Everyone, Welcome to the School of Meritocracy

May 1st—that thrilling day.

The three classes that already knew the hidden rules—A, B, and C—all woke up early and immediately opened their phones to check the personal points stored on their terminals.

They confirmed the increase in points, though the amount was a bit off from expectations, and each breathed a sigh of relief tinged with luck.

"Thanks to the class buying the hidden rules from Class B, otherwise we wouldn't know how much living expenses we'd have left this month."

"Exactly, but our Class A only has 86,000 personal points this month. I wonder how many points Class B has."

"Our class bought points from Class B at the start of the month, so the amount we checked probably isn't that high."

"I think it's all because of Class C. Otherwise, our points this month could've been a bit more."

Listening to the scattered chatter of girls from other classes in the elevator, Kikyou Kushida stared at her phone screen, where her personal points hadn't increased at all, and couldn't help feeling a bit flustered.

What exactly are the hidden rules?

She'd never heard of them before—not even her friends in other classes had mentioned them.

A bad premonition tugged at her heart. As soon as the elevator doors opened, she quickened her pace, exiting the dormitory building and heading straight for Class D's classroom.

Already in the classroom, Sho Ryuuen pulled out his phone and checked his remaining points.

"An increase of 78,000 personal points. Unexpectedly feels like a lot, but more is fine."

Putting his phone away, Ryuuen, now the ruler of Class C, sat quietly in his seat, waiting for his classmates to arrive.

After all, it was time to start collecting protection fees soon.

Class B classroom.

Everyone was cheering and celebrating. Ichinose, who had arrived early, joined the crowd in sharing the joy of this too-easy gain.

"98,000 personal points—that means our class's monthly class points are 980."

"Hey, Ichinose, can we delay turning in the points today? I want to savor this hard-earned harvest a little longer."

"No problem~" Ichinose replied with a smile.

"But it's rare for Yuki-kun and Tomie to be this late. They're not in the classroom yet. Do you think they're..."

"Take this!" Yuki Gyakukai suddenly appeared in the classroom, silently moving behind Himeno Yuki and delivering a chop to the head of the well-behaved girl.

Feeling the movement above her head, Himeno instinctively tried to dodge.

Thud!

A crisp sound rang out. She couldn't avoid it after all. Wincing in pain, Himeno covered her head with both hands and crouched down.

"Himeno, you're still as unruly as ever."

"Yuki-kun, it's better not to bully Himeno. Her health has always been fragile."

Ichinose sighed helplessly, pulling the crouching, head-holding Himeno back to her feet.

In the end, what saved Himeno was the frail persona she had carefully crafted in front of everyone all along.

"Fine, I'll let her off this time as usual. Next time, I'll hit her again."

Himeno, already slumped back onto her desk, shielded her head with both hands, turned her face sideways, and glared at Yuki not far away.

Hatred in her eyes, she bit her lip angrily: "Bastard, when did you even get here? And you couldn't hit a little softer?"

To be honest, Himeno had no idea how many chops to the head she'd taken since the start of the school year. All she knew was that in her memory, there were a lot.

And they all came from the same person.

She had originally played the frail persona, so she shouldn't have been bullied like this.

But the problem was, her frail persona had been torn apart from the start.

Even now, she couldn't figure out why, when she was in the karaoke room, she had locked eyes with Yuki Gyakukai passing by outside.

Every time she thought about how she usually acted weak and fragile, then sang songs that were wildly out of character—wild and unrestrained—she still felt incredibly embarrassed.

Fortunately, just as Himeno was lost in thought, sprawled on her desk, her savior arrived: Teacher Hoshinomiya.

Hoshinomiya walked into the classroom with cheerful steps, gesturing like she was handling little kids, calling for everyone to take their seats obediently.

"Good morning, everyone! Your performance last month really surprised me. I hope you'll keep it up."

"First of all, you all already know the rules, so I won't repeat them. Let's start with this month's class points for each grade."

Hoshinomiya picked up a piece of chalk and, with a delighted expression, began writing the class points for each first-year class on the blackboard.

Class A: 860

Class B: 980

Class C: 780

Class D: 0

Regarding the points for each class, the students in Classes A, B, and C had no objections.

After all, these three classes knew the hidden rules. The reason Classes A and C had such low points was simply that both classes had broken a large number of rules over a certain period of time.

But Class D's results seemed to have caught everyone completely off guard.

"Zero points!?"

"Unbelievable, what were Class D's students doing to rack up deductions like this?"

"..."

Class D

Sae Chabashira's face was dark as thunder, her icy gaze layered with a frosty chill.

This ominous feeling only deepened the unease that had already settled over the class since no points were distributed at the start of the month.

"Teacher, why haven't this month's hundred thousand points been handed out yet?"

With a cold glance, she barely spared a look at the cowering Ike: "The school has verified everything. Your points for this month have already been distributed."

"But there clearly aren't any..."

"Heh! You really are a bunch of hopeless idiots."

Was it mockery, anger, or something else entirely?

Hard to tell.

Sae Chabashira didn't bother responding to Class D's foolish questions. Instead, she directly wrote the class points for all four classes on the blackboard.

"I actually had some expectations for you, but you've truly opened my eyes, you defective products!"

"You're the first class in history to reduce your class points to zero in the very first month. I'm genuinely stunned."

"..."

After a long pause, Sae Chabashira walked out of the classroom.

She paid no heed to these fools—some wailing over their zeroed-out class points, others blaming everyone around them because failing grades meant expulsion.

Class B

Hoshinomiya cheerfully announced everyone's results.

"Everyone did pretty well, so no need to worry about expulsion."

"Huh? You can get expelled for failing grades?"

Watching Chihiro Shiramami in the front row look utterly shocked, Hoshinomiya smiled and nodded.

"That's right, so next time, Miss Shiramami, you'll have to work hard. If you get expelled for failing, your teacher would be very sad."

"Mmm, I'll do my best."

She said that, but looking at Chihiro Shiramami's scores—all above fifty in every subject—it hardly seemed like she was at risk of expulsion.

It's worth noting that Class B's passing line for each subject ranged between 38 and 42.

Quite surprising, but a large part of the reason was that the exam papers contained many middle school-level questions, making them very easy.