Sakayanagi's class snapped to attention the instant homeroom teacher Mashima announced their score—forty points. Dozens of heads whipped around.
Toward Yukio's section.
"Th‑this is impossible! I memorized every—every—single character! I even copied it five times in the dorm last night. There's no way I made a mistake!"
"Yukio… Yukio again? Did his class pull some trick?"
"It has to be them! Who else could tank our transcription marks this badly?"
"Stop."
Feelings had been simmering since morning—tampered test papers, soaked running shoes, anger looking for an outlet. Just as it was about to burst onto Yukio's class, Sakayanagi rose from her chair.
She alone had been seated in the corridor; because of her health Mashima had fetched a chair for her while the others stood waiting to enter. Now she stood and cut off the commotion.
"What exactly do you plan to do?"
A hot‑blooded boy smacked the wall. "We're demanding an explanation from Yukio's class!"
"Hehe." Sakayanagi's laugh dripped with contempt—an expression no one had ever seen disturb her usual ladylike smile.
The boy's bravado crumbled. He lowered his fist, unable to meet her eyes. "I‑I didn't say anything wrong."
"Didn't you?" She almost chuckled aloud. "Paper—plain A4 draft sheets—no problem. Pens—no problem. Scores tabulated by our own teacher.
Tell me, how could Yukio‑kun alter our sutra scores? Magic? Abandoning science now?"
Only then did the boy flinch—right, how would that even work? You can't hang every black pot on Yukio's door.
The rest of the class exchanged looks; paper, pens, teacher—none compromised. They'd copied the sutra themselves. No tampering meant the fault had to be theirs.
So more than one of them had written the wrong characters, dragging the score down.
Exactly the same scene played out in the other two classes. One by one they realized the fiasco really wasn't Yukio's doing.
Which only made it harder to swallow.
People instinctively dodge responsibility; it spares them guilt and self‑reproach. In a phrase: humans are born to pass the buck.
Flunk a normal test and most students cry, "The examiner's insane—those questions were brutal!" Only a rare few begin with, "I didn't study hard enough."
Thus, low sutra marks? Must be Yukio's sabotage—never "we copied it wrong."
Even after uncovering the truth, they kept wriggling out of blame. When the black pot couldn't be dumped on Yukio, they tossed it at one another.
Two students in Sakayanagi's class erupted:
"Was it you? I told you—stay up a little longer drilling before bed! You waste half the night sleeping early, and now we tanked the score!"
"Oh please! I get up at dawn to recite with a clear head—unlike you, dozing through morning meditation!"
"Ha? Now it's my fault? I knew my page by heart—no way I missed a stroke! I'll write it out right now if you want!"
The quarrel threatened to spread. In this forest camp they shared eight‑person rooms, so the hard‑working pointed fingers at the slackers, and the slackers fired back.
Sakayanagi's class boiled like porridge, everyone trying to dump the giant blame‑pot on a roommate.
"Enough." She stepped in again. "In fact, none of you is at fault."
"Eh?" Some didn't follow—this wasn't the usual way to smooth things over.
"After all," she resumed her seat and her polite smile, "I memorized the whole sutra long ago. I went in last and skimmed the first thirty‑nine pages—nothing wrong with them."
…
Over in Ichinose's class—united though they were—the diligent still scolded the less diligent.
Those scolded didn't argue; they bowed their heads, guilty for dragging the class down.
Ichinose clapped lightly, stopping the cycle of blame and apology. "What are we saying? I think everyone tried hard enough this time~"
"It's nobody's fault. Yukio‑kun really did a number on us—running a thousand meters for the boys, eight hundred for the girls in soaked shoes. When you're that tired, of course you slip up. If blame's needed, then I, the class rep, didn't handle things—I underestimated Yukio‑kun."
She was plainly offering to wear the black pot herself to keep the peace.
Her classmates weren't fools; one by one, the angry or ashamed broke into smiles.
After the laughter, unity returned.
"Sorry—I shouldn't have blamed you. If you weren't drilling enough, I should've kept you on task. That's on me."
"Quit it. My own laziness is the problem—it's not your supervision, and certainly not Ichinose's fault. My bad, sigh…"
"All right, Ichinose—enough. Even Yukio's class bombed the transcription. We just have to work harder."
Seeing harmony restored, Ichinose flashed her brightest, sweetest grin and kept cheering everyone on, soothing every classmate still weighed down by guilt.
...
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