On the morning of the twelfth day, Class C moved its two option boards from beside the whiteboard to the stands' railing.
`Class D finished today`
`Class D did not finish today`
A blank space had been left beneath each option. Kushida walked back from the stands and brought word of it into Class D's preparation area.
This time, the option boards faced the stands, not Class D's recording table.
"They're starting to let other people choose for them." The first-row participant had just reconfirmed her short-segment slot. She stopped writing when she heard that.
"Choose what?" "Whether we finished," Kushida said.
"They haven't seen the internal sheet," Hirata replied. "That's why they're getting the stands to guess."
Horikita placed the public sheet in the middle of the table. It still contained only the three statuses and yesterday's two explanatory sentences.
"Guesses don't go into Class D's records," she said. "But they'll change how other people see us," Kushida replied.
Gu Heng looked toward the space beneath Class C's whiteboard. Ishizaki set the two boards beside Class C's own observation line.
Class C did not approach Class D's starting point. It simply had people passing the stands place a piece of chalk in one of the two spaces.
"They're not keeping records," Gu Heng said. "They're collecting judgments," Ayanokoji added from behind him.
He stood at the edge of the stands' shadow, without approaching Class D's internal sheet. "Judgments can turn into pressure too," Horikita said.
"Pressure pushes people to prove themselves," Ayanokoji replied. The first-row participant looked at her short-segment confirmation.
"I already missed my turn once yesterday because I responded." "Today, finish your personal confirmation first," Hirata said.
"What if they mark their observation of me as unfinished?" "That's their choice," Gu Heng replied.
She did not look