Light Novel 2nd Year Volume 5/Summary

Summary

WARNING! This article contains information from the light novel.
Do not read beyond this point if you want to avoid being spoiled.

Below is the long summary of 2nd Year Volume 5 of the You-Zitsu light novel series.

Prologue

Sae Chabashira gives a monologue regarding about a certain repeated nightmare she has been having of a fateful day, and that no matter how many times and how different each time it's played out, the ending was always the same. She recounts the time when she was still a student of Advanced Nurturing High School. In her 3rd year, her Class B was gaining overwhelming momentum and was en route to become Class A, despite having lost 6 students. She was convinced they would graduate as Class A without losing anybody else. At the end of the third semester, a new special exam arrived, serving as their last chance to advance to Class A. The exam progressed smoothly until a certain motion was raised. The scene then switched to Chabashira hopelessly watching the class fell apart, while her best friend Chie Hoshinomiya angrily grabbed her by the collar. Chabashira then mentions a guy in the class that was an important and irreplaceable presence to her, and that their relationship ended right when it had just began.

Chapter 1

The summer break has ended and the second semester begins. Kiyotaka bumps into Sudō as they exit the dormitory. Sudō says he has been spending numerous nights studying for the second semester exams with some help from Suzune and is confident he can now at least maintain a B rating for his academic ability in the OAA app. Kiyotaka notes how Sudō has been improving not just his academic ability but also his behaviour in class. The both of them then starts talking about Ike and Shinohara who are now dating. Sudō goes on and asks whether Kiyotaka has had a girlfriend before. Kiyotaka did not expect the question, but confirms that he has been having one for some time. Sudō begins panicking and asks if it was Suzune. To his relief, Kiyotaka denies and assures him that it’s not her.

As Sudō wonders who it could be, Kei suddenly appears and complains to Kiyotaka that she wanted to walk with him to class together but he had already left. Sudō, oblivious to how she just referred to Kiyotaka by his first name, tells Kei to stop interrupting his conversation with Kiyotaka. Kiyotaka asks if Kei is planning to reveal their relationship on the day, with Kei saying she finds it difficult to actually reveal it. Kiyotaka mentions how she was quick to announce her relationship with Hirata, and Kei retorts that they were not the same scenario. Sudō, confused at this point, tries to ask before finally realising Kiyotaka and Kei were on a first-name basis. Kiyotaka simply tells Sudō they are dating, making the latter yell out in surprise which caught the attention of some other students. Sudō is understandably stunned and asks Kiyotaka if he's sure about this relationship. Sudō was still under the impression that Kei was unfaithful. He reminds Kiyotaka that she has dated Hirata and probably also fooled around in her middle school years. Kiyotaka responds by asking if he prefers it to be Horikita which Sudō vehemently rejects.

After arriving at school, Kiyotaka notices the 3rd-years’ stares as they are now watching him under Nagumo’s instruction. Chabashira arrives in the class and announces the events of the second semester. There will be a Sports Festival in October similar to the previous year, followed by the first Cultural Festival at the school in November, with planning starting from September. In addition, midterms and finals will also occur in-between. Chabashira then starts detailing the Cultural Festival, saying there will be a lot of guests. Each class will have to compete with all the other classes of all years for total sales at the festival. They can hold however many events they want within a budget.

Cultural Festival summary:

The number of private points that each 2nd year class can use to prepare for the festival is 5,000 points per person (5,500 points for 1st-years and 4,500 points for 3rd-years). These funds can be used freely.
Additional funds are available in exchange for social contributions through voluntary work in student councils, etc., and contributions from active participation in club activities, etc. Details will be reiterated in each class when they are finalized.
Unused funds will be taken away in order to prevent initial costs and additional funds from being reflected in final sales.
Classes in 1st through 4th place will receive 100 class points
Classes in 5th through 8th place will receive 50 class points
Classes in 9th through 12th place will not have a change in class points.

Chabashira also shows the areas where they can set up their stalls and their respective fees. Information on each class’ planning will be kept secret by the school until the day of the festival, and Chabashira warns the class to be careful with potential leaks from the students themselves. Each class can apply for permission to bring necessities from outside and they are free to use their budget in any way provided that it is within the bounds of the rules.

After classes ended, Class C starts discussing on preparing for the Cultural Festival. With 39 students, they have a budget of 195,000 points. Suzune proposed that they decide on a plan first and experiment with it using their own private points. Matsushita is concerned about those who will not contribute, but Suzune says if they win class points then they will gain extra private points as well, which will then be rewarded to the contributors. Suzune also stresses that they have to be careful to keep their plans a secret.

Fast forward 2 weeks later, in mid-September, preparations for both the Sports and Cultural Festivals have been occurring. Satō approaches Suzune and tells her that she has an idea for an event that will allow their class to win. Kiyotaka noted that all suggestions previously made to Suzune, with some even making her shortlist, lacked something conclusive. Satō asks Suzune to meet at the empty classroom in the special building in 30 minutes, then proceeds to ask Kiyotaka to be there as well before hastily leaving.

Later on, when both get there, they are greeted by Maezono who is guarding the place. Maezono asks them to be customers for their simulation. As they step inside, they are greeted by Satō, Mii-chan, and Matsushita in maid costumes. The classroom has been turned into a maid café called Maimai. After taking a seat and being handed a menu, Kiyotaka asks if this takes lots of time and money to prepare. Matsushita explains that it took 4 days and 13,200 points, with the three of them and Maezono sharing the costs. Suzune praises the project and asks for a detailed budget. She then calls it great, but also points out the additional costs needed, to which Satō assures that they can afford to raise prices. After carefully reviewing, Suzune asks if anyone else has known about the project, then tells them that she will handle the proposal, to the joy of the three girls. Kiyotaka is surprised Suzune actually bought into the idea, and she replies that it’s too powerful to pass and could actually win. Suzune then tells Kiyotaka to help out with the plan. Kiyotaka argues that Ike and Hondō are more suitable, but Suzune is worried that they are not careful enough. Despite his him obvious disinterests, she assigns him to take charge of running the café, before leaving to the student council.

On the way back, Kiyotaka meets Chabashira, who has also heard about the proposal and was going to check it out. Kiyotaka tells her that Suzune is positive about it and that he is also getting involved by being the manager, to Chabashira’s amusement. Chabashira thinks Suzune has made an interesting move and that he is fit for the role as sales are important, saying that he can now learn about other things besides schoolwork. Before leaving, she asks Kiyotaka to meet with her later and he accepts, sensing her seriousness.

Chapter 2

The next day, Chabashira came to the class with a stiff expression. She announces that there will be a special exam to be held before the Sports Festival, causing a commotion among the students. The exam is called Unanimous Vote Special Exam and will take place in the following day in 2nd year classes only. It is a simple exam whereby the entire class would vote on a multiple choice question again and again until they reach a consensus. The exam will be completed within the class itself, and there is no need to compete with any of their rival classes. The exam will start with the class receiving five motions from the school, and the contents of the motions will be the same for all classes to ensure there is no discrimination. Chabashira proceeds to give out an example:

You will lose five class points, but all members of the class will get 10,000 private points.

Option 1: Yes.
Option 2: No.

Chabashira explains that all students will vote on a secret ballot for one of the available choices, shown in their tablets. After thinking over the options, Kiyotaka decides to vote ‘yes’ to see how it plays out.

The results were: 3 votes for yes, 36 votes for no.

Chabashira says that due to the result not being unanimous, they will have to vote on it again. In the actual test, there will be a fixed interval of ten minutes between rounds of voting. During that time, they will be allowed to freely discuss their opinions. She then asks them to vote again as this is just an example, and Kiyotaka continues to vote ‘yes’.

The results this time were: 2 votes for yes, 37 votes for no.

Apart from Kiyotaka, Suzune has also voted ‘yes’. Chabashira says they will have another ten-minute interval before annother round of voting, and this pattern will be repeated until there are all 39 votes for one option. The unanimous decision will also be adopted to reality. Due to time constraint, Chabashira skips to the next example and adds that students are prohibited to discuss the motion before the first round of voting.

Example motion: One member of the class will receive one million private points. In case of unanimous assent, the student who will receive the points will be selected and voted on.

Option 1: Yes.
Option 2: No.

The results were: 39 votes for yes, 0 votes for no.

Chabashira says that there will be an interval for the students to discuss and pick a nominee. Each of them will have to choose a classmate listed on their tablet apart from themselves to nominate, and the list is randomly re-ordered every time to ensure anonymity. A student that is chosen by the majority of the class will be recognized as the subject and not be able to vote. Chabashira picks Ike as an example, then tells the rest of the class to vote on the motion:

Kanji Ike will receive one million private points.

The results were: 0 votes for yes, 38 votes for no.

As there is an unanimous result in opposition, Ike will be removed from the list and the class will have to nominate another student to vote on. Chabashira also warns that they will fail the test if they cannot pick a subject and reach a consensus before time runs out. If nobody receives majority nominations, then a student will be randomly selected as the subject to vote on.

Chabashira them moves on to the final example, this time with 4 options not limited to ‘yes’ or ‘no’:

The school has decided to add facilities to Keyaki Mall. Of the following, which do you prefer? (The school will pick the facility which receives the most votes from all the classes combined.)

Restaurant
General store
Recreational facilities
Hospital

Results of the first round were: 20 for Restaurant, 4 for General store, 15 for Recreational facilities, 0 for Hospital.

For this example they now have the ten-minute interval to discuss the options. Chabashira informs that when the interval ends, they will only have 60 seconds to vote and will be penalized for the excess time taken. If any student takes a total of 90 seconds of excess time before all five motions are done, they will be expelled.

Results of the second round were: 23 for Restaurant, 2 for General store, 14 for Recreational facilities, 0 for Hospital.

Chabashira ends the example and reveals that each class will have to reach a consensus on five motions within a five hour period, or they will receive a penalty of 300 class points. In contrast, clearing the exam in time will give them 50 class points. After showing a summary of the exam rules and procedures, Chabashira warns that it is strictly prohibited to make contracts or the like with others to restrict them to vote for only a specific option of a motion. It is also not allowed to exchange money to buy votes, or having someone outside the class to influence on their voting. Chabashira explains that while protection points were temporarily invalidated for this exam, expulsion could still be cancelled by paying 20 million private points. Kiyotaka monologues that right now the class does not have that many private points, so if an expulsion were to occur, it couldn’t be cancelled. The only person in the class with a protection point was Kōenji and he didn’t mind the rule at all. Additionally, Chabashira explains that the use of mobile phones was prohibited during the exam to prevent communications with people outside of the class.

During lunchtime, Hirata walked to the front of the class to address everyone and ask for their opinions. Kushida brings up the topic of the exam probably being difficult to achieve consensus in and Suzune agrees, saying that otherwise they wouldn’t make it a special exam. Kushida then proposes that they elect a class leader to make decisions in case the class’ opinions are divided. Hirata agrees and nominates Suzune as the leader. Kushida also supports Suzune’s leadership, saying that she has been a leader for the class countless times until now and would probably not be biased when making decisions. Kushida’s proposal was accepted by the class without any objections.

Kiyotaka invites Suzune into his room so they can discuss the special exam without any eavesdroppers. Kiyotaka asks her whether she already has an idea for how to pass this exam, which Suzune affirms by saying that the easiest method is to have a leader with the final say. As long as the leader’s decision is final, it won’t matter how many people object to the decision. Kiyotaka is skeptical about whether that would really work. Suzune agrees that there will be some students who will be hard to convince depending on the question and she wistfully muses that this would be easier if their class was a dictatorship like Ryūen’s. Kiyotaka again doesn’t think that will work since the fact that the votes are anonymous allows students to oppose Ryūen. Suzune argues that there’s no benefit to opposing Ryūen’s decision in this exam since if the time runs out while votes are unanimous, the class will lose 300 class points. Kiyotaka says if they were holding that assumption, then there would be no need to even plan out a strategy at all.

Kiyotaka then holds a thought experiment for Suzune. He asks what she would do if 38 students agree to one thing but one student opposes it. Suzune says she will try to convince that one student. Kiyotaka then asks what she will do if that student doesn’t give up. While Suzune is speechless, Kiyotaka says that the majority will not always win and there’s the possibility that while they’re trying to convince that one student, some of the 38 students may be swayed to the other side. Suzune feels a little restless at how easily Kiyotaka is giving his opinions and advice to her. He retorts that it isn’t really advice since she probably should have already thought of the possibility of these things happening. Suzune then finishes off the meeting by asking Kiyotaka to always vote differently for the first vote of every question so that they will always be able to use the break interval to discuss their ideas. Kiyotaka agrees that this will avoid the risk of everyone being blinded by biases and unanimously voting for something which they can’t revoke, however, he warns her that there’s the possibility of an originally unanimous vote becoming fragmented after discussion.

He also warns her that since it’s an unanimous vote, they will never know for certain which individuals voted for which choice since people can lie. Suzune questions him on what he means and he replies that the class isn’t unified. Suzune picks up on the underlying meaning and asks if he’s referring to Kōenji and Kushida. Kiyotaka says that Kushida is willing to lie to their faces whilst Kōenji is the type of person who can shamelessly oppose the class’ decision. Once again, Suzune feels a sense of incongruence since Kiyotaka has never been this cooperative with her before. When she questions him on it, Kiyotaka replies that he determined that the current Suzune would value his opinion and understand him. She once again says that she feels restless from how different he’s acting compared to usual. Suzune’s mobile phone then receives a call and she excuses herself to reply, saying “Please let me text her back. If I handle this poorly, there’s a chance she’ll leave me on read forever.” Kiyotaka is a bit curious about who this person is but after Suzune spends two minutes writing a long text message, she says that she already said everything she needed to say and leaves.

Later that evening, Hirata and Kei visit Kiyotaka’s room. Kiyotaka explains that he gathered them together because he wanted to make some preparations for the special exam. Kiyotaka says that there will likely be some topics which will cause conflict between students with different ideologies. He gives an example question: “You are only allowed to eat either rice or bread until you graduate. Choose one.”

Hirata and Kei laughs a bit at the ridiculousness of the question. Kei says that she would choose bread because she can’t imagine going without bread all the way until graduation. On the other hand, Hirata chooses rice. Kiyotaka also says that he would choose rice but uses this to prove that it could be difficult to make all 30 people in the class’ decisions unanimous, since everyone has different personal tastes. He asks Kei whether she would follow the majority opinion if 30 people voted for rice. She says that would be impossible since she can’t go without bread and would continue voting for bread. Kiyotaka then gives his second example: “What if there were a question asking to choose whether all future exams will be judged on academic ability or physical ability?”

It’s clear that students like Sudō would vote for physical ability whilst students with poor physical ability would choose academics. Kiyotaka thinks that the current Sudō would probably be able to compromise since he’s putting all his effort into studying, but there will always be students who are poor academically and wouldn’t be able to do the same. Kiyotaka then asks Hirata and Kei to try to influence the class votes during the exam to try to make sure there will be as few disputes as possible. Hirata says he’s fine with doing that but asks why he didn’t invite Suzune to the discussion since Suzune was also in the role of a class leader. Kiyotaka then tells them that he’s going to be secretly acting as Suzune’s support from the shadows, and tells them not to tell anyone else. Kei then shows disgust at the idea of following Suzune’s orders. Kiyotaka says that the two of them are good at reading the mood in the classroom so he wants them to predict Suzune’s thought patterns and try to match her opinion. Hirata and Kei agree so he then teaches some signals to them to serve as a cue for how to act in certain situations. Finally, he warns Hirata that if the remaining exam time was less than 2 hours, there’s a possibility he will take a forceful approach to clear the exam. He wants Hirata to be prepared so that he won’t go on a rampage when that happens.

Later that night at 10 PM, Kiyotaka receives a phone call while he was lying in his blankets and browsing his phone. While he hadn’t registered the number on his contacts list, it was a number which he was familiar with. The caller was Chairman Sakayanagi who called to tell him that he’ll be providing assistance to Kiyotaka from now on. Both of them comment on the strangeness of Acting Director Tsukishiro’s actions and believe that he wasn’t being completely serious about expelling Kiyotaka. Chairman Sakayanagi tells him that he tried to stop the upcoming cultural festival where government officials will be invited, but he was unable to since work on it had already begun. Kiyotaka tells him that he doesn’t need to apologise since it was something that all the students were looking forwards to.

Although he does mentally note that he’s skeptical whether it will just end as a normal ‘cultural festival’ for him. Chairman Sakayanagi tells him that in the October sports festival, in preparation for the cultural festival, several guests will be invited to come watch. Again, Sakayanagi says he was unable to stop this, since originally, sports festivals were supposed to be an event where parents came to watch their children compete. He says that since all the guests will be chosen by his superiors, there’s a possibility that Kiyotaka’s father might be involved. He proposes to assign security guards to Kiyotaka, who politely declines since he doesn’t want to stand out. Chairman Sakayanagi says that he has come to understand that Kiyotaka is a person who is capable of taking care of many things by himself. However, he thinks he will have a lot of regrets if Kiyotaka were to be expelled. So he asks Kiyotaka to refrain from attending the sports festival. He wants Kiyotaka to stay cooped up in his dorm room on the day with the excuse of being sick while Chairman Sakayanagi places a trustworthy bodyguard outside the dorms.

Kiyotaka was grateful for his consideration but from the moment he heard the proposal, he felt like declining. However, he suddenly thought of a new idea and asked to be given some time to think it over. Chairman Sakayanagi accepts but tells Kiyotaka to give his answer at least one week before the sports festival since time will also be required to make preparations.

A few hours earlier in the day, after school, Kushida met up with Yagami in his dorm room. Yagami had prepared tea for her but Kushida didn’t reach out for it. Yagami jokingly tells her that he didn’t drug or poison it. With an irritated expression, Kushida hands over her mobile phone and tells him to get on with it. On the mobile phone was a recording of Chabashira’s explanation of the rules of the exam, including all the examples that were given. After listening to the recording, Yagami says that at first glance it appears to be a very easy exam. Since the penalties for failing are severe, students will naturally want to vote unanimously to clear it. He taunts Kushida saying that even though she’s been trying to expel Kiyotaka and Suzune for so long now, it’s already the middle of their 2nd year and she still hasn’t had any success. Kushida says that she personally thinks he is partially responsible for that but bringing that up now would just be a waste of time so she urges him to continue.

Here it’s revealed that Yagami was the one who told Kushida to propose the ‘everyone listens to the leader’ strategy. When Kushida asks if there was a method to expel Suzune using this exam, Yagami laughs and says that after listening to the recording, he confirmed his theory that they could use this exam to expel her. Kushida asks him how he came to that conclusion after listening to the rules since the only way to expel someone is if they didn’t vote within the allocated time. Yagami says that if his predictions are right, there will be an alternative method to expel a student and Kushida could potentially guide the discussion in the direction of expelling Suzune or Kiyotaka. He then tells Kushida about the kind of questions he predicts will show up in this exam. While he hadn’t been told this information by Tsukishiro, he was able to predict the possibility of it happening from the information gathered.

Kushida is skeptical about her own ability to execute the strategy but Yagami says that he trusts in Kushida’s ability because he actually laid down a test the very first time he met Kushida. He says that usually if a stranger talks to you, you would be suspicious of them, but Kushida improvised very well in getting close to him and probing him for what information he knew. From that instance onwards, he knew that Kushida was a capable/talented person. Kushida demands to know who he is, since he knew her past despite not being from the same middle school. Yagami tells her to think of him as a special guest who was invited to this school to play with Kiyotaka. Kushida asks him what would have happened if she hadn’t responded to him in the manner he predicted. Yagami replies that it would have probably provoked Kiyotaka’s suspicion and there was a possibility they could have their faceoff earlier.

Kushida suspects whether Yagami was from the same middle school as Kiyotaka but Yagami dodges her question and tells her to focus on the upcoming special exam instead. Kushida says she understands and will give his strategy a try if Yagami’s predicted questions show up. But as Kushida tries to leave, Yagami stands up and grabs her shoulders. She tries to escape but was unable to move at all as he was much stronger than she imagined. Yagami says that her determination is too weak. He says that it’s incredibly difficult to expel your own classmates at this school and that this is a one in a thousand chance that she can’t let slip.

Kushida says she understands but says that if she tries too hard, she may risk putting herself in danger. Yagami says that she needs to have at least enough determination to put her own safety on the line if she wants the plan to succeed. Otherwise she will never be able to expel either of her targets. He urges Kushida to make a decision of her own free will because if he goes any further it would count as blackmail which is against the exam rules. She responds to him with the determination to expel Suzune and Kiyotaka. In her mind, she also thinks that she must expel Yagami.

Chapter 3

Chabashira is woken up by her alarm clock and tries to reach out to stop the alarm but accidentally sweeps it off her bedside table. She had only gotten 2 hours of sleep last night. Picking up her alarm clock, she apologises for treating it roughly. She stands in front of her bathroom mirror and realises that she looked terrible with dark circles under her eyes because she had been having difficulty sleeping the past few nights. After washing her face, she covered up her condition with makeup so that her students wouldn’t be worried. Chabashira had always known that someday would come when she would have to confront her past. She reassures herself by saying that this was no longer her battleground and that her current class should be able to clear this obstacle without any problems.

Since a special exam was to be held today, a meeting was held with all the teachers present. A teacher named Ikari warned the other teachers that they were forbidden from interfering with their class’ decisions regardless of how much they wanted to protect their students. Hoshinomiya asks why the teachers weren’t reassigned to look after other classes in order to avoid the possibility of interference. Sakagami muses that it was because the school trusted them to uphold a standard of fairness. However, Hoshinomiya was unconvinced and theorises that since this exam will exposes the darkest depths of every student’s heart, the school didn’t want the information leaking to teachers of other classes. Ikari expresses her annoyance at Hoshinomiya and then continues her explanation.

She says that a supervising teacher will be placed in every classroom, and if any of the teachers were deemed to have provided advice to their classes, they would first be warned and then any repeat offences would result in a salary deduction and in the worst case scenario a demotion. Afterwards, Chabashira tried to act normally but lost track of time, and by the time she noticed it was already lunchtime. She had left her lunch half-eaten. Finally, the bell rang for the afternoon classes which also signalled the start of the exam. She passed by Hoshinomiya who provokes her by asking if she was having difficulty sleeping while thinking about the exam. Chabashira replies that she didn’t care about whether or not her current class passed their exam. Hoshinomiya says that she’s lying and then reminds her that she doesn’t have any right to aim for Class A. On the rest of the way to the classroom, Chabashira was unable to look up from the ground.

Kiyotaka returned to the classroom after lunchtime, five minutes before the start of the exam. He was instructed to sit in a designated seat different from the seat he usually sat in. Satō was sitting to his right and Onizuka was sitting in front of him. Ike nonchalantly asked Shinohara if she wanted to go on a date at Keyaki Mall if the exam finished in 1-2 hours, to which Shinohara replied that she wanted to get some studying done first but would be happy to go in the evening. Chabashira first collects all the students’ communication devices. As Kiyotaka was thinking about the various strict rules put in place to ensure that students wouldn’t know what everyone else voted for, he notices Haruka pushing Airi towards him.

Airi asked him for some of his time after school, saying that she wanted to consult him about the upcoming cultural festival. While standing behind Airi, Haruka was putting pressure on Kiyotaka with her eyes. Kiyotaka agreed, saying he also planned on talking to her sooner or later. As soon as she got his agreement, Airi quickly returned to her seat as if to run away. Haruka says that whilst Airi’s wounds haven’t completely healed, she was looking ahead to the future. But she also warns that whether or not Airi will accept Kiyotaka’s request will depend on Kiyotaka’s own attempts to convince her.

Before the exam, Chabashira warns that they will only have a maximum of four bathroom breaks over the course of this exam. These can only be held in the 10 minute interval breaks and the timer will continue counting down during these bathroom breaks. Everyone had already gone to the bathroom before the exam and no one was absent due to being sick. However, while everyone was waiting for Chabashira to start the exam, she only dazedly stared at her class. She only finally began the test after being warned by the supervising teacher.

The first question was to choose the class to face in the end of year exam held in the third term. The subtext stated that even if there was a change in class rankings, the choices are referring to the current rankings at the time of selection. In the case that the desired matchups were not the same amongst the classes, the school would randomly decide the matchups. The class points given for winning against each class were detailed as following:

Class A: 100 points
Class B: 50 points
Class D: 0 points

E.g. if Suzune and Honami’s class both selected Arisu’s class as their opponent, then Arisu’s selection would determine who they face. But if Arisu chose Ryūen’s class and Ryūen chose a different class, then everything will be randomised by the school. Since Kiyotaka had already agreed with Suzune that he would select the first option whilst Suzune would select the second option, he selected Class A whilst Suzune selected Class B.

The results of the first vote were: 5 votes for Class A, 21 votes for Class B and 13 votes for Class D.

Suzune speaks up and gives her opinion that they should choose Class B because it would result in a fair battle without any dirty tricks. Furthermore, Class B had been on a downward trend and were now almost level on class points with Class C and D, making them no more difficult an opponent than Ryūen’s class. Before any dissenting opinions could be spoken, Hirata and Kei immediately spoke out in support of Suzune’s opinion. Hirata said that whilst there was a sizable reward for defeating Arisu’s class, they were also the most difficult opponent. Kei also said that beating Ryūen’s class didn’t sound very rewarding and there would be no point if they lost to Arisu’s class. The second vote was unanimously in favour of facing Class B. Kiyotaka thinks that there is a strong possibility all three classes would choose Class B since they were the obvious easiest opponent so Honami’s choice would likely determine the matchups. Kiyotaka prays that Honami will choose Suzune’s class.

The second question asks the class about where they want to go for the school trip. The choices are:

Hokkaido
Kyoto
Okinawa

Chabashira says that this vote does not guarantee they will be able to go their selected destination. It will also depend on the other classes’ choices. The results of the first vote are: 17 votes for Hokkaido, 3 votes for Kyoto, 19 votes for Okinawa.

As soon as Chabashira announced the beginning of the break interval, Hondō started laughing and mocking the special exam for being a piece of cake. A lot of other students also relaxed after realising how easy the exam was. However, several students such as Hirata and Suzune were still being cautious as they didn’t think the questions would continue being this easy all the way until the end. Hirata called for the class’ attention and told them to focus on the task at hand. Kushida asked whether Suzune had any advice for how to vote for this question. Suzune was lost in thought and after a bit of prompting, she apologised and said that it might be a bit difficult to reach unanimity for this question. Kiyotaka thought the same thing, since something like this was a matter of personal taste and not something which Suzune could decide by abusing her title of class leader. Suzune decides to start by collecting the class’ opinions. Sudō starts by saying he voted for Okinawa and he thinks they should go for Okinawa since it had the most votes. Maezono retorts that the difference in votes is too small to make a significant difference and asks the rest of the class whether they’d like to ski. Other voices in the class also start arguing amongst each other.

After a few minutes of arguing, Hirata interjected and said that while it was fine for people to vouch for their own preferences, it wasn’t nice to discredit other people’s choices. But on the contrary, he put himself in the firing line and his classmates started demanding to know what he picked. Hirata decided to keep his choice a secret. Afterwards, Sudō and Maezono continued arguing with Sudō saying that Okinawa is the only place where they can still swim in November whilst Maezono says she’s had enough of swimming after the uninhabited island exam. Kushida asks Suzune about how she plans on resolving this situation and Suzune is at a bit of a loss. Just like that, the break interval came to an end and it was time for the second vote. This time, Kiyotaka decided to switch his vote to Kyoto because it was a place with a remarkable history and he had never been there before. The results for the second vote were: 18 votes for Hokkaido, 4 votes for Kyoto and 17 votes for Okinawa.

Maezono celebrates Hokkaido’s comeback win while Sudō demands to know who changed sides from Okinawa to Hokkaido. Both sides once again started arguing. Kiyotaka was sad that Kyoto was not being considered at all. Since Suzune was forced to choose option 2 Kyoto the first time around, he thinks it’s possible that she continued voting for Kyoto this time as well. He also thinks that there was the option of going with the majority, but doing it now would definitely leave a grudge since Okinawa won the first round. Suzune decides to choose the winner by playing rock, paper, scissors. She tells the Hokkaido faction and Okinawa faction to each elect 3 participants while the Kyoto faction is represented by a single participant. By using fair rules, Suzune was trying to disperse the class’ dissatisfaction. After a brief discussion about who to nominate as the candidates, the teams were decided as:

Hokkaido team: Maezono, Ishikura, Shinohara.
Okinawa team: Onodera, Hondō, Sudō.

When Suzune called out for a Kyoto representative, Keisei raised his hand and said he will definitely bring everyone to Kyoto. It was the first time anyone had named themselves as part of the Kyoto faction. Kiyotaka also prayed for Keisei’s victory.

In the first round, Maezono and Keisei used paper whilst Onodera used scissors. The Kyoto factions dreams were ruined within 10 seconds. As Kiyotaka saw Suzune place her hand to her forehead and sigh, he was convinced that she was also part of the Kyoto faction. Onodera then continued on to defeat Ishikura as well, leaving the Hokkaido faction with their final representative. Shinohara then defeated Onodera and Hondō. In the end, Shinohara defeated Sudō as well for a come from behind victory. Sudō gets flamed by his classmates who wanted to go to Okinawa.

As a result, the 3rd vote ended up being: 39 votes for Hokkaido, 0 votes for Kyoto and 0 votes for Okinawa.

Kiyotaka is slightly disappointed that Kyoto didn’t win but he’s also looking forward to Hokkaido and there was still the possibility that Okinawa or Kyoto could win in the other classes. The third question was:

Option 1: For half a year, in exchange for all private points received by all students per month becoming zero, 3 random students will each be given a protection point.
Option 2: For half a year, in exchange for all private points received by all students per month being halved, choose 1 student to give a protection point to.
Option 3: For half a year, the bottom 5 students in the next written exam will receive 0 private points.

Chabashira warns the class that if they chose option 2, there must be an unanimous decision over who to give the protection point to. The results of the first vote are: 12 votes for option 1, 5 votes for option 2 and 22 votes for option 3.

The majority of the class who have confidence they wouldn’t be in the bottom 5, chose the option to abandon protection points in exchange for not receiving any damage to their own private point income. They preferred to sacrifice the 5 students with the lowest grades. Satō and Ike objected to the choice to sacrifice only five people. Sudō tells Ike to sacrifice his private points, as there's a low chance he would get the protection point anyway. When Ike protests saying that he needs private points, Sudō retorts that he’s probably just going to be spending it on dates with Shinohara. Sudō tries to end the discussion like that but Ike continues to protest. When Sudō tells him to just study hard, Ike says he doesn’t want to hear Sudō saying that to him.

Suzune says that they don’t need to think so pessimistically. The rest of the class can just make up for the loss of the five people. Each person would only be down by 6500 private points per month. Sudō begrudgingly agrees although he says he doesn’t mind if they don’t share the points.

With that discussion over, the class’ opinions started moving towards the no protection point option. But at that timing, Hirata interrupts and asks for Suzune’s opinion on what would be best for the class. She thinks that it’s a difficult choice because protection points are a very useful tool to prevent expulsions, but at the same time, private points were also very valuable. She asks Hirata for his opinion and he says that he thinks they should choose the option to get protection points for three people. Suzune objects because she thinks that not having private points may have a greater influence beyond just their day to day lifestyle, since it may even influence future special exams. From Hirata’s perspective, the existence of his classmates was priceless.

Option 1 would allow him to provide protection for three of those classmates from expulsion. But as the two of them are arguing, Keisei interrupts and gives his opinion. He does some maths based on the class point trajectory and says that the class would actually stand to lose even more private points over the following 6 months if they chose option 1. Kushida sums up the situation as choosing private points would be an offensive strategy whilst choosing protection points would be a defensive strategy. Kushida says if they weren’t able to use the protection points, it would just be an expensive purchase but then adds that she doesn’t mind even if that were to be the case. Keisei says that there are alternative uses for protection points such as using it in a suicide bombing strategy.

Suzune then asks Keisei to confirm which strategy he is supporting. He says that he actually supports option 2. When Suzune asks if he wants the protection point for himself, he says that he would be happy but he doesn’t think it’s realistic. He vouches for giving the protection point to Suzune who will have to compete against the likes of Ryūen and Arisu in the future as the class leader. He says that she has a strong track record and a high OAA so there will be less objections from the class, and by having a protection point, she will not need to be afraid of Ryūen or Arisu aiming directly at her. Hondō says he understands Keisei’s point but it a little dissatisfied since he thinks it’s an expensive price to pay. Keisei says that this is an investment for the future since Suzune will help them earn more class points than what they pay with option 2. Suzune herself warns him that he perhaps has too much confidence in her and that she can’t guarantee that his investment will work out. Keisei replies that he doesn’t think they can beat Class A without taking any risks. Surprisingly, Kōenji supports Keisei’s proposal to give Suzune a protection point.

The results of the second vote were: 0 votes for option 1, 39 votes for option 2, 0 votes for option 3.

After nominating Suzune as the candidate to receive the protection point, the vote was 39 votes in favour. The fourth question was:

In the next written exam, choose for one of the following options to be applied:

Option 1: Higher difficulty
Option 2: Larger penalties
Option 3: Lower rewards

The results of the first vote were: 6 votes for increasing difficulty, 18 votes for increasing penalties and 15 votes for lowering rewards.

Afterwards, there was a fiery argument between the students who were good academically and those who weren’t, but on the second vote, the class ended up unanimously voting for increasing penalties after Suzune said that increasing penalties wouldn’t have any consequences if everyone just took their studies seriously. After only 1 hour of the exam, the class had finally arrived at the last question. There were many students who were almost prematurely celebrating clearing the exam and almost everyone in the room was certain that they were only one step away from getting the 50 class points clearance reward. But there was only one point of concern. As they had sequentially progressed through the different tasks, their homeroom teacher Chabashira’s complexion had gradually paled and it was clear that something wasn’t right. Hirata asked her if she was feeling okay but Chabashira reassured him that she was fine. She didn’t even seem to notice her own complexion.

The last question which was displayed on the tablet was:

Will you expel a classmate to earn 100 class points?

Option 1: Yes.
Option 2: No.

(If the vote is unanimously for yes, nominate and vote for a classmate to expel.)

Kiyotaka thinks that if this exam were held in the last term of their 3rd year, there may be students who choose the option to expel a classmate, but at the current moment in time, there shouldn’t be any students who were that desperate. Kiyotaka’s agreement with Suzune was to vote for the first option every time. However, he determined that rather than giving the opportunity of a break interval to change his classmates’ minds, it would be better if he just voted for the second option to pass the motion in one go. He determined that this was a question which they should quickly move on from without giving it any opportunity to go pear-shaped.

The results of the first vote were: 2 votes for yes, 37 votes for no.

Usually Chabashira would call out the results of the vote. But this time around, she just stared dazedly at the results displayed on the monitor like the rest of her students. Kiyotaka realises that this was the question which Chabashira was so concerned about.

The supervising teacher called for Chabashira to continue with the exam which woke her from her daze as she started announcing the results. As soon as she finishes speaking, Sudō immediately starts demanding to know who voted yes, all while directing his gaze at Kōenji. After no one replies, he starts demanding to know which choice Kōenji voted for. Kōenji refuses to answer and says that ‘Suzune girl’ allowed every student to pick any option in the first vote for each question. Ike ignored Kōenji and demanded to know who the other yes vote was, choosing to focus on that instead. Suzune tells them not to panic and reveals that she had told Kiyotaka to always vote for the first option on the first vote so that their votes would be split. Suzune then speaks to the whole class and says that she doesn’t think it’s wrong to want to prioritise class points. But she thinks this is a question where the class should all vote ‘no’. She urges the person who voted ‘yes’ to reveal themselves and give their reasoning as to why they voted ‘yes’. However, everyone in the class held their silence.

Sudō asks Kōenji for how long he plans to stay silent for. Kōenji tells him to not just straight up assume that he voted for yes but Sudō doesn’t believe him. Suzune tells Sudō to calm down since it was still only the first vote. She says that they had no confirmation that it was Kōenji who cast the vote and she thinks the fact that no one revealed themselves as voting ‘yes’ means that they felt bad for choosing that option. She optimistically believes that everyone would unanimously select ‘no’ in the second vote. They moved on to the second vote.

The results were: 2 votes for yes, 37 votes for no.

Until this moment, there had been no tension in this special exam. But the mood in the class had clearly worsened since the results meant that even after hearing everything earlier, there were still 2 people who decided to vote to expel. Suzune immediately questioned Kiyotaka as the most likely culprit. Other students such as Sudō also followed her gaze. Kiyotaka reveals that he had voted ‘no’ for both the first and second votes. He tells his classmates that he didn’t follow the plan because he didn’t think there was any discussion worth having with the exam question being what it was. He also didn’t speak out after the first vote because he didn’t want to cause any unnecessary confusion or distress. Suzune thinks for a moment then asks the people who voted yes to please explain why they chose that option if they intend to continue voting that way. Since there were 37 people opposing that decision, Suzune wanted them to present a reasonable argument to convince their classmates.

Kushida asks Suzune in a worried tone about whether they’ll be okay. Suzune once again reaffirms that her policy was to not expel anybody. Hirata speaks out and addresses the people who voted ‘yes’. He says that he even if they were to get 500 or 1000 class points, it wouldn’t be worth expelling one student for it. He says that it’s easy to earn back a measly 100 class points. Kōenji starts laughing and says that this special exam was getting interesting. He says that he thought that everyone other than him would vote ‘no’ in the second vote, thus revealing that he indeed voted yes. Suzune asks him to confirm because it would only cause extra confusion if he was the boy who cried wolf.

Kōenji reassures her by saying he voted ‘yes’ both the first and second times. When Suzune asks him for his reasoning, he says that the reason is simple since with 100 extra class points, he would get more private points every month. Hence he can’t see any merits for voting ‘no’. When Sudō asks him if he thinks class points are more important than his comrades in arms, Kōenji burns him by saying that he didn’t see Sudō as being the type of person to treasure friends back when they first enrolled at this school. When Sudō gets angry again, Kōenji replies that he’s never seen any of them as his comrades. When Suzune asks Kōenji if he plans to continue voting yes, he confirms that’s his intention. Sudō rages and tells Suzune to just order everyone to expel Kōenji. However, Kōenji uses his deal with Suzune as a shield and says that she will protect him from expulsion. He says that a leader who takes back their promises is unable to earn the trust of their classmates. Suzune agrees with him and says that she can’t expel Kōenji. Suzune asks for some time to think of a solution and instead asks the other student who voted yes to also come out and reveal themselves. Once again, silence ensues. The break interval ended and the class voted for the third time.

The results of the third vote were: 2 votes for yes, 37 votes for no.

Suzune calls out to Kōenji and the anonymous student voting ‘yes’, saying that she and the other 36 classmates will continue to vote ‘no’ while the two of them vote ‘yes’. If that happens and time runs out, it will only be the worst case scenario of the class running out of time and losing 300 class points. She says that the ‘no’ faction are prepared to wait it out and protect their classmates even at the cost of those 300 class points. But the ‘yes’ faction would not only lose the only benefit of voting ‘yes’, but they would receive an even greater loss. Kōenji agrees that this would be the result. Hence, he urges Suzune to hurry up and vote ‘yes’ before that happens. Suzune says that the aftermath of voting ‘yes’ would be the even greater hurdle of choosing one of their classmates to expel. She says that would be an even more difficult task to reach unanimity in, but Kōenji says he doesn’t care since that’s Suzune’s job. He also adds that he doesn’t think it’s a demerit to expel one of their classmates. He says that they can freely delete one of the classmates who are dragging the class down and even get class points for doing that. He says if they change their mindset slightly, it should be obvious how fantastic of an option it is.

Hirata disagrees with Kōenji and says he doesn’t think expelling one of their classmates is a positive. Kushida also followed up and said that she thinks they should prioritise their classmates. As if the walls of a dam had broke, all the other classmates who had been silent up until now also started arguing in favour of not expelling anyone. However, Kōenji did not respond to any of their arguments and eventually, it was time for the fourth vote.

The results of the fourth vote were: 2 votes yes, 37 votes no.

Sudō angrily asks if he can just sock Kōenji and knock him unconscious and force him to vote ‘no’. Suzune decides to change the focus of the discussion to what the other classes would choose. Sudō thinks Ryūen’s class will definitely get rid of the person who he thinks is most appropriate to expel. Many of their classmates seemed to agree with his opinion. Suzune also thinks Honami’s class would definitely vote ‘no’. Arisu’s class could potentially vote for either option. Sudō says he doesn’t want to be overtaken by Ryūen’s class, especially since they currently had a lot of momentum. Suzune agreed but said that even if they were overtaken, the difference was only 100 class points. Akito interjects and reminds the class that someday they could potentially cry and regret not taking these 100 class points. When asked to clarify his position, he states that he’s definitely in the ‘no’ faction, however, he asks the class what they would choose if this exam was held at a time close to their graduation. He tells Kōenji that he acknowledges the contribution he made in the recent island exam. He thinks that even without the promise to Suzune, he wouldn’t want Kōenji to be expelled. But he doesn’t think that gives him the right to be a nuisance to the class. Kōenji mocks him for not understanding how this school works and says that everything revolves around and that things such as friendship and camaraderie don’t matter. After another scuffle with Sudō, Kōenji says that the thing which was important to him wasn’t these class points.

Suzune realises that Kōenji values the private points which would be gained each month by earning those 100 class points. Kōenji says that even while holding back his tears, he agreed earlier to cut his private points income in half because Suzune’s presence at the school was necessary to protect him from their classmates. However, this time around, he had no incentive to choose option 2. Suzune proposes a deal with Kōenji to transfer him 10,000 private point every month until graduation to offset this loss in exchange for changing his vote to ‘no’. But she clarifies that this condition will only hold if the class ends up voting ‘no’. Kōenji agrees to her proposal. Kiyotaka thinks that Kōenji switching sides would usually mean the one remaining anonymous person would also switch their vote to avoid the pressure of being the only person in opposition.

But at the end of the 5th round of voting the results were: 1 vote for yes, 38 votes for no.

Kiyotaka thinks that the real battle will be uncovering this anonymous voter. The school had already taken countermeasures against attempts at watching the position of people’s fingers by randomising the position of the choices. While Suzune is thinking, Kiyotaka coughed twice, sending a signal to Kei and Hirata. Kei spoke up and asked Suzune if she perhaps had an idea of who was still continuing to vote ‘yes’. Until now, Suzune would have ignored such a statement if it was said by Kei, but since Kei was now openly dating Kiyotaka, she understood the hidden meaning behind it. She agrees but says that she doesn’t plan on naming that person yet because the damage caused would be very significant if she were to be wrong. But she says that if this person continues to vote yes, she would have no choice but to force her hand. Hirata objects and says that they shouldn’t recklessly name people in this exam because there’s no way of confirming whether they’re actually the culprit voting ‘yes’. Kushida also agrees with Hirata and says that she thinks it isn’t a good idea to name a student without evidence.

Suzune says she understands their feelings and doesn’t want to do it either. But she says she will have no choice if they’re running out of time. Hirata says he understands and says that he’s also a changed man. He says he will be ready to make the necessary choices if need be, but he wants to make sure they get it right. Kiyotaka then interrupts and asks whether there are any students other than Suzune who have an idea of who the culprit is. Nobody else in the class raises their hand. He then asks Hirata since he is close to many people and has many friends, but again, Hirata doesn’t know. He then proceeds to ask Kushida who coolly answers him without showing any hint of being agitated by the sudden question. On the contrary, Suzune looked shaken and glared at him as if to ask him what he was trying to do. Kiyotaka directs the class’ attention to Kushida by saying that she was the most familiar with everyone in the class and was relied upon by almost everyone. He asks her to speak out if she had heard of anybody’s complaints. Kushida says she can’t think of anything but promises to tell him if something comes up in the future.

The result of the sixth round of voting is then: One vote for yes, 38 votes for no.

The result remained the same and the same discussions repeated themselves again.

7th vote results: One vote for yes, 38 votes for no.

8th vote results: One vote for yes, 38 votes for no.

The result continued to remain the same and the classroom became silent. In the midst of that, Chabashira collapsed against the podium and started breathing heavily. She adjusted her posture and stood back up but continued looking at the class with hollow eyes. Eventually she speaks up and says that while teachers are not allowed to provide guidance, she would like them to listen to a story about her past. The supervising teacher warns her against influencing the students’ opinions, but Chabashira replies that she is speaking with the resolve to be punished if she is deemed to have broken the rules. Suzune welcomes her story since they are currently at a standstill.

Chabashira reveals that she was also a student who graduated from Advanced Nurturing High School and she once took this exact same exam. She says that the most important part is to make a choice which they will not regret. The supervising teacher listened to Chabashira talk without interrupting or saying there was a rule violation. Chabashira was just barely skirting the boundary of the rules.

Suzune calls out and says that it’s almost time for her to come to a decision. But she first wants to reassure the person in question that she is not their enemy. Without naming this individual, Suzune continued to appeal to them that she was on their side.

9th vote results: One vote for yes, 38 for no.

Both Kiyotaka and Suzune knew that rather than the 100 Class Points, this individual was clinging on to the ‘ability to expel a classmate. There was no doubt that this individual would continue voting to expel, but there was no method to confirm their choice. Suzune had said she would name that individual when time was close to running out, but irrespective of how many times the class voted, Suzune didn’t name that individual. She knew that if she named that person, she would lose any hope of them cooperating with her in the future.

Chapter 4

Every teacher was confident that Honami’s class would successfully clear the exam, but at the same time, they were also worried that with this choice, the class would no longer be able to compete for Class A in the future. Honami’s classmates had finished the prior questions quickly and had just submitted their first round of votes for the last question. Kanzaki was the only one out of the 40 students who was nervous, as he prayed for a result where the votes were split as evenly as possible. Hoshinomiya looked at the results on her tablet before announcing them in a resigned tone of disappointment.

One vote for yes, 39 votes for no.

Kanzaki closed his eyes as his worst nightmare came true. None of the other 39 students felt any tension whatsoever and Shibata called out asking for the name of the person who accidentally made a mistake and pressed yes. They didn’t even consider the possibility of this single vote being intentional. That only made Kanzaki even angrier. He felt that the class could no longer continue to walk the path of delusion by protecting all their classmates. He could no longer bear this attitude which didn’t even consider prioritising class points over classmates as a possibility.

Kanzaki stands up and slams his desk. He tells the class that the fact that not a single one of them doubted whether this was the correct course of action meant that the class had already fallen into a vicious cycle of normalcy bias. He claims that for their class to climb to Class A, they need to change their way of thinking. He says that if all the other classes chose to expel someone, they could potentially fall all the way to Class D. But contrary to his hopes, all of his classmates merely looked at him with cold eyes. The only one who was listening attentively to him was their homeroom teacher Hoshinomiya. However, as a teacher, she was forbidden from making any statements to support Kanzaki’s argument.

Shiranami tried to shut down his argument by saying that there wasn’t anyone in their class who’d done anything worth being expelled for. Kanzaki’s classmates also think that other than maybe Ryūen’s class, all the other classes will also choose the option to not expel. Kanzaki says he understands but what’s most important for him right now is the class’ mindset. He thinks the class should stop being so single-minded and there should be some students who think about prioritising the class over their friends, but they’re being suppressed by peer pressure. Kanzaki was also someone who agreed that classmates were more important than class points. However, that ideology of theirs has only made them lose whilst the two classes below them have made up that gap over time and are now almost even with them in class points.

Hence he decided that something needed to change. Kanzaki desperately looks around the classroom for someone to agree with him but is met with radio silence. Even while feeling the pressure from his classmates, Kanzaki says he will not let this conclude with an unanimous vote to not expel. Honami says that their thoughts will not change and that she personally doesn’t want to belong to a class who would be willing to sacrifice their classmates for points. Kanzaki asks his classmates why they think this would be the last exam of its kind. If similar exams show up over and over again, their class will be left behind if the other classes repeatedly chose the expel option. Shibata replies that he doesn’t think a class which repeatedly sacrifices their friends will be able to win. He believes that the class which trusts and protects each other will end up being victorious.

All his classmates nod their heads in agreement. Kanzaki tells Shibata that he’s averting his eyes from the reality. The other 3 classes which chose to sacrifice someone were steadily growing and overtaking their class. Shibata says that it’s only temporary, and even if their rank falls, they’ll be able to climb back up. Honami says that she understands Kanzaki’s sentiments in wanting them to welcome other methods of winning. But she says that there are some choices which must never be taken and that it’s fundamentally wrong to weigh the value of class points and classmates on a scale.

As Honami’s classmates grew even more resolved in their determination from her words, Kanzaki is instead greatly disappointed. From outside appearances alone, Class B looks like an idealistic class with many students who were strong academically and good at sports. Their leader Honami was charismatic and had unified her classmates into something almost resembling a hive mind of worshippers. They have upheld an ideal of striving to reach Class A with all their classmates intact. But if you look at it from another perspective, it also means that they are okay with being stuck as Class B as long as they don’t lose any of their classmates.

Kanzaki says that he doesn’t know if he’s doing the right thing, but he decides to hold his classmates hostage. He says that even a single vote holds enormous power in this exam and proclaims that he will continue to vote to expel until the time runs out. Shibata calls him out on his bluff, saying he can’t do that since it would only make them lose 300 class points and be unable to reach Class A. Kanzaki says he doesn’t think it makes a difference whether they lost 100 or 300 class points because he thinks that if the class doesn’t make the decision to expel here, they will never be able to reach Class A. Hoshinomiya then interrupts them and urges them to vote.

The results of the second vote are: One vote for yes, 39 votes for no.

Even after he voted ‘yes’ again, his classmates aren’t angry at him and are merely exasperated without taking him seriously. Kanzaki believes that the pressure of the approaching time limit will eventually force his classmates to break out of the herd mentality and think for themselves about what would be the best solution for the sake of the class. Kanzaki says that since he’s going to continue to vote to expel, the only way to clear this exam will be switching to an unanimous vote for expulsion and choosing to expel him. He wants to become a sacrifice to forcefully change the class. He says that he doesn’t see the point of meandering about without having the courage to take the steps necessary to aim for Class A. If such a future is awaiting him, he would prefer to leave the school and seek a different future. The next 3 votes continued to be one vote for yes, 39 votes for no. Nobody was swayed by his words.

One hour passed and still nothing changed. His classmates tried various methods like appealing to him in a friendly manner or shouting at him angrily, but nothing worked and Kanzaki continued to vote to expel. Hoshinomiya gets bored of the silence and tells her class that she also took the same exam during her school days. Her students are surprised since this was the first time she had talked about her time at school. Although Hoshinomiya had a good relationship with her class, she had always brushed off their questions whenever they asked her anything about her time at school. She says that her class also took quite a long time to decide. Hoshinomiya asks them if they would be able to make the same decision if they were at the end of their 3rd year and only one step away from Class A.

When one of her students asks her about the choice that she made at the time, Hoshinomiya says that she chose to cut off people who she thought were unnecessary. She says that everyone is the same and when it really comes down to it, will always prioritise protecting themselves over others. She says that even if you call someone your best friend, you will still end up prioritising your own safety. She says that she can’t say any more than this since she is being closely supervised. She says she will respect the class’ decision regardless of what choice they end up making.

But she wants them to make the choice that they truly think is the right thing to do. She tells them to go ahead and prioritise class points if they think the friendships they have are fake. She says that they’ve only known each other for one and a half years and likewise, the 3 students who were expelled from other classes have already moved on with their lives. She says that if they are unable to reach Class A because of this, they will remember it for the rest of their lives. However, if they truly believe their friends are important, then they can go ahead and prioritise their friends.

But in the next vote, the results continued to be one vote for yes and 39 votes for no. Hoshinomiya isn’t surprised at this result and merely accepts it as the class’ resounding answer to her question. Himeno urges Kanzaki to give up because even if people were to start changing their votes right now, they would run out of time to convince the entire class. She and her other classmates would be willing to even run out of time if it meant they didn’t have to expel one of their classmates. Honami then says that she understands what Kanzaki and Hoshinomiya was trying to say, but it's much too late and unrealistic for the entire class to change their mentality at this point. Therefore, she remains determine and will continue to uphold her ideal of graduating in Class A without losing any of her classmates. She wants them to do their best so that they will never need to face such a choice because she thinks a Class A achieved by walking over the corpses of the classmates that they sacrificed is meaningless. This ties in to the the time Kiyotaka told her to remain stalwart in her decisions continue on with her classmates.

Kanzaki thinks she’s being unrealistic but Honami says that’s the kind of class she wants to aim for. All their classmates around her nod in agreement. Kanzaki gives up and realises that he doesn’t have the ability to change this class. He doesn’t know if this class would end up being Class B or Class D but the one thing he has understood today is that this class will never be able to reach Class A. But there’s nothing he can do about it because none of his classmates have realised that reality.

The results of the tenth vote were: 0 votes for yes, 40 votes for no.

None of Kanzaki’s classmates noticed, but the expression on his face wasn’t of agreement, but resignation. His classmates was more happy that the exam was over. Hoshinomiya informs the class that Arisu’s class had already completed the exam but Ryūen and Suzune’s class were still in the middle of theirs.

Chapter 5

In Class D, the first vote for the fifth question ended as 14 votes for yes, 26 votes for no. Ishizaki asks Ryūen for instructions on how to proceed. The first, third and fourth questions all reached unanimity after only a single break interval with Ryūen’s instructions on how to vote. The second question about the destination of the school trip ended up being decided by majority after 30 minutes of discussion amongst the class. Everyone had followed Ryūen’s instructions until now and hence they naturally looked towards him again for instructions on how to vote for this question. However, Ryūen merely walked up to the podium and asked the people who voted yes to raise their hands. After a few seconds of hesitation, 5 of the 14 people raised their hands.

Komiya asked the remaining 9 people to also name themselves, saying that no one will get angry at them for voting ‘yes’ in the first round of voting, especially since there weren’t any instructions from Ryūen. After Ishizaki shouted angrily, one more student apologetically raised their hand, bringing the total up to 6. But Ryūen says that he’ll allow it to pass for now and tells them to spend the remaining 8 minutes thinking about what they believe is the correct decision. The class spends the next few minutes in silence but Ryūen didn’t say anything. Ishizaki gets impatient and asks Ryūen for instructions, but he continues to hold his silence. In the end, the first break interval ends without anything happening.

The results of the second vote were: 10 votes for yes, 30 votes for no.

Everyone in the class believed that with the current trend, if Ryūen just said a few more words, the class will unanimously reach the conclusion of voting ‘no’. However Ryūen merely frowned and was disappointed that even after ten minutes of thinking, the results weren’t what he expected. Kaneda asked him if it was because the number of ‘yes’ votes were too few, but Ryūen shook his head. But he didn’t confirm whether he voted ‘yes’ or ‘no’. As the class starts getting agitated, Ryūen says his only intention with this first and second vote was to know what the class’ feeling truly were. Ryūen tells everyone to voice their own opinions. He walked around the classroom listening to everyone talk, sometimes bringing his ear to their mouths so that they could whisper their thoughts to him. After a while, it was time for the third round of voting.

The results were: 9 votes for yes. 31 votes for no.

This time Ryūen asked everyone who voted for yes to raise their hands. The only people who did were Kaneda and Nishino, while 7 people remained anonymous. Ryūen asked Kaneda why he had voted to expel all 3 times. Kaneda says that while he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to expel their classmates, he thinks the 100 class points will be important for attaining victory. Ryūen asks if Kaneda considered that he might be expelled by the class if he held this stance, but Kaneda says that Ryūen would never cut off anyone who was valuable. Ryūen agrees with Kaneda’s self evaluation and then asks Nishino if she had the same opinion of herself. Nishino says she voted for yes because she thinks it’s a good idea to take an easy way to gain 100 class points and the reason she named herself was because she didn’t like the idea of stealthily hiding her vote like a snake. Ryūen then reveals that he had voted to expel all three times. Ishizaki then asks Ryūen if that meant they were going to choose to expel someone.

But Ryūen smirks and said that his decision was for the class to choose in a democratic manner. He wanted to vote ‘yes’ because the idea of getting rid of trash while earning 100 class points by doing so sounded like it only had positives. But even after three votes, the majority of the class was against expulsion. Hence, he decided that they would now unify the class in the direction of voting ‘no’. However, Ibuki objects and asks why he isn’t forcing his opinion through like he usually does. Ryūen wonders if Ibuki was also part of the ‘expel’ faction but Ibuki says that she voted ‘no’ but doesn’t understand why Ryūen was acting out of character. Ryūen says that if this exam wasn’t anonymous, he wouldn’t have hesitated to use forceful means. However, with the current rules, it’s easier to just unify the class in the direction of the majority.

But while everyone thought that the next vote would be the last, the results of the fourth round of voting were: 7 votes for yes, 33 votes for no.

When Ryūen asked Kaneda and Nishino, both of them said that they had switched their votes to ‘no’. Since Ryūen himself had also switched his vote, it either meant that one of them was lying or someone had switched their vote from ‘no’ to ‘yes’. Ishizaki roared in anger but Ryūen calmed him down while saying that things were getting interesting. He says he welcomes the fact that there are seven ambitious students who want the class points to aim for Class A. But, the fact that they voted ‘yes’ means that they probably had somebody in mind who they wanted to expel. And that person was probably Ryūen. He challenges the anonymous voters to name themselves but none of them reveal themselves.

The results of the fifth vote were: 8 votes for yes, 32 votes for no.

Since the ‘no’ vote isn’t passing through, Nanami Yabu proposes that they should just first unanimously vote ‘yes’ and then expel someone who no one else minds expelling. Upon being asked to elaborate, she names Ibuki as an example. Afterwards, several other girls voice out their agreement that they’d be okay with expelling Ibuki. Ishizaki exasperatedly tries to stop them but Ryūen says he welcomes their idea since they at least had the guts to name themselves unlike the 8 anonymous voters who kept casting ‘yes’ votes. Yabu was the leader of the top caste of girls in the class, which meant her opinion was essentially the same as the opinion of the collective group. Ryūen says they’d just be wasting time if the votes don’t switch to ‘no’. He asks the class if anyone would be willing to defend Ibuki. No one raises their hands. When he then asks Ibuki if she is willing to just obediently go gently into that good night without raging against the dying of the light, Ibuki declines.

She says that while she doesn’t particularly care about the school itself, there was someone she wanted to get revenge on. She also has no intention of being used by people she disliked for their own convenience. Yabu mocks her for putting on a tough front when in reality, she was just afraid of being expelled like the rest of them. Ibuki retorts that she’s gotten awfully arrogant for someone who used to just be Manabe’s groupie. Ryūen warns Ibuki that Yabu had many friends who would oppose her expulsion but Ibuki didn’t have a single friend. He says that he doesn’t dislike Ibuki but the circumstances are not in her favour so he tells her to sacrifice herself to become a fertiliser for the rest of the class. Yabu mocks Ibuki, saying that her only ally Ryūen had also turned against her. However, Ibuki continues to refuse to leave the school.

Result of the 6th round of voting: 7 votes for yes, 33 votes for no.

Results of the 7th round of voting: 6 votes for yes, 34 votes for no.

Results of the 8th round of voting: 7 votes for yes, 33 votes for no.

Results of the 9th round of voting: 7 votes for yes, 33 votes for no.

Throughout these 40 minutes, Ryūen just sat at the front of the class and observed his classmates silently. But during the break interval before the 10th round of voting, he asked his class why none of them had the brains to think for themselves and change their votes without him giving them any instructions. He tells them to stop messing around.

Results of the 10th round of voting: 6 votes for yes, 34 votes for no.

By this time, the smirk had disappeared from Ryūen’s face and turned into a scowl.

Results of the 11th round of voting: 7 votes for yes, 33 votes for no.

Nishino asks Ryūen how he intends to unify their votes. Ryūen says that it’s about time to finish this and says that after observing the class, he now knew the identity of the idiot who had been switching their vote around between ‘yes’ and ‘no’. He names a girl called Mariko Yajima who hurriedly tries to deny his accusation. Ryūen says that he wouldn’t name anyone unless he was certain. As long as her vote is now no longer anonymous, Ryūen forbids her from making any more ‘yes’ votes without his permission. He also warns the rest of the anonymous voters saying that if they still get caught voting ‘yes’, he won’t give a second chance to the rest of them.

Results of the 12th round of voting: 5 votes for yes, 35 votes for no.

Ryūen sits back down in his seat and calls for the remaining five anonymous people to name themselves. He says that if they don’t want to run out of time, their only choice now is to try to bring the class’ opinion in the direction of expelling Ryūen. At this point in time, Tokitō accepts Ryūen’s challenge and names himself as one of the people who were voting ‘yes’. Ishizaki was about to hit him but Katsuragi restrains him and reminds Ishizaki about the rules forbidding the use of violence.

Tokitō reveals that he had always been waiting for an opportunity like this since the usual special exams wouldn’t give him any opportunity to get rid of Ryūen. Ryūen welcomes his challenge and relishes the feeling of someone rebelling against him. Ryūen asks him what he plans to do since at this rate they will just run out of time and lose 300 class points. Tokitō says that wouldn’t be his responsibility and instead it would be Ryūen who takes the blame as the class leader. He appeals to the class that following Ryūen is wrong, listing the earlier example of Ryūen overruling the class’ desire to pick Honami’s class for the end of term exam and instead choosing Arisu’s class. Tokitō tells Ryūen that if he pledges to step down from the position of class leader, the remaining votes will naturally turn into ‘no’. Ryūen asks Tokitō if he lacks the confidence to win the class’ support but Tokitō scoffs and says that if the vote becomes an unanimous ‘yes’, then Ryūen would definitely become the primary target.

Kaneda intervenes and says that while the responsibility for failing special exams would fall onto Ryūen’s shoulders, right now, the first person the class would pick would definitely be Tokitō who kept trying to force through an expulsion against the class’ wishes. Tokitō says that other than himself, there were still 4 other anonymous voters who wished for Ryūen’s expulsion and many more who merely lacked the courage to oppose him. Ryūen then applauded him and said that his logic was a lot more sound than that of the likes of Yabu. Ryūen then asks if he would like a duel. He proposes that everyone in the class switch their votes to ‘yes’ and then nominate one of either Ryūen or Tokitō. That way everyone else would be able to vote knowing that their safety is assured. Tokitō warns him that Ryūen would have no way of surviving in such a scenario but Ryūen urges him on by saying that they were wasting time. He provoked Tokitō, asking if he was scared of losing. Tokitō then finally accepts Ryūen’s proposal, confident in his own victory.

Katsuragi interrupts saying that with the current state of the classroom, Ryūen had the absolute advantage. Tokitō denies his claim, saying that many students had simply been biding their time and will bite back if an opportunity arises, listing the ‘dog’ Ishizaki as an example. When Ishizaki objects, Tokitō tells him to remember the rebellious spirit he once had when he defeated Ryūen. Seeing that Tokitō had confidence in his own victory, Katsuragi then changed the question, asking him who was going to take leadership of the class after Ryūen was gone. Tokitō says that they can talk it out but it won’t be Katsuragi since he’s an outsider. Seeing that Tokitō was unwilling to listen to him, Katsuragi pleaded with Ryūen to spare Tokitō. Ryūen then laughs and says that he’s willing to give Tokitō a second chance. He says that in the next vote, everyone in the class except for Tokitō will vote ‘no’.

Whether or not they pass the exam will depend solely on Tokitō’s decision. If Tokitō decides to vote ‘yes’, he will begin taking action in the direction of expelling Tokitō. Tokitō asks what happened to the other 4 votes. Ryūen dared him to try voting ‘yes’ and says that he will see for himself. Tokitō wants to call Ryūen’s bluff but gets nervous as he imagines the possibility of the other dissidents switching to Ryūen’s side. In that scenario he would definitely lose. On the contrary, if Ryūen was bluffing and Tokitō alone switched his vote to ‘no’, he would also lose all the confidence of his classmates and will definitely lose if it ended up coming down to a duel between himself and Ryūen. Ryūen dares him to vote ‘yes’ if he is prepared to be expelled.

Results of the 13th round of voting: 2 votes for yes, 38 votes for no.

Tokitō is relieved that there’s someone else with a will as strong as his and wouldn’t succumb despite Ryūen’s attempts at intimidation. However, Ryūen interrogates Katsuragi on what he was trying to to do. Katsuragi reveals that he was the other person who voted ‘yes’ since he thinks that Tokitō was a student necessary for this class. In fact, after objectively looking at the class as an outsider coming from Class A, he honestly believes that there isn’t a single unnecessary student in the class. He thinks that Tokitō’s willingness to provide dissenting opinions to Ryūen was a valuable trait. He reveals that Tokitō’s anonymous allies were a figment of imagination all along because the other 4 votes were Katsuragi, Hiyori, Albert and Ryūen himself. Katsuragi says that Ryūen had given him multiple second chances but Tokitō did not recognise them and simply continued trying to expel Ryūen. He asks Ryūen to grant Tokitō another chance. Ryūen says he isn’t that forgiving of a person but Katsuragi says Ryūen was also at fault for provoking him too much.

The 14th round of voting began. Tokitō was left with his pride shattered. He had the option of either voting yes and guaranteeing his own expulsion or swallowing his pride and succumbing to Ryūen. In the middle he thought about continuing to vote against his class’ decision and causing them to fail this special exam, but in the end decided not to involve his classmates in his feud with Ryūen.

Results of the 14th round of voting: 0 votes for yes, 40 votes for no.

Tokitō tells Ryūen that he hadn’t accepted his ways and that if he thinks Ryūen makes a mistake, he will once again stand up to him and challenge him. Ryūen welcomes him to challenge him at any time.

After the exam, Ryūen approached Katsuragi and said that he did something unnecessary. Katsuragi theorises that Ryūen told Hiyori to include him in the fake voting group because he expected Katsuragi to protect Tokitō after receiving information from Hiyori that Tokitō often spoke to Katsuragi. But after seeing Ryūen’s response, he became convinced that it was actually Hiyori’s independent decision. But either way, the result was that Ryūen gave Tokitō a lifeline and nobody was expelled. Katsuragi is convinced after today that this class had the potential to defeat Arisu and aim for Class A.

Chapter 6

After just one hour of the exam, Arisu’s Class A had reached the final question. Similarly to Suzune, Arisu had made preparations to always split the first vote. As a result, the first vote had 2 votes for yes and 36 for no. All other students had voted for no. When Hashimoto asked Arisu for her instructions, she instead asked for his opinion. He thinks that they should take some time to think about it since the correct answer was possibly less obvious than it looked. Arisu think it’s nonsense to pick such an option when their class is currently head and shoulders above the other classes

When Hashimoto says he doesn’t want to regret this decision in the future, Arisu says that there are also demerits to reducing the number of people in their class. The class’ total number of private points will decrease (which is a lie as they each get 10,000 extra points) and the class will lose morale and trust in each other. Arisu says that she wouldn’t expel any of her classmates who were working hard for her sake unlike Totsuka and Katsuragi. But internally, she notes that this was a lie and if they were actually in an emergency situation, she would mercilessly cut any of them off. She just judged that keeping her classmates’ trust in her was more important at the moment. Thus, Class A finished the exam on the second vote with 0 votes for yes and 38 votes for no.

Chapter 7

Back to Suzune's class, results of the 10th vote: 1 vote for yes, 38 votes for no. Chabashira announced another interval period as the votes are still not unanimous.

Regardless of how much Suzune appealed, the culprit did not name themselves. Chabashira’s face was looking paler with every single time that she had to repeat the exact same words. Hirata asks his classmates to raise their hand if they voted for no. 38 people raised their hands. The only one who didn’t was Kōenji who couldn’t be bothered to raise his hand.

Suzune goes around the class and looks into everyone’s eyes to see if they’re lying. Thus the break interval runs out and it was time to vote again.

Results of the 11th vote: 1 vote for yes, 38 votes for no.

All of their classmates thought that this anonymous individual will continue voting ‘yes’ until time is close to running out. Then they will be forced to vote ‘no’ and the class will pass the special exam without having to expel anyone. However, Kiyotaka knew. The only result awaiting for them would be running out of time and losing 300 class points. Kiyotaka didn’t think there was anything wrong with Suzune’s strategy. However, it was fundamentally impossible for them to clear this exam without expelling anyone. The main issue being that the culprit didn’t actually view time running out as a detrimental result. No forms of persuasion would work on them. The basic premise of this exam was that all the students would rank the outcomes from best to worst as: Don’t expel, expel, and running out of time.

However, there was a single student whose priorities were: Expel, running out of time, and don’t expel.

In that case, the only solution was for the class to unanimously elect to expel someone. Hence, Kiyotaka decided to make a move.

Results of the 12th vote: 2 votes for yes, 37 votes for no.

Suzune looked at the results in despair as if she were stuck in a nightmare. By casting a vote for ‘yes’, Kiyotaka broke the unified solidarity that the class had until then. Opinions in the class started heading in the direction of there being no choice but to expel someone.

Results of the 13th vote: 5 votes for yes, 34 votes for no.

Results of the 14th vote: 12 votes for yes, 27 votes for no.

More and more students started to vote in favour of expelling someone because they had confidence that they themselves would be safe. Hirata and Suzune desperately tried to resist against the class’ momentum, claiming that it would be even more difficult to get unanimity in choosing a student to expel. Kiyotaka then speaks out and says that he had voted ‘yes’ in the 14th vote which had just been held (even though he had actually been voting ‘yes’ since the 12th vote).

Kiyotaka implies to Suzune that now is their only chance to gain unanimity. If they try to vote to expel after exposing the traitor, that person would simply continue to vote in opposition to the rest of the class. Hirata asks him if they had the right to judge whether someone should be expelled just for voting ‘yes’. Kiyotaka answers that they have that right since this person was committing the sin of preventing their class from reaching Class A. Hirata tries to hold out on the hope that this person would change their vote once time was close to running out. However, Kiyotaka asks him if he was willing to bet their class’ future on such an uncertainty. He then reveals that just like Suzune, he also has an idea of who the traitor is. Akito tries to convince him to name that person now and let the class try to convince them together, however Kiyotaka says that this individual will never change their vote after he names them. He warns Suzune that their opponent was fighting a battle to the death. He then tells Hirata that the next vote will be the vote that decides their fate. Whether they will unanimously choose to not expel or decide to expel someone will all rest on the results of this single vote. Hirata tries to protest but eventually acknowledges that he can’t just selfishly continue being a nuisance to the class.

Hirata then announces to the class that he agrees with Kiyotaka’s plan, thus influencing the rest of the class.

Results of the 15th vote: 1 vote for yes, 38 votes for no.

Everyone in the class could understand from this vote that the traitor was prepared for the class to run out of time. Kiyotaka receives Hirata and Suzune’s consent and then warns the rest of their class that from now on, if they were to choose to vote ‘no’, they would need to provide a reason why.

Results of the 16th vote: 39 votes for yes, 0 votes for no.

Chabashira gets PTSD as she announces that the class voted unanimously to expel. Everyone looks towards Suzune and Kiyotaka to announce the name of the traitor, but neither of them say anything. Instead, Hirata nominates himself as the first target. He receives 6 votes to expel and 32 votes against. In the break interval, Sudō and Keisei demanded for Kiyotaka and Suzune to name the traitor. Kiyotaka asks them to wait. Many students start asking each other for mutual protection whilst others start crying as they regret voting to expel. Kushida starts crying as well and Mii-chan pats her back. Kushida says she already regrets that things came to this and wonders why she agreed to vote yes. Sudō and Ike start comforting Kushida and tell her not to blame herself because it wasn’t her fault. Kushida continues crying and says that she thinks they could have unanimously agreed to not expel. She says that they would definitely have come to an understanding if they continued persuading the person who voted yes.

Kushida then appeals to the class, saying that there’s no metric such as sports or academics or OAA that they can use to judge whether someone should be expelled. She then says that she’s prepared to be criticised for this opinion and then names Suzune and Kiyotaka as the people who should take responsibility for putting the class in this situation. Kiyotaka notes that Kushida is playing this very intelligently. By naming himself and Suzune, if they try to accuse her back of being the traitor, there will be people who think they are just retaliating against her unfairly. But before he could say anything, Kei interrupts and says that she would never vote for Kiyotaka’s expulsion and hence the vote would fail before it even began. Hondō claims that she’s being selfish, but Kei accuses him of doing the exact same thing with Onizuka. Hondō tries to defend himself by saying he wasn’t the one trying to get the class to agree to expel, but Kei says that Kiyotaka was only voicing out the thoughts of everyone in the class. She says it doesn’t matter to her whether they rise to Class B or fall to Class D since Kiyotaka meant everything to her. But before she can continue any further, Kiyotaka stops her and tells her that if she says any more, the class will target her instead. Sudō also says he won’t allow Suzune to get expelled.

Haruka says that she thinks the class should first listen to Suzune and Kiyotaka because at the end of the day, the person who’s at fault is the one who continuously voted to expel. Kushida reflects and says that’s right but mentions the danger of Kiyotaka and Suzune naming the wrong person. But Chabashira first intervenes and says that they need to nominate a target to expel. Suzune nominates herself and receives 16 votes in favour of expulsion and 22 against. Kiyotaka thinks that this was a pretty funny outcome. Sudō yells for everyone who voted yes to raise their hands so that he can kill them. Suzune and Hirata calm him down, saying that she will be safe as long as Sudō continues to vote to defend her. Hirata then urges Kiyotaka and Suzune to name the traitor.

Kiyotaka says that if he gets the traitor wrong, he will take responsibility for this incident and let himself be expelled. Kushida shows consideration for Kiyotaka and says that she doesn’t want any of her classmates, including Kiyotaka, to be expelled. Kiyotaka thanks her for her consideration but says that he’ll be fine. He then also gets Kei to promise not to block his expulsion if it ends up happening. He says that just like Kushida claimed, he has responsibility for influencing the class to choose this option. But ultimately, the person most responsible was the anonymous voter who continued voting to expel. Kei, Kushida, Airi, Haruka and Akito all agree to his opinion. Kiyotaka says that the reason why he was able to drop a name was because he was close to 100% certain that he was right. Kushida then says: “Okay, I’ll believe in Kiyotaka-kun.” Kiyotaka then names Kushida as the traitor.

A moment of silence followed before everyone in the class gasped in surprise. Kushida asked if Kiyotaka was naming her because she had requested for Kiyotaka and Suzune to take responsibility earlier. After seeing Kushida on the verge of crying, Hondō defended her by saying it was impossible for Kushida to be the traitor. Kiyotaka says that he obviously doesn’t know for certain whether Kushida was the traitor since the vote itself is anonymous. However, he had enough reason to believe he was right. Kushida tries to play the victim again by saying that she can’t complain even if she gets slandered by lies since she was the one who decided to put herself in the firing line for the sake of the class. Kiyotaka then reveals that Kushida had always tried to expel him and Suzune. He talks about Kushida’s middle school history with Suzune and the fact that she had a hidden personality.

However, Ike told him to shut up because it was impossible for Kushida to be the traitor. Numerous other people also came out in support of Kushida while mocking Kiyotaka for taking so long to name a person only to end up naming Kushida. They also started badmouthing him for acting out of character even though the usual impression of him within the class was that of a quiet guy. As a result, many of his classmates didn’t trust what he said. Kushida urges everyone to stop blaming Kiyotaka since she says she can understand why he would want to blame someone else in this situation. Their classmates praise Kushida for being so kind even when someone else was talking shit about her. Hirata tries to calm the class down and get them to listen to Kiyotaka but Ike tries to shut him down by saying that no one can bear to continue listening to Kiyotaka’s nonsense. Hirata demands for Kiyotaka to show some evidence.

He tries to continue but once again gets interrupted by Kushida who pleads for him to stop lying. Haruka also tries to urge him to drop the subject, saying that while she’s Kiyotaka’s ally, Kushida is also her friend. Kiyotaka says he needs to continue because he has the obligation to everyone in the class to prove who the traitor was. Haruka still can’t believe that the traitor could ever be Kushida. As Kiyotaka talked about Kushida’s dark history, Chabashira interrupted them and told them it was time to nominate a candidate. The students want to nominate Kiyotaka but Kushida nominates herself saying that she doesn’t want to make Kiyotaka to lie any more. She says she hopes that the class will return to normal once she gets expelled and then asks for everyone to please vote for her.

The result of the 19th vote: 5 votes for yes, 33 votes for no.

Ike says that they can’t possibly let Kushida be expelled and the other 32 students also nod in agreement with him. The class calls Kiyotaka pathetic for trying to expel Kushida to protect himself. They point out inconsistencies in his story such as Kushida never having made an attempt at expelling him or Suzune. Kiyotaka points out the Class Poll special exam held last year where Kushida collaborated with Yamauchi to try to expel him and then says that expelling one’s own classmates is a difficult thing to do. Hondō angrily demands that he provide evidence if he wants to continue smearing Kushida’s reputation. Kiyotaka then talks about the deal he made with Kushida where he provides half of his private point income in exchange for a non-aggression pact.

Kushida tries to lie and say that Kiyotaka was merely lending her his private points for safekeeping, but he reveals that even if Kushida already moved her version of the recording from her phone to some other device, Kiyotaka himself recorded the conversation on his phone. He begins recounting the conversation but Kushida keeps repeating that he’s lying. He says that they can ask Chabashira to take out his phone as evidence but Kushida says that she doesn’t mind but it would be impossible because they’re in the middle of a special exam. Kiyotaka says that he doesn’t need to be the one to press the buttons himself since he can just get Chabashira to do it in his place. Kushida anxiously looked towards Chabashira. She hadn’t considered the possibility of phones being used as evidence in this exam since they had been confiscated beforehand. As Kiyotaka continues recounting the conversation, Kushida tells him to shut up.

But he ignored her and continued until she finally snapped and forcefully screamed over him. She apologised to her classmates for lying to them and says that she actually had an argument with Kiyotaka and then made up with him in exchange for half of his private points. But she insists that she never once thought of voting to expel during this exam. She then accused Kiyotaka of perhaps being the person who repeatedly voted to expel. She theorises that Kiyotaka wanted to expel her so he took action in this exam to force the class to unanimously vote to expel. She then explains that Kiyotaka had non-consensually touched her chest soon after enrolling at this school. All the girls in the class as well as many of the boys who had a crush on Kushida immediately started sending looks of disgust towards Kiyotaka. Kushida says that she also has evidence and that she kept the uniform which had his fingerprints on them.

When Kei asks him to explain himself, he says that she’s straight up lying and either way, it’s scientifically impossible to store fingerprints for one and a half years. He also adds that if he really touched her breasts like that, she would have reported it to the school immediately. Kiyotaka then revealed that Kushida had also cooperated with Ryūen in the past to try to expel Suzune. Kushida walks up to him and grabbed him by the collar before demanding to know why he betrayed her.

Kiyotaka replies that neither he nor Suzune had wanted to do this. But he says that Kushida herself was the one who forced his hand since she didn’t accept any outcome other than expulsion. He had no choice but to expose her for the sake of protecting their classmates. Kushida’s classmates still want to believe in her and hope that Kiyotaka was lying. But Kushida admits that everything he said was true. She then goes on a rant and spills the beans on everything. Kiyotaka asks her why she uncharacteristically tried so hard to expel Suzune despite knowing how difficult it would be. Kushida averts her eyes for a second before saying that she didn’t have any special reason but simply couldn’t help herself. Kiyotaka knows that at this point it would still be difficult to convince the class to unanimously vote for Kushida’s expulsion so he needs Kushida to direct more hatred towards herself.

He goads Kushida into revealing the class’ secrets. First, she says that Kei, Mori and Matsushita were laughing about Shinohara being ugly and hence she was only able to get ugly boys to chase after her. Kushida says that she tried to stop them at the time, but inside she was actually thinking the exact same thing as them. She then said that Shinohara had been indecisive about whether to go out with Komiya and Ike and asks her whether she was using Ike as a test run before going out with her true love Komiya. She then also reveals that Mii-chan had feelings for Hirata and says she finds it disgusting when Haruka calls her by a nickname and that she only does it to disguise the fact that she has no friends.

Only a few minutes after Kiyotaka exposed Kushida, everyone’s attitude towards her had completely changed. Even though Kushida’s bonds with her friends should have been just as strong as those between members of the Kiyotaka group, their friendships had been completely shattered. Even though she was the first to know of Kushida’s dark history, Suzune doesn’t think she would be able to achieve the same effect if she tried the same thing. That alone showed her the unfathomable depths of Kiyotaka’s true ability. As the classroom around her descended into the pits of hell, time slowed down for her as she began to think. She began to weigh Kushida on a scale. She believes Kushida is worth more than 100 class points but finds herself struggling to justify saving Kushida at the cost of 350 class points. However, by slowing time to a complete stop and reaching even deeper for an answer, she was able to find a solution which would allow her to sacrifice neither Kushida nor the class points.

One of the notable things to mention is that in his monologue, Kiyotaka realised that Suzune was about to namedrop Airi. He took over because of two reasons:

He needs Suzune to retain the class’ trust to continue being the class leader in the future.
Suzune’s plan was half baked and she wouldn’t have been able to successfully convince Airi (and by extension Haruka).

Eventually, Haruka considers leaving the school together with Airi in the final vote, but Airi breaks the exam rules to shout at her and convince her to vote for her. Haruka does so out of respect for Airi’s wishes. At the end of the exam, Chabashira reveals that the they were the last class to finish the exam and that they gained 150 class points while every other class only gained 50 class points.

After the exam, Suzune apologises to Kiyotaka for leaving him alone to take the brunt of the class’ hatred. She thinks that Kiyotaka’s friendships were left in an irreparable state but Kiyotaka tells her that the current situation may end up being more convenient for him and then refuses to provide further clarification. Airi then appears so she can show her new ‘makeover’ image to Kiyotaka before she leaves the school. They say their farewells to each other before Airi turns and leaves. Kiyotaka feels nostalgic as he remembers seeing a similar scene numerous times within the White Room.

Epilogue

After the special exam, Chabashira calls Kiyotaka out for a meeting on the rooftop. She recounts her own story of this special exam from back in her school days. Her Class B were only 73 points behind Class A and this special exam was their final special exam before the graduation exam. Their class were also able to smoothly proceed to the final question. However, many of her classmates desired the 100 class points since it would allow them to reach Class A. The day before the exam, Chabashira had started going out with a leader figure in their class who she described as a mix of Hirata and Ike. She described him as someone who was cheerful and acted as a mood maker for the entire class. He was unable to bear the thought of expelling any of his classmates who he had worked alongside tooth and nail for three whole years so he nominated himself for expulsion instead.

Usually there would be many detriments to expelling a class leader, however, the only exam left was the graduation exam. The only person in the class who objected to his self-sacrifice was Chabashira. No matter how much her friends tried to persuade her, she stubbornly refused to vote to expel him. Eventually, the class grew irritated of her and tried to expel her instead. But this time, her boyfriend protected her and refused to let her be expelled either. Eventually, the class ran out of time and lost 300 class points, completely ruining their chances of reaching Class A. To add insult to injury, Class A not only expelled a person to gain 100 Class Points, but won the Graduation Exam as well. Chabashira broke up with her boyfriend immediately after the exam which had left irreparable scars on their minds as they had all sorts of abuse hurled at them by their classmates.

Chabashira says that during her three years of high school, that man and reaching Class A meant everything to her. She now thinks that she was stupid since three years of high school are very insignificant in the grand scale of a person’s life. She thinks that even if she were unable to reach Class A, she should’ve strived to have an exam where she wouldn’t have any regrets. She asks Kiyotaka what he thinks was the correct answer. Kiyotaka replies that he doesn’t think there is a single correct answer for this special exam. Unless there was a truly incompetent and unnecessary student, people will always doubt whether they made the right choice. Chabashira starts reminiscing and says “If only I had a student like you in my class…” but then stops herself, saying that it’s impossible to return and fix the mistakes of the past. She then asks Kiyotaka about why he chose to nominate Airi even though she was a close friend to him and even held romantic feelings for him. She asks him if there was any option where he could have saved her and instead sacrificed another student. He replies that at the time, Suzune had the momentum and the class’ opinion was aligned with her.

He says he didn’t have enough time to convince their classmates. Chabashira asks whether he felt hurt at all by expelling Airi. Kiyotaka says that he too would have preferred a different method to pass the exam. But someone needed to be expelled for them to pass that exam. He didn’t expect Suzune to protect Kushida. The moment that happened, the only method he could choose was social darwinism. Amongst the students with low grades, Airi was the easiest to expel. The other students would have many friends on their side whilst Airi only had Haruka as a major obstacle. He predicted that even if Haruka were to nominate herself, they would only waste ten minutes. Additionally, Airi’s personality also made things easier. He knew that Haruka would never cast a vote to expel Airi except for the case when Airi herself desired it. He knew that Airi wouldn’t be able to burden the class by making them lose 300 points for her sake. Lastly, if someone important to Airi were to tell her that she was the most unnecessary student in the class, she would have no choice but to listen to them.

Kiyotaka says that people may call him a demon or human trash. But he says that this was a role that someone needed to take. Chabashira says that she’s accepted expulsion as a logical everyday aspect of this school. But she will never be able to be as ruthless as Kiyotaka. She wonders how many people he’s abandoned to reach this level of emotional apathy. Kiyotaka doesn’t know either just like he doesn’t remember the colour and shape of all the pebbles he kicks by the wayside on a road. Chabashira thanks Kiyotaka for listening to her and says that she had been trapped in her past for a very long time. But she finally realised that she needs to move on and doesn’t have the time to dwell on the past. She promises to fulfill her responsibilities as a teacher so that her students will be able to continue their fight without having any regrets. In the past she often dreamed about her class helping her fulfill her unfulfilled dreams but she would always recall a painful memory and be unable to properly face her students. Chabashira smiles at Kiyotaka and promises him that she will make sure their class graduates as Class A. Kiyotaka thinks that Chabashira will be fine from now on.

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