Just like an exam—the kind where they circled the important parts.
The reason he thought that was because the speaker had said it three times.
As he thought about it,
Shirogane noticed the Class D students coming out too. Then a girl walked right past him and Classmate Shiina.
She was a little taller than Classmate Shiina.
And she drew plenty of attention.
That was right.
The students around them were immediately drawn to her.
She was a super-beautiful girl, with long black hair falling past her shoulders, a bow and a long braid on the right, and a pair of lovely foxlike eyes. Yet her whole presence radiated, "Don't talk to me." She was a cool beauty.
Perhaps she seemed too cold, because after she briskly walked away, the students around them returned to what they had been doing.
Shirogane was a little surprised.
He had spotted another stunning girl, and she was completely different from Classmate Shiina and Classmate Sakayanagi. But this time, the Narrator System hadn't piped up.
As if it were avoiding something.
As he thought about that,
"Move!"
Shirogane saw one of his classmates roughly shove aside a student walking in front of him.
The boy had red hair parted down the middle. Like everyone else, he wore the school uniform, but underneath it he had on his own black shirt, with two buttons undone.
He looked like a delinquent.
"Hey, Ryuen, this isn't your old school!" Apparently, there was a student there who had come from the same place as the red-haired boy.
"Get lost! Don't make me beat you up!"
"..."
The area quickly fell silent.
The Class C students were angry, but didn't dare say anything.
It was clear that the Class 1-C Shirogane had joined was indeed not looking good.
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Shirogane's Worries, and a Beautiful Girl Who Could Distract Him from His Studies!
"Take the seats with your names on them. I'm your homeroom teacher, Sakagami."
"This school doesn't change your class assignments. I'll be your homeroom teacher until you graduate in your third year. My name is Sakagami Kazuma."
"Here's my phone number. You can save it in your contacts."
In the Class 1-C classroom, a tall, thin male teacher with glasses introduced himself.
He had well-defined features, but his skin wasn't great. A few acne scars made him look older than he was.
Even so, he gave the impression of a stern, professional teacher.
He then wrote a string of numbers, 13455454XX, on the blackboard, and the students below followed his instructions and saved his number.
Shirogane took out his phone too.
After returning from the Gymnasium, he had gone straight to Class 1-C. Each desk had a student's name on it, so everyone had found their seats without trouble.
A few minutes later, their homeroom teacher walked in.
The teacher spoke in a somewhat rote manner.
"This school has a special policy. All students are required to live in the dormitories until graduation..."
"On the first of every month, the school will deposit Private Points into your Student ID accounts. You can use those points to buy anything at school, so you can think of them as money... One Private Point is equivalent to one yen."
"Prices on campus are almost the same as those outside."
The students already had their phones out, and as soon as they heard the teacher, they hurriedly opened the Student ID app.
They found their information.
Their names, student numbers, and classes—and then a unique entry.
Private account.
The number beside it was 100,000.
That must be the 100,000 Private Points the teacher had mentioned!
And if one Private Point was worth one yen, with prices on campus almost the same as outside, didn't that mean everyone had 100,000 yen to spend?
One hundred thousand!
For students who had just started high school, their monthly allowance in middle school had only been around 1,000 to 2,000 yen. Now they had 100,000! How could they not be excited?
"Are you surprised by the huge number of points? This school measures its students by their abilities. The fact that you were admitted here means you're quite valuable."
Teacher Sakagami continued.
But the students were already caught up in the excitement of their newfound wealth. Only a handful in the class were still listening carefully.
[The students around you seemed to be getting excited, but you started to feel anxious.]
[It wasn't just the Student Council President. Now even your homeroom teacher had mentioned that this was a school where ability came first.]
[At that moment, you began observing the classroom.]
[You noticed the girl sitting at the desk in front of you turn around. Look, she seemed to smile. So cute.]
"..." Shirogane.
Shirogane realized he had gotten used to the Narrator System in his head.
But he had indeed put down his phone. It wasn't idle, though—he had turned on the voice recorder and started recording Teacher Sakagami's speech.
The Student Council President's speech had contained important information, so there should be important information here too.
Would the teachers in all four classes give roughly the same speech?
He decided to record it for reference.
The girl sitting in front of him really did turn around as if she sensed something, then smiled.
It was only a polite smile, but Shirogane couldn't deny that the girl named Shiina Hiyori, who had the same silver hair as his younger sister, was adorable.
So, why was the girl sitting in front of him the same Classmate Shiina he had met in the Gymnasium? Judging by her looks, she seemed to be the prettiest girl in the class.
And with her sitting right in front of him, even though there was some distance between them, he could still catch a pleasant scent.
It was troubling.
That was right.
To Shirogane, this was a problem.
Because...
Wouldn't it make him lose focus during class and affect his studies?
For someone who wanted to study, that was a tremendous challenge!
Of course,
now wasn't the time to focus on that.
Shirogane had confirmed that he was bound to a system called the Narrator System, and that he would hear its narration. Some of it seemed intended to egg him on, but it also contained information.
So what information had it just revealed?
That he had started observing the classroom.
Hmm.
Did that mean there was something in the classroom he should pay attention to?
Shirogane noticed two cameras in the classroom, one at the front and one at the back.
And their indicator lights were on. They were recording.
It wasn't exam time, so why were the cameras filming?
Homeroom soon ended. Teacher Sakagami had a few students bring in the textbooks, handed them out, and then announced that they were free for the day.
Classes would begin as usual tomorrow.
The school had arranged dormitories for the students. They could use their Student IDs to get a key card from the dorm manager on the first floor.
The students quickly got moving.
There were quite a few directions they could go.
Since they would be living at school, finding their way to their dorm rooms—their homes for the next three years—was important.
The 100,000 points in their Student IDs were equivalent to 100,000 yen, which was tempting. So, more important than checking out their rooms was finding out whether they could really spend those points like money. If they could, they'd be in luck.
Most of the students headed off in one of those two directions.
Shirogane stood up.
"Shirogane." He noticed his front-row classmate, Shiina Hiyori, had gotten up too.
"Are you taking your books back to the dorm?" Shirogane asked.
He noticed that Classmate Shiina had placed five books on her desk.
There were nine subjects in total, with at least one textbook for each, and sometimes a workbook to go with it. That meant more than ten books, weighing well over ten pounds.
For some reason, Shirogane thought of the cane he had seen in the infirmary... No, Classmate Sakayanagi. She had been given so many books. It would be difficult for her to carry them back to the dorm.
"I like reading, so even though these are textbooks, I'd like to take them back to my room."
"But before that, I think we should look around the school," Classmate Shiina said. "Getting 100,000 points out of nowhere makes me uneasy."
Really?
Uneasy?
Yeah.
For an ordinary high school student, 100,000 points was already a fortune.
And for Shirogane, it was enough to pay two months' rent for his family. If the 100,000 points in his Student ID were worth 100,000 yen, he already knew what he wanted to do.
If he could save them up and send them home, that would be wonderful.
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Horikita, You're Related to the Student Council President, Aren't You? Kushida
Although their goal was to test whether the 100,000 points deposited in their Student IDs could be used, Shirogane and Classmate Shiina ended up deciding to go back to the dorm first.
The map on their phones showed that besides the cafeteria, the school also had a Shopping District, and it covered a large area.
The teacher had said they could use their points like money at school, so shopping in the Shopping District seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to test them.
And they were all new students, new to this place. They would be living here for the next three years, so they would surely need to buy plenty of things.
But they would have to check their rooms before deciding exactly what to buy.
The school's dorm arrangements were quite good.
All the students lived on campus, and each had a small room of twenty-three square meters. It was cramped, but had everything they needed: a small balcony, a small bathroom, a washing machine, and even a small kitchen. The kitchen had a gas line—natural gas, to be precise. In other words,
so that was how it was.
The school really did encourage students to be self-sufficient and make their own boxed lunches.
Before you continue