3.2
AS SOON AS we entered Pallet, Karuizawa glared at Horikita. “Jeez, what were you even doing?! You’re so late! At least apologize.”
“Let’s get started. After all, Hirata-kun has club activities, right?” said Horikita, ignoring her completely.
“Wow, you just ignored me. Typical,” said Karuizawa. “Not even a ‘sorry.’”
Besides Horikita and myself, the group now consisted of Hirata, Karuizawa, Kushida, and Sudou. Horikita was right that there wasn’t much of a grace period before club activities. It was already 3:50 in the afternoon, and clubs convened at 4:30. Hirata, who was in the soccer club, should have been the most anxious, but he remained calm and collected. Maybe he was sincerely looking forward to this meeting, since his eyes shone.
After Horikita took her seat, she immediately launched into the conversation without touching the drink she’d purchased. “Let’s discuss the upcoming short test, shall we?”
“Is it really that important? I mean, the school pretty much guaranteed that our grades won’t reflect our test results,” said Karuizawa. “Having these study sessions one after another now that midterms are over is a huge burden on everyone.”
First midterms, then the short test, and lastly, the final exam. The flurry of study sessions, which left us practically no room to breathe, would probably place an unbearably high level of stress on the students who weren’t doing that well.
“I wasn’t going to force people to study. However, the school isn’t making us take this test simply to measure our academic ability. We just passed the midterm, after all.”
“We all passed because the midterm had easy questions, right?”
“Wait, you think the short test will have more difficult questions on it? That doesn’t seem efficient,” Hirata said.
If they tried to make the short test more important than the midterms, the school’s priorities would seem completely backward.
“The short test might be significant in another way, then. Does the school want to measure something other than our academics?” asked Hirata-kun.
“Huh? What? What are you talking about?” asked Karuizawa, perking up considerably as Hirata spoke.
“It has nothing to do with our academic abilities at all. The short test’s results will influence partner selection for the final exam. That’s why it matters,” explained Horikita. Sudou looked somber. “Do you understand, Sudou?”
“Just barely.” Sudou’s grasp on the current situation appeared dubious at best.
“There must be some kind of process to select the pairs,” Horikita continued. “If we discover that process, we can gain a clear advantage in the final exam.”
“What’s that mean, Ayanokouji?” Sudou whispered. He most likely didn’t want to interrupt Horikita’s explanation.
“It means that controlling the short test’s outcome is necessary to clear the final exam,” I answered.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Sudou’s lie was so incredibly obvious.
Horikita’s read on the situation was true, without a doubt. The results of the short test were definitely going to be used to determine how the pairs were formed, meaning we’d be able to uncover the process in some way. The school had promised to explain things to the students at a later date, so we wouldn’t end up making a strange, complicated decision. I figured I’d see what Horikita had up her sleeve.
“So what? Will they match up the people who scored closest together or something?” said Karuizawa. Apparently, she’d been listening intently.
“Or maybe they’ll pair someone who got an answer right with someone who got the same answer wrong?” asked Sudou, who was also focused.
“Either is possible,” said Horikita.
Hirata seemed to have some doubts, since his expression turned serious. “I understand it to some extent, but I’m a little skeptical about this.”
“About what? Please, I’d like to hear it,” said Horikita, her gaze encouraging him to speak.
“If there is some kind of partner selection method, then I think we should confirm it with an upperclassman,” Hirata said. “If it’s the same test from previous years, then the rules probably haven’t changed. Maybe the teachers would deliberately try to hide that?”
Kushida had listened quietly up to this point. After Hirata’s comment, she spoke. “I was a little curious, too. I think an upperclassman I’m close with might be willing to tell me.”
If it were a simple rule, then we should be able to hear it. Otherwise, the rules could be complex or entirely nonexistent.
“Wow, just as expected, Yousuke-kun! You’re right!” Karuizawa showered Hirata with admiration, then crossed her arms in apparent contemplation.
Horikita side-eyed her. “As Hirata-kun said, it’s certainly true that we don’t know the facts. However, the school hasn’t tried to stop us from finding out what the rules are. In fact, discovering them might be one of the test’s prerequisites.”
“What do you mean, Suzune? Can you explain it like we’re dumb?” asked Sudou. He looked as if he’d racked his brain so intensely that smoke was about to shoot out of his ears.
“So, the test begins once we find out the rules? In that case, not learning what they are could be disastrous,” said Hirata. He was probably imagining a scenario in which the school expelled half the class.
“This is all just hypothetical, but if we don’t discover the process behind the pairing, the results could be devastating. Or would it? Chabashira-sensei said this is the first time that Class D has made it this far without anyone being expelled. She also said that, in previous years, only one or two pairs were typically expelled, right? Isn’t that strange?” asked Horikita.
“Nope,” said Sudou. He banged his forehead against the table in resignation.
“I see what you mean,” Hirata said. “Horikita-san is trying to say that, if we understand how this all works, we might not suffer any serious harm. Right?”
“Correct.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Karuizawa.
“Because we’re taking the final exam in pairs. Consider the highest average score, and the high difficulty level of problems created by the students. If we take on this test without discovering what the rules are, then it seems like we’ll only see terrible results, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” added Hirata. “If two failing students were paired up, it’d be pretty bad.”
“So, if we’re afraid of what could happen, then we just need to find out how they determine the pairs, right?”
“Yes, we absolutely must know the rules first. Again, Chabashira-sensei said that only one or two pairs were expelled in past years. That’s far too few, isn’t it? If the school partnered our class’s weaker students together, it’d probably force close to ten people to drop out,” said Horikita.
“I see. So that’s how it is.”
“Yousuke-kun, what does this mean?” asked Karuizawa. “I’m getting a little confused.”
“Yeah, okay. Hmm, how to explain it? Let’s start fresh. Forget trying to figure out the rules for a moment. Imagine if we took the exam without knowing that these rules even existed. What do you think would happen?” asked Hirata.
“Umm, it’d be bad? If the dumber students got paired, we’d probably see the school expel a lot of people,” said Karuizawa.
“Yeah, I think so, too. But, in past years, only one or two pairs from Class D were expelled.”
“Isn’t that kinda weird?” Sudou seemed to realize what we were saying.
“The pairs seem balanced,” Hirata said. “This is the hidden rule we’ve been looking for.”
Indeed. That seemed to be the trick.
“We can extract this conclusion from all the prior processes and results. The pairs are made up of a high-scoring student and a low-scoring student,” said Horikita. “It can’t be any other way. So, if I scored a hundred points, and Sudou-kun scored zero points, we’d be the pair with the most significant difference between our scores. That means we’d produce balanced results on the test, because our scores would even out.”
Karuizawa seemed basically convinced. “I see. But doesn’t that mean the average students are the most at risk?”
“Yes. The more average someone’s grades are, the greater the danger,” said Horikita.
Poor performers would be paired with the top students, but middling students would likely be partnered with one another. It made sense that the questions on the short tests were going to be of a somewhat higher difficulty level. While it might make it hard to accurately measure students’ academic abilities, they probably held some sort of meetings to devise countermeasures.
“We need to confirm this with upperclassmen. Then we can plan our next steps. Hirata-kun, Kushida-san, would you please talk to some senior students?”
“Of course,” said Kushida.
“I’ll check with the upperclassmen in my soccer club,” said Hirata.
The two of them readily accepted Horikita’s request. Our strategy for dealing with the short test was beginning to take shape.
“I’d also like to ask one more thing,” said Karuizawa.
“Go ahead.” Even in the face of Karuizawa’s doubt, Horikita was as composed as ever.
“They said we’re being paired up, but what if there’s an odd number of students?”
“I doubt we need to worry about that right now. At the time of enrollment, all classes from A to D had an even number of students. No one’s been expelled yet, so our class sizes haven’t changed. However…if someone were expelled, it might place their class as a whole in an excruciating situation.”
“Really? Wouldn’t it suck to suffer just because one person was absent?” Apparently, Kushida thought that the school should be gentler.
“We started the year with an even number of students. If someone is expelled or withdraws due to unforeseen circumstances, their class will have to bear the consequences,” said Horikita.
During the test on the island and the sports festival, the school imposed merciless penalties on nonparticipants. Horikita might’ve been right that, if even one student were kicked out, we’d likely suffer serious disadvantages in future exams. She was probably realizing just how important it had been to save Sudou.
“Do you understand?” Horikita asked.
“Yeah, I guess so. I just feel like thinking about it is a waste of time,” said Karuizawa.
Karuizawa’s doubts had been cleared away, so we moved on to the next item on the agenda.
“Now that we’ve discussed the short test’s importance, we can move on. But there’s one more thing. Which class do we nominate as our opponent? In my mind, we should be going after Class C,” said Horikita. Before hearing out anyone’s opinion, she offered her own. “It goes without saying, but their collective academic ability is their big weakness. Class C is inferior to Classes A and B in academics. Looking at the class points so far, that’s plain to see.”
She wasn’t wrong. Deliberately challenging an academically superior class would be nearly suicidal.
However, Hirata offered his own two cents. “I agree, Horikita-san. But Classes A and B will naturally think the same way. If Class C is so inferior when it comes to academics, then multiple classes will likely go after them. That might be bad news for us.”
Hirata wrote down the imaginary situation in his notebook.
Class A nominates Class D → No conflicts with other classes → Class D is the target
Class B nominates Class C → Wins the lottery → Class C is the target
Class C nominates Class B → No conflicts with other classes → Class B is the target
Class D nominates Class C → Loses the lottery → Class A becomes the target by default
“Although this is a worst-case scenario, it could happen,” said Hirata.
“Whoa, that’d be awful. We’d have to solve problems the smart kids made, and we’d have to make problems for them to solve, right? There’s no way we could win,” said Karuizawa.
“Yes, you’re right, the other classes will probably target Class C. But there’s no reason we shouldn’t pick Class C too, don’t you think? We have to do anything we can to try to win.” Horikita didn’t care that we might lose the lottery.
“There’s a clear academic gap between Classes A and B, isn’t there? I’m curious how different we are from Class C,” I said, expressing a bit of naiveite.
“There’s no doubt Class A is better academically. But I don’t think the difference is that extreme. There does seem to be quite a stark difference between B and C, I think. Hmm, I’ll have to investigate this,” said Horikita.
We understood how well Class D students performed academically, sure. But truthfully, we didn’t know too much about the other classes. The school hadn’t made us privy to that information, come to think of it. We only knew the difference in points, and based solely on that, we couldn’t gauge how smart each class was. For example, if Class B turned out to be better at academics than Class A, then it was possible we’d see an intense outcome as a result. In the end, maybe that was the reason for these tests.
Still, I shifted my attention to Sudou.
Horikita did the same. “You’re awfully quiet, Sudou-kun. Usually, you’d be complaining by now.”
“I just don’t get this conversation. Besides, if I started complainin’, it’d disturb you,” he replied.
We all fell silent.
“What? Did I say somethin’ weird?” asked Sudou.
“No, it’s just…what you said was so observant and restrained, I was surprised.”
Horikita had probably thought he would derail the conversation. Sudou’s unexpected maturity seemed to have given her an unprecedented shock.
“Well, we just gotta defeat our opponents one-on-one, right? We can’t immediately jump up to Class A in one shot. So, attacking the class we’re closest to—C—makes the most sense,” said Sudou.
“I see what you mean,” said Horikita. “If our combined score wins against theirs, then the point gap between their class and ours will go down dramatically.”
“Okay, but wouldn’t it be a good thing if Class A attacked C? I mean, Class A would have no problem beating them. Then Class C would definitely lose points. Wouldn’t that be good for us?”
“That depends on what we’re aiming for with this exam. But Class C should still be our target—that hasn’t changed. Let’s assume one class will go after them, whether it’s us or not.”
If the goal was to reduce Class C’s points, then it might be better for us to let Class A or B attack them. However, Class D also wanted to gain points. To increase the chances of that happening, it would be better to compete against a weaker opponent. Avoiding Class C would mean having to defeat a stronger enemy.
“It seems like everyone agrees with Horikita-san’s plan. So, I’ll go along with it, too,” said Hirata.
Hirata didn’t like the idea of things going south, so that was probably why he’d presented an array of possibilities.
“Thank you. I think we can move on to the next stage.”
Even though there were a few things that tripped us up during our conversation, everyone came together on one course of action. We disbanded a little after 4 p.m. Hirata and Sudou both left for their respective clubs. Karuizawa followed Hirata.
“Well, I’ll go ask the senior students about the exam and report back,” Kushida said as she left. Nothing else of note from her, as I expected.
“We’re counting on you.” Horikita turned to me. “What are you planning to do, Ayanokouji-kun?”
“Nothing. It should be fine if I leave the plans to you and Hirata, right? Honestly, you’ve handled everything so far almost perfectly. You’re confident in your predictions, aren’t you?”
“So far. But to ace the final exam, we need to be able to tackle it head on,” said Horikita.
“Yeah. If Class D doesn’t study and improve, we’ll get nowhere. But if we can turn things around, then passing the test will be a breeze. If necessary, I can adjust my score in order to team up with a specific person,” I said.
“So, I can count on you?”
“If it’s within my power, sure. I can join your study meetings if needed. But I won’t be a leader.”
“Because you plan to act the mediocre student as long as possible, right?”
“I prefer doing whatever is the least hassle.” I thought it was a fair compromise.
However, Horikita was the furthest thing from undemanding. “Let me think about it. You’re a member of Class D, after all, and I’d like to give you an appropriate role. I want us to win,” she said.
“I’ll consider it.”
I did my absolute best to avoid answering.
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