The teacher spoke up.
"The final phase of the exam has already begun. You have three minutes to submit any attacks and use any items."
Their words brought the class from a disorganised chaos to an organised one. It was clear to anyone that in this state, the class wasn't going to be coordinating any strategies. The one advantage that class 2-C held over the other classes was null.
Furukawa was the one to address the class.
"Everyone, I won't force you, but anyone who doesn't have a specific target in mind should target Kimura from class 2-A."
Oh? It seemed that Furukawa would appear to have some sort of grudge against Kimura. Considering that they never appeared to be on bad terms, I assumed that Furukawa was again trying to prove his leadership of the class. Kimura was an almost universally feared figure from 2-A, so he was a safe, logical pick as a target for the class.
There was some agreeance. In messy situations like these, people didn't care about their voices. All they wanted was someone to listen to.
It showed an ironic resemblance to the real world.
Kobayashi looked over at Kaoru.
"Kaoru! Shouldn't we have the vote? This is what our class does, isn't it?"
However, unlike Kobayashi, she could clearly tell that there was no point in trying to organise a vote. Time was running out, and all people wanted to do was follow instructions. Sighing, Kaoru just sat back down.
"Lucy, there's no point right now."
"Still, we should vote on something, shouldn't we? If this continues, our class will fall apart?"
Kaoru was resting her face on her hands.
"I don't know what to do. Let's just make our own decisions this time."
"Kaoru! You're our leader!"
She suddenly looked up after hearing Kobayashi's words. However, upon seeing Furukawa leading the class, she lowered her head again.
"I'll try to reorganise the class after this exam. There's only a minute left anyways. Lucy, just use your items how you'd like."
Kobayashi was still insistent on following Kaoru's leadership. It seemed that the situation in the class was starting to boil over. Eventually, the two sides were going to collide head-first with each other.
It was only a matter of time from now.
...
I looked down at my phone. I still had Tachibana to deal with. I guess I'll make some preparations.
...
I looked at the items she had using the special item that Hamasaki gave me. What I saw was somewhat surprising.
—She had not a single item.
Looks like I'll have to test my luck too.
***
The time limit ran out as everyone finished using their items.
There was a moment of silence as our phones updated the information.
...
Finally, it vibrated.
-
[0 attack tokens were used against you]
[You have one life remaining]
[Congratulations, you have passed the exam]
...
Tachibana was far too predictable.
***
***
◤━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◥
[Tachibana Emi POV]
I always knew that Ayato was smart. However, even someone like him has weaknesses. I know what they are, but I can't get him into a situation where I can exploit them. Ah, I can feel the anger brewing up inside me again.
As long as I keep trying, he'll eventually fall.
***
This exam was going to be another opportunity for me. Looking down at my phone, I thought about the options I had. My greatest weapon was the special item that told me the number of lives a student had. Using this, I'd be able to deduce what decisions Ayato was making. This was an exam about luck, but more importantly, this was an exam about probability.
I used the item on him.
—He had one life.
By simply calculating the odds, it was clear that he didn't skip a single lottery aside from the last one. It made sense for someone like him. His strategy was probably to use the shield item to corner me before overwhelming me with a large number of defence tokens.
It wasn't going to be easy to get around this. However, I had someone else on my side this time.
I opened the messaging app.
[Murakami, he's got one life]
[Alright. I've prepared 42 attack tokens]
[Good, I'll transfer you the 27 that I've managed to get]
Attacking him by proxy, this way, even if he had some sort of item, he wouldn't be able to target me directly. We managed to gather a large number of attack tokens; I wasn't sure if it was going to be enough, but he would definitely need to make sacrifices if he was to gather enough defence tokens.
It was expensive to gather so many attack tokens, but it was the only way to put pressure on him. I had plenty of points to spare anyways.
Let's see what you do, Ayato.
A few moments passed, and the next phase of the exam finally began.
I had nothing else to do, so I just sat back and had a rest.
There was no need for me to prepare any defences since I still had the immunity from the previous exam. If Ayato was going to try to take me down with him, it wasn't going to work.
Suddenly, I saw another message from Murakami Akio.
[Bad news]
[What happened?]
[All of our attack tokens just got converted to defence tokens]
[What...]
Ah... ah... what the hell.
I guess it did seem like it was all going a bit too well. Still, this is a bit unfair, isn't it? To have an item that we didn't even know about, this school sure loved to play with us. There was nothing I could do at this point.
There were only three seconds left. It wasn't enough time to gather more items.
Ayato... I'm going to expel you. Then, finally, I'll be able to live a normal life. We're all the same, aren't we? All we want to do is just live a normal life... if that was what you wanted, why did you do that all those years ago.
This hatred will never end. Not until you finally feel the pain that they felt.
...
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