Sakayanagi Arisu, Blow After Blow

"1.02 million points? Does our class even have that many points?"

"No! I'm not helping someone who was just insulting us!"

"Yeah, exactly. Wouldn't it be better to spend those points on food? I've been eating cheap set meals for almost a month."

"Impossible! Such ugly creatures aren't worth the beautiful me spending points on them. In fact, they're tarnishing my beauty."

Excellent!

Setting her small white beret on the desk, Sakayanagi Arisu watched the expressions on most of Class D's students with satisfaction.

Those three weren't worth spending 1.02 million personal points on. Class D probably had less than 400,000 points it could offer, and even so, these students wouldn't give them up to help the trio.

Even if they tried borrowing from students in other classes, there were less than ten minutes before class started. That wasn't enough time to explain the whole situation, and no student would dare lend out such a large number of points without a contract.

Thinking this, Sakayanagi Arisu turned her gaze to Ken Sudō, who had been sitting silently with his head bowed.

His brain might have been a bit off, but he had a decent physique. He could just barely serve as a useful pawn. As for the other two... Heh.

"Thud!"

A heavy, clear thump interrupted Sakayanagi Arisu's thoughts, and the smile on her face froze.

The sharp sound immediately drew the attention of the whole class.

Everyone looked over. In front of the entire class, Hirata Yousuke had dropped to his knees. His brown bangs fell over his face, hiding his expression.

"Everyone, please, even if it's just a little, help Sudo and the others. You can consider these points a loan to me. I'll pay you back. From now on, whenever I get any points, I'll pay you back first."

"Even if I can't pay you back now, once I start working, I'll repay every one of you. Whether it takes one year, two years, ten years, or even twenty, I'll return all the points. I'll write IOUs, draw up written agreements, sign contracts—anything you want. Just don't let Sudo and the others get expelled... I'll do anything!"

"Please, I'm begging you."

With that, Hirata Yousuke pressed his forehead firmly against the floor.

"Hirata..."

Ken Sudō looked at his classmate, someone he normally didn't get along with very well. He opened his mouth, but couldn't say a word.

The whole class stared in shock at Hirata Yousuke, kneeling on the floor and humbly begging them, having cast aside all his dignity—that usually gentle, kind Hirata Yousuke...

"Just this once. I'll do it for Hirata."

"Tch... Why does Yosuke have to help people like them? Wouldn't it be better to save the points?"

"Ichinose might be able to lend me some. I hope she gets the message. Otherwise, the three of you will still have to leave."

"Well... I really don't like them, but Hirata's helped me out a lot. I hope the seniors in my club don't mind me asking to borrow money."

Even the students who disliked Hirata couldn't deny everything he had done for Class D. Without him patching things up and smoothing over conflicts, the class—little more than a pile of scattered sand—would have fallen apart long ago.

Sakayanagi Arisu tapped her finger lightly against the edge of her phone, struggling to maintain her smile.

She had thought he was just an ordinary do-gooder. It turned out she'd been too naive. There was something seriously wrong with this guy, too!

"Yeah! We'll definitely study hard from now on. Doctor, we'll be best friends for life, right?" Yamauchi Haruki immediately ran over to a student wearing glasses.

"..." Kanji Ike stared at the girls' group, who were sneering at him, and his lips twitched.

"You want us to help you? In your next life! Didn't you say you didn't care about this school? Then get out of here while you can!"

Horikita Suzune took out her phone, her expression shifting as she stared at the screen.

Truthfully, she didn't want to save those three. But considering that future class competitions might include Special Exams related to class size—especially when one of them was Ken Sudō, who had exceptional physical ability—she couldn't ignore the possibility.

Whether it was worth spending 1.02 million personal points to save three Class D students was something they wouldn't know until later.

Very few students could produce such a large number of points at once. As luck would have it, she knew two of them, and they were the only two people still in her phone's contacts.

[Brother]

[Mikage Touji]

Horikita Suzune's slender fingers hovered indecisively over their profile pictures.

In theory, if she asked her brother quietly, he would probably lend her the points.

So Horikita Suzune decisively chose Mikage Touji!

In the end, Horikita Suzune nearly died of anger, but managed to borrow 80,000 points from the slow-to-act Mikage Touji.

At the same time, Class D's students each transferred their loans to Hirata Yousuke's account.

625,000 points. That was the price of Hirata Yousuke's dignity.

The bell rang, and the last lesson happened to be Japanese Literature. Chabashira Sae arrived in the classroom right on time.

"You're still here? Get back to your seats and get ready for class."

"Chabashira-sensei, wait. Please give us a little more time. We'll be done soon, really. Please," Hirata Yousuke pleaded, tears in his eyes.

"..."

Chabashira Sae was momentarily dazed. She glanced around Class D: a leader on the verge of breaking down, classmates arguing with one another, a chaotic classroom. It seemed to remind her of something.

"All right. We'll turn this lesson into a class meeting. You can use the time as you like. And don't think about asking me for help. The school strictly forbids teachers from getting directly involved in helping students."

"Thank you. Thank you," Hirata Yousuke said, bowing over and over.

Time passed, second by second, as the clock on the wall ticked away.

Yamauchi Haruki watched the time grow closer on the clock, then looked at the personal points on the blackboard, which were still nowhere near enough. He broke down and shouted,

"Hey, what are you doing? You've got to have more, right? I saw you girls buying new clothes before. You must still have points! Hurry up! Don't just stand by and watch us die, you heartless people!"

As expected, his thoughtless outburst immediately drew the Class D students' scorn.

"You think we'll save you after acting like that?"

"Get down on your knees and thank us properly! If it weren't for Hirata, you wouldn't be getting any of these points."

With his first attempt failing, Yamauchi Haruki panicked and looked around the classroom, quickly fixing on the person most likely to still have points.

"Sakayanagi-chan, you still have points, right? Hurry! Give them to me and save me!"

Sakayanagi Arisu, who had been quietly watching the show, rested her hands on her knees. An awkward but polite smile appeared on her face.

"I'm sorry, Yamauchi. Those were the last of my points, the ones we received at the beginning of the school year—"

"What are you talking about? Hurry up and take out your phone so I can check!"

Yamauchi Haruki shook his head and rudely cut her off.

"..."

All the excuses Sakayanagi Arisu had prepared jammed in her mind. Her usually unstoppable tongue was useless now, and her smile lost its composure.

"I knew you still had points! Hurry! Hand them over! Kanji and I will be grateful!" Yamauchi Haruki exclaimed, overjoyed. He impatiently yelled at Sakayanagi Arisu.

"Don't go too far! So what if Sakayanagi-chan has points? A phone's contents are private. How could you expect her to show you?" Karuizawa Kei sensed trouble and led her group of gyaru girls in confronting Yamauchi Haruki.

"Yeah! And fix your attitude, you jerk!"

"There aren't that many points to go around. Take them or leave them!"

Yamauchi Haruki's behavior enraged the whole class. No matter how much Hirata Yousuke begged, no one offered another point. In the end, the total on the blackboard stopped at 688,000.

When he saw that they couldn't raise any more points, and felt the whole class turning against him, Yamauchi Haruki sweated profusely as he used the last scraps of intelligence he had to assess the situation.

688,000 points. No matter how you looked at it, one of them had to be expelled.

So...

"Ike, do you seriously have no gratitude at all? Our classmates are kindly lending us points, you know!" Yamauchi Haruki immediately turned on Kanji Ike.

"Haruki, you..."

Kanji Ike stared blankly at Yamauchi Haruki beside him, eyes wide, unable to speak for a moment.

"I knew from the start you were no good. You're always badmouthing Hirata and the others behind their backs, and all you do in class is cause trouble. You can't compare to me, someone who's been the center of attention since elementary school."

"You're just like me! You talk with me about the girls in our class and their breasts every day!" Kanji Ike snapped back, his shock giving way to anger.

"I was gathering evidence so I could expose your ugly side to the whole class." Yamauchi Haruki turned to face everyone, pointed at Kanji Ike, and shouted, "He was even planning to peep into the girls' changing room a while back. Luckily, I stopped him."

At that, every girl in Class D looked at Kanji Ike with disgust. Yamauchi Haruki's behavior was simply annoying, but Kanji Ike's attempt to peep was an unforgivable crime.

"You're bringing that up, too?" Kanji Ike shouted in disbelief.

"Didn't you say you didn't care about this school? Then you can get expelled. Leave the opportunity to me and Ken. Right, Ken?" Yamauchi Haruki turned to ask Ken Sudō what he thought.

"Huh?"

Ken Sudō looked at Kanji Ike and Yamauchi Haruki, who were arguing in a complete uproar. He clenched his teeth and shut his eyes, but in the end couldn't bring himself to kick someone when they were down.

"You just said the same thing, didn't you?" Kanji Ike was panicking. He hurriedly appealed to the others. "Right, Hondo? Kushida-chan, he said it too, didn't he?"

"What I said wasn't wrong, was it? Why should I be expelled? Ike is the one at fault. If he'd just kept his word, we wouldn't be arguing."

"It's all my fault? Say that again!"

"Yeah, it's Ike's fault. All he has to do now is keep his word and get expelled."

"Why shouldn't you be expelled?!"

"Do I even have to explain? Because I'm better than you."

The two had been laughing and joking together that very morning. By the afternoon, they had gone their separate ways, exposing each other's secrets and cursing their former friend with the cruelest words they could find.

By then, Hirata Yousuke understood that he couldn't save all three of them. The class was also growing reluctant to help Yamauchi Haruki. If he kept hesitating, he might not even be able to save two.

Without consulting any of his classmates, Hirata Yousuke stumbled over to Chabashira Sae and used points to buy three points for Ken Sudō and six for Yamauchi Haruki.

Seeing that he was about to be expelled, Kanji Ike completely broke down and loudly cursed the entire class again and again.

In the end, the two lost control. They grabbed chairs and tried to hit each other, but Ken Sudō and Hirata Yousuke each grabbed one of them from behind and held them fast. Unable to move, they could only keep shouting insults at each other from a distance.

Their shouting match continued until the bell rang.

Even at the very last moment as he was dragged away, the expelled Kanji Ike kept cursing Yamauchi Haruki, glaring at the whole class with venomous eyes. Yamauchi Haruki, meanwhile, looked delighted, happy that he had managed to stay at Kouiku.

Chapter 57: Sakayanagi Arisu, Blow After Blow

After enjoying the whole spectacle, Sakayanagi Arisu left the classroom at an unhurried pace, her cane in hand and an elegant smile on her face.

When she reached the corner of the school building, Sakayanagi Arisu stopped.

"Oh my, teacher. Instead of handling Ike's expulsion paperwork right now, you've followed me. May I ask what you want?"

Her pleasant voice rang out beside the flower bed near the school building.

Chabashira Sae walked out of the shadows, her mood complicated.

"Why? Why didn't you tell Hirata from the start that he could use points to buy scores? Why wait until the last lesson to tell them?"

"Hmm? Chabashira-sensei, what are you talking about?" Sakayanagi Arisu turned with a smile. "I don't understand."

"You had to know how points could be used. In fact, no one in the entire year understands it better than you. I've seen your file, after all," Chabashira Sae said with absolute certainty.

"So what does that have to do with me? I agree with something Horikita said: people have to take responsibility for their actions."

"Of course it has something to do with you!" Chabashira Sae's emotions were unusually stirred. "If you'd said something sooner, Ike and Yamauchi wouldn't have ended up like this. They wouldn't have turned against each other, and they might still have had a bright future ahead of them."

"Heh." Sakayanagi Arisu's eyes curved as if she'd heard a joke. "Wasn't it you who put them in this situation in the first place, by giving them the wrong exam scope?"

"If you'd told them even one week earlier, two weeks ago, that the exam scope had changed, they'd have had more time to study. Maybe they all would've passed."

Chabashira Sae's expression darkened.

"I heard you graduated from Kouiku, too?"

"Yes."

Chabashira Sae's voice carried a note of reminiscence and bitterness.

"You didn't graduate from Class A, did you? In my view, someone like you, who acts only on the basis of her own emotions, never deserved to graduate from Class A in the first place."

"I—"

Chabashira Sae started to argue, then abruptly stopped. She lowered her eyes, unable to answer Sakayanagi Arisu.

"From the beginning, you never intended to help them, did you? Judging by the look on your face, you probably saw the class turning against itself, were reminded of something, and changed your mind at the last minute. You wanted someone else to clean up the mess. Otherwise, you only needed to give Horikita a small hint, and she would have figured it out herself. Isn't that right, Horikita?"

Chabashira Sae turned to look behind her. Horikita Suzune had appeared behind her at some point.