And patched the school rules, stipulating that any similar cases in the future would be subject to this limit.
57. Meeting Chairman Sakayanagi for the First Time
With a monthly exchange limit of 560,000 Private Points, multiplying that by thirty-six months over three years came to just over Twenty Million Personal Points.
The school's intentions were already clear.
Since Aragaki Shun had already proven his ability, the school was willing to let him exchange his points for a direct ticket to Class A. But he shouldn't expect to use that opportunity to interfere in the competition between the other first-year students.
Aragaki Shun could only sigh with mild resignation. "The school's higher-ups have money and still don't know how to make more. If I put a billion yen in royalties into the school's account and used it all to exchange for Twenty Million Personal Points to transfer classes, wouldn't the school suddenly have an extra billion yen in its budget?"
"Aragaki, you make a billion yen sound like pocket change. That's certainly generous of you. But you're only talking about the extra budget the school would get, without mentioning how much effort it would take to find placements for fifty extra Class A graduates!"
A warm, unfamiliar voice suddenly rang out in the office. The boy turned to look and saw a man who appeared to be in his forties walking toward them.
The man greeted the two of them politely, wearing a kindly smile. He looked like an ordinary middle-aged man.
"Sorry to interrupt, you two. I saw the door was open, so I came right in."
Aragaki Shun looked at the man he was meeting for the first time, though he wasn't exactly a stranger to him, and raised an eyebrow.
"Chairman Sakayanagi, I didn't expect you to come by to take an interest in such a minor matter."
"Aragaki, you're the first student in the history of Kodo Ikusei to earn over ten million Private Points in your first month after enrollment. I've been hoping for a chance to have a proper conversation with you for some time, but I haven't had much free time until now."
Only a few days ago, Aragaki Shun had joined forces with Kanzaki and Koenji to pull one over on him. Yet Chairman Sakayanagi acted as though he didn't care in the slightest. His manner was exceptionally amiable, as if he were just an ordinary teacher showing concern for an outstanding student.
Aragaki Shun naturally wasn't about to take that at face value.
Still, since the other man had shown goodwill, there was no need to respond coldly. After exchanging a few polite remarks in his usual manner, he asked curiously:
"May I ask what guidance you have for me, Chairman?"
"I wouldn't call it guidance. It's just that your application to establish a club, followed by your proposal to convert the royalties earned during club activities into Private Points, has caused the school quite a headache. I wasn't sure whether you had any objections to the school's final decision, so I thought I should come explain it in person."
Chairman Sakayanagi studied Aragaki Shun for a few seconds, then turned his gaze to Kagurazaka Ayame. "Welcome to Kodo Ikusei Senior High School as well, Editor Kagurazaka. Perhaps one of our graduates will have the opportunity to work for your publishing house someday."
"You're too kind, Chairman Sakayanagi. If a Kodo Ikusei graduate with the right abilities wanted to work for us, our president would surely find the most suitable position for them."
After exchanging a few pleasantries with Chairman Sakayanagi, Kagurazaka Ayame realized he still had things to discuss with Aragaki Shun. And since the time allotted by Kodo Ikusei was nearly up, she gathered her documents and stood.
"Now that I've got the manuscript for Aurora's new book, I should hurry back and arrange for its publication."
"Oh, right. Eromanga-sensei contacted me earlier. She said that if Aurora's new book came out, she'd like to continue working as the illustrator. What do you think, Aurora? Should the publishing house find you a different illustrator?"
When Kagurazaka Ayame said that somewhat daring pen name, the image of a rather unconventional single mother immediately came to Aragaki Shun's mind.
But as he recalled, Sagiri had actually drawn the illustrations for the latter half of his previous light novel, hadn't she?
When the woman sent him those illustrations, which differed from her usual work in a few subtle ways, and asked if they were acceptable, he'd wondered why they seemed just as polished as before, yet somehow less risqué.
It wasn't until he was invited to her home the next day that he learned the slightly more innocent illustrations had been done by her daughter as an experiment.
Remembering that slender, timid figure, Aragaki Shun calmly nodded to Kagurazaka Ayame. "I've enjoyed working with Eromanga-sensei the last two times, so there's no need to change illustrators for the new book. Sorry for the trouble, but could you discuss the terms with Eromanga-sensei?"
He vaguely remembered that Sagiri was only twelve this year.
Still, young talents like her were hardly rare in this world's ACG industry, so Aragaki Shun had no worries about her abilities as an illustrator.
Besides, Sagiri had already done nearly half of the illustrations for his last book without any problems. Given Aragaki Shun's personality, if he could continue working with someone he knew, he wouldn't bother contacting an unfamiliar illustrator.
"Understood. The publishing house will arrange the various aspects of publication as soon as possible. If you have some free time, Aurora, we could also organize a few promotional events for the new book. Your fans have been hoping you'll hold more signing sessions."
"We can discuss that later. I'm not planning to leave school for now."
With a wave, he dismissed Kagurazaka Ayame, who had never given up on getting him to appear in public. After watching her leave the office with an expression of resigned acceptance, Aragaki Shun turned to Chairman Sakayanagi, who had been smiling throughout.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Chairman. What did you want to discuss with me?"
"Heh, there's no need to be so formal, young man. Didn't I tell you earlier? I only came to ask whether you had any objections to the school's decision."
Aragaki Shun inwardly rolled his eyes. Even though he knew the other man couldn't possibly have come all this way over such a minor matter, he still had to play along.
"Do you mean the limit on exchanging royalties? I understand that the school wants the four classes to compete with Class A at the center, growing through that competition. That's why it created the Private Points system, to keep outside money from influencing things."
"Honestly, the school allowing me to exchange 560,000 Private Points each month already exceeded my expectations. At first, I thought the school would simply give me more club activity funds as a reward once the club had achieved some results."
If all he received were club activity funds, they certainly wouldn't amount to 560,000 a month.
Although Kodo Ikusei Senior High was famously wealthy, it only gave sports clubs a little over a hundred thousand Private Points in monthly activity funds, while cultural clubs received even less—just a few tens of thousands each month.
The school also awarded a large number of points for achievements in off-campus competitions, but those were one-time rewards, not something students received every month.
58. Rules Made Especially for Aragaki Shun?
To be fair, Kodo Ikusei was extremely generous when handing out Private Points to students.
That was evident not only in how it distributed living allowances to students in each class based on Class Points, but also in club activity funds and the way teachers came up with all sorts of reasons to give students rewards.
For example, during their first PE class the previous week, the teacher had used a competition as an excuse to give Private Points to the winner of each event.
The problem was that Kodo Ikusei had many teachers. Aside from the twelve teachers who also served as homeroom teachers, whose treatment was tied to the classes they led, the rest usually taught several classes at once and had no particular reason to favor one class over another.
In other words, even if Class B won the class competition, it had nothing to do with the other teachers. That made the PE teacher handing out his own Private Points to reward them rather strange.
Unless there was something in it for them, who would do something that benefited others at their own expense in an academy that championed meritocracy?
So Aragaki Shun suspected that the Private Points teachers awarded to students were part of some hidden rule the school either tacitly accepted or actively supported. The teachers couldn't possibly be paying out of their own pockets; as long as they had a suitable reason, the school would probably reimburse them up to a certain amount.
Once he understood that, Aragaki Shun figured that if these rewards were already approved by the school, there was no reason not to take them. So at a class meeting, he encouraged everyone in Class B to seize any opportunities they noticed in class to persuade their teachers to hand out rewards.
Still, ordinary teachers weren't closely tied to any one class, so Aragaki Shun didn't expect to get many Private Points from them. At most, he hoped this would make his classmates more active in class and earn them a little extra spending money.
If he really wanted to squeeze points out of a teacher, he had a better candidate: Chie Hoshinomiya, whose benefits were closely tied to Class B.
After all, wasn't she desperate to claim Class A's position and rub it in the face of Class D's homeroom teacher?
Did she really think she could enjoy the rewards without offering them any support?
When Aragaki Shun challenged her like that, Chie Hoshinomiya could only laugh helplessly.
In the end, though, they agreed that after the month ended and the restrictions during the Behavioral Standards Exam were lifted, she would deposit her share of the class funds into Class B's account, as proof that she and all the students in Class B were in it together.
That agreement was the most he could get from the teachers.
If he wanted to keep earning Private Points, and there were no other Special Exams that month, his only option was to target the clubs the school so strongly supported.
At first, he'd only been confident that starting his own club would earn him a fixed amount of Private Points each month. He hadn't expected that amount to be particularly large.
If the school followed its usual practice, a newly established literary club—even one with more than a dozen Class B students on its roster and an off-campus work of his as an achievement—would probably receive only a hundred or two hundred thousand points a month in activity funds and school rewards.
Now that the school was allowing him to exchange royalties directly, even with a monthly cap of 560,000, the decision had honestly surprised him.
After all, this situation had no precedent at Kodo Ikusei and wasn't just a matter of the first-year exams. Even if the chairman was forbidden from interfering in this year's competition, he surely still had some say in a matter like this.
Aragaki Shun had been prepared from the start for the royalty exchange to fall through completely.
At first, he'd simply hoped that aiming high might at least get him something. Even if the club didn't earn him many Private Points, having an off-campus source would still be good.
But it seemed Chairman Sakayanagi hadn't obstructed him at all. In fact, he'd even made things easier for him.
Otherwise, there'd be no reason for the man to come talk to him at a time like this.
Looking at the kindly middle-aged man before him, Aragaki Shun's mind raced as he tried to work out what the chairman was thinking.
"If the school's only concern had been fair competition between classes, it shouldn't have agreed to let you exchange royalties for Private Points."
Chairman Sakayanagi was a shrewd man, and could immediately see the undisguised confusion in Aragaki Shun's expression. He calmly explained the school's reasoning.
"But fairness for the group isn't necessarily fairness for the individual. Although the school encourages competition between classes as a whole, it has never intended to erase the limitless potential of individual students. That's why the school provided a path to transfer classes for Twenty Million Personal Points."
"Your achievements are a reflection of your exceptional talent, Aragaki. The school shouldn't suppress that without good reason."
As he said this, Chairman Sakayanagi couldn't help looking troubled.
Who could have imagined that this year's incoming students at Kodo Ikusei Senior High would include someone like him?
He was barely more than a teenager, yet he could earn at least a billion yen in royalties through three years of creative work while still at school. What were the millions of working people in Sakurajima, earning an average of only four million yen a year, supposed to think?
Someone like him shouldn't be dominating the high school student market. Even if he were thrown straight into society right now, he'd still achieve a higher status than the vast majority of people in the world.
Normally, any school would be delighted to have such a talent. Even Kodo Ikusei Senior High, for all its peculiarities, wasn't so twisted that it would push its own students away.
It was just that Aragaki Shun's earning power was so absurd compared with that of other high school students. If he were allowed to exchange his royalties for Private Points without any restrictions, the four classes might as well give up competing.
The three-year competition would be over before the first month of school had even ended. Could anyone call that reasonable?
"In the end, we board members could only stay up all night patching the loophole in the school rules, limiting the Private Points students could earn through clubs to 560,000 per month."
As for how likely this rule was to be triggered, under normal circumstances, it was practically impossible.
After all, Kodo Ikusei Senior High only admitted 160 first-year students each year. Unless ordinary students had achievements outside school to prove themselves, the school would never go out of its way to connect them with outside sources of income.
In other words, the only way to trigger the rule was for an incoming student to already have a considerable reputation in society while still in middle school, enough for an outside organization to contact Kodo Ikusei specifically on their behalf.
Talents like that were rare in society to begin with, and anyone with that kind of ability could go to any school they wanted. The chairman didn't think Kodo Ikusei could easily recruit someone like that.
So in his eyes, this rule had effectively been made for Aragaki Shun alone.
59. The Behavioral Standards Exam Was Nearing Its End
Chairman Sakayanagi seemed to have come just to make a little small talk.
After thoroughly explaining the school's reasoning, the middle-aged man, who had maintained a warm smile throughout their conversation and seemed like an ordinary older relative, asked Aragaki Shun a few detailed questions about life at Kodo Ikusei. Only then did he unhurriedly leave the office.
When it was all over, Aragaki Shun headed to the Student Council with a somewhat complicated expression. Guided by a certain Bun-haired Senior, he found the club activity classroom arranged by the school.
Whether the school was really that wealthy or the chairman had granted him special treatment, the activity classroom she showed him was exceptionally spacious. It even had a bookshelf, several desks and chairs, a sofa, and an office computer.
It had practically everything a cultural club could need.
If the room hadn't been so neglected that dust had accumulated on the floor, he could've brought his things in and started using it right away.
But cleaning it was no big deal. Aragaki Shun promptly called Kanzaki Ryuji and asked him to bring along a bunch of Class B students who hadn't joined any other clubs to help fill out the roster for his newly established club.
"So you called us over just to make us do the dirty work together, then?"
Kanzaki Ryuji looked at the troublemaking friend who thought of him whenever there was hard labor to be done with deep resentment. He was genuinely tempted to walk away and leave him to it.
"I think Class B needs an extra base besides our classroom. What do you think of this new club room I applied for? It's spacious, right?"
Aragaki Shun looked contentedly at the activity classroom. More than half the class had come inside, and it still didn't feel crowded.
But because the room was so large, cleaning it alone would have taken quite a while.
Now that more than half the class had shown up, the cleaning could be taken care of in no time.
"But are there really that many people in our class who haven't joined a club? I thought there'd only be a dozen or so."
Aragaki Shun was a little puzzled by the number.
Most of their classmates were well-behaved kids in the eyes of their teachers and parents. Influenced by Ichinose Honami, they were generally helpful and good at talking to others. Normally, students like them would be eager to take part in club activities.
He hadn't specifically opposed them joining clubs—in fact, he'd encouraged them to pursue their interests. So why were there still so many Going-Home Club members in Class B, even though club recruitment had started a week ago?
"That's not it."
Ichinose Honami, who had been diligently wiping down the desks and chairs, suddenly spoke up. "Most of the class have already picked their clubs. We just heard that Aragaki had applied to the school to start a club, so we came to see what it was like."
"I see." Aragaki Shun nodded. That made sense. "Then anyone in the class who still hasn't joined a club can come get a club registration form from me. If you're bored, you can come here and read."
"If you don't like reading, you can just be a Ghost Member and collect some club activity funds."
"This club gets activity funds, too?"
Kanzaki Ryuji exclaimed in surprise. He already knew the school had allowed Aragaki Shun to exchange royalties for Private Points. Was it really going to give him club activity funds as well?
"According to the chairman, the royalties are something I earned through my own talent. Letting me exchange them for Private Points is just a reward for my achievements, so the club activity funds that every regular club gets still apply. It's not like I'm the only member of this club."
Now that he could exchange up to 560,000 in royalties each month, Aragaki Shun didn't particularly care about the club activity funds.
"For every additional member who joins, the school gives us another 5,000 Private Points each month. If any of you want to join, fill out a club registration form. A little extra spending money each month is never a bad thing."
Five thousand Private Points a month was barely a drop in the bucket to Aragaki Shun.
But exchanging royalties cost him his own money from outside school, while these 5,000 Private Points, meager as they were, came as a benefit from the school.
You didn't turn down something free!
He wasn't just going to take advantage of it himself; he was going to encourage his classmates to do the same.
It was a shame that even if students joined multiple clubs at Kodo Ikusei Senior High, the school only provided activity funds for one club. Otherwise, he'd have told everyone in the class to help claim a spot.
"Five thousand Private Points isn't much, but the chairman agreeing to let you exchange royalties is already absurd enough. Don't push your luck."
While grumbling, Kanzaki took a club application form and signed his name without hesitation.
"Chairman Sakayanagi, huh..."
Before you continue