A month had almost passed since school started. The final week was already underway, with barely five days left before the month came to an end.
The second period which was English, had ended a few moments ago, and the teacher was already gone. A low murmur spread through the classroom as students shifted in their seats, small conversations starting up while they waited for the next class.
Leaning back in his chair, Hikigaya stared at the ceiling, relieved that English was finally over. History was up next, a subject he found much easier to digest. He appreciated that in history, the people who made disastrous decisions were already dead; no matter how powerful or influential they once were, they could no longer object to whatever society chose to think of them in the present.
The sliding door at the front of the room creaked open and Chabashira-sensei walked in, the scattered voices and low murmurs dying out at once as if someone had flipped a switch.
Before anyone else could react, Hirata stood up immediately.
"Stand up," he called out in a loud, clear voice, enough to reach everyone in the class.
Every student rose to their feet together at once, chairs scraping softly against the floor.
Hirata waited a second, then said, "Bow."
Everyone bowed toward the teacher.
"Good morning, sensei," the whole class said together.
"Good morning, everyone," Chabashira-sensei replied, her gaze sweeping calmly across the room. "Please be seated."
Everyone sat back down. After that, no one spoke. The room settled into a quiet stillness for a moment as the lesson was about to begin.
Chabashira-sensei didn't move toward the whiteboard. Instead, she remained standing at the podium, her arms crossed as she surveyed the rows of students.
"Before we begin," she started, "I should inform you that today's lesson won't be as usual. It will be a bit more serious."
"What do you mean by that, sensei?" a student asked, unable to hide their curiosity.
"It's almost the end of the month, so we're going to have a short test. Please pass these to the back."
She handed out the papers to the students in the front row. Eventually, the single-sheet test reached his desk. It covered all five main subjects. There were only a few questions per subject, but that only made it feel more deliberate than forgiving.
As the papers made their way back, a few groans broke the silence.
"Eh? A test? Why? we never heard anything about this!" a student cried.
"Yeah, that's kinda unfair, sensei. Dropping it on us like this is sneaky," another student added.
"Don't say that," Chabashira-sensei replied. "This test is just for future reference. It won't be reflected in your report cards. There is no risk involved, so don't worry. Of course, cheating is prohibited."
"Future reference, huh?" Hikigaya muttered under his breath, "And 'no reflection in report cards.' How generous."
So that was how they were framing it. This "reference" must be for the written aspect of the school's ongoing, hidden assessment of its students. After all, they were judging our worth as students, so academics had to be included as well.
'Good thing I started grinding early,' he thought, a faint sense of relief mixing with his usual cynicism. 'Right from the first week, I've been forcing myself to study every night and staying after class to study with the teachers every day, trying to catch up on as much of the basic stuff I missed as I could.'
As soon as the pop quiz began, Hikigaya scanned the questions. There were four questions per subject, for a total of twenty. Each question was worth five points, adding up to one hundred points.
His eyes moved across the paper as he read it carefully, a quiet sigh of relief slipping out without him noticing.
This wasn't nearly as difficult as he had been bracing himself for. Most of the problems were pretty basic stuff that showed up in the textbooks he had been hammering into his head every night and since it mixed all five subjects together, the math and science part didn't feel overwhelming. Just four questions scattered in with everything else. He had been mentally ready for a full-on maths and science combo slaughter, but this?
At the very least, he could pass this exam.
Just as he was starting to think the test was not too difficult, he reached the end of the question paper.
The final three questions stood apart from the rest.
'…What the hell it's way too hard?' he thought, narrowing his eyes at the paper. He didn't even bother entertaining the idea of attempting them. Just reading the questions felt like trying to decipher an alien script.
'Why are these so different from the rest?' he wondered, the first seventeen questions were normal high-school level, maybe even a little easy for this place. But these three? Even someone as academically weak as him could tell they weren't high-school level at all.
They felt closer to university-level problems, the kind that assumed a foundation most of them simply didn't have yet. He doubted many people in their class or even across the first year could solve them, unless the other first year classes were somehow stocked with nothing but geniuses, which seemed unlikely.
'…Horikita, perhaps.'
Beyond her, no one else came to mind who could solve these questions in their class. Which made it hard to believe this was meant to be fair in the usual sense. It was almost as if the test had been designed with a ceiling in mind one that very few were meant to reach.
Or maybe he was just thinking too hard over nothing as always.
'Whatever. I'll just do what I can,' he thought, pulling his eyes away from the impossible math problems.
He lifted his eyes from the paper and glanced around the classroom. Chabashira-sensei was monitoring the room, walking slowly between the rows as she kept her watchful eye to dissuade anyone from cheating.
The room itself was silent, with no whispered complaints or restless shifting. Everyone looked focused on their papers.
He glanced to the side. Horikita was already working through the test, someone who would never even consider cheating. Her pen moved steadily across the page as she filled in the answers. It looked like she was easily going to get a perfect score.
Hikigaya lowered his gaze back to his own paper and finally began to write.
As his pen moved, a quiet feeling surfaced, something faint and distant, like an echo he hadn't noticed in a long time. It had been almost four years since he had taken a school exam seriously sitting in a classroom, answering questions alongside everyone else, with nothing separating him from the rest.
For a moment, he felt like just another 'normal' kid taking a 'normal' exam again.
The thought lingered for a brief moment. Then he pushed it aside, refocusing on the test in front of him.
'Don't get sentimental, idiot. It's just a quiz.'
For now, all that mattered was doing what he could, one answer at a time.
-----0-----
From her position at the front of the room, Sae Chabashira watched over the students as they worked on their exams in silence. Most of them looked less bothered while attempting the questions than she had expected.
Actually, she would go as far as to say she hadn't expected anything from this class.
For as long as she had been teaching Class D at this school, expectations had always ended in disappointment. Year after year, it followed the same pattern.
This class, however, had managed to set the bar even lower at the start. Their attitude, the way they behaved, was worse than even the previous batch of first-year Class D students.
So now, when almost a month was about to end—
The bell rang suddenly.
The sound carried across the classroom, and she stopped where she was.
She paused for a moment, then called out in a clear voice.
"Time is up. Almost everyone seems to have finished the exam anyway. Please pass your answer sheets forward."
The students began to pass their papers up the rows. Once the stacks reached the front, Chabashira collected them, straightening them into a neat pile with a few quick taps against the podium.
As she finished, Hirata stood up once more.
"Stand up," he said firmly.
The class rose as one, chairs scraping softly.
"Bow."
Everyone bowed toward her.
"Thank you very much, sensei," the class said in unison.
"…Good work today," Chabashira said. "You may be seated."
The students sat back down as she turned and left the classroom, the door sliding shut behind her with a soft click.
This thought continued as she walked away
—Yep, this was what her class had been acting like lately, almost like model students. They came on time, didn't openly slack off, and avoided causing nuisances during lessons. She didn't know what had happened or why, but the change had started around the end of the second week.
'Did they figure it out? About the hidden assessment?'
Even if they had figured it out that still didn't explain their behavior.
It wasn't as if Class D was always full of idiots. There had been capable students in the past, and every year a few of them noticed how the school worked and tried to inform the others. But never had they been able to unite or become like this.
Because the incentives given by the school were just too irresistible, it was impossible for normal students to ignore all that and behave like model students given the quality of the rest of the students in Class D.
'So, what had happened this time?'
Because one thing was clear: even though they were behaving like model students, none of them was being led by any one person to do it. Almost as if everyone was doing it by themselves.
She had expected someone like Hirata or Kushida to coordinate them like this, but no everyone was doing it independently. Hirata was just acting as a representative, not leading them.
That was the strangest part.
Although subtle changes had been there even before two weeks, it had only been during the time a teacher was in class or when someone in class was asking a question.
But now it was different; the class environment had changed completely.
These strange happenings started around after that complaint between Hikigaya and Ike & Yamauchi.
Did they have something to do with it too? But how? She couldn't see it.
Something had definitely happened then. Wait! Wait! Now that she thought about it, the—
"Ah, Sae-chan! You're here already?"
Chabashira blinked, her thoughts interrupted as Hoshinomiya's cheerful voice echoed through the staff room.
She glanced around, realizing with a start that she had already arrived, the bundle of test papers still clutched in her hands.
She turned her head slightly, acknowledging the other teacher with a nod. "Hoshinomiya."
"Oh, come on, Sae-chan, you can do better than that!" Hoshinomiya said with a playful grin, waving her own stack of papers like a flag. "Let's submit these together. Race you to the checking room?"
Chabashira didn't respond to the tease, but she fell into step beside her as they walked toward the small alcove at the back of the staff room where the submission bin waited. The process was quick they slotted their papers into the labelled slots for grading.
As they turned away, Hoshinomiya tilted her head, studying her face.
"You know, Sae-chan, you seem in a good mood today. What's got you smiley on the inside? C'mon, spill it out."
"You're just imagining things, Chie—" she corrected herself immediately, "—I mean, Hoshinomiya."
Hoshinomiya's eyes lit up at the slip, her grin widening with amusement.
"Oh? If you say it like that, Sae-chan, then who am I to doubt you?"
Chabashira looked away, clicking her tongue softly. Even she wasn't convinced by her own words.
'Uh… Fine,' she admitted to herself inwardly.
'…Guess I am a little… pleased. Strange as it is, I might even be looking forward to the revelation of the class points next month.'
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Author's Note:
So, this chapter is finally done, and I hope it turned out alright. It's a relatively small chapter where nothing major happens, but the next one will take us to March 1st, where things will start moving again.
It took longer than I wanted to get here, but honestly… reaching this point feels like a small personal victory. When I first started this story, I wasn't sure if I'd have the consistency to keep going, but here we are. So, thank you for reading, for sticking around, and for letting me grow with this fic. I feel like, in terms of writing, I've improved quite a lot since I started. My writing back then was honestly dog shit, but now I feel like I've improved at least a little.
I'm actually quite nervous about writing the next chapter because it's such a pivotal moment in the story, but I'm going to give it my absolute best.
Side Project Shoutout: I've also been collaborating with the author 'CacciaFulmini' on an Oregairu x Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover titled "As Expected, Our Teenage Mecha Apocalypse was a Complete Disaster." We dropped the prologue a few days ago, and Chapter 1 is almost ready to go. If you're interested in seeing Hachiman deal with Evas, definitely check it out on (FFnet!)
As always, if anything feels off pacing, structure, characterization, or anything else please let me know. Your feedback genuinely helps me improve.
Thank you for giving this story a chance. Your comments and encouragement mean a lot to me and honestly keep me motivated to keep writing.
If you feel like supporting my work, a small tip here would really mean a lot.
ko-fi.com/raijinmaru_k2
Stay tuned for more.
—Raijinmaru_K2