After Honami Ichinose and the rest of Class B had a clear grasp of the situation, they didn’t immediately decide to make the deal.
Instead, they suggested stepping outside to discuss it.
“No problem, you’re welcome to go out and talk it over—but please make it quick.
I don’t have all that much patience.”
Now that he had them right where he wanted them, Naruse’s attitude was easygoing.
“Understood.
We’ll be right back.”
The five members of Class B found a secluded corner around the bend of the corridor outside the café and gathered into a small circle.
Honami Ichinose spoke up first.
A transaction of five hundred thousand points was no small sum, after all, and she needed to know what everyone else was thinking.
“What does everyone think?”
Ryūji Kanzaki was the first to respond.
He crossed his arms over his chest, as if he’d already made up his mind.
“Judging by Hoshinomiya-sensei’s reply, this school really does have hidden rules.”
“If we were to go gather all this information ourselves right now, it would take an enormous amount of time and energy—and we wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“If the information Naruse is offering really is that valuable, then buying intel does make sense.
After all, right now we have no idea just how much weight these hidden rules actually carry.”
“Yeah, I think Kanzaki has a point.”
Sayo Andō nodded gently.
“After a full day of classes today, I already got the sense that a lot of things about this school feel a little off—but I just can’t put my finger on what’s wrong…”
“Right.
If there really are some kind of hidden rules, then finding out sooner is always better than later,” Chihiro Shiranami added in a small voice.
Just then, Sō Shibata’s eyes suddenly went wide, as though he’d just had a revelation.
“I remember now!”
“?”
His voice came out much louder than normal, drawing the eyes of everyone beside him all at once.
“This afternoon, during Japanese history class, I accidentally fell asleep.”
His words made everyone present pause for a moment.
“And then?” Ryūji Kanzaki pressed.
“The thing is, when Chabashira-sensei walked right past me, she made absolutely no move to wake me up.”
Sō Shibata’s eyebrows knitted tightly together, his tone full of confusion.
“It was only later…
after Chabashira-sensei had left, that Moriyama next to me gave me a nudge and I woke up—and that’s how I found out about it.”
The moment those words were out, the atmosphere in the air instantly shifted.
“You mean…”
“Kanzaki, do you think a normal school, when a teacher spots a student sleeping in her own class, would just turn a blind eye like that?”
Shibata may have been a sports-type guy, but his mind was no dull blade.
“Before I enrolled, I heard that this school’s rate of advancement to higher education is close to a hundred percent.”
For a teacher to see a student sleeping in class and deliberately do nothing about it was suspicious in and of itself.
At an ordinary school, this might be explained away as the teacher’s oversight or a lack of professional ethics.
But this Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School boasted a hundred-percent advancement rate.
If they didn’t even bother about students sleeping in class, then how was the school supposed to guarantee everyone’s grades?
Don’t tell me they relied on hypnosis?
“…”
After hearing Sō Shibata out, Honami Ichinose reached a decision in her heart.
“If that’s the case, then we really do need to buy those hidden rules.”
“Exactly!”
No one objected.
The other four members of Class B nodded almost in the same instant.
“Naruse.”
Back inside the café, Honami Ichinose looked straight into Hikaru Naruse’s eyes.
“We can agree to this deal.
Five hundred thousand points, to buy from you the three hidden rules you’ve investigated.”
“But you have to guarantee that these three hidden rules are worth that price.”
“Heh, of course, no problem.”
Hikaru Naruse had come this time with plenty of preparation.
He simply pulled a neatly folded sheet of paper from his pocket.
It was a contract.
The paper had an excellent texture, and printed upon it were the crest of Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School and a standard contract format.
“This too is a special product of this school—a contract.”
Hikaru Naruse spread the contract out flat across the tabletop and began to explain.
“This contract is something I went and requested this afternoon from Mashima-sensei, our class’s teacher.”
“You can think of it as a legal document that takes effect within the school, because once it’s signed, it gets uploaded to the school’s database—which guarantees it will be enforced.”
Using the contract was actually quite simple; Mashima-sensei had taught the whole thing to Hikaru Naruse directly.
“Ichinose, since you’re the leader of Class B, you’re the most fitting person to sign on Class B’s behalf.”
“I can sign first—that way you can be sure I won’t break the agreement.”
Hikaru Naruse wrote his name in the space for the second party at the bottom of the contract, then held the pen out toward Honami Ichinose.
“A contract?”
Seeing how thoroughly prepared Naruse was, the students of Class B were startled once again.
After all, back in elementary and middle school, they’d never heard of such a thing.
“Alright!”
Honami Ichinose drew a deep breath, then took the contract and read it through carefully.
She didn’t miss a single word written on it before finally signing her own name.
“Very good.”
Looking at the two signatures side by side on the contract, a satisfied smile surfaced at the corner of Hikaru Naruse’s mouth.
He took out his phone, snapped a photo of the contract, then opened a certain app on his phone and uploaded the data directly.
“Done.
The contract is now in effect.”
Hikaru Naruse gave a little laugh.
“Then I’ll go ahead and tell you the information.
I’m not worried about you welching on the deal—after all, there’s nowhere for you to run.”
“Understood.
Thank you for your trust, Naruse.
We won’t go back on our word.”
“Mm.”
Hikaru Naruse’s expression gradually grew more serious, and then he slowly began.
“Each of the three pieces of intel I gathered is directly connected to this school’s hidden rules.
Everyone, please listen closely.”
He paused for a brief moment, then spoke.
“The first.”
“The number of cameras in this school is far greater than you imagine.”
The moment those words came out, the five of them all faltered slightly at the same time.
“Cameras?” Sō Shibata repeated in confusion.
“That’s right.”
Hikaru Naruse gave a slight nod, then casually pointed to a certain corner of the café.
“There’s one right over there, for instance.”
Once again he drew a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, densely marked with all sorts of locations and symbols.
“This is a map of the camera positions I collected today.
I can share it with you—there are over sixty in total.”
In truth, he’d just wandered around at random to pad out the count.
Naruse would never sync the positions of the important cameras with them—after all, he still had big plans for those later.
“Classrooms, corridors, the cafeteria, the library, the sports field—there are even some in the hallways outside the restrooms.”
He lifted his head, his gaze fixed straight on Honami Ichinose.
“What this means, I think you all should understand.”
“This sheet is yours to keep.”
“Thank you…
Naruse.”
Honami Ichinose took the sheet, and the others crowded in to have a look as well.
The more they looked, the graver their expressions became.
In this island nation’s schools, cameras actually weren’t especially common.
Out of consideration for privacy protection, most Japanese high schools wouldn’t install large amounts of surveillance equipment inside their campuses.
But this place was clearly different.
“Alright, now for the second.”
Hikaru Naruse didn’t give them much time to digest it and simply continued.
“The Private Points issued to each person every month—that number is not fixed.”
He paused briefly, giving them another shock.
“Have you ever wondered why the school provides free mountain-vegetable set meals and free daily necessities?
If every student were simply handed a hundred thousand outright, then what’s the point of setting up all these free supplies?
To waste resources?”
“The information I’ve gathered so far is that the points issued each month are tied to class ranking, but I’m not clear on the exact details.”
“Still, this alone is more than enough to prove the value of this intel.”
“Yeah…”
Honami Ichinose and the students of Class B all understood the weight of this.
If it wasn’t a fixed hundred thousand each month, then that was actually the more natural state of things—otherwise, why would the school shoulder such an enormous cost?
Of course, Naruse held back part of this information as well.
Knowing the original story, he understood full well that the matter of class points being deducted right at the start of the term was itself a kind of Special Exam.
It was only carried out during the first month after new students enrolled.
If students committed violations in class or in the classroom—passing notes, talking, playing games, eating snacks, and so on—all such actions would deduct class evaluation points.
But once the first month was over, this rule ceased to exist.
Afterward, the increase and decrease of class evaluation points had to do only with Special Exams.
Through today’s full day of classes, Naruse had come to understand the overall academic atmosphere of Class A.
Everyone there wouldn’t commit violations, so naturally there’d be no deductions.
But this was something he could never tell Class B right now.
“And the last one.”
Hikaru Naruse suddenly gave a cold laugh and said to Honami Ichinose:
“Although this school boasts a hundred-percent advancement rate, not everyone gets to graduate smoothly.”
These few sentences landed like a heavy hammer, slamming all at once into the hearts of every Class B student.
“Over the three years of high school, all sorts of situations can arise that lead to a student’s expulsion—and those who are expelled naturally fall outside the scope of the advancement rate statistics.”
“From what I understand, the rosters of the second- and third-year students are not the full one hundred and sixty from enrollment—especially the second years…
they’re already several people short.”
“This is the cruelty of this school.”
Sō Shibata, Sayo Andō, Chihiro Shiranami, Ryūji Kanzaki, and Honami Ichinose—every one of them wore an extremely grave expression.
Especially Honami Ichinose.
The girl’s body swayed ever so slightly, as though she doubted she’d heard him correctly.
“Naruse, is this…
true?”
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: COTE: Counterattack System
Let’s hit these goals: