Her memory was pretty good, and she could still remember things from a month ago quite clearly.
"It's me. Sakayanagi wants to see you," Kamuro Masumi said impassively. "Come to Palette after school."
Palette was a café in the shopping mall, quite popular with students. Both the coffee and desserts were pretty good.
"Eh? Wh-why does she want to see me?" Wang Meiyu asked, flustered.
Kamuro Masumi didn't answer. She simply said calmly, "Then you'll have to ask Sakayanagi. I'm just the messenger."
"Now that you know, I'll head back."
The atmosphere in Class D was strange—not because of any odd smell, but because the mood felt peculiar.
There was a palpable sense of collapse in the air.
She didn't like this kind of atmosphere.
Since she'd finished delivering the message, she should head back.
She really had no idea what Sakayanagi was up to this time.
She'd thought Sakayanagi's visit to Class D at the beginning of the month had been a whim, but now she wanted to see Wang Meiyu this month too. What had she been doing before, then?
Come to think of it, aside from not being Japanese, what was so special about Wang Meiyu?
"I, Classmate Sakayanagi, you..." Wang Meiyu stammered.
She suddenly realized she didn't know Kamuro Masumi's name.
She hadn't managed to seize the chance to refuse. All she could do was watch Kamuro Masumi turn and leave.
Her hands instinctively pressed down on the desk, but she couldn't bring herself to stand and chase after her.
Because Chabashira Sae had arrived.
The class bell rang, and Chabashira Sae ambled over, holding a poster tube.
Her expression was still cold, but this time, compared to her usual look—as if someone had died at home—she seemed to have an extra air of seriousness.
"Teacher, you're not on your period, are you—?"
Kanji Ike shouted the utterly stupid question in a loud voice. No one paid him any attention.
"We'll begin the morning assembly," Chabashira Sae said, expertly ignoring Kanji Ike's idiocy. "Before that, ask whatever questions you have."
As soon as Chabashira Sae made the announcement, the noisy students below began asking the same question one after another.
'Where's the money?'
Hadn't they agreed on a hundred thousand points every month?
Hadn't they said it would be deposited on the first, right on time?
Why hadn't they received a single point yet?
But no matter how they asked, Chabashira Sae gave them the same answer:
"The points have been deposited."
The students lowered their heads and looked at the unchanged figures on their terminals, then raised them again to look at Chabashira Sae, whose words brooked no argument.
They were bewildered.
"But, um, there's nothing here..." a student named Hondo said, at a loss.
"Honestly..." Horikita Suzune, who had been lying face-down on her desk, finally couldn't take it anymore. "The points that were supposed to be issued have been issued."
"It's not because Class D was left out, and it's not because the school made a mistake."
She turned her head to the side, freeing her breathing, and spoke in a listless voice to put an end to this increasingly exasperating farce.
"It's just that the evaluation we received means we won't get a single point."
After saying that, she buried her head in her arms again.
"..."
"..."
"..."
Horikita Suzune's voice faded, and Class D fell into deathly silence.
"Hey, hey... You're kidding, right?" Kanji Ike said, his voice trembling.
Yamauchi Haruki was even more frantic. He sprang to his feet and shouted at Chabashira Sae, "Chabashira-sensei, say something! Tell everyone Horikita's wrong, that it's not like that, and the school's just delayed issuing the points!"
"How could we not get a single point...?"
If they didn't get a hundred thousand points for the month...
"...Is this because of the Behavioral Norms Exam?" Hirata Yosuke rested his wrist on the desk, his fingers interlocked tightly. It was easy to tell how hard he was gripping them.
Chabashira Sae raised an eyebrow slightly and nodded without hesitation.
"Yes."
"Hahaha, 'evaluation'—what a lousy scam." Koenji Rokusuke brazenly propped his legs up on the desk, raised an eyebrow, and looked straight at Chabashira Sae. "So, Teacher, you deceived us, didn't you?"
A scam.
Deception.
That was the inevitable conclusion after learning what had happened today.
Chabashira Sae had deceived them.
"You took our money, yet deliberately withheld the truth about the most crucial information, using 'evaluation' to cover up the real price of the Special Exam." He wagged his finger. "That's not good."
At that moment, Koenji had neatly laid out the accusation and pointed it straight at Chabashira Sae.
As if guided by someone they could rely on, the confused students immediately followed Koenji's lead.
"That's right! Chabashira-sensei, you took our money, didn't you?!"
"You could've just told us directly! Why say it would only affect our evaluation?"
"I won't accept this! I'm protesting! Give us our money back!"
The noisy voices rang out one after another. Since their own interests were at stake, they set aside their respect for their teacher and focused instead on protecting what belonged to them.
They had to protect their own interests.
"I believe I already explained on the day of the Entrance Ceremony that this school measures students by their abilities." Chabashira Sae sneered and spread her hands. "And this time, your evaluation was 'zero.'"
"That's all."
"Didn't I make it quite clear that the Special Exam would be a Behavioral Norms Exam?"
"Didn't I also make it quite clear that the points deducted in the Special Exam would affect your evaluation?"
With a slap, Chabashira Sae put a sheet listing the Class Points of all four classes on the blackboard. Her face was full of puzzlement.
"Why did the other classes figure it out, while you continued to act so recklessly?"
She truly couldn't understand why this year's Class D had turned out to be so unbelievably bad.
When she'd heard the school's result—'zero'—she hadn't believed it. She'd been willing to think there had to be some mistake.
After all, they had already spent two hundred thousand points to confirm that the Special Exam existed, and they knew the exam was about behavioral norms.
How could they still have received an evaluation of zero points?
So she'd questioned the result.
Then she saw the evidence.
The deductions were laid out in exhaustive detail, and their actions beneath the cameras were clearly displayed on the screen.
There was no room to dispute it.
The facts proved it: Class D had scored zero points.
...That was why she was so furious.
How could they be this hopeless?
"Incredible. You've managed to set the worst record in Class D history. I'm truly honored to be your homeroom teacher." Chabashira Sae raised her hand high and delivered a scathing mockery.
"..." Most of the students in the class were at a loss for words.
"..." Looking at Chabashira Sae at the front of the room and listening to everything she said, Sato Maya seemed to finally understand what Asakusa Toru had meant by his parting words.
She quietly repeated what he'd said:
"How many of the people dragged under with them will be innocent...?"
Innocent or not... That was too harsh.
Of course she didn't want to be branded with the trashy label of a D evaluation, either.
She was in Class D herself, yet she'd said something like that.
Her upper teeth sank into her lower lip.
A long-forgotten feeling of resentment rose in her heart.
When it came to being innocent or not, she certainly wasn't completely innocent herself.
Talking in class, arriving late, leaving early, playing with her phone... She'd done all the things Chabashira Sae had listed as violations of the Behavioral Norms Exam.
But everyone in the class did those things, didn't they?
If she wanted to fit in, she couldn't refuse, could she?
If she acted like a model student like Horikita Suzune, she'd only be ostracized, wouldn't she?
What else could she do?
Trapped in the mire, the more she struggled, the deeper she sank.
"I can't accept this, Chabashira-sensei." Hirata Yosuke took a deep breath. "Regardless, the fact is that you used 'evaluation' to conceal that it would ultimately affect the points we received."
Hirata Yosuke knew, of course, that they were in the wrong.
When all was said and done, they had brought every deduction upon themselves.
Chabashira Sae hadn't failed to explain the exam, nor had she failed to warn them, but they'd still carried on as they pleased without changing their behavior.
But that wasn't the way to look at the problem.
If he were from another class, he might not say anything. But he was a student in Class D.
So he could only—and had to—seize on the one point where Chabashira Sae was vulnerable and launch an attack.
Otherwise, they'd have no choice but to accept the result of zero points and drown at the bottom of the rankings.
"I don't think I need to explain this over and over again, do I?" Chabashira Sae sighed and pressed a hand to her temple.
She had a headache.
"At this school, there's nothing you can't buy with points." Irritably, she tapped the lectern, her rhythmic knocks conveying her annoyance to everyone as she continued:
"The value of one thousand points is getting a 'yes' or 'no' answer out of me. Likewise, on the third day after the school year began, the value of two hundred thousand points was simply an explanation of the 'Special Exam' itself."
"I had no obligation to tell you that the school would issue points based on its 'evaluation' of you."
"Th..." Hirata Yosuke couldn't answer.
"Hey, Koenji, say something! You're the one who's always got plenty to say!" Seeing that Hirata was no use, Yamauchi Haruki anxiously began urging someone else to take the lead.
"Boring. I have my own will. I don't need to act on your instructions." Koenji didn't lower his legs. Instead, he took out a nail clipper and began filing his nails.
Koenji was no help.
Yamauchi Haruki gritted his teeth and looked around at the others in the class.
Hirata Yosuke had been defeated, Koenji Rokusuke wouldn't follow his lead, and Kushida Kikyo was absent... Right, wasn't Horikita Suzune still there?
Before you continue