This Treasure Hunt Isn't Quite Proper / I'm Definitely Not a Siscon

"This concludes the explanation of this Treasure Hunt Game."

After Hoshinomiya Chie finished explaining all the rules, the students in the audience gave her a warm round of applause. Many of them, already dazed by the rewards of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars and the seemingly foolproof addition and subtraction, were already rubbing their hands together, waiting to head out and find the QR code posted by the school.

But Kitagawa Ryo was clearly not among them. Rather, he sensed something was wrong the moment Hoshinomiya Chie uttered the phrase "a cruise ship gift card worth 6,000 points."

At first glance, it seems like a perfect deal to use 5,000 Private Points to win at least 6,000 points – a win-win situation. However, the actual prize is just a prepaid card that can only be used for purchases on the cruise ship. Considering the inflated prices on the cruise ship and the final 2:1 exchange rate...

Considering the text message from the school he received yesterday, which stated that it was "to cultivate students' views on money and consumption," Kitagawa Ryo lowered his eyes slightly.

If his intuition and speculation were correct, from this moment on, all of them, the First Year students, had quietly stepped into another large-scale series of Special Exam meticulously designed for them by the school.

Is it Treasure Hunt Game?

It's more accurate to describe it as a combination of gambler's psychology, consumer traps, and a lottery game that uses the fabricated image of a lucky winner to lure a group of people who want something for nothing.

"That sounds interesting. Ryo, are you planning to participate?"

Having perfectly demonstrated that a woman's intelligence drops to zero during a romantic date Amasawa Ichika had given up thinking and simply looked up at Kitagawa Ryo, clinging to his arm, and asked him a question.

What's the point of analyzing this? If Liang agrees, she'll participate; if she doesn't, she'll refuse.

Faced with Amasawa Ichika's innocent question, Kitagawa Ryo nodded in agreement without hesitation.

"You can try it."

This was indeed a trap disguised as a sweet deal, but for Kitagawa Ryo, who was already planning to splurge on this cruise ship, it was a sure-fire way to make money.

As he spoke, Kitagawa Ryo casually glanced at the other students around him who had already begun downloading and scanning the special app as instructed by Hoshinomiya Chie, and several good ideas had already formed in his mind.

However, after only a short while, Kitagawa Ryo quickly rejected all of these ideas, which, although they had some benefits, were quite troublesome in terms of procedures, and most importantly, would lead to frequent interruptions.

He just said yesterday that he wanted to enjoy his vacation, so let the students in Class B do what they want for now. It'll also be a good opportunity for him to see how much they've grown so far.

"We'll just scan a couple of codes and try our luck; there's no need to waste too much time on this."

Kitagawa Ryo lowered his head slightly and whispered in Amasawa Ichika's ear:

"Once they're all busy treasure hunting in the floors with the hidden QR codes, won't the other decks become a private world for me and Ichika?"

Chapter 251: This Treasure Hunt Is Not Serious (4k5)

Although the school's Treasure Hunt Game lasted until 6 p. m., giving students a full six hours to search, most students couldn't wait and rushed out of the fifth-floor venue as soon as the event started, like a swarm of locusts searching for QR codes on the fifth-floor deck.

According to the map provided by the school, the QR codes are only distributed in the public facilities and accessible rooms on the third, fourth, and fifth floors. There are no QR codes in Matoba such as restrooms, bathhouses, or other places that require payment to enter. Standing on the side of the corridor, Kitagawa Ryo glanced down through the window and could see quite a few students who wanted to take a different route and go directly to the third floor to search from the bottom up.

Of course, besides these students who were caught up in the excitement, there were also a dozen or so people in the venue who noticed something was wrong, were deep in thought, or wanted to communicate with other students to share their thoughts on the event. Seeing that Ryuen Kakeru from Class C was walking towards them as if he wanted to strike up a conversation, Kitagawa Ryo quickly grabbed Amasawa Ichika's hand and followed the crowd down the stairs, making it look like he had no intention of participating at all.

But just as Kitagawa Ryo had shaken off Ryuen Kakeru and taken only two steps, another familiar voice stopped him in his tracks:

"Wait a minute, it's getting cold."

Hearing the sound, Kitagawa Ryo turned around and saw Sakayanagi Arisu standing halfway up the stairs in the corridor. Taking advantage of this position, she had a rare, somewhat commanding view. Her arms were crossed on the handrail, and she casually, or perhaps wearily, gestured with her chin in his direction.

"Does Liang have any particular thoughts on this Treasure Hunt Game?"

"The school's motives, the loopholes in the rules, and how to leverage these to one's own advantage..."

Before Sakayanagi Arisu could finish speaking, Amasawa Ichika interrupted her, making a playful face at her with a hint of displeasure.

"Of course not. If there is anything, it's that Ryo is planning to just play this Treasure Hunt Game with me without thinking about anything else."

Just kidding. Although she did have some feelings for Sakayanagi Arisu Kitagawa Ryo because of the way he took her out of the White Room during the simulation, it depends on the situation. Karuizawa Kei is closer to Shiina Hiyori, but yesterday she still tried to get rid of her. Turning a two-person world into a three-person party... is definitely not an option at this stage.

However, Sakayanagi Arisu seemed completely unconcerned about Amasawa Ichika's words and expressions, resting her chin slightly on her right hand and continuing to look at Kitagawa Ryo, awaiting his reply.

"Yeah, that's pretty much it. I don't really plan to set up any traps for this Treasure Hunt Game. If Arisu is interested, you can give it a try. Call Honami and Airi. The other students in Class B should be willing to follow your lead, since they're used to being on Uninhabited Island."

Faced with Sakayanagi Arisu the topic, Kitagawa Ryo shook his head and expressed his thoughts, then asked with concern:

"Speaking of which, how's Arisu?"

As someone who had a perfect attendance record for fourteen days on Uninhabited Island, although she barely moved in the last two days, her below-average physical condition meant that after the exams, Sakayanagi Arisu stayed in her room to rest until now. If it weren't for this unexpected text message from the school, she probably would have stayed in bed for another day or two.

"It's nothing—but I've definitely come to realize that this body needs to be fully exercised. I'll be in trouble with the fitness instructor then, no, I should say?"

Sakayanagi Arisu casually, clearly aware of Kitagawa Ryo's whereabouts over the past two days. After all, although she herself did not leave her room, Matsushita Chiaki and other students were still active outside, and various intelligence was constantly being sent to her.

"We'll talk about it later, bye-bye."

Feeling the grip on his arm tighten a little more, Kitagawa Ryo temporarily abandoned his intention to continue talking with Sakayanagi Arisu, turned around and said goodbye.

"Okay, goodbye."

Sakayanagi Arisu waved back nonchalantly, but watching the two figures disappear into the distance, she couldn't help but feel a strange sense of melancholy.

After listening to Hoshinomiya Chie's explanation of the Treasure Hunt Game rules in the venue, she deliberately searched for Karuizawa Kei among the students present, but ultimately did not find her. She asked several students from Class A, and they all said that she seemed to be feeling a little unwell today and was resting in her room.

Therefore, Sakayanagi Arisu no choice but to make a private phone call to Karuizawa Kei.

Then, after listening to the other person's vivid description of their personal experience, the girl fell into deep self-doubt and even self-denial. In fact, this was the real reason why she said, "However, I have indeed come to a profound realization that this body needs to be fully trained."

Thinking of this, Sakayanagi Arisu sighed sadly again, subconsciously lowered her eyes, and spread her right thumb and forefinger as wide as possible, measuring slightly upwards from her lower abdomen.

Having abandoned a bold idea once again with this action, Sakayanagi Arisu withdrew her right hand in the next instant, covering her cheek as if she were ashamed of herself. She could feel every inch of her skin burning between her fingers, and her reason seemed to evaporate into thin air, her brain crashing and becoming a blank.

Ugh... No, no, no!

Just as Sakayanagi Arisu was lost in some indescribable fantasy and her mind went blank, Kitagawa Ryo, who had left with Amasawa Ichika, also encountered a similar predicament.

Although they had said before coming down that they would just find a couple of QR codes and end the Amasawa Ichika Treasure Hunt Game, when they arrived at the fourth floor, where there were the fewest people, they still subconsciously began to look for the deepest hidden QR codes.

It must be said that this strong competitive spirit and desire to win are, to some extent, one of the aftereffects of the White Room.

"This feeling is probably well hidden."

A short while later, Kitagawa Ryo found a QR code pasted inside the lampshade of a table lamp in one of the rooms.

"Wait a minute, if you can't find it hidden deeper, come back and scan this one."

Amasawa Ichika casually replied, then enthusiastically began searching along the cracks in the wall for any blind spots:

"Let it cool down a bit, and could you move this sofa for me?"

"Have you found anything?"

"I have a feeling it might be hiding here."

Kitagawa Ryo walked to the spot indicated by Amasawa Ichika, braced one hand against the wall and placed the other on the back of a large sofa. With a little effort, he pulled the sofa, which was pressed against the wall, to create a gap. However, because there was a table blocking the way on the other side, even when pulled to its maximum, it was only enough to barely squeeze one person in.

"Just hold on like this, I'll go in and check on things."

Before Kitagawa Ryo could react, Amasawa Ichika had already slipped into the gap and was intently searching for possible traces of QR codes on the floor tiles, the side walls of the sofa, and the bottom.

However, it must be said that the other person's half-crouching posture with their back to him was hard not to remind Kitagawa Ryo of classic scenes in some literary works, except that the heroines in those works usually crawl into the opening of a washing machine.

Just as Kitagawa Ryo's nerves, along with Amasawa Ichika's black pantyhose beneath her half-hidden school uniform skirt, which were naturally arched upwards due to her posture, reached a certain limit, he finally heard her shout of surprise:

"Found it! There really is one here."

The QR code was made of a different material than the sofa fabric. You could clearly feel the difference just by touching it. It was because of this that Amasawa Ichika discovered the QR code and took a complete picture of it with her phone in flash mode before she was satisfied and crawled out of the narrow space again.

After patting himself clean, as if circling around Kitagawa Ryo, to remove any dust he might have picked up, Amasawa Ichika stretched with a sigh of relief.

"Let's use these two -- then we'll go play on the second and first floors. Only a dozen minutes have passed, and it seems most students are still busy looking for QR codes."

"Good."

Upon hearing this, Kitagawa Ryo let go and restored the sofa to its original state. Then, while rescanning the QR code inside the lamp, he also restored a certain part of his body to its original state. Only then did the two of them leave the room and walk against the flow of people searching for the QR code, making their way back to the venue on the fifth floor where the lottery was being held.

"Congratulations to both of you—would you like to pay the 5,000 Private Points now for the official draw? There aren't many students redeeming their prizes yet, and the grand prizes of over 100,000 haven't been drawn much yet."

The person in charge of redeeming the prize was still Hoshinomiya Chie of Class 1-A, and her assistant was Chabashira Sae, the homeroom teacher of Class 1-D. Perhaps she wanted to leave a good impression on the school as much as possible during the investigation, or perhaps it was just that her attitude towards him was different. As soon as Kitagawa Ryo and Amasawa Ichika walked over, Chabashira Sae smiled and took the initiative to speak.

Sitting next to her, Hoshinomiya Chie frowned slightly, but immediately put on a sweet, formulaic smile and clapped her hands as if encouraging him:

"A student won the grand prize of 100,000 yuan just a few minutes ago!"

"This is 10,000 points for me and Ichika."

However, Kitagawa Ryo remained indifferent, showing no intention of continuing the conversation with the two beautiful homeroom teachers. He simply paid the 10,000 Private Points he and Amasawa Ichika had accumulated according to the Treasure Hunt Game's procedures, and then quickly received the verification code for the lottery draw from Hoshinomiya Chie.

After entering the verification code provided by the school into their respective mobile apps, a treasure chest popped up, and the screen began to overflow with golden light, looking almost identical to the gacha animation in some gacha games. This made Kitagawa Ryo and Amasawa Ichika's hearts involuntarily tense for a moment.

Soon, as the screen returned to normal, Kitagawa Ryo and Amasawa Ichika saw the rewards they had won in the Treasure Hunt Game.

The former scanned a QR code from the inside of the lamp and won exactly 50,000, while the latter went to great lengths to find a QR code under the sofa that won ten times his 500,000 prize.

"What great luck! Here, these are the gift cards you two won. This is the first 500,000 yuan grand prize in the game so far."

While exaggerating and shouting loudly, Hoshinomiya Chie handed two cards resembling bank cards to Kitagawa Ryo and Amasawa Ichika, each with a spending limit of 50,000 and 500,000 yen respectively.

As she deliberately raised her voice, some students who had just arrived at the venue and had not yet set off to collect QR codes, who wanted to wait and see, clearly began to get restless. Soon, some left, some redeemed their prizes, and before long, a line formed behind Kitagawa Ryo.

Kitagawa Ryo did not stop the school from using him and Amasawa Ichika to promote their event, or even encouraged it. He calmly took the two prepaid cards from them and quickly left the venue with Ichika, heading towards the second floor.

"Only 500,000? -- Hidden so well, I thought it would be the top prize of one million."

Amasawa Ichika fiddled with the prepaid card worth 500,000 Private Points in his hand, and pouted slightly in dissatisfaction.

"It's alright. Maybe no one will even get that million this time. If you think about it that way, the 500,000 that Ichika got is already a jackpot."

Faced with Amasawa Ichika's complaints, Kitagawa Ryo reached out and smoothed her hair, offering a comforting smile.

"Huh? Really?"

Having completely given up on thinking, Amasawa Ichika lazily draped herself over Kitagawa Ryo's arm and subconsciously asked this question.

"Not necessarily, it's just that such a thing is highly likely to happen."

Kitagawa Ryo shook his head and held up the prepaid card he had received. Although it was just a prop for students to use temporarily in the next few days, the workmanship and materials were quite exquisite, and it emitted a charming golden luster under the reflection of the crystal chandelier inside the cruise ship.

The prepaid cards he and Amasawa Ichika received were the same style. If I'm not mistaken, all the prepaid cards, including the lowest tier of 6,000 points, should be this shiny gold.

"There are a total of 151 First Year students. That means that even if all of them participate in this Treasure Hunt Game, they can only obtain a maximum of 151 QR codes."

"But the total prize pool contains 189 prizes, which means that a full 38 prizes cannot be claimed."

"You see, even though you Ichika won 500,000 points, Hoshinomiya-sensei didn't actually call out your name, so no one else could tell whether it was you or me who won."

"This is exactly what the school planned. As long as they don't disclose the specific names of all the winning students from the beginning, and just like when we came here and they heard 'a student won the grand prize of 100,000 a few minutes ago,' they can create a rumor that someone won a million. Who can actually verify this?"

"Even if you investigated all the students who redeemed their prizes during that period, you'd probably just assume they won a million and wanted to hide it."

After casually sharing his opinions, Kitagawa Ryo suddenly felt bored and shut up, refocusing all his attention on Amasawa Ichika.

He turned his head to examine the other person's profile, couldn't help but smile, and then suddenly swung their clasped hands high into the air.

On the nearly deserted streets of the second floor, where everyone was concentrated between the third and fifth floors, he and Amasawa Ichika looked like two clumsy elementary school students on a school trip, being reminded by their teacher to hold hands and not get separated, or like an exceptionally flamboyant couple who had just confirmed their relationship and couldn't wait to tell the whole world that they were dating. One moment he was pulling me in front, the next he was dragging me from behind, stumbling and switching positions as if they were doing some kind of duet.


Chapter 252: I'm Not a Siscon

After Kitagawa Ryo and Amasawa Ichika spent about half an hour browsing the relatively quiet second floor, they emerged from a clothing store carrying shopping bags of various sizes. By then, they could see many students who had redeemed their prizes waving their prepaid cards excitedly and buying things, making the environment quite noisy.

That's really exaggerated.

Seeing the sudden commotion and noise Matoba her, Amasawa Ichika instinctively shrank back, hiding half her body behind Kitagawa Ryo, presenting a pitiful, helpless, and innocent image. This caused a passing Class D boy to twitch at the sight, since his classmates had witnessed her 'brutal' methods on the Uninhabited Island. Being brutally beaten by her in the dodgeball game was still a scene the boys didn't want to recall.

"Back when I was in school, the Keyaki Mall did have discounts and promotions, but it never felt as good as it is now."

"It's probably because the payment methods are different now."

While holding Amasawa Ichika's hand and protecting her from the somewhat surging crowd, Kitagawa Ryo casually spoke up about his thoughts.

"Actually, from the beginning of enrollment, the school has been trying to blur the lines between Private Points and money, so you can pay for items on campus simply by scanning a QR code with the school's mobile phone."

"Compared to cash transactions, this payment method itself reduces people's sense of 'I am spending money.' The reduced amount on the mobile screen is not as tangible as receiving change or handing over Fukuzawa Yukichi (referring to a 10,000 yen bill)."

As he spoke, Kitagawa Ryo also glanced at a Class C boy who was casually handing a gleaming gold prepaid card to the cashier at a nearby shop:

"But using credit cards or prepaid cards for payment might actually feel even less real; in fact, you might even feel that saying 'Use my card' sounds pretty cool."

After casually complaining about the prepaid card reward offered by the school, Kitagawa Ryo and Amasawa Ichika walked into a nearby clothing store that wasn't crowded yet, intending to temporarily avoid the flow of people going in the opposite direction.

It has to be said that the school really went all out in terms of amenities on the cruise ship. Not only were the staff all beautiful older women, but the interior decoration was also quite exquisite. It was as if everything about the ship was designed to extract Private Points from the students.

"I see."

Upon hearing this, Amasawa Ichika nodded, her fluorescent yellow pupils darting mischievously. As if struck by a wicked idea, she stopped in her tracks, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a prepaid card worth 500,000 Private Points. With a playful bow towards Kitagawa Ryo, she presented the card with both hands, and under the slightly shocked gaze of the female shop assistant who had rushed in after the two customers entered, she spoke in a playful tone:

"Please, please swipe my card!"

"... If you keep making trouble, I'm going back to Arisu."

"Then forget it--"