Chapter 022: It's Truly Great Not to Be Assigned to Class D!
Although Hikigaya-kun had a bit of a mean streak, it was undeniable that even the most brilliant business battles are sometimes quite plain and unadorned.
During the following week:
After his high-profile visit to Class C, the students of Class A indeed heightened their vigilance.
Information from Ichinose's network also revealed that students from Class A had begun secretly monitoring Class C's situation. They seemed worried that Class B and Class C might form an alliance, making them extremely wary—as a result, they ended up witnessing the scenes of Class C's fighting violations.
Naturally, the clever ones among them took recordings.
As for Shibata-kun and Kanzaki-kun, they followed his instructions, continuously documenting the scenes of Class C students appearing over the next few days with bruised faces and gauze bandages.
Of course, there is a difficulty with cameras in Japan: surreptitious filming produces a shutter sound. But don't forget what kind of school this is.
Points can solve most problems.
By paying points, one can remove the camera's shutter sound.
And it only costs 5,000 points.
With the price being so low, it seemed the school did not oppose this kind of behavior from students.
Although he wondered what kind of students the school intended to cultivate, Hikigaya still unlocked this privilege for the four core members of Class B: Shibata, Kanzaki, Ichinose, and himself.
Yesterday, after lying in wait, Kanzaki-kun and the others finally captured a scene of Ryuen-kun persistently harassing a student named Albert in the restroom.
In the footage, Ryuen was being quite excessive, actually interfering with the other's use of the facilities to the point of giving him no peace, leading Albert to surrender directly to Ryuen. This Albert was a biracial student nearly 2 meters tall, extremely burly and capable in a fight.
His physical ability reached A+, putting him on the same level as Sudo from Class D, but with a greater advantage in raw strength.
In the original story, he was Ryuen's henchman.
After Albert submitted, Ryuen quickly teamed up with him to launch a group assault on the remaining boys in Class C, seemingly intending to use brute force to completely subjugate everyone.
Kanzaki and the others fulfilled their mission, finally capturing this crucial footage.
From this perspective, everything seemed ready; they only needed to wait for the one-month conduct assessment to end.
Two more days passed, and Ryuen appeared to have completely taken control of Class C. When students from other classes passed the Class C classroom, they found them to be exceptionally disciplined.
For example, no one put their feet on the desks anymore, and—even more significantly—everyone had to put their phones into a specially prepared bag upon entering the classroom, only retrieving them during lunch break or after school.
This effectively eliminated the act of checking or touching phones during class.
This level of self-discipline even had the potential to surpass that of the students in Class A and Class B.
Because they simply didn't have their phones available.
To some extent, Class C's transformation... was a bit terrifying.
During these two days, another event actually occurred.
Over in Class D, didn't Horikita obtain the truth of the school from Hikigaya?
The maximum price for this intel was 600,000 points, but Hikigaya gave her a discount, ultimately charging only 200,000.
Thus, she learned the essence of this school: meritocracy, class competition, and that each class's evaluation points are tied to everyone's living expenses for the next month.
However, those 200,000 points weren't paid by her; they were advanced by her brother.
So, having learned the truth early, did Horikita Suzune, the heroine of the original work, take any action?
Of course she did.
First, since the 200,000 points were advanced by her brother, Horikita Manabu, she felt useless and naturally wanted to pay him back.
Therefore:
During the homeroom period, she tried to recruit students in the class who wanted to know the truth, willing to sell it to them at a discounted price.
Her idea was simple: there are 40 students in the class, her brother had paid 200,000 points, so if split equally among 40 people, it would be 5,000 points each. Since she still had over 80,000 points herself, even if she also contributed 5,000, she could immediately gather the full 200,000 for her brother.
However, once the topic was raised, most students in the class were unwilling to pay those 5,000 points.
"You mean we'll find out the truth anyway after a month?"
"Then why spend money? Just wait."
"Besides, you're asking for an equal split the moment you open your mouth. Isn't this a 200,000-point bill you need to pay, Horikita-san? Why should we pay for it? This is a forced sale!"
It sounded somewhat logical, leaving Horikita momentarily speechless.
"Furthermore, since you already bought the news, is it so hard to tell us as classmates?"
"Didn't Chabashira-sensei say we should pick a class representative? You might as well take that position, Horikita-san."
Hearing this, Horikita quickly understood why the students of Class D were in Class D.
She instinctively looked toward Chabashira-sensei, but the teacher only shook her head.
Chabashira had long felt despair over the quality of this class.
One must realize that this year's Class A had pooled 1,000,000 points from the entire class on the very first day to buy information.
And while Class B only acted on the tenth day, they had obtained their own bargaining chips from Horikita Manabu, securing an early advantage. In contrast, Class D was not only lagging behind, but they were now unwilling to even split the cost for intel sold at a "shattered bone" price of 200,000 points.
A Class D like this simply couldn't compete with Classes A and B.
In fact, their initial 1,000 evaluation points were already down to less than one-third.
"Um, Horikita-san, I am personally willing to pay 20,000 points." However, Class D did have reliable students, such as the "nice guy" Hirata Yosuke, who had been mediating Class D's minor frictions since enrollment.
Seeing that Yamauchi and the others wanted to "freeload" the intel Horikita spent 200,000 on, he hurriedly tried to smooth things over.
"Yes, I'm willing to give 10,000 points too." Another student who served a mediating role, Kushida-san, also took the lead in responding. She smiled at Horikita after speaking, but Horikita remained expressionless, leaving Kushida-san feeling slightly awkward.
Perhaps with two very popular students leading the way, a few more students gradually agreed to pay. However, the others were certainly unwilling to give that much; the points offered ranged from 1,000 to 500 to 2,000.
Ultimately, about ten people participated in pooling the money.
As a result, Horikita Suzune had originally hoped to reimburse the full 200,000 points for the intel, but now she could only gather 50,000.
50,000 points wasn't much, but since it was information that would become invalid at the end of the month anyway, recovering even a little was better than nothing.
So, Horikita Suzune chose to reveal the truth of the school.
She also informed the class that a special exam had actually begun this month. However, she didn't have extra points to pay for the exam's content.
True, purchasing the truth of the school was her own decision, but information regarding this month's special exam was linked to the whole class.
However, upon learning that the school's advertised 100% advancement and employment rates only applied to Class A graduates:
"The school's advertising is fake!"
"But there are 160 freshmen; the school couldn't possibly fulfill it for everyone, right? Only giving the treatment to one class seems acceptable."
Indeed.
After knowing the truth, most students did not show expressions of being cheated.
Because they had already enjoyed the benefits of this school: free tuition, free housing, and plenty of living expenses!
As for the evaluations that Class A was the best and Class D represented inferior or "trash" students, they didn't care much.
After all...
"What? Our class's initial score is 1,000 points?"
"Living expenses are 1,000 points times 100? So we have 100,000 this month? Wow, that means next month we'll have at least several tens of thousands?"
As long as the living expenses didn't stop, there was no problem.
Of course, compared to these "salted fish," some people had a mental breakdown over being assigned to Class D and labeled as "trash."
For instance, a student named Matsushita Chiaki couldn't help but stand up.
Though she was quickly persuaded by her companions to sit back down.
But quite a few others showed dissatisfied expressions.
In other words, even if everyone in Class D knew they might be poor at academics, poor at sports, or even had various dark histories or were "problem children," they still did not accept being labeled as trash.
But...
Acceptance or not, someone eventually remembered when Horikita mentioned that the content of this month's special exam could also be purchased. When Chabashira appropriately stated that buying the first month's exam intel would now cost 400,000 points based on the timeline, most of the students in the class fell silent again.
Because...
400,000 points meant 10,000 points per person, which was even more expensive than the 200,000 Horikita had just proposed.
And some people had just given money to Horikita. Why did they have to pay again now?