Unless he planned to sneak into the girls' dormitory at night.
But if he tried that, he'd get caught and expelled that very night. Did he think the cameras at Advanced Nurturing were just for show?
It was one thing to block one or two people, but he wanted to block everyone?
Besides, getting someone else's Room Key Card wasn't actually that difficult.
The Class D Idiot Trio—Yamauchi Haruki, Kanji Ike, and Ken Sudō—had pulled off the outrageous stunt of making spare keys to their rooms without asking the owners' permission.
Should I say this was worthy of the Black Room's greatest masterpiece? They'd actually managed to think of a loophole like this.
...If he reported the loophole to the school, how much money could he get?
"Forget it. I'm not that short on cash." Asakusa Toru shook his head, casually tossed the Room Key Card in his hand up and down, then put it away.
It probably wouldn't be of much use at Advanced Nurturing, but his life wasn't limited to Advanced Nurturing. It would come in handy three years from now.
"Well, this is about what you'd expect from a C rating." It was useful, but not all that useful.
Lying on his bed and gazing at the ceiling, Asakusa Toru murmured to himself:
"But that means I'll have to adjust my strategy based on the rating from tomorrow onward."
He'd make one last attempt to see whether he could get a high rating by doing good deeds when the rating was low. If he couldn't, he'd change his strategy completely.
He'd give up on low-rating days and save the good deeds for when the rating was high.
It was possible there wouldn't be any more high-rating days, but Asakusa Toru thought that was unlikely.
After all, if the ratings were based on how important an event was to the plot, then the first day of school could get an A, and the end-of-month checkpoint and the Uninhabited Island Exam couldn't possibly be rated below an A.
It wasn't a big deal. He was only giving up the free time when nothing special was going to happen anyway.
"Anyway, I'll work out for a bit first."
White Room, activate!
Horikita Suzune: We're Already Falling Far Behind!
By the third day of school, the social dynamics in the class had begun to take shape.
The cliques were already becoming faintly apparent.
Some people got along well with one another, others stuck together, and the less popular students tended to band together too.
...It wasn't really any different from middle school.
People were social creatures, after all. It was instinctive for them to form groups.
Kushida Kikyo didn't think there was anything wrong with that.
Only when the groups were clearly defined could there be gaps for people to fit into one another's lives.
That was how she could slip into those cracks.
"Man, getting a hundred thousand points in spending money every month is amazing. I'm so glad I came to this school. I love being rich!"
"I've never been able to spend money like water in my life. It's even better than I imagined!"
The Idiot Trio, late again, were loudly going on about how they felt. Hearing their booming voices, Kushida Kikyo couldn't help remembering the harassing messages Ike had sent her in the middle of the night.
They were full of repressed desires, though he tried as hard as possible to sound restrained. He laid bare his innermost thoughts, yet seemed to think he was hiding them well. Everything he said reeked of a schoolboy bragging about himself and trying to get attention and praise, hoping that this much self-display would make girls notice him.
That was how Kushida Kikyo had felt about the harassing messages Kanji Ike had sent her last night.
It was... disgusting.
But she had to force herself to keep a pleasant expression and think of a way to brush him off. After all, becoming friends with "everyone" and earning "everyone's" trust was the path she had chosen for herself.
"Hey, Kikyo, have you heard?" A girl beside her suddenly spoke up. "Someone did something unbelievable at Club Orientation yesterday!"
"I heard someone went up there and beat up the student council president onstage."
"Wasn't it that someone ran up there to promote something?" another girl asked.
"No, no! I heard he ran up and grabbed the student council president's microphone to make a loud confession!"
"Whoa, that's so romantic!"
Though they'd started by talking to her, they soon went back to their own conversation.
They weren't going to wait for anyone else to chime in.
"Tch. He was just a clown," Yamauchi Haruki grumbled from the back row as he listened to them. "If it were me, I'd definitely get more attention."
"I'm just trying not to stand out too much while I recover."
...Was he still sticking to that story about getting injured in the high school league?
Kushida Kikyo was at a loss for words, but she still put on a smile.
"Oh, then he must be really amazing, right?"
Ninety-nine percent of the things people talked about at school were meaningless, but if you wanted to maintain your relationships, you still had to respond to all those meaningless things.
If someone started to feel neglected, the relationship would quietly begin to fade.
Even if the conversation was just a perfunctory exchange, she had to make sure to respond to most of what was said.
...Of course, knowing how to treat people according to their station was another necessary skill.
With the likes of Ike and Yamauchi, no matter how perfunctory she was or how often she failed to respond, they'd still shamelessly come up to her.
Just like how she kept approaching Horikita, even though Horikita always gave her the cold shoulder.
Tch. Just thinking about Horikita made her mad.
She'd planned to go along with her at Club Orientation yesterday and get closer to her. At the very least, she could find out which club that woman planned to join. But just as the orientation ended and Asakusa Toru caused a commotion, Horikita left.
That was fine. She could catch up with her.
But, but, but, at that moment, those three idiots came over!
One of them bragged about how amazing he was, but said it was a shame he wasn't planning to join any clubs. Another kept pestering her, suspicious of her relationship with Ayanokoji, who had also stayed behind, and insisting she'd come to the orientation with him. The last one had nothing but muscles for brains and could barely string a few words together.
By the time they'd held her up, Horikita had disappeared!
What a disaster!
What on earth was going through Horikita's head?
...Never mind Horikita for now. The important thing was last night's diary.
Ignoring all the weird remarks, last night's diary had mentioned someone, as well as a piece of information.
The former had three names in the diary: ALICE, little princess, and Nepo Baby.
It wasn't hard to guess that it meant Sakayanagi Arisu from Class A.
The frail silver-haired princess looked like a girl from a fantastical kingdom, just like her name suggested. In only two days, she already seemed poised to become the leader of Class A.
If Katsuragi hadn't stepped up to challenge her, she would probably have taken control of Class A already.
She was a Nepo Baby?
...If Sakayanagi Arisu counted as a Nepo Baby, Kushida Kikyo would sooner believe that Yamauchi Haruki and Kanji Ike were Nepo Babies.
If they weren't Nepo Babies, then how the hell had they gotten into this school?!
Ah, speaking of the school, that brought her to what the diary had mentioned next.
The employment rights available only to Class A... She'd been a little surprised at first, but Kushida Kikyo realized she wasn't all that surprised after all.
If all you had to do was stay at the school until graduation, didn't that mean even Yamauchi and Ike might get sent to a major corporation?
Don't disgust her.
Still, she didn't care much about employment.
After all, that wasn't why she'd come to this school.
So she could ignore the part about the conditions for changing classes too.
The second point was what mattered.
"The first month's Special Exam has begun."
She could've thrown up.
Couldn't he be a little clearer? An exam? What exam? What kind of Special Exam?
How was it that she knew absolutely nothing about this???
Her intuition told her this point was connected to the others. The exam would determine the class rankings, and the highest-ranked class might eventually become Class A. That was probably why the diary had later mentioned the school's evaluations of the four classes and changing classes.
But... she hated people who only told half the story.
That put her in a difficult position whether she shared the information with her classmates or pretended she hadn't seen it!
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Kushida Kikyo was about to grind her teeth to dust.
"Everyone, I have something to announce." While Kushida Kikyo was worrying, Horikita Suzune had somehow made her way to the front of the classroom. "The first month's Special Exam has begun. We're already falling far behind!!!"
I Can't Afford It
Horikita Suzune had actually decided not to believe anything in the Diary anymore. The moment her brother had coldly asked, "Who?" she had completely lost all faith in it.
But then last night's diary had included this line:
"Class D is garbage."
The moment she saw it, she instinctively remembered what her brother had said when she met him yesterday.
"I heard you got into Class D."
Why had her brother asked that? Why had he looked that way?
Had he been trying to say something?
Then why hadn't he said anything in the end?
Was it... because he was disappointed in her?
Her white teeth bit down on her lower lip as Horikita Suzune stared blankly into space.
She kept telling herself the diary was all fake, and everything in it was a lie.
But at that moment, she couldn't help believing it was telling the truth.
After tossing and turning all night, Horikita Suzune was once again unable to sleep.
When the sun rose the next day, her mind was still full of the words in the diary.
The privileges available only to Class A, Class D is garbage, and... the first month's Special Exam has begun.
Horikita Suzune didn't want to be deceived again, but the moment she saw those words, there was no way she could ignore them completely.
So before class, she went to the staff room and found Chabashira Sae, the homeroom teacher of Class D.
"Is it true that only Class A gets the school's promised employment recommendation?" she asked Chabashira Sae.
Chabashira Sae, whom she had stopped on her way to class, raised an eyebrow and looked surprised.
"Ten thousand points." She quietly gave her answer. "I can answer that question for ten thousand Private Points."
She'd found out on the third day... Maybe it wasn't too late.
"...Why?" Horikita Suzune was stunned.
She'd assumed that since Chabashira Sae was her homeroom teacher, she could get the answer just by asking.
She hadn't expected to get this kind of answer.
Was a homeroom teacher really asking a student for money???
"Hm? Didn't I tell you?" Seeing that Horikita Suzune didn't seem to understand, Chabashira Sae, who had been somewhat interested, looked disappointed. She repeated what she had said on the first day of school:
"'There is nothing you can't buy with points at this school.'"
In other words, there was nothing you could get without paying a price.
Before you continue