"More or less. I'd run into people hiding weapons inside things before and learned the hard way, so I trained a little."
His words left everyone present speechless.
Atmosphere Group: "..."
Had this guy really been a student before? What ordinary student ever ran into something like that?!
Hoshino En: "..."
The person in question had refused to answer, so Hoshino En stopped analyzing him. After all, that kind of scrutiny wasn't very pleasant for the person being examined.
He picked up his coffee and took a long sip, soothing his protesting mouth.
Huh? Why had everyone suddenly gone quiet?
Noticing the sudden silence, he looked at Ichinose Honami, who was standing frozen in the middle of the room and staring at him. He tilted his head in confusion.
But the moment their eyes met, she jumped like a startled little rabbit.
A blush climbed visibly from her neck to her cheeks. Clutching her chest with both hands, she dashed back to her original spot and hid behind Kushida Kikyo.
Still, to keep eavesdropping, she poked her head out from behind Kushida's shoulder. Her eyes glistened with mist, and her cheeks were bright red—an utterly alluring sight.
When his gaze followed Ichinose Honami's movements to the table beside them, the girls he glanced at all covered their chests with their hands and curled in on themselves. Their eyes grew misty, as if they'd been bullied.
Oh, one of them was different. After noticing his gaze, she slowly lowered her hands from her chest and straightened her back. Her face was as red as a boiled prawn, but she looked at him with shining eyes.
Hoshino En: "..."
"Is that really necessary...?"
"A girl's measurements are private, Hoshino-kun. You'd better know your place."
"What did you think I said that for? You're the one who went and teased them!"
As soon as Sakayanagi Arisu poked her head out, Hoshino En's retort made her duck back down.
He turned to the table beside them and said very seriously, "And you girls, either sit quietly and listen or just leave. Don't come over and meddle. Sakayanagi Arisu isn't some little white flower you can handle at your level."
Atmosphere Group: "..."
They wanted to protest, but after the chaos a moment ago, they decided to just watch and keep quiet this time.
"That's quite a thing to say, Hoshino-kun... Am I some kind of evil mastermind?"
Hoshino En turned to Sakayanagi Arisu, who had regained her usual elegant composure.
"Aren't you? We're supposed to be discussing serious business, but you keep changing the subject and baiting people with strange remarks."
"That's because you're so aggressive. I'm just adapting to your pace. Otherwise, you'd see right through me after a couple of sentences."
"Is Hoshino-kun the kind of person who likes stripping girls naked?"
Hoshino En: "..."
"Wouldn't most boys your age like that?"
Atmosphere Group and Sakayanagi Arisu: "...!!!"
"I'm not sure myself. I'm still a virgin, so I haven't tried it, but..."
Hoshino En looked Sakayanagi Arisu up and down.
"If it were you, I'd leave you thigh-highs, tights, or white stockings and things like that. You're rather petite; you couldn't pull off black stockings or fishnets."
Sakayanagi Arisu: "..."
"Hoshino-kun, what you just said could qualify as sexual harassment."
"You're the one who started it. I just took the opportunity to play along. Besides, it worked pretty well."
Looking at Sakayanagi Arisu, whose desire to attack had clearly vanished, Hoshino En nodded with satisfaction.
"And I wasn't lying, either. If it were you..."
"All right, I get it. Stop talking about that!"
"Let's talk business. Tell me how you discovered the truth about this school. In return, I'll share the information our homeroom teacher gave us."
Atmosphere Group: "..."
The truth about the school? What was going on?
"Fine."
Hoshino En ordered a second cup of coffee, then laid out his entire line of reasoning.
"Let's start with a month ago, when I received my acceptance letter."
"That early?!"
Sakayanagi Arisu looked surprised.
"Why did you get suspicious? Shouldn't you be excited to receive an acceptance letter from a high school with no tuition and a hundred percent advancement rate?"
"Do you even believe what you're saying?"
"...Of course not."
"Exactly! I didn't trust the school's claims, so when I applied, I had a friend whose written and interview scores were about the same as mine apply too. But only I got accepted."
"The only difference between him and me was that I'd received a recommendation letter from my middle school principal the previous December. You all got one too, didn't you?"
Hoshino En looked toward the four girls at the next table. Caught off guard by the sudden question, they all nodded instinctively.
After getting their answer, Hoshino En turned back to Sakayanagi Arisu.
"And you definitely wouldn't know about that. You've been frail since childhood and needed a cane to walk, so you must have studied at home with private tutors all this time."
"You couldn't have known about recommendation letters, yet you still enrolled. That means someone in your family is part of the school's administration, and they must hold a fairly high position—at least a trustee. Am I wrong?"
Sakayanagi Arisu: "..."
"And you say I'm the one testing you, when you've been probing me this whole time."
"That's right. My father is the chairman of this school, but my placement in Class A was the result of a fair review by the school. There was no favoritism."
She stared sternly at Hoshino En, like a dragon roused after someone had struck a nerve.
Hoshino En: "..."
So she cared a lot about her father's reputation? I'll remember that weakness!
"I know that too. You're probably the reason your class figured out the truth. Otherwise, nobody except Hairpin Girl would have let you boss them around on the very first day."
Atmosphere Group: "..."
So what exactly was the truth about the school? And the placement review... Weren't classes assigned at random?
"Anyway, once I realized that acceptance had nothing to do with that overcrowded exam and interview, and was actually determined by recommendation letters, I started paying very close attention to this school."
"Then there was the test on the bus this morning..."
"Test!!!"
A shrill outburst came from the table beside them.
Thankfully, the café was empty for the moment, so their reaction didn't disturb anyone.
"W-what kind of test was it? Could it affect us?"
Karuizawa Kei was the first to panic. She was a genuine academic struggler and had the hardest time dealing with exams.
"Don't worry. That test probably won't have much effect, and it had nothing to do with academics. It tested something that's useless to society at large, but still essential—morality."
"Morality?"
Sakayanagi Arisu, sitting across from Hoshino En, recalled what had happened that morning and quickly understood.
"You mean the old woman?"
"That's right. Since you ran into her too, my guess must be correct."
"Every bus bound for the school eventually comes to this man-made island. Yet at nine o'clock, when the school required us to be here, more than half the seats on the bus were occupied by adults who weren't students."
"They weren't heading to work during working hours. Instead, they'd boarded a bus going to the school. The only explanation was that riding that bus was their 'job.'"
"The old woman who got on at the last stop was the test. If none of the students had offered her a seat, one of the adults sitting down would have stood up and given her theirs. The test was about our morality—whether we had a sense of public responsibility."
"So that's why you were the first to offer her your seat?"
Kushida Kikyo remembered too. Hoshino En had been the first to rush over and give the old woman his seat, even helping her into it. He'd looked just like a kind little angel.
"Yeah. Nobody else was moving, and it didn't cost me anything to help her."
"Anyway, since I encountered a test before I'd even enrolled, I started to think that the supposed benefits and free tuition were just bait placed on top of a trap. There were probably pitfalls everywhere."
"But..."
Hoshino En looked at Sakayanagi Arisu, his face alight with curiosity.
"I wouldn't have guessed that someone like you, a pampered young lady, would squeeze onto a bus. You got me there. I was wrong."
Sakayanagi Arisu: "..."
"This was my first time going out to attend school. I wanted to go like a normal student."
"So you had your family's driver take you to the bus stop?"
"If you've figured it out, you don't have to say it out loud."
"And even if I admit defeat over that, I'm not going to feel any joy at winning."
"All right, all right... Then there was homeroom. You all know the school gave each of us 100,000 points, equivalent to 100,000 yen."
"What's wrong with that?"
Ichinose Honami was the one who interrupted this time. She seemed to have recovered from the confusion earlier.
"That's too much. If we get this many points every month, then over twelve months, just the first-year students would need 12 × 4 × 40 × 100,000 = 192 million yen. Even with government backing, the school couldn't spend that much on students' living expenses. It's unrealistic."
Ichinose Honami: "..."
"That does make sense."
"But someone in our class thought of that today too, so the whole class unanimously decided that, aside from necessary living expenses, the rest would be handed over as class funds. We also strictly prohibited wasteful spending."
The three students from Class D, who'd already been dazzled by the news and had decided to go on a shopping spree this month: "...!!!"
They looked at one another, then at the well-prepared girls from Class B and at Hoshino En and Sakayanagi Arisu, who'd already thought of this. Suddenly, they realized just how enormous the difference between people could be.
"Then there was what our homeroom teacher said. She seemed to be deliberately encouraging the students in our class to spend money, which made me uneasy. So after homeroom ended, I went to take a look at the other classes."
The three who really had been encouraged: Please stop scolding us. We know we messed up!
"As it turned out, Class C's representative was using violence to unite the class, and was about to finish bringing them together. Everyone in Class B had been won over by Ichinose's personality on the very first day, and they'd already united. As for Class A..."
Hoshino En looked at Sakayanagi Arisu, whose face wore a confident smile.
"You obviously won't let go of your position. So until that bald student is defeated, Class A will remain divided."
"Oh my, Hoshino-kun. Do you think I'm certain to win?"
"Of course. Once this month's Behavioral Norms Exam ends and all the first-years learn the truth about the school and the class competition, Class A will become the target of the entire grade."
"That position is a trap. Without an advantage that completely overwhelms the other classes, or a sufficiently aggressive leader, a cautious, conservative strategy won't be enough to hold on to it."
"And in our first month, we can only open up a lead of 1,000 points at most. Class A and Class B may have different resources, but once they know what the exam involves, the divided Class A won't necessarily have an advantage over the united Class B in the Behavioral Norms Exam. The gap will only get smaller. Class A won't be able to establish absolute dominance."
"So I can say for certain that if a high-value exam comes up, Class A will probably fall behind if you don't get involved."
"Would you help another leader?"
Hoshino En stared directly into Sakayanagi Arisu's eyes, wearing a confident smile that said he already knew the answer.
He knew exactly what she was thinking.
"Don't ask such an obvious question. Didn't you figure that out ages ago?"
Sakayanagi Arisu smiled excitedly too.
They both picked up their coffee and took a small sip.
Atmosphere Group: "..."
"Why do I suddenly feel so full?"
Wang Meiyu looked at her best friend, unsure what to make of it.
Before you continue