After the Class Points were announced, the atmosphere in Class D's lessons changed considerably. There were far fewer rule violations, so Hoshino no longer dared to break the rules so openly. At most, he stared out the window and daydreamed.
But only Class D's behavior during lessons had improved. In other respects, things were actually worse than Hoshino had imagined.
The class was now falling apart, with no one in charge. Of course, that didn't mean everyone had to listen to one particular person, but the class needed to share a common goal. Class D currently didn't.
Some students wanted the class to move up and were doing their best to stay disciplined, but plenty of others had no interest in that at all. Take the tall, blond guy sitting in the middle of the classroom, for instance. Hoshino had heard he was the heir to the Koenji Conglomerate.
What was someone like him doing at this school? Hoshino could only assume he was here for fun. He couldn't imagine what would motivate him to work hard.
Of course, one person could only have so much influence on the whole class. The main problem was that the class had already split into several groups. They talked to one another and generally got along, but there were still occasional conflicts. On top of that, there were quite a lot of "lone wolves." Things were already bad enough. Hoshino could only hope no one else would drag the class down.
Hoshino thought the most unstable group was probably Sudo and Yamauchi's. Sudo had a short fuse and was likely to cause trouble, and the things they talked about could easily offend a lot of girls. Hoshino could hardly imagine them being an asset to the class.
"Phew..." Hoshino sighed and put those thoughts aside.
He was a "lone wolf" himself, anyway. He didn't need to take responsibility for what happened in class.
The preparation phase was finally over. One after another, people began coming to Hoshino and Sotomura for advice, though most of the inquiries came through their dedicated account.
In just a few days, Hoshino had bought up quite a few things: hair clips, bags, clothes, shoes, game consoles, toy figures... all sorts of odds and ends.
Most of the people who contacted him were desperately short on points and wanted to sell things they'd bought only recently. There was also almost no competition, so Hoshino had plenty of room to bargain them down.
There were plenty of buyers, too. Hoshino's prices were quite high, but they were still several thousand to tens of thousands of points below the original prices, and most of the items were in nearly new condition, having been used for less than a month.
Most of the buyers were second- and third-year students. There were very few first-years. It seemed the first-years had realized how important personal points were and were starting to be more cautious.
Of all the items, Yamauchi's game console probably brought in the biggest profit. After looking into it further, Hoshino discovered that its original price really had been points! He sold it to a third-year student for 65,000 points, making a profit of a full points.
What a racket! Hoshino couldn't help marveling.
But a secondhand deal of that scale was a one-off. This had only happened because Class D's situation was so extreme this year. After all, most of the items they'd bought had come from Class D!
There were a few from other classes, but they were just a drop in the bucket.
Over the next few weeks, Hoshino settled into a "regular" routine: classes, chatting, transactions, sleep...
The messages on Hoshino's phone never stopped coming. Even during the twenty-minute breaks between classes, he had to answer a ton of them. After school, he also had to run all over the place. If he hadn't trained before, Hoshino thought he would've collapsed ages ago.
Ayanokoji tried to talk to Hoshino a few times during this period. It seemed to be about the study group, but Hoshino wasn't focused on that at the moment. Each time, he brushed Ayanokoji off with a few words.
Before he knew it, the month was almost over. The points would be handed out again tomorrow!
Hoshino was curled up in his dorm room, sitting at his desk and reviewing the past month.
All told, after a month, his net profit had reached around 600,000 points. It was an astonishing amount!
Seeing the number of points displayed on his phone gave Hoshino a sense of security. Money really was the best source of security.
Sotomura had also contributed a great deal over the past month! After rounding up customers each day, he had to run around making deliveries, and overall, he'd been quite diligent. Sometimes he inexplicably slacked off, but it wasn't a big deal.
Thinking of that, Hoshino transferred 100,000 points to Professor. Then he called Sotomura. "Hey, Sotomura, did you get it?"
"100,000 points? I got it! Thanks, Hoshino! But isn't that a little too much...?" Sotomura sounded excited, though he hesitated a little at the end.
"It's fine. By the way, you don't need to advertise anymore starting today."
"Huh? Are we stopping the buying today?"
"Yeah. There's no need to keep going."
They'd already sold all the items that were worth selling. From now on, everyone would be much more cautious about spending their points, so they probably wouldn't find anything else valuable to buy. There wasn't much reason to continue.
"Mm... That's a shame!" As someone involved in the plan, Professor could do the math and tell they'd made a decent profit. If Hoshino was giving him 150,000 points, then Hoshino must have earned at least another 150,000 or more.
What Professor hadn't expected was that the net profit would reach as much as 600,000 points!
They still had a few useless little things left over, like hair clips and pens, but that didn't matter much.
After chatting with Sotomura for a little while, Hoshino hung up and lay down on the bed, staring at his phone.
The points were displayed on the screen.
The past few days really had been uneventful. For a whole month, he'd gone to class, eaten, and spent most of his time on secondhand transactions. Every day, he spent ages chatting with all sorts of people before meeting them to trade. But since they'd already worked everything out online, the face-to-face meetings were just a matter of exchanging money for goods and making small talk. For someone like Hoshino, who wasn't very sociable, it was actually pretty manageable. And the results had been great. The month hadn't been wasted!
"Right! Speaking of points, Ryuen's really not taking this seriously! Is he trying to get away with it? I'll have to go remind him tomorrow." Hoshino muttered angrily to himself.
But Hoshino seemed to have forgotten something important!
Early the next morning, Hoshino entered the exam room looking completely bewildered...
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