allow them to reject anybody they like, depending on their real acceptance criteria." Ryuzaki speculated.

"I agree with that theory. It wouldn't make sense if the exams actually meant anything. At least, they can't be an integral factor." I added.

There's a chance that the exams played a minor part, but personally I found it unlikely. My conjecture was that there was an entirely unknown metric which they used to evaluate applicants.

"Hmm... Class D is known as the 'defectives,' but, apart from the obvious ones like Horikita and Sudō, they don't look openly defective. They have students like Hirata, Kushida and Karuizawa, who're all prominent figures in the school's social hierarchy and who don't have an obvious flaw. Hirata especially is a model honour student. Why is he in Class D?" Sora mused.

Unlike the rest of my classmates, I knew all about Kushida's defect. That dark side of her that I'd witnessed on the rooftop. That got me thinking though: If somebody like Kushida has a hidden defect like that, does that mean Hirata and Karuizawa have similarly hidden faults?

"Good question..." Ryuzaki narrowed his eyes.

Lelouch sighed loudly. "This is annoying. Why is everything about this school so suspicious and mysterious? Can't they just be transparent?"

"That'd make it much less interesting, though." Light countered. "Besides, don't you find it more fun this way?"

"I suppose so. Anyway, I'd better get going. Might as well get that deal with Class E done with now. Suzaku, you're coming with me so that I don't get beaten up."

"Huh? Me? Why do you think you'll get beaten up?!" Kururugi exclaimed in alarm.

"Well, there are some real muscle-head idiots in Class E like that Sudō. I might get pummelled if I tick him off while all alone."

"You could just, you know, not get on everybody's nerves?" Light suggested.

"But that'd be boring?"

Lelouch gave Light a genuinely confused look, as if he really couldn't understand why he'd ever act amicably.

"Well, we're off. Goodbye." Lelouch waved to us before heading to the mouth of the cave. "Oh, Shiina, we're done talking. You can go back in now!"

He shouted that last part as him and Kururugi exited into the daylight. I, along with the other members of the class, suddenly felt a little bad for making her wait out there alone for all this time.

"Well, I guess all we have to do now is sit around and wait for him to bring back results. God, this exam is boring, isn't it?" Sora complained.