"I'll contact them on my phone now. Let's still choose Pallet as the exchange location; there's a pretty good angle there." Kushida Kikyo picked up her phone.
"Okay." Shiraishi Makoto could handle this kind of simple fixed-camera filming himself, so there was no need to trouble Kamuro Masumi.
Shiraishi Makoto ordered a drink, chose a seat, and laid his backpack flat on the table. Unless one looked closely, it was difficult to notice the tiny camera hidden in the gap of the backpack's opening, its lens aimed precisely at Kushida Kikyo's seat across from him.
Before long, Sudo Ken, Ike Kanji, and Yamauchi Haruki hurried over. Shortly afterward, two unfamiliar upperclassmen quietly entered the café as well.
The group gathered at a corner table and spoke in low voices for a while. Then the upperclassmen pulled a stack of review materials from their bags and carefully handed them over.
"Great! We finally got them!" Yamauchi snatched the papers and shouted in excitement.
"Keep it down..." The others hurriedly stopped him.
Sudo and the others packed up their things, intending to return to the dorms and verify whether the Archived Exam Questions were genuine. Since Kushida Kikyo had also casually obtained the answers to the First Quiz, they would not need to worry about the upcoming exams if the answers matched.
Shiraishi Makoto reached into his backpack for the camera, opened the playback, and carefully checked the footage, the audio, and the complete recording.
The footage was clear and complete. The entire transaction process and every detail of the conversation had been preserved without a single omission.
When he turned around, Kushida Kikyo was still seated directly opposite him. Only after she saw Shiraishi Makoto give her an OK gesture did she leave the café.
Monday arrived. Horikita Suzune brought Kushida Kikyo and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka to the office.
"Teacher, we have something urgent we need to confirm with you."
"Keep it brief. I have other things to take care of." Chabashira Sae seemed to have work of her own.
"Regarding the Midterm Exam scope you mentioned during the first week of this month, was there an error? We asked students from other classes, and the exam scope they described was clearly different from what we have been studying."
Chabashira Sae listened to Horikita Suzune without expression, only stopping her writing after she had finished speaking.
"Now that you mention it, the Midterm Exam scope was changed the Friday before last. Sorry, it seems I forgot to tell you."
"..." Horikita Suzune fell silent in the face of this.
Chabashira Sae pulled an A4 sheet from the printer and smoothly wrote down the exam scope for all five subjects. What gave Horikita Suzune a headache was that while all of it had been covered in class, it differed greatly from what everyone had spent the past week reviewing.
"Thanks to you, Horikita. Otherwise, I really would have forgotten about it."
"Isn't this too late...?"
"Isn't there still a week left? If you study properly, you can pass easily."
Chabashira Sae seemed to feel no guilt whatsoever. After saying that casually, she ushered them out of the office.
Honestly, did she still not understand what I meant? After seeing the students off, Chabashira Sae resumed her work. However, she noticed that Hoshinomiya Chie, who had just been in the office, had suddenly vanished during that brief interval.
"Horikita..." While they were walking back to class, Kushida Kikyo suddenly spoke. "Actually, you don't need to worry too much about Sudo and the others."
"Are you saying we should just give up on them?" Horikita Suzune stopped and turned to look at Kushida Kikyo.
"That's not what I mean." Kushida Kikyo glanced around and lowered her voice. "Last weekend, I learned from some upperclassmen that the school has 'Archived Exam Questions.' We also got the First Quiz questions to compare, and we found that the Third Year's First Quiz was exactly the same as ours."
"You mean... the Midterm Exam questions are very likely to be the original questions from before as well?" Horikita Suzune understood what Kushida Kikyo meant.
"Yes. So over the weekend, I had them go back and memorize the questions properly first. But the terms of the transaction said we couldn't leak the questions to anyone else, so we didn't mention it before." Kushida Kikyo explained.
For some reason, Horikita Suzune let out a sigh of relief. The anxiety that had built up over the past two weeks seemed to ease considerably.
"In that case, let them memorize the Archived Exam Questions." She herself had no confidence that she could teach Sudo and the others well enough within a week. Memorizing the Archived Exam Questions was the best option for now.
"However, we still need to quickly notify the other students in class about the changed exam content. I'll leave that to you, Kushida."
"Huh? Me?"
"That's right. You're the most suitable person among us." Horikita Suzune glanced at Ayanokoji Kiyotaka as she spoke.
"Then all right. I'll be responsible for informing everyone in class."
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka paid no attention to their conversation. His gaze drifted into the distance, where he spotted a familiar figure entering the infirmary.
Inside the infirmary.
"Hahahahaha! Little Makoto, did you know? That idiot Sae actually forgot to notify her class about the changed exam scope. Their class was already pretty weak academically—won't a huge number of them fail now?" Hoshinomiya Chie's laughter rang out the moment she entered the infirmary.
"I know about it, Hoshinomiya-sensei." Shiraishi Makoto nodded lightly. "But Chabashira-sensei probably wanted to use this method to make the students quickly look for other ways to pass."
"Other ways to pass... You mean?" Hoshinomiya Chie's smile instantly vanished. She had thought of that method too.
"Yes. The Archived Exam Questions."
"Hmph, Sae really isn't playing fair." Hoshinomiya Chie pouted. Chabashira Sae had always acted as though she did not care about her class advancing, nearly fooling her completely. Yet she had been pulling this sort of move behind the scenes.
"But since Little Makoto already knows this much, you should have a way to deal with it, right?"
"I obtained evidence of them buying the Archived Exam Questions." Shiraishi Makoto took three photographs from his backpack, all stills captured from the video he had recorded.
Hoshinomiya Chie took the photos and smiled. "You're amazing, Little Makoto~ What reward do you want from your teacher?"
Shiraishi Makoto waved a hand, ignoring Hoshinomiya's teasing. "Buying Archived Exam Questions is a rule the school tacitly allows, but if someone reports it, then even if the school doesn't punish them, it'll rewrite the exam questions, right?"
Different questions could be set for the same kind of tested material without having much impact on the scores. Since the failing line was based on the class average, if the questions were slightly difficult and no one could answer them, the average would naturally drop.
But for students who had only memorized the original answers without grasping the basic principles, changing the questions would be a devastating blow.
"If that happens, even though I don't teach any subjects, I'll have to work overtime helping everyone write questions." Hoshinomiya Chie lightly punched Shiraishi Makoto's chest with her pink fist. "Good job. Keep it up next time."
Before you continue