On Sakura's second day in Yukio's class, Sakagami came to the classroom once again and held a homeroom meeting to explain the specific rules for the cultural festival.
Like the veteran teacher he was, Sakagami turned on the projector and displayed the rules the school had issued so every student could see them clearly.
[Cultural Festival Rule 1: Each second-year student receives 5,000 private points, to be used only for cultural festival preparations. Any unused amount expires. First-years receive 6,000 points each, and third-years receive 4,000 each. Students who have shown exceptional performance in the student council, clubs, or daily school life may receive additional points. See appendix for details.]
[2. Invited Guests: Guests will mainly consist of internal staff from Advanced Nurturing High School, people in society who know about the school and their families, and the school's many business partners and their families. The school will issue each adult guest 10,000 spending points and each minor guest 5,000 spending points. According to the school's statistics, there will be 487 guests in total: 285 adults and 202 minors. Guests will use school-issued wristwatches as their means of payment and may not use any cash they bring with them. The points spent by guests will count toward each class's sales total for ranking purposes.]
[3. Rewards: The top four classes in total cultural festival sales each receive 200 class points. Classes ranked fifth through eighth receive 100 class points. The bottom four classes receive no change.]
When he saw those rules, even Yukio raised an eyebrow.
As long as you made the top eight, there was a reward?
Put in gamer terms, just making quarterfinals counted as a win.
"Pretty simple, right? Any questions?" Sakagami said.
He told them to memorize the rules as quickly as possible, and if they really could not, they could just take out their phones and snap a picture. Once everyone had done that, he switched to the appendix, which listed the students receiving additional points for outstanding performance.
Yukio, of course, was on the list. As student council president, he received an extra 10,000 points.
Ryuuen, Hiyori, Ishizaki, and several others were also listed for outstanding performance in the student council, daily school life, or club activities.
Ryuuen got an extra 7,000 points. Hiyori got 5,000. Ishizaki got 6,000, which made him so happy he started snapping his fingers at his desk and praising himself.
After reading through it all, everyone got a basic understanding of this cultural festival.
It really was just a pure event, with no punishment at all.
Even if a class came in dead last, there would be no penalty and no change to its class points. You could call it the most relaxed major event they'd had so far.
Still, if you ignored the bonus points and just counted the base amount, Yukio's class only had 200,000 points total to prepare for the festival, which was honestly pretty tight.
Once Sakagami invited them to speak up, Kaneda adjusted his glasses.
"Sakagami-sensei, the guests aren't allowed to use the cash they bring and can only use the points issued by the school. What about us students? Can we use our own private points?"
Ishizaki had been grinning like an idiot a moment ago, but now he immediately caught on and started complaining too.
"Exactly, Sakagami-sensei. Isn't the school being way too stingy here? What the hell is 5,000 supposed to cover? Everyone in our class gets 300,000 points a month."
Once the others heard that and did the math, they also felt the school was being ridiculously cheap this time.
"You've gotta be kidding me. Taisho-era clothes alone cost tens of thousands apiece if we buy them. And it's not like there's a rental shop on campus for this kind of thing."
"Forget the clothes. We still need decorations, and we have to prepare snacks too. 200,000 is tight. We'll have to budget really carefully just to barely make it work."
"Isn't the school usually loaded? Why are they suddenly this cheap?"
Sakagami's cheek twitched a little.
"You think the school's money just gets blown in on the wind? Anyway, all festival prep has to be done using this budget. You're not allowed to use your own class points. The school is having us homeroom teachers check everything one by one."
"Huh?!"
Ishizaki's eyes lit up.
"Sakagami-sensei, you're the one checking? Then isn't that easy? You keep one eye open and one eye shut, and we can use our own points to make the theme amazing. We'll crush every other class with quality. Perfect, right?"
Other people might not know what kind of guy Sakagami was, but Sakagami definitely knew what kind of guy Sakagami was.
At that moment, his face probably had this is awkward written all over it.
After teaching for so many years, he was now being openly advised by a student to abuse his authority.
So what was the obvious answer?
Keep one eye open and one eye shut, of course.
As the homeroom teacher who had already covered for Ryuuen and Yukio fighting on the very first day of school by suppressing the surveillance footage, nobody would seriously mistake Sakagami for an upright citizen.
"Ahem."
Sakagami turned to look out the window.
He did not say anything, yet somehow he said everything.
Yukio's classmates immediately exchanged knowing grins. Everything was understood without being spoken aloud.
Ishizaki perked right back up.
"Hahaha! If Sakagami-sensei's basically giving us the okay, then let's go big. We'll pour in a ton of points, build the best theme money can buy, and take first in total sales!"
Kaneda immediately cut him off.
"Wait, Ishizaki. The fact that you even thought of overwhelming the other classes with quality is already impressive, but if we overdo it, people will notice. That'd drag Sakagami-sensei into trouble too."
"There's no problem with us adding some of our own points, but we can't go overboard. How about this? Everyone adds another 5,000 points. That gives us a total of 400,000, which should be about right."
Sakagami nodded in clear approval.
This was why having smart students around was so reassuring. If they really went as wild as Ishizaki wanted and started throwing money around on a huge scale, he would have a much harder time dealing with the school afterward.
On the other side of the room, Hiyori raised another question.
"Sakagami-sensei, how exactly is sales revenue calculated? Is it revenue minus costs? Or is it simply the total number of points spent by guests? And is there a time limit?"
"There is, naturally," Sakagami replied. He knew the rules by heart and did not even need to check the materials. "Sales only count the total number of points spent by guests. Your actual costs are not factored in."
"And yes, the festival only lasts one day, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. But there's one thing you all need to pay attention to: sales stop being counted at 4:00 p.m. That's when the rankings are finalized."
In other words, the competition among the three grades and twelve classes only lasted seven hours.
That alone made every student grow more serious.
They had thought this would be easy, but if they wanted to place in the top four, they were going to have to work for it.
There was a time limit, and every class's event would obviously take time.
Yukio's class and D-Class, for example, were both running cafés. A guest going in for coffee, dessert, and some conversation could easily spend half an hour or more there.
If the guests' time was all used up, then even if you somehow made plenty of money in the final two hours, it would not matter anymore.
So the students all came to the same conclusion:
As expected of Advanced Nurturing High School. Even when it gave them a supposedly relaxed event, it still found a way to make them feel the pressure.
...
For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.