From what she knew, Sakayanagi must be in a pretty good mood—otherwise, she wouldn't have shared something like this on her own.
"Then he said something about the test. He guessed I stayed up late last night reviewing older versions of the textbooks. He figured out I might be trying to compare past materials to the current version seven, and find parts that aren't covered anymore."
"And he offered to help with that."
"Except for math, he said he'll handle the other subjects and pick out the missing content that's not in the new version."
"He already finished this semester's materials last month, and at the same time, he reviewed all the different versions of the textbooks. So for him, doing what I'm trying to do now is easy."
Sakayanagi said.
"Uh…"
That left Kamuro frozen.
Wait, you can do something like that?
"He said he'd do that for you—for our whole class?"
Kamuro was shocked and had to ask again to make sure.
"Yes."
Sakayanagi nodded.
"He said it would be easier for him to handle."
"And if I take care of it, I might end up like today again—staying up late and too tired to focus in class."
Sakayanagi said.
Oh.
Kamuro felt like she understood.
But even though she understood every word, the whole thing just didn't make sense.
Because this version of Miyuki Shirogane… wasn't he basically being super sweet?
If Shirogane was willing to do all this for Sakayanagi, Kamuro couldn't help but question everything. She used to think Shirogane only saw Sakayanagi as a rival—but now, isn't he being way too nice to her?
"So what does he want our class to do?"
Even Kamuro knew there's no such thing as a free lunch.
"It's simple,"
Sakayanagi Arisu said.
"He wants our class to do something at a certain time, and then…"
She paused. "Report Classes B, C, and D from the first-year for cheating on the exam."
"Huh?"
Kamuro's mouth fell open.
Wait, was Shirogane Miyuki being serious?
Also… was it really possible to cheat on this test?
…
Of course it was possible to cheat on this test.
The next afternoon, Shirogane got a message telling him to go to a private room in a karaoke place near the shopping street.
This time, things felt more serious than usual.
Albert was even standing guard outside the room.
Clearly.
Ryuen must've gotten the exam papers.
Sure enough, when Shirogane walked in, two of the class's top students—Shiina and Kaneda—were already there.
Ibuki was there too, but she was focused on something.
Then she asked,
"These are the test papers for this time?"
"But why are there mistakes and blanks on them?"
Ibuki asked directly.
She was holding a math test with 100 questions, but the score on it was only 68.
Of course, Ibuki wasn't one of the worst in class, but she was still in the bottom ten, so she couldn't really tell how hard the questions were. Still, the test paper Ryuen got had problems—some answers were clearly marked wrong.
"You're dumb. These are the real test papers. If the seniors who took this could all get perfect scores, we wouldn't even need to bother getting them early, would we?"
Ryuen said.
That's what Shirogane saw as soon as he walked into the room—Ryuen drinking Sprite.
They couldn't drink alcohol, but between Sprite and Coke, Shirogane preferred Coke.
Anyway.
What this meant was that the test papers they had now were last year's exams from the seniors. Once the tests ended, the papers were left behind.
"Can't get the real ones?"
Shirogane asked.
"They already cleaned them up,"
Ryuen answered.
"Of course they don't want to leave behind proof that they cheated."
"Yeah."
Shirogane nodded.
Then he looked over.
Math, physics, chemistry, biology, and English—five subjects in total.
The titles on each test paper also stood out.
[First-Year Midterm Exam – Math]
That meant they were real test papers, and most likely the exact ones everyone would be taking soon.
But since students took the exams themselves, and the person who gave these papers had memorized the pattern from the last test, if they remembered it, good. If not, too bad.
Even if the papers were handed out again, nothing would be changed. What was wrong then stayed wrong.
Asking them to go back and correct the answers would pretty much be pointless.
If they asked others to check the answers, it might raise suspicion.
"Did you already pay them?"
Shirogane kept asking.
"Yeah. Two people, 50,000 points each. That's probably why they didn't bother getting papers with better scores."
Ryuen said this with a look of disdain.
"I think those two are planning to keep the 100,000 points for themselves."
"But really, we didn't have to give them that much, or even anything at all."
Ryuen looked over at Shirogane as he spoke.
Originally, Ryuen had planned to get the papers from those unlucky upperclassmen for free, just like last month.
But Shirogane told him they had to pay.
Preferably, pay a bit more.
And he only gave the order this morning, which caught Ryuen off guard.
"You said it yourself—if lower-year students figure out how the school works and buy test papers from upperclassmen, the school turns a blind eye.
So just follow the rules, pay them, and make it a proper deal."
"That way, it's against the rules, but not illegal."
Shirogane said.
"Our class plays a dangerous game, so we need to avoid getting reported.
And even if we do get reported, we should aim to reduce the punishment or avoid it altogether."
"You've got a weird way of thinking."
Ryuen said. But even as he said it, he accepted Shirogane's approach.
Violence works, but it needs money to back it up.
This school seems to quietly allow shady tactics, and Ryuen had thought about what he'd do if he were in charge.
First step would be controlling scores across the board to stop anyone from getting expelled.
But after seeing the info Shirogane gathered, and how he figured things out, and now that the school really was allowing this kind of test-selling, Ryuen realized this school might actually suit him well.
His grades were weak, and his class was full of hopeless people.
So if he didn't use some outside-the-box tricks, there was no way to climb up.
Now that he looked at it, these shady methods might actually be allowed.
But even if they were, if someone reported them, things could still go badly.
Shirogane's backup plans clearly covered that weakness.
So maybe, before the end of first year, their class could make it to Class A and break another school record.
But if Shirogane warned him about getting reported…
Does that mean there's a real chance someone will report them during this exam?
"Even if there are some tricks we can use, in the end, you still have to be strong yourself."
Shirogane said, "So I invited students from Ichinose's class to help tutor our classmates. The tutoring sessions will happen during the time Sakagami-sensei visits the classroom."
"And Ryuen, you're joining the tutoring too."
Shirogane said.
"Your grades aren't good enough to be trusted. Or are you planning to fail the written exam if the school doesn't give you a chance to cheat? What if you can't even score 40 points and get expelled?"
"..."
Ryuen.
That's why he and Shirogane Miyuki will never get along.
Why is it that the guy who looks the most like a delinquent and doesn't even act like a model student has such good grades?
"So our next job is to attend tutoring while also finishing these answer sheets?"
Shiina had already finished reviewing five of the test papers.
She found that—
Even for her, she couldn't score 70 points on any of them. Around 30 points of each paper were made up of content not even in the curriculum.
And if the class average doesn't reach the perfect score of 100, they won't get the full class performance bonus.
So they need to cover that extra content too.
Average students definitely couldn't handle that, so it had to be up to the top students like them.
"We'll hand out the test papers in the last week."
Shirogane said.
"First, we need to raise the overall academic level of the class."
"As for the test answers, don't worry about that."
Shirogane continued.
"I brought a pen. I'll fill in the answers for the papers later."
"What you need to do is organize everything, type up the questions again, and reprint them. To make it easier, just put the correct answers directly into the options for each question. Also, remove the title that says 'First-Year Midterm Math Test' and turn it into review material."
"It's best to delete five of the original 100 multiple-choice questions and replace them with five new ones."
"Even if we do that, the total score will become 95 points."
"But that still gives us about 25 points of wiggle room. And with the correct answers given, the students shouldn't score under 70, right?"
Shirogane said.
And he was clearly looking at Ryuen when he said it.
Ryuen knew this was the part where he had to step up.
"I'll make sure they memorize it all."
Ryuen said.
Even though the school unofficially allowed underclassmen to buy test papers from upperclassmen, directly handing out tests was still a dumb move. If they turned it into "review materials," then it would be much safer.
The school only required each subject's average score to be 70 anyway, so aiming for a perfect score wasn't necessary. Review sheets were the smarter option.