"You're too slow, Hikigaya! What if you miss roll call?!"
The moment I arrived at the main camp, Sudo yelled at me. This time, though, I calmly apologized.
"Yeah, I'm really sorry about that. The river where we were gathering food flooded, so we couldn't get back."
This really was my responsibility. If missing roll call caused the whole class to lose points, it was no wonder Sudo was angry.
"Tch... Say, have you seen Suzune and Ayanokoji?"
"Horikita and Ayanokoji? No, I haven't. They're not here?"
Could those two have been stranded by the heavy rain too?
"Neither of them is here. Maybe they're somewhere getting all lovey-dovey..."
"No, not in this kind of rain."
"Who knows? Maybe in a cave or a hut..."
Ah, wasn't that exactly what I had been doing? After all, I had just held the completely naked Masumi in my arms and even kissed her.
Naturally, I couldn't tell anyone that even if it killed me. If word got out, not just Sudo but everyone in Class D would probably yell, "You're seriously having fun in a situation like this?!" and beat me into the ground.
But Horikita and Ayanokoji... My intuition told me Horikita was the leader, but could that have something to do with the Katsuragi Faction I saw earlier?
If so, Ibuki, Ryuen's subordinate who had colluded with Katsuragi, was highly suspicious. Looking around, I realized Ibuki was gone too.
From that, I could infer that Ibuki had discovered Horikita's identity as the leader and stolen the key card, the crucial evidence. If Horikita had chased after her and been defeated instead, her absence made sense. Ayanokoji was probably searching for Horikita.
But there was a hole in that theory: why had the leader's identity been exposed? There had been no