"It would normally have cost 100,000, but since you're the first to apply this way, you've provided the school with a new point of reference. So we've waived some of the Private Points."
"So from now on, a standard notarization will cost 100,000 Private Points?"
Aragaki Shun gave a soft "tsk." He had to admit, rule-makers sure knew how to rake in money.
Still, this was like the processing fee for registering a company in the outside world. At least compared to all the steps required out there, all he had to do was hand the documents to Chie Hoshinomiya instead of running around everywhere.
"According to the school, the Private Points are the easy part. The main thing is that the class rules you and everyone in Class B drew up don't contain any clauses that would cause trouble for the school. The school considers these rules beneficial to Class B students' growth, so it's looking forward to seeing where you'll go from here."
Chie Hoshinomiya shook her head, gathering herself and getting serious as she relayed the school's message to Aragaki Shun.
"If you need to have similar rules notarized in the future, you'll need signatures from everyone in the class and you'll have to pay Private Points. But most importantly, the rules can't violate the school's basic principles, and they have to serve its goal of cultivating talent."
In short, they could set up a smaller circle of rules for their class within the boundaries laid down by the school, but they couldn't use it to pull any tricks and try to cross those boundaries.
"Of course. I never expected this method to get the school to offer us more benefits."
"A slightly more formal organization needs a complete set of rules in the first place."
"And the people who join later have to follow the organization's normal procedures too. Isn't that only natural?"
"So you're burning the bridge after crossing it, huh?" Hoshinomiya held the Class B rules in her hands. After Kanzaki Ryuji had sent over the corresponding Private Points, she finally couldn't resist making a comment. "First you send those two oddballs to Class A and Class C separately. Then, once the other classes realize what the Transfer Ticket can do, they'll discover you've already blocked that route."
Once the school notarized these rules, any other class that spent two million Private Points to use a temporary Transfer Ticket to send someone over and cause trouble would be informed of the rules Class B had put in place.
The looks on their faces would be priceless!
Of course, students who used a Transfer Ticket were fully bound to their new class for a month. If Class B actually expelled one of them, the class would lose a fair number of Class Points too.
But would anyone really risk expulsion just to drag Class B down and give their original class a slight advantage?
What would they even be getting out of it?
Unless people like Sakayanagi Arisu or Koenji Rokusuke promised them an even brighter future after expulsion, no one in their right mind would do something so pointless and harmful.
Of course, if someone really was being bought off with promises of backing from outside the school, Aragaki Shun wouldn't mind telling them: They can give you a comfortable life outside school, but do you think I don't have the same kind of influence? Maybe you should think carefully about what's easier: wrecking things or protecting you.
"I bought the Transfer Tickets in the first place because I wanted to welcome every talented person to Class B, not because I wanted to drag all four classes down to zero points and have everyone wallow in the mud together!"
Aragaki Shun rolled his eyes. "I'm just warmly welcoming every outstanding person to Class B, so we can work toward the future together."
From that perspective, it made more sense to think of Class B's rules as a company contract. All the benefits, protections, and penalties for breaking the agreement were spelled out clearly.
If someone transferring over thought the terms suited them, they could join the class!
If they didn't, then once their month-long probation ended, Aragaki Shun could only say that classes and students chose each other. If they weren't a good fit, they could part on good terms.
And if they didn't want either of those options, then what had they come for?
Would they dare to say outright that they'd come to cause trouble?
Then, sorry, but the penalty would range from paying the minimum number of Private Points to compensate for the damage to receiving an expulsion warning.
The school encouraged competition, but it still had its dignity. Every class could secretly plant spies, no problem. But now that Class B had established rules, following them was only fair.
It was also a way to prepare for society, fully in line with the school's long-standing approach to cultivating talent.
48. Strengthen Our Roots Within, Undermine the Competition Without
"Ehh~ 'welcoming every outstanding person to Class B'?"
Chie Hoshinomiya first gave an astonished little gasp, then immediately understood what Aragaki Shun meant.
"So the strategy you chose for Class B's dealings with the outside world is poaching people, huh, little Aragaki?"
"Isn't that normal?"
Aragaki Shun smiled as he asked the homeroom teacher in return.
"Companies poach from one another all the time. Every time a rival loses a pillar, our own strength grows!"
"Only by constantly widening the gap can we ensure Class B remains undefeated, no matter what kind of Special Exam the school throws at us."
In Aragaki Shun's eyes, enrolling in an experimental school like Advanced Nurturing and devoting all their attention to the Special Exams set by the school, hoping to earn Class Points through those exams and ultimately graduate from Class A... You couldn't say that approach was meaningless. It was just far too passive and put the emphasis in the wrong place.
For one thing, the people who designed the Special Exams were ultimately officials from Advanced Nurturing. And people had their own interests and preferences.
Aragaki Shun couldn't be sure what kind of person the rule-makers considered representative of Advanced Nurturing's ideal student.
What if they thought one class better fit the school's idea of talent and deliberately set exams that favored it?
Or suppose every test-writer at Advanced Nurturing Senior High School was perfectly impartial and treated all four classes equally, but their idea of talent included being hardworking, self-sacrificing, and selfish. What then?
Would they have to cater to the test-writers' expectations and twist their own will just to pass the Special Exams and become the kind of "talent" Advanced Nurturing wanted?
That was ridiculous. They'd come to Advanced Nurturing for a better future, not to throw away their present!
For another thing, they'd only be at this school for three years.
Three years wasn't short, of course, but they had another thirty, forty, or even more years ahead of them.
The benefits Advanced Nurturing Senior High School promised to Class A graduates were precious. For most students from ordinary or even poor families, they were a dream opportunity that could change their social standing.
But that didn't change the fact that the benefits were only a foot in the door.
The school's promise was tempting, but it could only let graduates choose the prestigious university they wanted to attend or the major company they wanted to work for. It couldn't get them through university or secure them a promotion at a prestigious company.
Sakurajima used to have many companies with lifetime employment systems, but as times changed, that system began to crumble. More and more companies started laying off employees they could no longer afford.
So a student's own ability mattered most. Even if their class leader carried them into Class A, would they really be able to adapt to a prestigious university or company after graduation?
Aragaki Shun had no intention of letting a group of people who were nothing but dead weight get lost in the Special Exams.
As he saw it, to make full use of Advanced Nurturing's role as a foot in the door, Class A graduates needed to be capable enough to handle whatever goal they chose.
The ideal situation would be for them to get into the school they wanted or join the company they wanted even without the school's recommendation.
Once they reached that level, the school's promise wouldn't matter. They could simply treat graduating from Advanced Nurturing Senior High School as a calling card and use its connections to help their future along.
That was the overall strategy Aragaki Shun had set for everyone in Class B:
--Strengthen our roots within. Make use of the school's top-tier teachers and rich educational resources to build up our classmates' abilities.
--Undermine the competition without. Find ways to contact the elite students in other classes and bring them into Class B with a twenty-million-point transfer.
That way, even if Class B fell behind in Class Points, it would be packed with the strongest students in the first year while the other classes were left with a bunch of useless stragglers. Would the school even have a choice then?
Of course, if they really achieved such an ideal situation, Class B would keep widening its lead in strength like a snowball rolling downhill. Under those circumstances, falling behind in Class Points wouldn't be easy either.
All sorts of thoughts flashed through his mind.
With his mental stats at 10 and [Erudition] at level 4, Aragaki Shun's thinking speed had reached a level that ordinary people could hardly imagine.
So even though he'd thought through all that, only a few seconds had passed in reality. Chie Hoshinomiya hadn't even noticed her student zoning out when he made another request.
"Hoshinomiya-sensei, have you arranged the tutoring yet? I think the sooner we get started, the better. We can't let everyone in the class have so much fun that they forget what tutoring was like."
School let out at three in the afternoon, leaving the rest of the day free. Did Hoshinomiya know how shocking that system was to someone who had struggled through the hell of entrance exams in his previous life?
Aragaki Shun couldn't stand seeing his classmates slack off like this.
His demands weren't high. He only wanted the twenty students at the bottom of the class in academics and physical fitness to spend a little extra time each week on tutoring and catching up. The top twenty could focus on improving themselves in line with their own goals.
"Your classmates are so lucky to have a leader like you!"
Chie Hoshinomiya's comment was half teasing and half admiring. Young people naturally wanted to have fun, and more often than not, only their parents wanted to force them to study all kinds of things.
But Hoshinomiya genuinely felt that Aragaki Shun was going to extraordinary lengths for his classmates, even though he had no need to go this far.
When she'd enrolled at Advanced Nurturing Senior High School, every student in her year had schemed and fought over a place in Class A. In all her years as a teacher at Advanced Nurturing, she'd never seen a leader put so much thought into his classmates' futures.
Watching all of Aragaki Shun's arrangements, Hoshinomiya couldn't help feeling that graduating from Class A didn't seem so important anymore.
If only we'd...
She forcibly suppressed her wandering thoughts and returned to her usual lively self. Touching the tips of her fingers together in front of her chest, she put on a cute expression and tried to charm her student.
"I just love hardworking children, and the school is happy to see everyone taking the initiative to improve themselves. There's no problem with arranging tutoring."
"The school will find the best tutors for everyone. This is a top-tier service that would cost a lot of money outside, but the school understands that cultivating talent is one of Advanced Nurturing's basic responsibilities, so it's willing to offer everyone a substantial discount."
"So you only need to pay 10,000 Private Points per person per month to get the very best tutoring. Isn't that a delightful surprise?"
He wouldn't call it delightful. All he knew was that the class fund really didn't go very far. Another 400,000 a month had just disappeared.
49. Ichinose Wants to Save Up Two Million First
Though he couldn't help feeling that the class fund was vanishing like water, they still had to pay for what they needed.
From what Aragaki Shun knew, ordinary high school students in Sakurajima spent around 20,000 yen a month on cram schools and extracurricular classes.
But Advanced Nurturing Senior High School was a closed campus, so students couldn't go outside and find their own tutors.
That meant the school had to arrange the tutors itself.
And since Advanced Nurturing was responsible for educating them over these three years, and the school encouraged students to work hard of their own accord... Taking all this into account, the school really had waived a considerable portion of the tutoring fees.
"So it wasn't a discount just because I was the first to apply. They're doing it because Advanced Nurturing needs to cultivate talent. In other words, the school had already planned for tutoring classes?"
But Aragaki Shun's attention wasn't really on the cost. He was curious whether students in previous years had needed similar support, and if that was why the school had responded so quickly.
He was sure the school would approve a request for tutoring as long as he paid the points.
But if this was the first time the school had faced such a request, they'd have to arrange all the tutors at short notice. There was no way the school could have had the monthly tutoring fee ready to go the moment he asked Chie Hoshinomiya to apply.
"Of course! Isn't it normal in our country for students to take cram school or extracurricular classes after school?"
Chie Hoshinomiya put her hands on her hips and grumbled.
"And in the past, plenty of students who enrolled at Advanced Nurturing were strict about their grades, or had no hope of graduating from Class A and wanted to take the same entrance exams as everyone else. The school naturally set up these services to meet their needs."
Advanced Nurturing Senior High School still had its dignity.
Even though only Class A graduates received the school's promised benefits, that didn't mean the school would completely give up on the other three classes.
If it did, and after three years the students in those classes graduated with worse grades than ordinary high school students—unable to apply for university or even find a job on their own—how would the school explain to society that it was turning out 120 graduates with no prospects every year?
So even at this unusual school, the administration still held every student to strict academic standards. The fact that anyone who failed their midterm or final exams would be expelled was the clearest proof of that.
But if the school wanted to ensure that every student kept up with their studies, it had to prepare the same kinds of services that students at other high schools had access to.
So cram schools, which played an important role in getting into university in Sakurajima, were obviously something Advanced Nurturing had to provide.
And since most of the students who needed tutoring were probably in Class C or Class D, where Private Points were likely to be tight, the school had even waived a good portion of the cost.
It was also a kind of hint from Advanced Nurturing Senior High School: if you didn't think you could graduate from Class A, then work hard like other high school students. You could still apply to the university you wanted to attend.
That way, Advanced Nurturing Senior High School let students enroll for free, gave them a monthly allowance, covered their room and board, and provided all kinds of top-quality educational resources. Even without the benefits reserved for Class A graduates, it still took care of everything an ordinary high school student needed. However you looked at it, the school had done its duty.
Under those circumstances, it was naturally easier to get students in the other classes to sign confidentiality agreements after graduation.
After all, how could they complain when they hadn't lost anything?
Even if their parents found out, they were unlikely to complain to the school. Three years of tuition and living expenses at an ordinary high school added up to a lot of money too.
Aragaki Shun considered all the school's possible motives, but didn't let any of it show. He returned to the podium at the front of the classroom.
"You heard her. Tutoring will cost 10,000 per person per month, deducted from the class fund. What do you all think?"
They didn't think much of it!
They really wanted to say that, but out of respect for their leader, Aragaki Shun, the class could only accept the tutoring plan with long faces, no matter how miserable they felt.
They'd have had to attend tutoring even if they hadn't come to Advanced Nurturing. They still had to attend tutoring after coming here. How did it feel like they weren't at a closed-campus school at all, but were still stuck at home with their parents?
"Um, Aragaki-kun."
They'd thought the matter was settled, but Ichinose Honami suddenly stood up.
Aragaki Shun turned his attention to her, wondering what else she wanted to say.
"I think improving everyone's grades and physical fitness is really useful, but do we need to spend 400,000 Class Points every month? If we all helped each other after class, we should still be able to prevent anyone from failing the midterms or finals and getting expelled."
The pink-haired girl felt that everything Aragaki Shun did was practically perfect, far beyond what she could manage. She couldn't help admiring him.
Having such a responsible and capable leader in the class was a wonderful thing.
But—
"A lot of second- and third-year students were expelled because of Special Exams, right? Shouldn't we save our Private Points and build up two million first, just in case?"
"We're bringing in nearly two million Class Points every month. We could save up two million in at most ten months. Wouldn't it be better to sign everyone up for tutoring after that?"
"Until then, we could organize study groups and have the students with the best grades tutor those who are struggling. I'm confident I can help with that. We can definitely get everyone safely over the passing mark."
That was more than confidence.
Before you continue