Another Like Me - Part I (CoTE x OC) ✔

Chapter 67 - The Beginning of the End

( Takeyama POV )

"Takeyama."

I turned around to see Ryuuen beckon to me. He was standing beside Ichinose Honami and Sakayanagi Arisu. I approached the trio silently.

"What's up?"

"Don't what's up me, asshole," Ryuuen replied. "You know very well what's up. You were with the Chairman for much longer than we were. What the hell did you talk about in the beginning?"

"Man City vs Aston Villa."

"Don't shit with me," Ryuuen threatened.

"Takeyama-kun, if it is something that is related to the situation at hand, then please do tell us," Ichinose pleaded to me. "This is really a strange decision, and I cannot come to terms with it. Please don't hide anything from us. Our future is at stake here."

"I'm not hiding anything," I replied. "The Chairman called me earlier because I'm close to him. Arisu can confirm."

Arisu Sakayanagi nodded with a small smile on her face. "It is true. Keisuke and I have been close friends since we were children, so he is inevitably close to Papa."

"Hmm? You and Sakayanagi-san are childhood friends?" Ichinose-san asked cutely. "I see. Sorry if I made you uncomfortable then, Takeyama-kun!" She bowed deeply in my direction.

"Please don't. Given the current situation, I wouldn't be surprised if the four of us are confuzzled," I replied. "I don't think it is wise for us to relay this information to our classes yet. We need to keep this under wraps until it has been officially confirmed."

"There's no point in telling the losers in class about this anyways," Ryuuen scoffed. "Not like they're gonna help. All the other classes are gonna go to shit without us."

It was half-true. If the four leaders of each class depart, then there will be mass confusion within the class. It might not be much in case of Class A, since Katsuragi will probably take the place. Class B is united as one front, so they would find a way to get through it as well. Kanzaki would most probably take Ichinose's place as Class Leader. Even my class, Class C will not face much of an issue. I'm assuming Horikita will take center-stage now, with support from Kiyotaka in the background.

The class that really has stuff to work out will be Ryuuen's class, Class D. As far as I know, there's no back-up leader of any sort in their class. It wouldn't be surprising if their entire class goes into shambles now.

I still had only half of the pieces of this puzzle.

What is the point of all this? If the goal is to separate me and Kiyotaka, then it has been achieved. But what comes after this? What happens after we're separated into different classes?

If Ayanokoji-sensei's goal is to pit the 2 of us against each other in competition, it's not going to work. I'm sure we can come to a compromise and make sure that we don't end up harming each other much. There's only so much one can do in Class battles anyways.

There has to be a catch that I'm not aware of yet. Otherwise this set-up has no meaning. Take all the leaders of each class, dump them in another class, and just sit back and watch what happens?

No, that's not possible. There's something I'm missing. And I cannot be sure of what it is until the start of the session next week.

"I think we should discuss matters on this soon," Ichinose proposed. "We need to understand where we're going to go from here. Considering we are not allowed to participate in any Special Exams for the rest of the year, we need to follow Takeyama-kun's heed — to go ahead and pool all our strengths towards one class, so that we can increase the average class points by the end of the year."