Chapter 31

"Everyone has to contribute at least three thousand points a month, with no upper limit. How does that sound?"

"I'll do as you say."

"Then you and... and Yajima will be the class treasurers!" I casually pointed to a girl who looked like she had plenty of free time. "Ryuen, or someone else, just needs to keep a record of how many points are spent. Note who attended meetings like this one, how much we spent in total, and of course how many points each person contributed each time. No problem, right, Ryuen?"

Coming to a karaoke place counted as a meeting, right? Who knew?

"Whatever you say, honor student. You people really are so fussy about every little thing." Ryuen didn't seem to care about my arrangements.

"Isn't this a little too arbitrary?" Komiya looked incredulous.

"What's so hard to believe? You and Yajima are both in Class C, aren't you? Are you unwilling to take responsibility?"

"Of course not! We... We'll do our best, Kitazawa!" Komiya hurriedly replied, and Yajima nodded beside her.

"Then that settles it. This is pretty good, too. We'll be able to see at a glance who's contributed to the class, and the class won't forget anyone's efforts. Hmm... I'll find a class accountant to help you two another day. Sonoda would be a good choice. He's reliable and good with numbers."

Of course we had to keep track of who contributed to the class fund! Otherwise, why would I be so generous? I'd contributed the most points, so I got to call the shots. It was just like conglomerates sponsoring the United States: trading money for power was something capitalists did all the time. The future Class C would be a capitalist country like that, with Ryuen up front, spouting nonsense and drawing everyone's ire. The teacher had said in class the day before yesterday that you could transfer to the class of your choice if you had twenty million personal points. That meant I'd have first dibs on using whatever was left in the class fund to transfer. In theory, as long as I contributed less than twenty million in total, I was guaranteed to come out ahead. Of course, that depended on the class fund ending up with at least that much. If we couldn't even save a little over a hundred million points by the end, then there'd be no point in playing this game as a class. Why not just use twenty million to transfer? Because I didn't need to buy my way into Class A with my family's money. I wanted to demonstrate my abilities. My goal was to turn Class C, a backward country, into a developed one. Excellence was always relative. Those who started in Class A were both fortunate and unfortunate, since they had the least room to prove themselves. Come to think of it, could the school be deliberately assigning talented students to lower classes? Interesting. Maybe the school was observing something. Another part of my plan was to earn back any unnecessary expenses. By the time I was in my third year, I could sell my surplus points to the first-years. Heh, with the Koenji Conglomerate backing me, which freshman would dare break a deal?

"You've thought this through pretty thoroughly. I don't need any of this, though. But you did remind me: we should keep track of everyone's contributions at study sessions, too. It'll make it easier to reward people according to their efforts..." Ryuen said, swirling his glass.

"Oh? Are you aiming for that rule too, Ryuen? If so, then Class Points don't really matter."

"Exactly. The rule Sakagami-sensei told us about the day before yesterday: transfer classes for twenty million points. You really are sharp... Kitazawa, don't tell anyone about this plan." Ryuen raised his glass toward me.

I raised my water bottle to toast him.

"I won't. This is a big deal for our class. I'm off. See you, everyone!"

I left with a flourish, leaving my classmates staring at each other, baffled by my conversation with Ryuen.

A plan to transfer the entire class at the last minute with eight hundred million points? That really was the safest way for everyone to graduate from Class A. If we couldn't gather the full eight hundred million, we could still promote people to Class A one by one according to their contributions, couldn't we? What a great plan! Ryuen really did have a few tricks up his sleeve. He was pretty sharp... Had he really just been a delinquent before? I'd struck gold! Now I could relax and let him lead these guys in having fun. Still, simply collecting class contributions wouldn't be enough to accomplish anything big. Earning a large number of personal points in Special Exams was our top priority. I could also be careful about that part, keeping the points we collected under Ryuen's and my control. Those points were the future Class C's nest egg. We couldn't let them spend it on food and drink.

Opening Volume: A Glimpse of Brilliance: 18. Overly Calm Thinking Lacks Emotional Impulse

Overly calm thinking, lacking emotional impulse, inevitably leads to psychological abnormality in people. —Kiril Vasilev

On Thursday at noon, I got a message from Kaneda saying that D Class had finally gathered a bunch of underachievers like Sudo for a study session. I decided to check out the library, not to see how well they were studying, but to see who was there. I'd already visited Hirata's study session before. It really had been all girls—what a sight. While it made me, a single guy, jealous and resentful, it also made me glad I'd decided to set him up. How could a guy with a girlfriend still be so popular with women? Wasn't that Karuizawa girl going to do anything about it...? And to top it all off, he was so handsome... A scumbag like that ought to be taken out at once. It was lucky for him that all I'd done this time was deal a blow to his reputation...

The people from Nagumo-senpai's soccer club had already given Hirata the fake exam papers. Since not a word had leaked so far, it seemed Hirata really was acting according to our plan. To be safe, I'd also told Koenji not to trust any papers Hirata gave him. He'd only replied confidently, "I don't need anything like that."

Our school's lunch break wasn't long, and by the time I got there, the library was already out of seats. But I didn't need one. I just walked around the classroom, answering everyone's questions, which also gave me a convenient view of the D Class group nearby.

Just as Kaneda had said, the underachievers in D Class had mostly been gathered together. The most conspicuous were the tall, burly Sudo, along with Ike and Yamauchi, whom I'd seen with Sakayanagi at a hamburger shop last time. They were the legendary Three Idiots of D Class. The inconspicuous Ayanokoji was there, too, so it seemed his grades weren't very good either. The one tutoring them was a familiar face I hadn't expected: Suzune Horikita.

"I thought she didn't have any friends. Why is she taking part in something like this?" I asked Kaneda.

"Is that really so strange? Shiina's like that, too, isn't she? Plenty of people are introverted but still willing to help the class. A girl as outstanding as Horikita must want to get promoted to Class A, right?"

"I'm still a little surprised... This Horikita seems like no ordinary person. Getting the underachievers in D Class together can't be as easy as it looks."

I began to take Horikita more seriously.

"Could it be Kushida's doing? She's there sometimes, too."

"Kushida and Horikita aren't friends. Other than Horikita, Kushida's friends with everyone. If two people are in the same class but aren't friends, it means they really don't get along."

"That's a bit much, isn't it?"

"You don't understand women. To women, there are only two kinds of other women. It's that black-and-white."

"...But the fact is, the two of them are working together for the class."

"Giving up personal interests for the class... That's not something the narrow-minded Kushida could do. So Horikita's the broad-minded one? This woman's interesting. I've got my eye on her."