The Eve of the Exam, Ryuen's Scheme

In the girls' dormitory, Horikita and Ichinose both sneezed at the same time, each feeling as though they had been caught in the crossfire of someone else's drama for no reason.

Both girls wore expressions of resentment simultaneously.

Horikita was worried that the results of the midterm exams would affect her class promotion, becoming an obstacle in her pursuit of her brother's footsteps.

Ichinose, meanwhile, was suffering from her inability to join the Student Council and gain recognition, not to mention having a best friend by her side who was constantly trying to turn her.

Both of them had bright futures ahead of them.

As for our Ayanokoji, he was completely heartless.

After seeing Sakura Airi home, he went to a small tavern alone; he also wanted to experience the feeling of having a girl on each arm like Ryuen!

Tonight, he wanted to be dashing for once!

With 100,000 points in his hand, what kind of service couldn't he afford?

Heh heh heh.

Of course, he simply wanted someone to drink with and, incidentally, to reminisce about his first love—a man who was a scumbag on the surface but deeply sentimental on the inside.

Upon arriving at his private room, just as he was about to order two plates of peanuts, he heard a cryptic conversation coming from next door.

"Hey~ Katsuragi, I heard you've been displeased with Sakayanagi for a long time. How about it? Consider working with me?"

"Stop using such childish phrasing, Ryuen."

"My differences with Sakayanagi are purely ideological; it hasn't reached the point of incompatibility yet."

?

Internal division? This was juicy.

Ayanokoji raised an eyebrow, his interest slightly piqued.

"Heh, how naive."

"Believe me, Katsuragi, before long you'll realize that Sakayanagi could never tolerate you, and you could never defeat her!"

Ryuen said with a smirk, his eyes seemingly seeing through everything.

"..."

"At the very least, I won't be the one causing a class split right now. Give it up."

The bald man said resolutely, standing up to leave the room.

"Yo yo, don't be in such a rush to leave."

"Believe me, Katsuragi, in the near future, you will come to find me on your own. A collaboration between us is inevitable. I, for one, am looking forward to it~"

The bald man paused for a moment upon hearing this, offered no response, and then silently departed.

Watching the guest leave the room, Ryuen picked up an empty glass from the table, admired it playfully for two seconds, and muttered to himself: "How interesting, leaving enough room for maneuver in every single sentence~"

"'Not now' doesn't mean 'not in the future,' right, Katsuragi?" A smirk curled the corners of Ryuen's mouth.

In the adjacent room, a certain member of Class D who had eavesdropped on the entire thing remained expressionless.

The eyes that had previously glimmered with excitement from the act of eavesdropping had now dimmed.

Boring!

Ayanokoji critiqued internally.

This conversation was devoid of substance, highlighting nothing but word games. Everyone refused to speak plainly, even though they had their desire to collaborate written all over their faces.

Their sense of prestige was maxed out, but fifteen minutes of Ayanokoji's life had been wasted.

If he had to choose again, he would rather have focused on singing two songs than eavesdropping.

At least the peanuts were pretty good.

"Waiter, another serving of peanuts!"

He heroically ordered two more plates.

The next day, almost every class entered a state of preparation.

Or, to be more precise, a state of last-minute cramming.

Because there were only two days left—today and tomorrow—before the midterm exams that would decide their fate.

Ayanokoji sat in his usual spot, looking completely indifferent.

After Chabashira finished the homeroom session, he signaled to Kushida Kikyo in the front row.

However, she didn't notice.

Ayanokoji felt a bit helpless, pinched a small piece of eraser, and flicked it toward her.

The eraser scrap gained its initial kinetic energy, traced a graceful arc through the air, and finally landed perfectly on the head of Wang Meiyu, who was sitting next to...

Kushida.

It seems Ayanokoji's marksmanship was not ideal.

But the force was quite strong!

"Ah!" After a brief one-second delay, Wang Meiyu let out a cry.

For a moment, everyone cast concerned gazes toward her, and Ayanokoji took the opportunity to catch Kushida's line of sight.

How should I put it? Everything was within his expectations.

"Midterm exam papers, presenting to everyone."

"Received."

After a brief exchange of glances, Kushida grasped what Ayanokoji meant.

Ayanokoji felt quite gratified.

However, what he didn't know was that Kushida hadn't understood what he was trying to express at all; or rather, in her eyes, Ayanokoji had maintained the same expression from start to finish, and her ability to understand him relied entirely on her own cleverness and judgment of the situation.

In short, it was no different from a wild guess.

A few minutes later, she walked up to the podium with a stack of test papers in her hand.

The crowd didn't know what she intended to do for a moment and cast curious gazes toward her one after another.

Some of the boys even began to worry that Kushida would replicate Hirata Yosuke's actions from the first week of school and announce that she was off the market in front of the entire class.

If that happened, they would all be heartbroken collectively.

Not long after, Kushida organized the test papers in her hand and said to the whole class: "Everyone, listen to me for a moment. These are the midterm exam papers from previous years and the previous quizzes. After my careful verification, I discovered that the questions for the two quizzes were exactly the same."

"Coupled with information obtained from some seniors, the midterm exam questions should also be the same as last year's. So, as long as we study these papers well over the next two days, there is a high probability that everyone in the class can pass the midterm exams!"

Kushida spoke very tactfully, but to put it bluntly, it was just memorizing the answers.

She didn't spell it out, but the listeners naturally understood.

The classroom suddenly erupted into an uproar, sweeping away the previous quiet and tension.

"Is this for real? Doesn't that mean we can just memorize the answers?"

"Eh?! Is there really such a convenient thing?"

"Would doing this be against the rules, or is this part of the rules..."

"Sigh, if only we had this sooner, I wouldn't have had to struggle for so long."

"Kushida-chan is truly an angel!"

Ayanokoji watched the crowd indifferently, feeling somewhat like he was observing the myriad states of sentient beings.

Ike, Sudo, Yamauchi, and Professor were the types he described—those who couldn't control themselves, who would let their guard down the moment they saw a shortcut, and who would bet everything on a single chip.

Meanwhile, Karuizawa, Sakura, Sato, and Miyake were the types who would think a little about the authenticity of the information and consider whether or not to rely on these test papers.

As for the remaining students like Yukimura, Matsushita, Wang Meiyu, and Hirata, it didn't really matter much to them whether they had them or not.

Needless to say, Horikita and Koenji could basically get whatever score they wanted.

And as for himself, it depended on the situation.

Whether to lie low or take action depended on both the opponent's strength and his own mood.

After Kushida shared the information, everyone happily discussed how to memorize the answers on the test papers more efficiently.

Among everyone, only Horikita and Koenji refused to take the test papers, and even Ayanokoji couldn't help but complain internally when he saw this.

You two really don't even want to pretend.

He looked at the test paper in his hand indifferently, not noticing that Horikita, who was beside him, had cast a questioning gaze toward him at some point.