The students who had only suspected Yukio because of first impressions were now furious after hearing him openly admit it.
They had made up their minds that very morning—in this exam we'll crush Yukio and avenge our classmates—and barely two hours later, with the very first event finished, Yukio had wiped the floor with all of them.
Who could stand that? Who wouldn't be angry? Yet alongside the anger was plenty of confusion.
"How did he even do it? One person can't tamper with the scores of every class. That's insane."
"If it were just one class I could half believe it, but he altered the results of the other eleven? That's absurd!"
"No, no—forget eleven classes—even changing a single class's score would be terrifying, okay?"
"I always thought the school couldn't make a mistake. Maybe the administration is helping him?"
"What? The school helping Yukio? Then why even have an exam—just hand all our class points to him! If the school's involved we're finished. Impossible!"
Unable to make sense of it, everyone chattered at once; the corridor became a boiling pot. Some denounced Yukio's vile methods, others accused the school of unfair intervention, but most tried to figure out how he could alter eleven averages at once—it was just not scientific.
Horikita Manabu wasn't angry; he was not easily angered. Besides, he'd become somewhat accustomed to Yukio's outrages. Nothing in this camp could surpass last term's workplace exam, when Yukio and Takahashi set the yukata shop on fire.
The real reason Horikita had come down to the first-year floor was personal concern.
How on earth did Yukio pull this off, and will he use it for something worse? If this trick could extend to midterms and finals, other students might fail out en masse.
Back at the succession ceremony Yukio had earned Manabu's trust—he didn't abuse student-council authority. But now Yukio seemed to possess a new way to ruin the school's fairness without any council power, so Manabu had to ask.
Trusting the boy's bottom line, Horikita did not barge in aggressively; he spoke sincerely.
"Yukio, could you explain how you managed this?"
"Sure. It's a one-time thing anyway." Seeing the usually stone-faced ex-president so earnest, Yukio felt generous—and it also bought a little time.
"Answer sheets. I tampered with the answer sheets your classes handed in. Don't forget: on day one, when we arrived, two school janitors unloaded two printers from the last bus.
I noticed right then—those machines don't just print test papers, they print answer cards too."
"So the rest was easy: get blank cards, have a few of my classmates fill them at random, and submit those. That's why every class average landed in the thirties—random guessing hits about that rate."
He revealed the trick but left Hoshinomiya out—she still had to remain Ichinose's homeroom teacher.
The staff would certainly discover the cards had been swapped after collection and trace it to Hoshinomiya, but so what?
Buying a teacher's help with private points was within school rules—Yukio had found that loophole back when he bought coursework grades.
"If even the chairman's post is for sale, why not a teacher's cooperation?" he mused.
The half-hidden truth was shocking enough. Horikita Manabu—who normally only pushed up his glasses once—did it three times in a row, as if they might slide off.
"A-answer sheets? …Looks like I was over-worried."
If the trick worked only for this special-exam card swap, regular campus exams were safe; the nightmare Manabu feared would not come.
Down the hall Sakayanagi, guarded by Kamuro and Hashimoto, perked up.
"Yukio-kun, even so, the school's printers aren't easy to access. Even sneaking in at night, the room would be locked. Forcing the door would trigger measures."
"How did you obtain extra answer sheets?"
Yukio waved the phone in his right hand, relaxed.
"The proctor said it during the exam, remember? One hundred private points buys a fresh answer sheet. Why take risks breaking in? Just buy them."
"Counting all eleven classes, plus upper-year dropouts, there are what—four hundred students? Forty-thousand points. Our class can produce that overnight."
Sakayanagi blinked, then gave a tiny shake of her head and a faint smile—half amused, half vexed.
"That truly caught me off-guard. I thought this format left you no room for trickery."
A short distance away Matsushita and Horikita Suzune exchanged looks, both recalling how classmates Onodera and Sonoda had sworn they'd overheard Yukio's class pooling points in the cafeteria.
Not rumor but fact!
Yet it wasn't two million to buy Matsushita's defection—it was just forty-odd thousand to purchase answer sheets.
Matsushita muttered, staring at the boy who stood above them all. "So that's strategy—one shot, two birds. So few points, gathered silently… yet he had students gossip in the cafeteria, framing me and hiding the real intent…"
Horikita nodded in deep agreement, eyes fixed on her brother and Yukio. "That guy really is this hard to fight."
Seeing her brother unknowingly fall into Yukio's scheme left her with complicated feelings—this wasn't the first time Manabu lost to him.
In her old world only her brother had been a towering peak; now there were two mountains, and their heights were becoming distinct.
She didn't want to compare them—didn't want to admit it.
Forcing stray thoughts aside, she steeled herself not to dwell on it…
...
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