“I’ll contact them on my phone right now.
Let’s do the transaction at Palet—there’s a good spot there with the right angle.” Kushida picked up her phone.
“Alright.” This kind of simple fixed-position filming was something Shiraishi could handle himself, so there was no need to trouble Masumi Kamuro.
Shiraishi ordered a drink, chose a seat, and placed his backpack flat on the table.
If one didn’t look closely, it was hard to notice the small camera hidden in the gap of the bag’s opening, its lens precisely aimed at the seat where Kushida would be sitting.
Before long, Ken Sudo, Kanji Ike, and Haruki Yamauchi arrived in a rush.
Shortly after, two unfamiliar upperclassmen also walked discreetly into the café.
The group huddled in the corner, speaking in hushed tones for a moment.
One of the upperclassmen pulled a stack of review materials from his bag and carefully handed them over.
“This is great!
We finally got them!” Yamauchi snatched the exam papers and couldn’t contain his excitement, shouting out loud.
“Keep it down…” The others quickly hushed him.
Sudo and the others packed up their things, planning to return to the dorms to verify the authenticity of the past exam questions.
Since Kushida had also obtained the answers to the first quiz, if those matched up, they wouldn’t need to worry about the upcoming exam.
Shiraishi reached into his bag, retrieved the camera, and played back the footage, carefully checking the image quality, audio, and the full recording.
The footage was clear and complete—the entire transaction process and all dialogue details were perfectly captured, with no gaps.
He turned his head.
Kushida, who hadn’t yet left, was sitting at a seat facing his direction.
When she saw Shiraishi give an OK gesture, she finally left the café.
Monday arrived.
Suzune Horikita brought Kikyo Kushida and Kiyotaka Ayanokōji to the staff office.
“Sensei, there’s something urgent we need to confirm with you.” “Make it brief.
I have other work to attend to right now.” Sae Chabashira seemed to have her own tasks to handle.
“Regarding the midterm exam scope you mentioned in the first week of this month—is there any mistake?
We asked students from other classes, and the exam scope they described clearly differs from what we’ve been reviewing.” Chabashira listened to Horikita’s words expressionlessly before finally stopping her writing.
“Come to think of it, the midterm exam scope was changed on the Friday before last.
My apologies—it seems I forgot to inform you.” “…” Faced with this situation, Horikita fell silent.
She watched as Chabashira pulled a sheet of A4 paper from the printer and smoothly wrote down the exam scope for all five subjects.
What made Horikita’s head ache was that although these topics had all been covered in class, they were vastly different from what everyone had been reviewing for the past week.
“Thanks to you, Horikita.
I might have truly forgotten about this otherwise.” “Isn’t this a bit too late…” “There’s still a week left, isn’t there?
If you review properly, passing should be easy.” Chabashira seemed completely unaware of any fault on her part.
After casually saying these words, she ushered them out of the office.
Honestly, you still don’t get my meaning?
After seeing those students off, Chabashira resumed her work.
However, she noticed that Hoshinomiya Chie, who had been in the office just moments ago, had suddenly disappeared.
“Horikita-san…” Walking back to class, Kushida spoke up.
“Actually, you don’t need to worry too much about Sudo and the others.” “Are you saying we should just give up on them?” Horikita stopped walking and turned to look at Kushida.
“That’s not what I mean.” Kushida glanced around and lowered her voice.
“Over the weekend, I found out from some upperclassmen that this school has ‘past exam papers.’ We even checked them against our first quiz and found that their third-years’ first quiz was exactly the same as ours.” “You mean…
the midterm exam questions are most likely also the same as previous years’?” Horikita understood Kushida’s meaning.
“Yes.
So over the weekend, I had them go back and memorize the answers first.
But the transaction came with a rule that we can’t leak the questions to anyone else, so we didn’t mention it earlier.” Kushida explained.
For some reason, Horikita felt a wave of relief.
The anxiety that had been building up over the past two weeks seemed to ease considerably.
“In that case, let them memorize the past exam questions.” She hadn’t been confident about teaching Sudo and the others within a week anyway; memorizing past papers was the best available option.
“But we still need to quickly inform the rest of the class about the changed exam scope.
I’ll leave that to you, Kushida.” “Eh, me?” “Yes.
You’re the most suitable person for this.” Horikita glanced at Ayanokōji and said.
“Alright then.
I’ll handle notifying everyone.” Ayanokōji paid no attention to their conversation.
His gaze drifted into the distance, spotting a familiar figure walking into the infirmary.
Inside the infirmary.
“Ahahahaha, Makoto-kun!
You’ll never guess—little Sae’s an idiot.
She actually forgot to tell her class about the exam scope change.
Their class already doesn’t do well academically—now a ton of them are going to fail!” Hoshinomiya’s laughter rang out as soon as Shiraishi entered.
“I’m aware of that, Hoshinomiya-sensei.” Shiraishi nodded lightly.
“But Chabashira-sensei probably did this to force her class to quickly find other ways to pass.” “Other ways to pass…
Are you referring to?” Hoshinomiya’s smile vanished instantly.
She, too, thought of that method.
“Yes.
Past exam papers.” “Hmph.
Little Sae is certainly not as honest as she pretends to be.” Hoshinomiya pursed her lips.
Chabashira had always acted as if she didn’t care about class advancement, almost fooling her completely—but now she was pulling these sneaky tricks behind the scenes.
“But since Makoto-kun has figured things out to this extent, you must have a countermeasure, right?” “I have evidence that they purchased past exam papers.” Shiraishi took three photos from his bag—still frames extracted from the video he had recorded.
Hoshinomiya took the photos and broke into a smile: “How impressive~ What reward does Makoto-kun want from his teacher?” Shiraishi waved his hand, ignoring Hoshinomiya’s teasing.
“Buying past exam papers is an unspoken rule that the school tacitly allows.
But if someone reports it, the school will rewrite the exam questions even if they don’t punish the students involved, right?” Setting different questions under the same topic scope wouldn’t have much impact on scores.
Since the passing line was based on the class average, if the questions were a bit harder, everyone would struggle—and the average would naturally drop.
But for students who had only memorized the answers without understanding the fundamental principles, changed questions would be devastating.
“In that case, even though I don’t teach those subjects, I’ll have to work overtime to help everyone come up with new questions.” Hoshinomiya gave Shiraishi a playful punch to the chest.
“Well done.
Keep it up.”