Starting in class B: Ayanokouji Kiyone

Arc 1 chapter 10: a rude awakening

"Hoshinomiya-sensei. I do not recall hearing you explain this to us before-"

"Aw, Ichinose-san. You should have been able to figure it out for yourself."

"There was never any talk about reducing our points. Had that been explained to us beforehand, I'm sure we would have avoided being late or talking during class."

"That is a rather bizarre argument, Ichinose-san. It is certainly true I don't recall explaining the rules of point distribution. However, didn't you all learn in elementary school not to be late or talk during class? Was that not taught throughout your elementary and junior high schools?"

"Well, that's-"

"I'm sure that in nine years of compulsory education, you learned that being late and talking in class are bad things. And now you say you can't understand this because I haven't explained it to you? I'm afraid your reasoning is flimsy. If you had simply acted properly, then your points would not have dropped all the way to zero. This comes down to you taking personal responsibility."

There was no way for anyone to refute her perfectly sound argument. Everyone knew that bad behaviour didn't pay.

"Having just entered your first year of high school, did you honestly think you'd receive 100,000 yen every month with no strings attached? At a school established by the Japanese government for the express purpose of training gifted people? It's a little bit silly, don't you think?"

Although Ichinose appeared to be upset that her friends had been swindled, she looked the teacher straight in the eye. "Well then, could you at least explain in detail how points are added or deducted? We can keep that in mind for future reference."

That was interesting. Ichinose was already thinking about adding to our class points. I had planned to install Kanzaki as the leader of the class, as Ichinose was too friendly. But, perhaps I was wrong.

"I cannot tell you. We cannot disclose the methods behind our student evaluation. It's the same as any other organisation. When you enter a company, it is the company's choice whether or not to tell you how it evaluated its employees. However, I'm not cruel, and I'm not trying to be cold. In fact, since I'm so nice, I'm going to give you a bit of guidance. Let's say you stop being late to class and have no more absences...even though zero points will be deducted from you this month, that doesn't mean your points will increase, either. That means next month you will still receive 65,000 points."

"Tch..." Kanzaki's expression darkened. Her explanation was so counterproductive that it had the opposite effect; some students seemed incapable of understanding what she meant. The students who thought they could improve their situation by remedying bad behaviour had their hopes dashed. That was probably Hoshinomiya-sensei's, or rather, this school's intention.

The bell rang, signalling the end of homeroom.

"It looks like we spent too much time yammering. I hope that you understood the gist of it. Well, it's about time that we switch to our main topic."

From the tube she carried, she removed a white rolled-up poster and spread it out. She stuck the poster to the blackboard with some magnets. The still-confused students stared blankly at the poster.

"Are these...the results of each class?" Kanzaki tentatively took a guess. He was right. Class A through class D we're listed. To the side was a row of numbers that went up to a maximum of four digits.

Class 1-A: 0940
Class 1-B: 0650
Class 1-C: 0490
Class 1-D: 0000

In this case, 1000 points would mean 100,000 yen, wouldn't it? Every class had apparently lost points.