Because of that result, everyone in Class D sat there like the life had been sucked out of them. Nobody wanted to move. A lot of them looked completely dead inside, like all the drive had drained out of them.
At most, their class had only managed to claw its way up to a little over three hundred class points.
And now? Great. Overnight, they'd basically been kicked all the way back to square one, down to a miserable twenty class points again.
In other words, after struggling for more than half a year and finally dragging themselves up from a cramped, desperate twenty points to 320, they'd just been slammed right back down.
The other three classes were all sitting at four digits per person. They were back to two digits.
Who wouldn't feel sick over that?
At that point, all they wanted was to sit in silence.
The proctor had already left to file the report. On her way out of the classroom, Chabashira saw Yukio and Sakura waiting outside. Realizing they were here to handle the transfer paperwork, she immediately brought them to the office.
Facing Chabashira directly, Sakura was still full of guilt.
After all, she'd been acting as a mole, stealing information, hurting Class D while fattening up Yukio's class. Standing face to face with Class D's homeroom teacher, she couldn't exactly act carefree and shameless.
Chabashira, on the other hand, wasn't thinking about any of that.
She just pulled out Sakura's file, moved it over to Yukio's class, and noted that all that remained was reporting it to the academic affairs office. Once that was done, the transfer would be officially complete.
Seeing how straightforward it was, Yukio nodded. "Thanks, Chabashira-sensei."
Leaning back in her chair, Chabashira waved a hand casually, signaling he didn't need to be so formal. There was a strange gleam in her amber eyes.
"If anyone should be thanking someone, it should be me thanking you."
"For not letting that damned fate repeat itself."
When she said that, the tension in her shoulders visibly eased. She looked lighter, freer, like a weight she'd been carrying for years had finally slipped off.
Yukio's thoughts stirred. "You mean the same Unanimous Vote exam from eleven years ago?"
He actually knew the outline of it.
Both Hoshinomiya and Chabashira had mentioned it to him before. The two of them had fallen out because of that Unanimous Vote exam eleven years ago, and that grudge had dragged on all the way to the present.
But whenever it came to the exact details, both women always stopped short. Neither had ever gone into it fully. It was still the deepest wound in their hearts, something they couldn't erase.
And now, because Yukio had forcefully stepped in and taken Sakura away, he'd ended up—almost by accident, almost miraculously—wiping out the path that had once reopened that wound.
"Yeah. Want to hear an old story? A rotten old story from years ago?" Chabashira didn't even seem to know why she wanted to talk about it now.
Maybe it was because she'd grown too close to the man in front of her and no longer wanted to keep it buried.
Maybe it was because Yukio had personally twisted fate onto a different track, and that made her want to finally tell someone.
Whatever the reason, that urge to talk was impossible to suppress.
And the setting was right for it. Since the other three classes had all finished their special exam early, the second-year teachers' office was empty except for Chabashira, Yukio, and Sakura. It was the perfect place.
That only made the urge stronger.
"Of course." Yukio looked at her gently. He wanted to understand Chabashira and Hoshinomiya better too.
Sakura stood timidly behind him and, of course, had no objections.
"It happened a long, long time ago." Chabashira's voice was heavy with memory.
She casually pulled out a pack of cigarettes. But after glancing at Yukio, she didn't open it. She just tossed it onto the desk instead.
"Eleven years ago, when Chie and I were still in Third-Year Class D, we were a lot better than this current Class D. We were less than a hundred class points behind Class A."
"That was when we ran into the Unanimous Vote exam. And the very last question back then was exactly the same as the last question you all got today. Not a single word had been changed."
"Everyone fell into endless arguments. People slammed desks, kicked doors, grabbed each other by the collar... Looking back now, it was a complete mess."
"After all, we were already third-years. If we sacrificed one person, we could move up to Class A. We could graduate from Class A."
"And under the pull of that kind of benefit, the arguments just kept going and going. We opened the expulsion branch, but when it came time to decide who actually had to go, we fell right back into another endless deadlock."
"At the time... our class leader was a girl named Misora. She was really capable, but also kind of careless and scatterbrained."
"Heh. Misora and I were roommates too. Eleven years ago, Advanced Nurturing High still used double rooms. And because Misora was so easygoing, she was also really close with Chie."
"The three of us helped each other, carried the class together, and kept chasing the upper-ranked classes."
"But when we came face to face with the Unanimous Vote... the three of us were powerless."
By the time she reached that point, Chabashira's face had gone tight and complicated, so full of regret it was obvious she still remembered every second of it.
"The whole class was in chaos."
"Once the expulsion branch opened, everyone got vicious. They started comparing who was weak in what subject, who had thin contributions, who was dragging the class down physically—using every possible metric to narrow down the one person they thought wasn't worth keeping."
"But arguments like that were never really going to settle anything."
"In the end... that idiot Misora actually volunteered to be expelled. She really was willing to sacrifice herself so everyone else could rise to Class A..."
"And back then, everyone was horrible. They convinced themselves that if the class could reach A by losing its leader, then that was still a net gain. In the end, the whole class reached unanimity and decided to expel Misora."
"But there was always one anonymous vote against it, stubbornly protecting her."
Yukio blinked, studying Chabashira's increasingly complicated expression, then asked quietly, "That opposing vote was yours, wasn't it, Chabashira-sensei?"
Chabashira smiled faintly and nodded.
Yes. It had been hers.
Eleven years ago, the vote that had stubbornly protected her roommate—her best friend of three years—had been hers all along.
And the story continued.
"I voted against it five rounds in a row. Time kept running down. In the end, they figured out it was me. Then all the votes to expel someone shifted onto my head instead. They wanted to expel me—the one person standing in the way of the class's will."
"And then that idiot Misora..."
Chabashira's expression tightened.
"In the end, she turned around and protected me instead. So I could stay, she kept voting against it too. No matter how much Chie tried to persuade me, or tried to persuade Misora to let go..."
"It still didn't happen."
"In the end, time ran out. Just like today's Class D, we timed out and failed the exam. Meanwhile, Third-Year Class B gave up one person, and all at once they opened up a five-hundred-point gap between us. From that moment on, we had no chance left to rise to Class A."
"And the aftermath of that Unanimous Vote was even worse. Misora and I were isolated by the whole class. Misora couldn't bear the psychological pressure anymore... and in the end, she voluntarily withdrew from school."
"She went abroad after that. I never saw her again."
At that point, Chabashira finally closed her eyes.
There was no need to explain what came after. Anyone could piece it together.
To atone, to make up for her obsession with reaching Class A, Chabashira returned to Advanced Nurturing High and stayed on as a Class D homeroom teacher.
To get revenge, Hoshinomiya returned too and kept obstructing Chabashira.
Three girls who had once been close as sisters had spent eleven years at odds because of that Unanimous Vote exam.
That alone showed just how vicious that kind of test was—how brutally it could drag human nature into the open.
Both Yukio and Sakura were left sighing after hearing it.
Then Chabashira glanced at Yukio, her eyes soft and strangely beautiful.
"If only you'd been there back then. If you had... you would've saved me the same way you saved Sakura today, wouldn't you?"
"Yes," Yukio said, very seriously, and nodded. "I would have."
And only then did Chabashira finally smile.
...
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