"Want to take part this time? If you do, I'll give you my spot."
After lunch, in the Activity Room, Ryuen lounged in a recliner with his legs crossed, a book covering his face to block out the sunlight.
"I'm not interested in this Special Exam. It's only 1.5 million personal points, so you can handle it however you like. If it comes down to a one-on-one tiebreaker at the end, I might give it a try. Just don't expect too much from me."
If I were competing against ordinary students, I'd still have a chance of winning. But against students with sharp observational skills, I'd have practically no chance.
What strategist takes a weapon into a duel? How inelegant.
"I'll borrow your girl, then. I've already agreed on a price with Katsuragi from Class A. They're willing to pay us two million personal points."
Ryuen took the book off his face, his arm dangling limply as he lounged around.
"Don't scare her, either. Make sure you keep her covered. They did give us three million points, after all. Otherwise, I wouldn't even be able to look at the points we earned this month."
After the school secretly apprehended the shop clerk, Sakura received hush money from the school at the beginning of the month and signed a supplementary confidentiality agreement.
She'd originally wanted to give me all five million personal points, but I felt that when it came to people, you shouldn't drain them dry all at once. It was better to drain them sustainably.
So I only took three million points, and told her not to let anyone know she had points. She'd earned them, and she could exchange them for money after graduation. There was no need to sacrifice them for Class D.
After the midterm exams, Ichinose often kept Sakura by her side. With my and Hiyori's efforts as well, Sakura had finally begun to grow more confident.
The downside was that she'd become fairly popular among the boys in Class D, and was getting a lot more attention than before.
Before, only Yamauchi had used her—the girl who didn't dare talk back—to make himself look impressive. Now, the rumors had shifted from Sakura having a crush on so-and-so to Sakura having already slept with so-and-so.
Ike had even dug up records of Sakura having worked as a gravure idol. Since she'd appeared in a magazine, the sexual rumors were growing more and more outrageous.
Then one morning, the classic incident happened: Ichinose used a convenient excuse to turn down Shiranami.
According to those involved, Shiranami had felt threatened when Sakura suddenly appeared by her side and took her place, so she'd decided to confess her feelings.
And during that time, Sakura had been receiving help from Ichinose. In an attempt to help her, Sakura had responded without thinking, using words that were bound to give Shiranami the wrong idea.
In the end, Shiranami ran all the way back to the classroom in tears that morning, with Ichinose and Sakura chasing after her the whole way.
After that incident, the nasty rumors surrounding Sakura took on a different character. Now the talk was about the love and heartbreak between the three girls: Sakura, Ichinose, and Shiranami.
The rumors had since been updated again. Now people were saying Sakura, Ichinose, and Shiranami were in a three-way relationship. That version had sprung from a photo of the three of them running together on the school track, posted on the forum.
With Ichinose drawing so much attention to Sakura, Sakura naturally came back onto Kushida's radar. And Kushida, who had connections everywhere, became Sakura's gateway into the girls' social circle in Class D.
At first, the girls in Class D hadn't liked Sakura much. She'd started out as an unsociable loner, and even after she latched onto Ichinose's boat following the midterms and began to change, that only made the other girls feel more hostile toward her.
They didn't want to see someone who'd been at the bottom of the class's social hierarchy climb above them. And with all the rumors coming from the boys, they were also worried that Sakura might have something going on with the boys they liked.
It wasn't until the latest version of the three-way rumors spread, and Kushida put in a good word for her, that they accepted Sakura. Mostly, they wanted to gossip with her.
They all knew more or less what happened between couples of opposite sexes, but multiple people of the same sex? That was a whole new experience for them.
As a result, Sakura now had a certain network of connections and standing within Class D, and could provide me with a lot of useful information.
At first, I'd only mentioned in passing that she should share information about Class D with me when appropriate.
Considering that in the original story she never showed any signs of growth, I hadn't expected much from her. But her actual performance had thoroughly proven me wrong.
Even Ryuen thought Sakura was interesting and could make a capable intelligence operative.
"She gave you three million? Where'd she get that many points? I see. I was wondering why I hadn't seen that sleazy guy when I went to the store to buy equipment lately. His entire future was worth only three million. What a pathetic worm."
Ryuen was initially surprised when he heard the figure of three million points. Then, combining it with the information he had, he figured out the key details of the incident.
"This favor of hers isn't huge, but it isn't small, either. The school was the one that caught the guy, and the people who called them were from Sakayanagi's side. I'm surprised they were willing to give her hush money. If it were up to me, I'd keep someone quiet without paying them a thing."
"Better to get the money straight from the school. That way, you don't have to pay another student's cut. They give them so many points every month, and they still don't know how to save. They ought to put more aside."
Ryuen sighed. He and Hiyori had been working hard lately. He'd assigned nearly every student in Class C to stake out spots around campus, observe the spending habits of their assigned targets, and estimate how much they usually spent.
They'd report back to him, and he and Hiyori would tally everything up to estimate roughly how many points each class still had available.
"Be grateful. If we hadn't acted fast and stabilized Class D's Class Points, they'd definitely have ended the first month with zero points. They can lose over four hundred points in just over a week. I don't even want to imagine how many they'd lose in a month!"
"Yeah. If Class D really becomes a zero-point class, we might as well give up on the points strategy altogether. It's too hard to earn points from the upper years. Even the students in the lower-ranked classes are old hands by now. There aren't many left who'll fall for a scam.
"If we want to earn points from students in other years, we either have to wait for a Special Exam or wait until we're in our second year and take a huge bite out of the first-years."
Only by choosing this strategy for real could you understand how difficult it was. Even with my advantage of knowing what was coming and acting first, the points we'd earned over the first two months couldn't make up for lost time.
We needed to earn at least 21 million points every month. Only then could we just barely pull off the plan. It was harder than climbing to heaven.
"Do you know the Longzhong Plan?"
"Zhuge Liang's essay? I've read it."
"Then we'll wait for the world to change, and build up our strength until the time is right."
As long as the Road Tyrant launched an attack, everything would work out!
Before you continue