The True Elites

Chapter 1-5: Ordinary

Ayanokōji's POV

I started the stopwatch function on my phone and, after approximately one second, stopped it again. The time displayed was 00:01:362. The inbuilt stopwatch function of our phones was useful because it used a minutes:seconds:milliseconds format.

"Two," I said aloud.

Then I once again started the stopwatch function and stopped it shortly after.

00:02:118

That was no good. I repeated the process again, since I had stopped the stopwatch on a time couldn't be used.

00:02:935

"And five. That makes seven total," I declared to my classmates who were seated around a large table with me.

Checking the last digit or digits of the milliseconds component of the current time is a widely used method for computers to generate a pseudorandom number. It is impossible to generate a truly random number due to the way computers work, so the next best thing is pseudorandomness, where a number is generated based on a 'seed,' whether it be a string of numbers or an aspect of the environment.

It's important that pseudorandomly generated numbers appear random, so that they cannot be predicted or manipulated. The exact time down to the thousandths of a second is one of the simplest ways that this can be accomplished.

In our case, we were using this method of random number generation to simulate the roll of a dice, since we didn't have any with us.

"Seven, huh? You know what that means, right Ayanokōji?" Sora taunted from across the table.

I sighed an affirmative.

"That puts you on Regent Street; in other words, you owe me 900 points!" he said maniacally.

Operating my phone, I transferred the 900 points to Sora. Now, I only had 364 remaining. I definitely wasn't in a good position; I was extremely low on points and I didn't have many assets either. My situation was shaky, to say the least.

I was currently playing a game of Monopoly with Sora, Lelouch and Ryuzaki. More specifically, the London-based classic edition Monopoly. Of course, we hadn't brought a Monopoly board with us to the Karaoke Parlour so we were playing it purely in our heads. There are so many different elements in Monopoly, from the piece positions to owned properties and so on, that at first I had my doubts about whether we would be able to remember everything, but it seems that my doubts were misplaced.

Kururugi didn't have the calculating ability nor a good enough memory to join in, so he was just sitting in silence with mild confusion written on his face. Honestly, I felt bad for him since he was left out due to his mental ability - Kururugi was by no means stupid, in fact he was probably in the top 10 percent of students at this school academically, but he simply wasn't on the same level as the rest of us.

Shiro on the other hand wasn't a player by choice; instead she was acting as the banker. We had unanimously agreed that Shiro possessed the best memory and calculation ability in Class E, so she was the natural choice for the neutral party that had to keep track of the entire game mentally and fairly clear up any misunderstandings. 

Before the game, we had noted down our point totals and then transferred everything we had to Shiro, and she had distributed 2000 points to each of us to act as our money. This system was convenient because the school had already set up a method to easily transfer points and check your balance at any time, making it easy to make payments to the other players. I'm sure the school would be very confused if they checked our point transfer history, however.