The cool breeze, the relaxing traditional aesthetic, and the captivating cherry blossom trees.
Ah yes, it truly was a new beginning because students from around Japan were accepted to a new school that reopened just two years ago, and it didn't accept transfer students—meaning the third years were the first third years of the school.
The school had already risen to become Japan's best high school in a short while, though it was already Japan's top school before it closed down.
It became quite famous because it was a school made in 2012 that became the best school in Japan after only 7 years.
In 2020 it shut down for renovation because of overcapacity; however, when it reopened in 2023, it became government-owned, and the campus was on an artificial island.
The school was also famous for its weird rules, such as lack of contact with the outside world, banning of devices, and banning of any form of currency.
If not it was government-backed, with the prime minister even speaking about it; one would have thought it was the most outrageous kidnapping scheme.
At any rate, parents were willing to believe in the government, and they sent their kids to this 'elite' high school, and that's how Tokyo Metropolitan Elysian High School, or EHS for short, began operations.
The students were divided into 5 classes, each denoted by the first five letters of the Greek alphabet.
No one really knew why; however, rumors arose that it was because of how impactful a person was to society, though there was no way to be sure.
Well, until the students were called for an orientation. The orientation was done by the student council president—Satou Gotou.
"Good morning, my fellow students, my name is Satou Gotou, and I'm the student council president," he grinned from ear-to-ear.
He went to explain the school system—the real school system.
He explained Rp, Crp, and the class rankings. To put it simply, those in Class Alpha were the best of the best in the entirety of Japan, while Class Epsilon was the slop.
After he was done, the chairman came and explained the benefits of graduation and the punishments of expulsion, and he also explained why this school existed.
"...you see, this school exists for a singular reason, to get the 'perfect student', and remember, while alliances can exist, there can only be one 'perfect student'."
With the orientation done, alliances started to form, and people started to quickly join the factions of upperclassmen.
And those in Epsilon were not an exception, especially considering how paranoid they were; however, in the first special test, two leaders appeared.
I suppose "appear" isn't the right word. They were always there and were fairly popular even with the other classes.
However, they spearheaded the operation in the first special test, and while class Epsilon wasn't the best, the students in the class felt at peace.
Maybe too at peace.
Students began to hang out more and relax, while people like Ito and Kagura had to hold constant strategy meetings on what to do on other special tests.
Before the word "jack" could be uttered, the class Epsilon students began to behave like normal high schoolers.
However, they began to realise they were losing RP, so they resorted to other tactics.
The girls wore short skirts, while the boys didn't bother to tuck in their shirts.
Before you knew it, the students didn't even have any semblance of the student when it came to dressing.
All this was possible because of the student autonomy clause—the name explained what it represented; of course, if any form of bullying was involved, the clause was annulled.
With that, cliques began to form, and the pseudo-leader of the girls, or rather the queen bee, was Honochi.
That being said, amongst the students in Epsilon there was a student named Kobayashi Shin—a boy with black hair that wore glasses—who happened to push the limits of said clause.
He was part of a group called the pervert trio (now the pervert duo).
This group was hardly anything special, with them doing childish things like watching female sports to see bouncing breasts and the like—not that other boys didn't do that, but they were often caught gawking.
Because of that it was annoying and gross, but the girls often overlooked such childish behaviour.
At any rate, the pervert trio weren't really anything special till Kobayashi went too far, and during P.E. swim class, he faked drowning so he could go back to class and steal a girl's underwear.
After the underwear went missing, the girl was crying in class; it was then that Kobayashi realised what he had done.
To ease his guilt, he met the girl and returned back to her while apologising; however, he was so scared that she would report him to the student council, so he just lied and said he found it on the floor.
After school on a certain day, he went to her desk to talk to her.
"So um, Ayumi, I know you've been looking for your underwear; I'm with it. Wait, before you think I stole it, I saw it on the floor. So you see, as I was heading home yesterda—"
The moment he began to lie, the girl slapped him and walked away.
The scene was laid bare before the class, making the girls start to side against Kobayashi and start to blame the boys for not doing something to Kobayashi.
This created a rift between the girls and the boys; even someone like Ito was barely spared.
And because it was not a centralised problem, both parties started to lose Rp, causing everyone to slowly lose Rp.
So something had to be done, and something was done, just that it may have been better if it wasn't done.
You see, in Satou Gotou's faction, if you bring 120,000 Rp within one week of joining, then you'll get a wish.
So Honochi managed to convince some girls to give her money.
The wish Honochi asked for was for a way for someone like Kobayashi to be punished.
She wished for that because despite what he did, he went unpunished simply because there was no evidence because the underwear was kept in the girl's locker room—and while the school could punish him for entering the girl's locker room, there was no proof that he stole the underwear per se.
It was truly bullshit; however, Honochi was determined to help her classmate Ayumi get justice.
Satou happily helped them by making the new clause known as the selective accords.
It states that if 40 out of 50 students agree, they can bend any rule.
Honochi used this to her advantage and convinced the girls and some boys to join her.
In the end she managed to get the outcome she wanted. She used the clause to turn off the class's cameras for 30 minutes.
Of course not at once; she would spread out the time and use such time to her advantage.
She would use the time to bully Kobayashi, and for a time it brought peace to the class, and Ayumi, who was a straight Jane, became friends with Honochi—everyone made sure to keep Ito and Kagura out of it because they were too kind.
However, Honochi was extra careful to not pull off big stunts during class; she saved those for after school.
She would pour water on Kobayashi, feed him dirt and insects, push him around, destroy his notebooks, et cetera.
At first it was funny but eventually got out of hand; however, no one interfered because no one wanted to be seen helping an underwear thief and not be seen as the one that restarted the rift between boys and girls.
It would make your RP plummet, leading to you being broke or expelled.
So because of that, Kobayashi lost Rp alone, and it became a centralised problem, causing him to lose more and more Rp.
Of course I was one of the many people that watched silently. I expected Kobayashi to retaliate but I suppose considering his frail build, it wasn't a surprise, though I still expected him to do something.
He could have reported to a teacher because the main issue of the selective accords was that they were only useful till teachers were involved—that was the drawback that Satou added.
It meant that there were only a few things achievable with the selective accords, only two to be precise.
One was it could end group arguments, and two was turning off the cameras. Of course, it was only possible with Satou having to manually meet the surveillance team to make some deals.
This meant that if still caught by a teacher, it would still count as bullying.
However, Kobayashi still didn't report the action. It was completely nonsensical, though I still expected Ayumi to feel a bit of guilt and tell Honochi to stop, but she didn't. In fact, Ayumi joined Honochi's group.
At any rate I just silently observed until the day that Kobayashi got expelled.
He broke the rules of the special test that was essentially the final exam.
As he was leaving the school, I studied his face; I expected regret or something of the sort.
But what I saw could only be explained with one word.
Relief.
[There's supposed to be an illustration here, but I'm still broke. In the illustration we see the relief in Kobayashi's face when he leaves the class.]
***
Author's Note:
Anyway, remember to comment, share, and leave a review. Thanks for reading the chapter and see you in the next one.