Study Session

Mu Tianchen picked up his phone and entered the transfer ID sent by Takagahara.

[Transfer 250,000 points to this account?]

[Yes]

[Transfer successful. Remaining balance: 1,242,000 points]

The school was considerate—when transferring, it wouldn't display the recipient's account name or ID number.

It seemed Ryuen Sho would have to swallow that loss in silence.

[Beep, 250,000 points credited to your personal account]

That was the sound from Beauty Bro's phone; apparently, he hadn't turned off the system notification tone.

Fortunately, there were few people here, so it didn't draw too much unnecessary attention.

Takagahara heard the notification sound from his phone and nodded in satisfaction. "Since you're so straightforward, I'll throw in a free piece of advice."

"In this school, there's nothing points can't buy—even the Class Transfer Right."

"The Class Transfer Right too? That means if you save up enough points, right before graduation in third year, you could just jump straight to Class A and still count as graduating from there."

"Naturally."

So that was it. Mu Tianchen now roughly understood what Nanyun Ya meant by "individual meritocracy."

He was leveraging the vast resources of the entire grade to provide transfer slots for those with stronger individual abilities.

This way, he could uphold individual meritocracy without violating school rules.

However, the cost of buying a transfer slot was probably exorbitant. Nanyun's method of pooling resources would likely lower the living standards of the entire second-year class—they must be having a tough time.

"How much does a transfer slot cost?"

"20 million."

Sure enough, that was an amount no one could save up through frugality alone in three years. The only way to go down this path was either to pool resources across the grade like Nanyun Ya did.

Or to earn it from others like Mu Tianchen—though reaching that number was still extremely difficult.

Speaking of which, could Takagahara be planning to use this method too?

It seemed he might have misjudged him. Points could be exchanged for yen, and conversely, yen could be exchanged for points.

With the backing of the Takagahara Zaibatsu, he could buy back points from graduating third-years at a higher price than the school offered. That way, he could indeed scrape together 20 million points.

Of course, that was just in theory. Based on Mu Tianchen's current understanding of the school, if Takagahara actually used this method to gather points and buy his way into Class A...

That was clearly cheating. He didn't believe the school would allow such a thing, nor did he think they'd be afraid of offending those zaibatsu.

The school was government-funded and had been around for many years. If they were really afraid of the zaibatsu, why wouldn't they have placed someone like Takagahara, a zaibatsu princeling, in Class A from the start? Instead, he was in D.

"Alright, I need to leave. The girls are waiting for me to have lunch together. As for the past exam papers, I'll put them in your drawer tomorrow when no one's around."

Seeing that Mu Tianchen was still lost in thought, Takagahara checked his watch. He really couldn't wait any longer, so he spoke up to interrupt Mu Tianchen's train of thought.

"Okay." Mu Tianchen snapped back to attention and replied.

Takagahara promptly stood up and left the teahouse directly.

The next day at noon, Mu Tianchen indeed found the past exam papers Takagahara had delivered in his drawer.

Along with them were the test papers from the last quiz.

How to put it... pretty thorough.

Mu Tianchen couldn't help but pick up the quiz papers and flip through them.

Sure enough, they were identical to the last quiz—even the order of the questions hadn't been changed...

That meant the midterm exam papers would be the same.

Well, that made things much easier. They just needed to memorize the answers; no need for excessive thinking. This was truly a blessing for Class D.

As for spreading the word, he'd leave that to Kushida.

She still owed Mu Tianchen a favor from last time, and with her personality, he didn't think she'd refuse anyone.

With that thought, Mu Tianchen picked up his phone and sent Kushida a message.

He waited for a long time, but Kushida didn't reply. The message still showed as unread.

She was probably busy right now...

At that moment, Kushida had been busy the night before contacting Sudo, Yamauchi, and the others to join Horikita's study session. She was so exhausted that she only remembered the next morning that her phone hadn't been charged.

Now her phone was dead, lying quietly in her backpack.

"Everyone, I've brought them over~."

Kushida said to Horikita and Ayanokouji, who had arrived at the library early.

Ayanokouji wore his usual expressionless face, while Horikita, upon seeing her approach, clearly showed a very displeased look, her face stiff.

"We heard that Kushida was holding a study session here, so we came. For everyone to avoid being expelled, please take care of us."

The one who spoke up first behind Kushida was Ike, with Sudo and Yamauchi standing beside him, along with another boy named Okiya.

Although Okiya hadn't failed the last quiz, his grades were right on the borderline of passing.

Kushida had noticed he wasn't attending Hirata's study group, so she brought him along as well.

"Is it okay for Okiya-kun to join too?"

Since last night, Ayanokouji had only asked her to call over Sudo's group of three, and Okiya was her own decision, so she asked with some concern.

"If it's about studying because you're worried about failing, I have no objections. But if you're here, you have to study seriously."

"Thank you, I'll study hard."

Seeing that Horikita didn't object, Okiya happily went to sit in a nearby empty seat.

Kushida and Sudo's group also took seats around Okiya.

When Kushida sat down too, Horikita's expression grew even more sour. "Kushida-san, didn't Ayanokouji tell you last night? What's the meaning of this?"

Ayanokouji had indeed conveyed Horikita's objection to Kushida joining this study session last night, but she insisted on participating under the pretense of wanting to be friends with Horikita, leaving Ayanokouji with no choice.

"Well... I'm actually scared of failing the midterms and getting expelled, you know?"

"If I remember correctly, you did very well on the last quiz."

Horikita said coldly. She didn't believe for a second that Kushida was afraid of failing; there had to be another reason for her coming here.

Although Kushida always acted like she wanted to be friends, Horikita could sense that Kushida seemed to dislike her. This feeling wasn't just once or twice.

So naturally, Horikita disliked her too. Horikita wasn't good at pretending; her emotions showed easily on her face.

"Well... that was just luck. The last test had a lot of multiple-choice questions, right? I guessed most of them correctly."

Kushida smiled cutely as she spoke, lightly scratching her cheek.

The nearby Ike and the others, seeing Kushida like this, had their eyes turn into heart shapes.

"Do you think I'd believe that?"

That trick didn't work on Horikita; instead, it only annoyed her more. But Kushida wouldn't do something like this for no reason.

"Horikita, what's your problem?!"