The Situation in Each Class, the Obvious Gap / Chapter 4: The Situation in Each Grade, the Hidden Truth

[Judgment: A]

[Physical Ability: A]

[Teamwork: E+]

First Semester of First Year:

Chapter 3: The Situation in Each Class, the Obvious Gap

Click! Click! Click!

Her high heels struck the floor with a crisp sound.

A woman with her hair tied in a high ponytail, wearing black stockings and a business suit, walked in through the door. She was carrying a stack of papers.

Once all the students had returned to their seats, she continued, "I'm your homeroom teacher, Chabashira Sae. You'll stay in the same class until graduation. I'll be your homeroom teacher for the next three years."

"First, I'll hand out some information about the school. Pass it back, please."

She distributed the stack of papers in her hands.

<Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School Guide>

At first glance, it seemed like the usual school rules and information booklet, with nothing particularly noteworthy about it.

Though it was thin, Hoshino En still opened it and read through it carefully.

Hmm. There wasn't anything else inside, just information on some systems that weren't made public: all students lived on campus, completely cut off from the outside world; the school had all the basic facilities, including necessities and entertainment.

Tch. So they'd turned the school into a small society isolated from the outside world?

"You'll need to use the points on your Student Terminals to buy things. You can buy anything in this school with points."

"Points are automatically deposited on the first of every month. One point is worth one yen. Your Student Terminals should already have been loaded with 100,000 points for this month."

Chabashira Sae's words sparked a commotion among all the students.

A hundred thousand points—that was the equivalent of 100,000 yen. For a high school student, that was already a huge sum.

There probably weren't many students in this class who had ever seen that much money all at once.

Hoshino En checked his Student Terminal and saw the 100,000 points displayed there, too.

If each student got 100,000 points, then a class of 40 would receive four million points. With four classes in each grade, that made 16 million points in total—the equivalent of 16 million yen.

And that was just for one month. If they received the same amount for all 12 months of the year, that would add up to 192 million yen. Over three years, it would be close to 600 million yen.

Hey, hey, what kind of joke was this? Even if the school had government backing, taxpayers' money didn't grow on trees. How could they possibly waste it like this?

There had to be a catch!

"Are you surprised by this huge number of points?"

Chabashira Sae didn't seem surprised by the students' reactions.

"This school measures students by their abilities. The fact that you were admitted means that you have value."

But Hoshino En couldn't help feeling that her smile looked rather sinister.

It sounded like she was trying to encourage the class to spend their points.

And when Hoshino En glanced around the class, he noticed that, aside from the unreadable, expressionless Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, no one seemed to have any doubts about the situation.

Seriously, none of you think this is suspicious? You're just accepting it without question?

Feeling the restless excitement spreading through his classmates after their initial shock, Hoshino En quickly decided to get away from them.

As soon as homeroom ended, he slipped out through the nearest back door.

As usual, he'd gather information first and decide what to do afterward.

Each grade in this school occupied an entire school building. Class D was on the second floor, while the other classes were on higher floors.

He climbed the stairs to the floor above Class D, where Class 1-C was located.

He didn't do anything suspicious. As he walked past the corridor, he simply took a careful glance at the students in Class C from the corner of his eye.

Compared with Class D, which was chaotic and full of all sorts of people, Class C was much more uniform. The atmosphere in the class was oppressive and filled with hostility.

There seemed to be a lot of delinquents and girls who looked like troublemakers, and a few of them even had bruises on their faces.

Was the class leader ruling through violence?

Among them, however, Hoshino En spotted someone who didn't fit in: a beautiful girl with long silver hair. She was like a Silver Fairy who'd stepped out of a book, adorable and cute.

He was impressed by her beauty, but Hoshino En didn't linger. He soon took the stairs on the other side up to the next floor.

The next floor was where Class 1-B was located.

As before, Hoshino En only glanced at the students in Class B from the corner of his eye.

But the atmosphere here was completely different from Class C's. The students seemed to get along well, and they were all gathered around a girl with rose-gold hair and a curvy figure.

Had they united through her affability? No, through her charisma? That was impressive.

If she'd brought the class together like this, then everyone in it must be a bunch of Little Angels and nice people.

There was no way Class C could ever pull that off.

But there was a downside. Everyone would listen to their leader's opinions, making it difficult for them to express their own ideas. Even if their leader made the wrong call, the atmosphere would make it hard for anyone to point it out seriously. After they failed, they'd only cover it up with empty words like, "We'll do better next time."

And a leader who united a class through her charisma was bound to be an incredibly responsible person. The more often the class failed, the heavier her psychological burden would become, and she'd have nowhere to let it out.

If she eventually couldn't take it and broke down, the class would become utterly defenseless...

Forget it. She was a beautiful girl, after all. There was no need to curse her for no reason.

Noticing he'd been standing there a little too long, Hoshino En saw the rose-gold-haired girl inside looking his way. He hurriedly left the floor.

"Honami-chan, what's wrong? Is there something outside?" A girl with a brown bob looked curiously at the rose-gold-haired girl, who seemed distracted.

"No, it's nothing, Chihiro. I thought I saw someone I knew from before... I probably just mistook him for someone else."

Above them was the last class in the first year: Class A.

Hoshino En only glanced inside a few times, but he immediately noticed something was off. A crowd had gathered around a bald man, seemingly choosing him as their leader. But apart from those surrounding him, another group kept stealing glances at a girl with short silver hair, as if they wanted to recognize her as the class representative.

It looked like the class was about to split apart.

Even so, Hoshino En had already figured out what kind of class this was: a group of elites.

Unlike Class D, where popular students ruled and everyone else just went along with them; Class C, where everyone had to submit to a violent ruler; and Class B, which had been won over by its leader's charisma and whose students struggled to express their own opinions, the students in Class A were using their own judgment to decide who should represent them.

If they chose their leader of their own free will, then no matter what the class representative decided to do, the members of Class A would wholeheartedly accept the leader's ideas and carry out their instructions.

That created a different kind of unity. Unlike in Class B, where the atmosphere swept everyone along, each student still had the ability to act on their own initiative.

Hey, hey, could the gap between classes really be this huge?

Forget Class A—even the Little Angels in Class B were in a league of their own compared with the chaotic Class D.

And there was another difference that was even more obvious.

Starting from the floor where Class A was located, Hoshino En went down one floor at a time, passing Classes B and C again.

Class B was discussing something. Everyone had their phones out, so it might have had something to do with points.

Class C was still oppressive, but no one was speaking. A man with medium-length hair who looked like a gang leader stood at the front, using violence to suppress the others below him. Beside him stood a delinquent with injuries on his body, but he was being very obedient. It looked like he'd already been tamed.

Finally, Hoshino En returned to Class D.

In Class D, aside from a few loners, no one else was there.

It seemed they'd all gone shopping.

Crazy. Was this class really that extravagant?

Hoshino En suddenly thought of the school's claim that its employment and higher education placement rate was 100 percent.

A school backed by the government couldn't be sending trash out into society, so... could this benefit be reserved for the outstanding Class A and Class B students? Would students from the other classes be given the names of worse high schools when they graduated, then tossed out to fend for themselves?

Tch. This was a scam.

First Semester of First Year:

Chapter 4: The Situation in Each Grade, the Hidden Truth

After leaving the first-year school building, Hoshino En didn't plan to head straight to the supermarket to buy daily necessities.

There was still plenty of time, so he planned to check out the second- and third-year buildings.

Perhaps there were things the school was hiding from new students.

When he arrived at the second-year school building, he found what he was looking for just by standing in the first-floor lobby.

On the second-year notice board, a set of unusual point values had been written on a whiteboard in black marker.

[Class 2-A 1800 points]

[Class 2-B 900 points]

[Class 2-C 800 points]

[Class 2-D 600 points]

Hoshino En: "..."

Wait, what was this?

Class Points?

To distinguish these from Private Points, he immediately decided to call them Class Points.

However, these Class Points were all three or four digits long, while the first-year students had received 100,000 Private Points. That suggested a possible connection: did the Class Points multiplied by 100 represent the amount of Private Points each student in the class received every month?

Without entering the second-year school building, Hoshino En went straight to the third-year building.

Just like in the second-year building, he found Class Points displayed here, too, though there had been no such board in the first-year building.

[Class 3-A 1950 points]

[Class 3-B 1650 points]

[Class 3-C 1000 points]

[Class 3-D 900 points]

Hoshino En: "..."

Class competition.

This time, he realized there was another meaning behind the Class Points.

They quantified each class's rank, making the level of each class—and the gap between classes—obvious.

If a class earned more points than the class above it, would their rankings switch?

The school had created a simulated society and made the classes in each grade compete in this survival-of-the-fittest fashion. In the end, there would only be one winner.

In other words, the promise of guaranteed employment or higher education probably only applied to Class A. The other three classes were just sacrifices.

And even if a lower-ranked class managed to overtake another, its students' poor qualifications would still make people question the school's standards if they were presented as Class A graduates.

Hoshino En thought of the gap between Class 1-D and Class 1-A and could only shake his head helplessly.

Even if someone carried Class D to the top while Class A fell apart and dropped down, the difference in quality between the two classes would still remain.

There was no comparison. They couldn't compete.

Lamenting the dark, miserable high school life that awaited him over the next three years, Hoshino En finally arrived at the convenience store.

He had arrived in the morning, attended the opening ceremony and homeroom that morning, then gathered information in the various school buildings. Now it was noon.

In other words, it was time for lunch.

When he entered the convenience store, he happened to run into Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, who had just finished shopping.

Standing beside Ayanokoji was a cool, aloof girl who was buying daily necessities.

It was Horikita Suzune.

The two of them seemed to have finished eating and were now buying daily necessities.

"What an unpleasant coincidence."

Horikita Suzune had completely recovered from her agitation at the opening ceremony. Her words were sharp as she headed straight for Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.

"Don't be so wary of me."