Cardfight!! Vanguard: Generations Volume 3 [Alice Secret]

- Part 9

Wednesday, 17th June.

When I came into class today, it was a little rowdier than usual. Since the finals had been approaching, everyone had the sensibility to try and study when they could, resulting in quieter form times, but today was an exception.

People were whispering and muttering, pointing at their phones and discussing the same thing amongst their peers. Whatever it was, it must've been significant, or else not so many people would've been interested.

I took out my phone and went on the school app to see if I could find out what it was about. It didn't take me long, as I immediately understood all the fuss that was happening just from looking at the most upvoted post in the 1st Year forum.

Less than an hour ago, Machida had leaked the exams A Class made for B Class.

...no wonder everyone was talking about it.

The scariest part of this post was the implication that none of our tests were safe. If A Class (the strongest class) could have their exam leaked, whose to say the rest of ours couldn't?

If Machida managed to obtain his hands on one of them, what's the chance he'd obtain another and post it tomorrow? Or even worse, what if other people start to do the same thing as him? The situation would devolve into chaos.

However, before I could start thinking like that, I first had to verify whether or not this leak was real.

Before checking the pictures attached, I scrolled down to the comments to see if I could infer anything from there. Interestingly however, no A Class students commented on the post, but students from other classes did.

Their reactions were a mixture of surprise, anger, and jealousy. There was even some celebration from the weaker B Class students. After all, if this was legit, B Class had struck a goldmine.

After skimming through that, I decided to comb through pictures of the leaked exams Machida attached as evidence. By scrutinising them, I could get a better sense of whether they're real or not.

Unsurprisingly, Machida took the images with his phone, adding a level of authenticity to it. However, the images looked very clear and had good lighting, meaning he wasn't rushed or pressed for time to take them.

That meant we could probably rule out him sneaking into the teachers lounge and taking the photos while they were left carelessly on someone's desk, for example.

From what I can tell though, these exams seemed genuine. I'd honestly be impressed if A Class didn't make this, because the quality of these questions were on the same level as what me and Nora made, if not even better at times.

What an audacious strategy...

Although, I suppose that's how Machida's always done things. He's the type of guy to deal huge mental blows at once to try and break someone, like how he thrashed our class and made it unusable just to target Nora.

Similarly, by casually dropping that he acquired A Class's exam papers, it would create the same amount (if not, greater) of mental damage to A Class, as their hard work making these exams in the past two weeks would've been invalidated by a single post.

Not only would they lose out on the element of surprise, but it'd also sow seeds of distrust between them as there was now a potential traitor in A Class. If infighting sparked between them, A Class's already weak unity would become even weaker.

That begs the question: how did Machida get his hands on this?

He's a man who'll stop at nothing to get what he wants, but even this seems too out of his range.