Horikita Manabu: Call me right now.
The brief message was as brisk and decisive as ever.
Shimizu Akira's gaze sharpened. Without hesitation, he got up and left the classroom, heading quickly for the relative privacy of the restroom.
Once the call connected, Horikita Manabu's trademark calm voice came through the receiver. "The School Administration has approved your request, more or less as I expected."
"Four classes, eight monitoring devices, and a rental period of three weeks, starting this Monday. They'll become invalid at the end of this month." Horikita Manabu paused. "However, the School Administration attached four conditions."
"First, since there's no monitoring data from last week, the Class Points your four classes have already lost during the first week cannot be changed."
"Second, you can only rent the monitoring rights to the classes where the devices are installed. You can't rent them to any other classes, and you have only three days to sell them. If you still have them after that, the school will have the right to take back those rights. In return, the School Administration will pay 400,000 points per device."
"Third, you'll need to pay a rental fee of 1.2 million points."
"Fourth," Horikita Manabu said, his voice tinged with amusement, "the chairman is very interested in you and wants to speak with you personally. You should be able to accept these conditions, right?"
On the other end of the call, Shimizu Akira's lips curled slightly.
"Fine by me."
The cost was far lower than he'd expected.
It seemed the student council president had misjudged things.
He'd assumed the School Administration would approve a full month's rental, but in the end, they'd only granted three weeks.
After thinking it over, however, Shimizu Akira realized the School Administration's reasoning made sense. If the monitoring devices covered the entire month, the gap in points between the four classes could shrink dramatically, making competition meaningless.
If the School Administration really let students use monitoring devices to completely prevent rule-breaking, it might end up having to pay each of the 160 first-year students a hefty reward of 100,000 points.
That would clearly be an unbearable burden on the school's finances.
The deduction data from the first week alone was enough to show which classes were Class A and which had fallen to Class D.
"So Class D is probably still at the bottom!" Shimizu Akira realized at once.
Come to think of it, there'd been dozens of instances of tardiness and skipping class in Class D during the first week.
Still, since it was only the first week, the class should have retained more than half its Class Points. They wouldn't have lost everything.
As for the second condition, the School Administration's intentions were obvious:
They wanted students to earn a reasonable amount of points, not treat their classmates as targets for surveillance—let alone interfere with anyone's normal school life.
In other words: Don't get carried away. Make the most of your three-day window to sell the devices, and don't go around monitoring your classmates. Otherwise, the School Administration will take the rights back.
Still, at 400,000 points per device, the School Administration's buyback price meant he was still guaranteed to make a profit overall.
In fact, Shimizu Akira had never intended to hold on to the monitoring rights for long.
He only needed to make a quick profit. There was no need to do anything extra.
And the rental fee of 1.2 million points wasn't that much, either.
"The chairman's right beside me. He wants to talk to you. Is that all right?" the student council president's voice came through the receiver again.
Shimizu Akira paused. "Of course."
He had no idea why the chairman wanted to speak with him, but he was the school's head. Shimizu Akira couldn't refuse.
"Hello, Shimizu. I'm Sakayanagi Narimori, the chairman of this school."
The voice from the other end was gentle and refined, with the warm, generous quality of an elder.
Shimizu Akira raised an eyebrow. It was unexpected for the chairman himself to introduce himself so courteously to a student.
Whether the warmth was genuine or not, he'd developed a little goodwill toward the chairman, whom he'd never met, at least for the moment.
"Hello, Chairman Sakayanagi. I'm Shimizu Akira from Class 1-D." He returned the greeting with just the right degree of courtesy, his voice neither servile nor arrogant.
"You've been at the school for over a week now, haven't you, Shimizu? Have you adjusted to life here?" Sakayanagi Narimori sounded like an elder checking in on a younger person.
Shimizu Akira smiled faintly, recognizing the familiar formal small talk. "Thank you for asking. The school is a great environment, and I've adjusted completely."
"Is that so? By the way, how have you been feeling lately? Anything bothering you?"
"I've always been in good health. Honestly, I've never even had a cold in my life."
"Oh?" The chairman let out a meaningful sigh. "It's rare for a young person to be in such good shape. Speaking of which..." He abruptly changed tack. "You probably go for morning runs, too, don't you? A few days ago, I happened to see you running on the field from my office window. If I'm not mistaken, you run at least ten kilometers each time."
"Yes. It's one of the habits I picked up when I was young."
Shimizu Akira paused. The windows of the Chairman's Office did indeed overlook the entire field. But how had the chairman recognized him?
Being seen by chance was one thing. Being recognized and remembered at a glance by the chairman meant he'd already been on the man's list of people to watch closely.
He didn't think there was anything special about him that would warrant so much attention from the chairman.
"Keeping up with your exercise is a good habit!" Sakayanagi Narimori's voice suddenly grew more sincere. "As a parent, there's no greater wish than to see your child grow up safe and healthy..."
Shimizu Akira keenly caught the unmistakable sadness in the chairman's tone. This wasn't just polite conversation—the chairman seemed unusually fixated on "health."
(Could it be... that he's in poor health himself? Could that mean...)
He decided to test the waters. "Please forgive my asking, Chairman Sakayanagi, but I know a student named Sakayanagi Arisu. I was wondering if she might be..."
A faint intake of breath came through the receiver, followed by a bitter chuckle. "She's my daughter... She's been a frail child since she was little."
Shimizu Akira's eyes widened.
My chairman father?
Wait, Sakayanagi Arisu had a chairman for a father!
"Don't worry about it, Shimizu," Sakayanagi Narimori said, his voice steady once more. "I've always believed in fair competition. I won't interfere in class matters because of personal relationships."
"Shimizu, I thought you weren't a very good student, but it seems I was completely wrong. I hope you keep up this good work." After a brief exchange, Sakayanagi Narimori brought the call to a clean end.
Shimizu held his phone, feeling that something was off.
The chairman hadn't asked about the monitoring devices at all.
Instead, he'd asked all sorts of detailed questions about his daily life. The excessive concern somehow reminded Shimizu of a matchmaking meeting arranged by an elder.
"I'm probably overthinking it..." Shimizu shook his head and slipped the phone back into his pocket.
After all, weren't older people all prone to going on and on?
Dragon Boy, How Many Million Points Are You Planning to Pay to Rent the Monitoring Devices in Your Class?
"Classmate Ibuki?"
A gentle voice pulled Ibuki Mio back from her jumbled memories.
At some point, a silver-haired girl had appeared beside her desk. Her voice carried a note of concern. "How are you feeling...?"
Her classmate Shiina Hiyori's tone was as gentle as ever, but Ibuki Mio's back tensed instinctively.
"Ah! I'm fine!" She abruptly straightened up, then deliberately leaned her chair back, making it creak. "Don't forget, I've trained in martial arts."
She waved a fist with a hint of pride, only to aggravate her still-healing wound. The corner of her mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.
"You... still haven't handed over your points, have you?" Shiina's voice was as soft as a sigh. "Even Ishizaki and Yamada, who used to resist him the most, have now..."
Ibuki Mio whipped her head around to scan the classroom. Only then did she notice that the usual troublemakers had once again gone off to do Ryuen Kakeru's bidding.
It was laughable. Somehow, those two had become Ryuen Kakeru's henchmen.
"You've got to be kidding me..." Her fist, hidden beneath the desk, clenched until her knuckles went white. "There's no way I'd give in to scum like him..."
On the third day of school, Ryuen Kakeru had ordered everyone in the class to hand over 80,000 points each as class funds for the month.
At first, plenty of people had refused, but he'd beaten them into submission one by one.
As the days went by and the second week arrived, even Yamada couldn't hold out. She was the only one still hanging on.
"This is ridiculous! The Student Council actually asked me for evidence? They won't even conduct the most basic investigation!" Ibuki Mio kicked her desk hard. The dull thud made the students in front turn around in alarm.
"You actually went straight to the Student Council to report Ryuen..." Shiina Hiyori's voice dropped to a whisper. "If he finds out..."
The classroom's rear door was suddenly kicked open.
Ryuen Kakeru sauntered in like a beast patrolling its territory, with Ishizaki standing beside him like a guard.
"Ha... You're really acting like a king now," Ibuki Mio said, deliberately raising her voice.
Ryuen Kakeru stopped in front of their desks. "A king, huh... That's not a bad title." His gaze sharpened, locking onto Ibuki Mio. "And you seem like a rebellious subject."
"You—!"
Ibuki Mio clenched her fists, fury flaring in her eyes, but Shiina Hiyori gently tugged at her sleeve.
Hiyori shook her head slightly, her expression calm and restrained, signaling her not to act rashly.
"...Hmph. Get lost!" Ryuen Kakeru sneered, his gaze sweeping disdainfully over the two of them. "I'm in a good mood today, so I'll let it slide." With that, he lazily pulled out his phone and tapped rapidly at the screen.
Ibuki Mio paused, then looked down at her phone. A new message had appeared in the class group chat:
Ryuen Kakeru: Everyone, get your asses to the classroom within ten minutes! Don't make me come "invite" you myself.
Ibuki Mio understood at once.
That man... must have found some crucial information again.
She gritted her teeth, forced to admit the truth. Ryuen Kakeru's methods were as despicable as they came: violence, coercion, verbal deception, secretly recording people... nothing but shady tricks.
But the miserable truth was that those low-down methods worked.
(Otherwise... everyone in the class except me wouldn't have obediently handed over those 80,000 Private Points...)
It hadn't even been half a month since school began, and almost everyone hated and feared Ryuen Kakeru, yet they couldn't deny his ability.
Ibuki Mio kept her eyes fixed on the classroom door.
Sure enough, seven or eight minutes later, the once half-empty classroom was packed.
"Starting today, everyone—" Ryuen Kakeru folded his arms across his chest, his sharp gaze sweeping over every student below. "Be on time for class! No being late! No playing on your phones! No fighting! And definitely no sleeping in class!" His voice hammered through the room. "Cut out any behavior that violates school rules!"
The classroom instantly fell into an eerie silence.
Every student stared wide-eyed at the figure on the podium, unable to believe their eyes. The troublemaker who usually led the charge in breaking rules and worshiped violence was now reciting the most textbook-perfect code of conduct for a model student.
"...I see." Shiina Hiyori's eyes widened slightly as she murmured, deep in thought.
"Huh?!" Ibuki Mio blurted out, disbelief written all over her face.
(Ryuen... Has he lost his mind? He's acting like a model student?)
"Hmph. I knew none of you idiots would get it except Shiina." Ryuen Kakeru sneered in contempt, then snapped his fingers.
"Ishizaki! Play it!"
"Got it!" Ishizaki Daichi immediately understood and quickly pulled out the Voice Recorder.
The Voice Recorder kept playing. Amid the crackle of static, a clear conversation came through:
"Things keep going like this, and Class A will have first place locked down next month."
"Exactly. Especially those idiots in Class C and Class D. They've already lost a lot of Class Points just from breaking the rules last week."
"How many points do you think we'll get next month?"
"According to Classmate Sakayanagi's calculations, at least 950 points."
"That means we should get more than 90,000 Private Points next month."
"Bang!" Ryuen Kakeru suddenly slammed his fist onto the podium. Chalk dust scattered down.
He looked down at everyone in Class C, the corners of his mouth twisting into a dangerous curve. "Now do you understand?"
Ryuen Kakeru stood there with one hand in his pocket, even his posture radiating impatience, as though mocking the whole class for being so slow on the uptake.
Only then did a commotion rise through the classroom.
"What are Class Points?"
"They seem to be closely connected to our Private Points!"
"Wait—does breaking the rules get your Class Points deducted?! Why didn't the school explain this from the start?!"
Ryuen Kakeru tapped his fingers against the podium in a dangerous rhythm, looking down at the students whispering below. A trace of scorn flickered in his eyes.
(What a hopeless bunch of idiots...)
(They heard the recording and still don't understand what it means?)
(Why does it feel like everyone except me and Shiina Hiyori is an idiot? Our class is way too weak!)
Before you continue