Rumors About Sakura Airi

"Are you going to step up and play this time? If you go, I'll give my spot to you."

After lunch, in the activity room, Ryuen lay on a lounge chair with his legs crossed, a book covering his face to block out the sunlight.

"I have no interest in this special exam. It's only 1.5 million private points; you can arrange it however you like. If it comes down to a one-on-one tie-breaker at the very end, I suppose I could give it a try, just don't hold your expectations too high."

If I'm only competing against average students, I have a chance of winning, but if I'm up against those with keen observation skills, I basically have no chance at all.

Besides, what kind of strategist carries a weapon into a duel? It's simply not elegant.

"Then I'll be taking that person from your side. I've already negotiated a price with Katsuragi from Class A; they're willing to pay 2 million private points to buy us off."

Ryuen pulled the book off his face, his hand dangling loosely, looking as slovenly as ever.

"Don't go scaring her, and remember to provide cover. After all, she gave us 3 million points; otherwise, I wouldn't even have the face to look at the points we earned this month."

After that clerk was secretly apprehended by the school, Sakura received hush money from the administration at the beginning of the month and signed additional non-disclosure agreements.

She originally wanted to give me all 5 million private points, but I believe that in life, one shouldn't drain the pond to catch the fish—one should practice sustainable fishing instead.

So, I only took 3 million and told her not to tell anyone else that she had points. These were points she earned, which could be exchanged for money after graduation; it wasn't worth sacrificing them for Class D.

After the midterm exams, Ichinose often kept Sakura by her side. With the efforts of Hiyori and myself, she has finally started to become more confident.

The downside is that she is now quite popular among the boys in Class D, and she receives much more attention than before.

Previously, only Yamauchi would use her—someone who wouldn't dare to talk back—to highlight his own greatness. Now, the direction of the rumors has shifted from Sakura having a crush on so-and-so to Sakura having already slept with so-and-so.

Furthermore, Ike dug up records of Sakura working as a gravure idol. Because Sakura had appeared in magazines, these lewd rumors began to escalate.

That continued until the morning of the classic "Ichinose uses a shield to reject Shiranami" incident.

According to those involved, Shiranami felt a sense of crisis because Sakura had suddenly appeared by Ichinose's side and taken her spot, so she chose to confess on the spot.

Sakura, who had been helped by Ichinose during this period, wanted to return the favor and, without thinking, retorted with words that caused Shiranami to misunderstand.

The final result was that Shiranami ran back to the classroom crying that morning, followed by Ichinose and Sakura, who had been chasing her the entire way.

Once this happened, the nature of the lewd rumors surrounding Sakura changed; they transformed into a tale of love and hate between the three girls: Sakura, Ichinose, and Shiranami.

Now, these rumors have updated once again, evolving into the "Three-Person Jogging" theory, which stemmed from photos on the forum of the three of them running on the track together.

By bringing Sakura along, Ichinose attracted so much attention that Sakura naturally re-entered Kushida's field of vision. Kushida, who is always expanding her network, became the catalyst for Sakura to integrate into the group of girls in Class D.

Originally, the girls in Class D didn't really like Sakura because she was a loner from the start. Even after she latched onto Ichinose's ship following the midterms, any changes in her only sparked hostility.

They didn't want to see someone who was at the bottom of the class hierarchy climb above them. Coupled with the rumors spread by the boys, they were also worried that the boys they liked might have had something going on with Sakura.

It wasn't until the new version of the "threesome" rumor came out, combined with Kushida's recommendation, that they finally accepted Sakura—mostly to gossip.

They all knew a little bit about what happens between heterosexual couples, but a multi-person homosexual dynamic? That was a brand-new experience for them.

This has resulted in Sakura now having a certain network and status within Class D, which can provide me with a great deal of help regarding intelligence.

At first, I only mentioned it to her briefly, asking her to provide me with intelligence about Class D as the situation warranted.

Considering that she showed no signs of growth in the original work, I didn't hold any expectations for her, but her actual performance really slapped me in the face.

Look at this—even Ryuen thinks Sakura is interesting and could become a qualified intelligence agent.

"She gave you 3 million? Where did she get that many points? Ah, I see. I was wondering why I hadn't seen that sleazy guy at the shop when I went to buy equipment recently. His whole life is only worth 3 million; what a pathetic worm."

Upon hearing the figure of 3 million points, Ryuen was startled at first, then combined it with the intelligence he possessed to deduce the key to the incident.

"This favor isn't exactly huge, but it isn't small either. It was the school that caught him, and it was Sakayanagi who called for it. I'm surprised they were even willing to pay hush money. If it were me, I'd just silence them without paying a cent."

"It's better to get money directly from the school; you don't have to pay the 'tax' of going through other students. I don't know why they don't save more of the points they get every month."

Ryuen was also lamenting. He and Hiyori have had a heavy workload lately; he arranged for almost every student in Class C to stake out the campus, observing the consumption habits and approximate spending amounts of their assigned targets.

Finally, they report back to him, and he and Hiyori compile the statistics to estimate roughly how many usable points each class has left.

"Be grateful. If we hadn't acted fast enough to help Class D stabilize their class points, they would have hit zero by the end of the first month. They were losing over 400 points in just over a week; I don't even want to imagine how many they would have lost in a full month!"

"Yeah, if Class D had really hit zero, we might as well have just given up on the point-earning plan. The difficulty of earning points across grade levels is too high. Even the students in the lower classes are old foxes; there isn't much to trick them with."

"If we want to earn points across grades, we either have to wait for a special exam or wait until we are second-years to give the first-years a good slash."

Only those who truly choose this strategy will know its difficulty. Even with my advantage of foresight and acting first, the points earned in the first two months couldn't keep up with the timeline.

I need to earn at least 21 million points every month to barely complete the plan; it's as difficult as ascending to heaven.

"Do you know about the Longzhong Plan?"

"Zhuge Liang's essay? I've read it."

"Then let us quietly wait for the world to change, accumulating strength while waiting for the moment to arrive."

As long as the Road Tyrant launches his attack, everything will be fine!