Popularity: 85,480
Looking at the popularity score on the system panel, Dokuho Kouya smiled with satisfaction.
His bold claims in front of Ayanokouji just now hadn't been in vain.
He'd built up a powerful image in Ayanokouji's and the audience's eyes. Even if he didn't take part in the so-called Special Exam, his popularity wouldn't be low.
"By the way, if I do something that damages my image, will my popularity score go down?" Dokuho Kouya asked the system.
[Popularity comes from the audience's affection for you. If you do something they dislike, your popularity won't decrease, but it will become harder to gain more popularity.]
The system's voice rang in Dokuho Kouya's mind.
In other words, the audience could only increase his popularity, not reduce it.
But if Dokuho Kouya made a blunder and the audience came to dislike him, they might stop giving him popularity points.
"Looks like I still need to be careful." In Dokuho Kouya's view, he was about to do something no student at Advanced Nurturing had ever done before.
Perhaps he could collect 20 million private points in his very first month.
But this would involve deception—and not deception aimed at the school's students, but at the audience watching the anime.
If he didn't pull it off and faced a backlash, he'd be in trouble.
"If I approach it with the mindset of someone just here for the fun, it should be fine."
As long as he didn't do anything heinous, the audience would be pretty tolerant of someone who was just there for the fun.
After thinking it over, Dokuho Kouya decided he should try out his idea.
So he asked the people beside him, "Have any of you played gacha games?"
"Huh?" Mako Amikura froze for a moment, then smiled. "Of course I have! I even accidentally spent money on one back then."
Norihito Watanabe nodded in agreement. "Most anime-style mobile games these days are gacha games. I play them pretty often."
Sayo Ando shook her head. "I don't really play games. Browsing forums and watching short videos is more fun."
There were plenty of ways to be entertained these days. Games, novels, and short videos could all provide emotional satisfaction, so it was perfectly normal for some people not to play games.
But Norihito Watanabe's answer showed that gacha games were still one of the biggest trends, and plenty of people were willing to play them.
Most of the time, it was basically just paying money to buy characters outright.
But every so often, someone got lucky, and that was what kept people spending money on them.
"Have you played gacha games too, Kouya?" Tetsuya Hamaguchi asked curiously.
For the record, I'm a day-one Genshin player, AR 60.
Dokuho Kouya paused, then smiled. "I just thought of something interesting that happens to involve gacha."
The following day, at noon.
Dokuho Kouya went to the teachers' office.
"Oh? What brings you here, little Kouya?"
A lively, sweet voice rang out.
Chie Hoshinomiya, the homeroom teacher of Class 1-B, blinked her beautiful eyes and looked over at him curiously.
"There's something I'd like you to help me with, Ms. Chie." Dokuho Kouya held a contract he wanted to show her.
"Oh my, the kids these days are so forward. You're even calling your teacher by her first name."
Chie Hoshinomiya patted her cheek, as if she hadn't heard what her student had said. "Little Kouya is so handsome. If you'd been around when I was a student, I would've snatched you up for sure."
Yeah, and then you'd dump me once you got bored, right?
Dokuho Kouya inwardly scoffed at what his teacher had said.
In his impression, his teacher seemed easygoing on the surface, but she was actually a bad woman.
She changed boyfriends almost every week, and as soon as a relationship started to heat up, she was already looking to move on.
If he let himself be charmed by a few of her words, he'd surely get badly deceived.
"Ms. Chie, about what I—"
"I know you came to see me about something, little Kouya. But first, I want to ask you a few questions."
Chie Hoshinomiya looked at him with curiosity in her beautiful eyes. "How did you find out so much information, little Kouya?"
"Even Horikita from Class A of the Third Year and Nagumo from Class 2-A—two of the most outstanding students the school has seen in decades—couldn't have learned this much about the school by the second day of classes."
As the homeroom teacher of Class 1-B, Chie Hoshinomiya naturally knew what had happened in her class.
When she learned that Dokuho Kouya had uncovered the secrets, she'd become intensely interested in him.
She'd originally wanted to use her authority as a teacher to summon him, but she hadn't expected him to come to her of his own accord.
"Did you find out because the school already knew about this, or did you hear it from the students in our class?" Dokuho Kouya asked.
He'd explained all of this in the classroom without avoiding the school's surveillance cameras.
The school must have already noticed that a new student had investigated the rules in such detail by the second day.
They were surely curious about where Dokuho Kouya had learned all this.
Perhaps Chie Hoshinomiya had come to question him on the school's behalf.
"Actually, I only found out because Honami and the others asked me about it." Chie Hoshinomiya's lips curved slightly. "The school was surprised by how quickly you gathered the information, but they don't have any complaints about you."
"They're also curious whether Class A will outperform Class B over the next three years, now that Class A has lost its advantage in the academic assessment."
After saying this, Chie Hoshinomiya froze for a moment, then lightly punched the boy in the stomach with her little fist and puffed out her cheeks. "Honestly! I was the one asking the questions, but somehow I ended up answering yours."
"Little Kouya, could you tell your teacher how you found out?" Chie Hoshinomiya widened her beautiful eyes. She seemed genuinely curious.
"I asked someone."
By ordinary reasoning, the only way Dokuho Kouya could have learned so much was by asking someone else.
"Who did you ask?" Chie Hoshinomiya pressed.
"I can't say." Dokuho Kouya shook his head.
This was perfectly normal in anyone else's eyes.
The school had ordered the older students and teachers to keep quiet about it.
If they told the new students and got caught, they'd be punished severely.
The school must have known that Dokuho Kouya had learned all this detailed information from someone else, but they couldn't figure out who had leaked it.
Fortunately, to simulate a social environment, the school had left many areas without surveillance cameras and even provided ways to avoid detection.
Even if the school's investigation turned up nothing, they'd surely assume that Dokuho Kouya and the student who leaked the information had made good use of the Gray Zone without cameras and left no evidence.
"Ms. Chie, now let's talk about what I came here for." Dokuho Kouya handed her the contract he'd written.
"Little Kouya, a guy who makes a woman work can never become a good husband." Chie Hoshinomiya puffed out her cheeks, then read the contract.
When she saw what it said, Chie Hoshinomiya's eyes widened in shock. "Little Kouya, are you trying to commit fraud?!"
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