Knocking over a tray and provoking someone.
And the punishment was a week's suspension and compensation of 50,000 personal points.
That was ridiculous!
Whether they were students from Class C or Class A, they all thought what Manabu Horikita had said was far too extreme.
That was just provocation.
If they actually got into a fight, wouldn't they be expelled outright?
The students from Class C couldn't help remembering how they'd been beaten by their class tyrant, Ryuen Kakeru, last month.
By the Student Council's standards, Ryuen should've been expelled a hundred times over by now. How was he still at school without a care in the world?
But Manabu Horikita ignored the Class C students' discontent and continued in an even tone. "The official notice will arrive soon. Starting tomorrow, Ishizaki is forbidden from entering the school building until his punishment is over."
"If he's caught entering the school building, he'll be expelled immediately. That's all."
After speaking, Manabu turned to leave.
"W-wait a second!"
Seeing that he really was about to be suspended and fined, Daichi Ishizaki panicked. "Can't we settle this privately?"
Before coming to Advanced Nurturing, he'd been a delinquent. Getting into fights was nothing unusual for him, so he knew problems could be resolved through private settlements.
"That depends on what the victim says." Manabu turned his face slightly and looked at the boy who hadn't said a word since the beginning.
Dokuho Kouya answered immediately. "I refuse."
"I already gave Daichi a chance, but he didn't take it. He'll just have to learn his lesson the hard way."
Before reporting the incident to the Student Council, he'd already told Daichi Ishizaki that they could settle it privately for 20,000 personal points.
When he heard he'd have to pay nearly 20,000 personal points, Daichi, who was already short on money, naturally refused.
As a result, the Student Council's punishment meant he had to pay even more points.
Anyone with half a brain would know which to choose: paying 20,000 or paying 50,000.
Hearing the boy's response, Manabu gave a slight nod. "Since the victim refuses to settle privately, the Student Council's punishment will stand."
With that, Manabu left the cafeteria with Akane Tachibana, the Student Council secretary.
Perhaps it was just his imagination, but as they left, Secretary Tachibana seemed to roll her eyes pointedly.
It was as if she were saying, "You called us over for something this minor? What a bother."
After the Student Council members had left,
Dokuho Kouya addressed the Class C students. "Daichi, are you all staying here?"
"If you don't have anywhere to eat, you can sit with us and chat."
"Who'd want to eat with a creep like you?" Daichi Ishizaki shouted angrily, then left the cafeteria with the two classmates beside him.
"Phew, that scared me." When the Class C students had left too, Sayo Ando breathed a sigh of relief. "I thought they were going to start a fight."
Those people from Class C looked like delinquent students who got into fights all the time.
Just watching them from the side made them seem like a lot of trouble.
When she saw Dokuho Kouya arguing with the Class C students, Sayo had been genuinely afraid they'd attack him.
"If they'd actually started a fight, they'd have been suspended for at least a month," Dokuho said with a smile.
After this clash, he had a pretty good grasp of the school's new rules.
Manabu Horikita had indeed kept his promise to him.
From the way things stood, if the incident had escalated into a physical fight, expulsion might have been too much, but suspension would definitely have been unavoidable.
Also, although Manabu hadn't mentioned it, Class C's Class Points would probably be deducted too—maybe just five to ten points.
If Ryuen Kakeru kept ordering his classmates to pick fights with others, they could easily lose 100 points over the course of a month.
"Just like Ichinose said in class, Class C really has started making moves against the other classes." Norihito Watanabe's face was beaded with cold sweat as he spoke in astonishment.
A while ago, Honami Ichinose had warned everyone to be careful of attacks from Class C.
At the time, they'd thought she was exaggerating. They were all classmates, after all—there was no reason anyone would go that far.
But after seeing how Daichi Ishizaki and the others had acted, Norihito realized that he'd been far too naive.
It turned out the students from Class C really were willing to go that far to reach Class A.
If they got into a clash with Class C without being mentally prepared, it could easily turn into a violent incident and cause both classes to lose Class Points.
"Good thing Kouya was prepared—even had a recording ready," Tetsuya Hamaguchi said with relief.
Without the recording, the cafeteria's security footage alone might not have been enough to prove that the Class C students had been provoking him.
Hearing his friends' praise, Dokuho Kouya smiled faintly, then said, "Class C got punished this time, but I doubt Ryuen Kakeru will just give up."
"Tell everyone else in class what happened, and send them the strategy for dealing with it, too."
"We might not be able to avoid being targeted, but we can still make the Class C students pay for it."
From the way things stood, Ryuen was testing the school's attitude toward this kind of behavior.
One failure wouldn't stop him.
Dokuho figured Ryuen would keep making moves in the coming days, until he'd figured out the school's stance completely.
But the students from Class A could benefit from this, too.
Take Dokuho Kouya, for example. He'd received 50,000 points in compensation for the incident just now.
If Class C students kept provoking Class A, his classmates could get a lot of points as well.
If they knew someone was going out of their way to give them money, his classmates would be over the moon.
"So whenever we run into Class C students from now on, we're supposed to record them on our phones?" Norihito Watanabe's mouth twitched. It sounded like a hassle.
"And make sure there's a camera nearby," Tetsuya Hamaguchi reminded him.
At Dokuho Kouya's urging, his friends all took out their phones and told their classmates what had happened.
Class C's attack had begun. Class A's job was to record evidence and use it to reduce Class C's Class Points and personal points.
After forwarding the details of the incident, Mako Amikura remembered something. "Come to think of it, Kouya, would you like to join our study group?"
"I remember your grades are pretty good, too. You got over 70 in every subject on the last quiz."
"Everyone would be really happy if you came."
Dokuho Kouya's quiz scores might have averaged just over 70 in each subject, but across the whole year, that was already above average—almost among the top students.
The quizzes at Advanced Nurturing had a lot of questions. The first few were easy points, and then the difficulty gradually increased.
By the last three questions, they were beyond the scope of the curriculum.
Unless someone had already studied the entire three-year high school curriculum, there was no way they could score above 85.
It seemed that English was the only subject in which anyone in the year had scored 90. In the other subjects, there weren't many students who'd even scored above 80.
Someone like Dokuho Kouya, who scored in the 70s in every subject, could already be considered a top student.
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