Chapter 4 Part V

"This is very useful information. We definitely want to attempt to see what type of questions the school will be accepting."

After I had separated from the rest of the group and gotten back to my dorm room, I immediately contacted Horikita.

The goal was to convey Yukimura's information to Horikita and ask for further instructions moving forward.

"Hirata and I are already working on questions for Class C, but I do want to know how far we can go with trap questions. I'll share the information with you. It's great that everything seems to be going well, but can we be confident that Kaneda-kun will be creating the problems for Class C?"

"There is absolutely no guarantee. But considering the questions that Kaneda might come up with is only one way to tackle the questions during the study sessions. There shouldn't be any harm in doing that, right?"

"That's true. If this exam is full of difficult problems, even we might have to try our best to get 80 or 90 points."

If it ends up being more difficult than a test given by the school, then there will be a limit to how high we can score on it.

"By the way, how did the study group go today? If you don't mind, can you tell me about it?"

It wasn't something I needed to hide, so I told the truth about what happened today. However, I did exaggerate to her a little. I made it clear to her that I had made friends. Horikita listened and didn't touch upon that aspect at all.

The only thing she made notice of was that there were many similarities between the academic abilities of Miyake and Hasebe.

"They don't appear to be doing it on purpose, but it's still quite the coincidence."

"Right?"

It's not unusual for two people to have occasional overlaps, but for it to be this similar is very strange.

"I will keep my eye on them as much as possible, they seem easy enough to control anyways."

"Please do. In addition, there's another thing I'd like to ask of you. When Yukimura-kun's study group is taking a day off, would you please come to my study group to keep tabs on everyone?"

"This isn't what we had originally agreed upon, is it?"

"It's not any different. You don't need to teach, I just want you there for management."

The word management is vague. It's so vague that I have absolutely no idea what she means by it. To me, it's as confusing as the meaning of the term 'less than a lover, but more than a friend'.

"...What kind of management?"

I asked, which she responded to with a deliberate sigh.

"The problem is that compared to how many teachers there are, there are too many people to tutor. In any case, I can't supervise everyone. I'd like you to monitor whether or not everyone is studying well."

"The school teachers manage to teach dozens of students all by themselves. Don't be naive."

"It may be self-righteous, but teachers aren't able to supervise everyone on their own, so students end up falling behind like Ike-kun. Even if the classrooms are equipped with surveillance cameras like they are here, the situation stays the same. In class, their attitude is faked successfully, but in the end, they're not focusing on their studies, so we're being forced into a desperate situation like the one we're in now.

I had thought that I had given her a daring and resolute response, but in a single breath, she had managed to strike back and crumble my argument.

"Yukimura-kun is struggling because he isn't used to teaching, but I'm having difficulties due to the sheer number of students on my end. Ike-kun and Yamauchi-kun are particularly problematic since they're less attentive than kindergarteners are."

Ike and Yamauchi appear to be attending the study sessions, but also seem to be doing whatever they wanted to do during them.

"Do you have any objections?"

"None."

"Good."

"I can skip the night sessions, right?"

"That's fine. The night session is much better than the day one. Though compared to the boys I'm dealing with, some of the girls are the issues in that group."

I see. Was the situation that the girls who hadn't planned on participating, chose to do so to be with Hirata? Even if Karuizawa was his girlfriend, it wouldn't be bad to interact with such a handsome guy, and it might not be a bad thing for the ikemen under Karuizawa's control to rise in popularity.

I didn't actually take part in it, but the interesting scene of their study group comes to mind.

Come to think of it, Sudō's name hadn't come up as one of her complaints.

"Has Sudō been behaving himself?"

"Yes, he's working seriously. Although his level hasn't quite reached a middle school student's yet."

Study content aside, he seems to have been putting in the effort to improve his attitude.

"Please take care of me starting tomorrow."

At the very least, I definitely don't have a good feeling about this.

"By the way, other than the matter with the study group, I want to make sure of something else. How's Kushida?"

"What do you mean?"

"Has nothing particularly changed with her?"

"Certainly. I think she will be able to help out to the best of her abilities. She has also promised to attend the study sessions every day."

That's not what I wanted to ask about, but from Horikita's point of view, she doesn't seem to have anything in particular to say on the topic. After all, it was only the first day of the study sessions, so she shouldn't have had an opportunity to get to the bottom of it. But from my point of view, it's also true that I can't sit back and simply watch the issue.

"Have you already started creating the questions for Class C?"

"Of course. As a basic guideline, I plan on incorporating the opinions of Hirata-kun and Yukimura-kun to create the questions. I originally wanted to ask more people for help, but the more people we have working on them, the higher the risk there will be that someone will leak them to Class C, so this is a very troubling situation for me."

Right, the questions and their accompanying solutions are the key points to Class D's defense. Even if we try to plan out an attack, if our defense is defeated, we wouldn't be able to survive. Our test problems cannot afford to be leaked by any means. It's also possible that we might come into contact with someone who is looking to explore the information.

"Even so, it will be hard to definitively get rid of outsiders given Kushida's character and her actions so far. Aren't you unable to attend the evening sessions? It would be hard for you to have a meeting with Hirata about it."

"Well, I can't really deny that, but she can't act carelessly herself either. I think that as long as we avoid asking for her help with the questions, she won't end up doing anything out of line."

This was only mutual speculation. The actions Kushida would take moving forward are something that neither of us can predict.

"These questions and answers are the lifeline of Class D. Don't forget that if these leak out, Class D will be sure to lose."

This is something I'll have to consider separately from the desire to pull Kushida over to our side.

The present state of affairs wouldn't allow for us to leave an eyesore unattended.

"I'll avoid making any information public, but that's probably not enough to solve the issue."

"I'm not worried about the process of making the questions, it's what comes after when we make the proposals to the school. As long as the questions and answers are confirmed with Chabashira-sensei the day before the final exam, the enemy will find out what they are."

During the sports festival, Kushida had used a technique like this in order to look at the participation table.

It's more than likely that Ryūen will come to request this of Kushida again.

"That is to say, there is no way out of this other than by talking with her."

"Even then, what are you going to do if the information leaks out to Class C?"

"That situation… I don't want to think about it."

"You can't afford not to think about it. This involves the entirety of Class D. No matter how much we study and improve our scores, if they get nearly 100 points across the board, we have no chance of winning."

If our answers are completely memorized by the opponent, we lose.

"Yes, I understand that you're anxious, but I also have some countermeasures that I've been thinking about on my own. Now that it's past 10 o'clock, I'd like to come up with at least one more question before I go to bed. So can I hang up now?"

I agreed with her and ended the call. I found that the battery was low, so I plugged it into a charger attached to a socket on my bed.

The current issue is similar to the one we faced during the sports festival. This is because the questions that we make act as the lifeline of our class for the final exams just as the participation table did during the festival. Ryūen and Kushida aren't going to be using the same strategy as one another. They will certainly think of separate strategies.

Horikita said she would think about countermeasures, but I don't know to what extent they will be.

She should try to convince Kushida head on.

I'm not trying to laugh at Horikita's strategies at all. It's more like there's not much else that can be said about it.

It's just hypothetical, but if I'm going to win Kushida over to my side, I should be using the kind of threatening behavior that I did with Karuizawa. No, I'd would have to do more than that to bring Kushida to her knees. However, I still don't know the details of Kushida's past, so that's not an option for me in this situation. Plus, there's no guarantee that I can successfully threaten her since the way we each go about things is so different. They might seem similar, but they aren't really the same.

"...What am I going to do?"

Unfortunately, I can't think of any other means right now.

After I had turned off my phone and rested for while, an email arrived. It was a message from Ryūen.

After the sports festival, I had asked Class C's Manabe for Ryūen's email address, and sent him the audio file. I hadn't gotten a response from Ryūen until now.

[Who are you?]

This sentence was the only thing that was written.

"Another meaningless email…"

I'm a nice enough person to give Ryūen a response. I'm using a free address that wasn't able to be traced. He should be able to understand such a thing, and was probably the game that Ryūen was playing.

I decided to ignore the email and go to bed.