The firelight flickered.
Those few words were still on the page.
`Secondary decoy candidate: Kiyotaka Ayanokoji`
Gu Heng did not immediately turn the sheet over.
He looked at Ayanokoji first.
"Why?"
Ayanokoji set the waterproof pen back on the ground, his expression unchanged.
"Writing only Horikita would be too clean."
"It would look like you deliberately wrote it for outsiders to see."
"With one more person, outsiders will believe Class D really prepared a second arrangement."
Hirata froze for a moment.
"A backup plan?"
Ayanokoji gave a quiet hum.
"If Horikita gets watched, would the class temporarily push a second person forward to share the burden?"
"That would be reasonable to begin with."
"If the paper only listed one arrangement, it would look fake instead."
Horikita frowned.
"Then why you?"
Ayanokoji glanced at her.
"Because you normally wouldn't choose me."
"So it feels more real."
His words were soft.
Yet everyone around the fire fell silent for half a beat.
Gu Heng flattened the sheet again.
"One more question."
"Once this name gets out, they'll start watching you."
"Mm," Ayanokoji said.
"But watching me doesn't mean they can use me."
"And you shouldn't make a fake arrangement too easy to see through in the first place."
Gu Heng stared at that line for two seconds, then suddenly smiled.
"Fine."
"Keep it."
Horikita turned her face to the side.
"You actually dare keep it."
"Because he's right."
Gu Heng circled the new name within the logic of the whole page.
"The easiest way to spot a fake sheet isn't finding one wrong sentence."
"It's being able to tell at a glance that the entire sheet was deliberately written for someone else to see."
"Now that there's a name on it I didn't write, it looks less deliberate instead."
Hirata was not