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ArabicClassroom of the Elite: Standing Firm in Class A — Chapter 24
Chapter 24: The Arrival of May
April slipped away from the stage of Advanced Nurturing High School like a film reel on fast-forward.
During this brief window, the atmosphere within Class A underwent a quiet, irreversible shift. The loose, superficial camaraderie of the first week fractured, splitting the room into two distinct factions. There was no screaming, no open warfare—only a chilling indifference. The invisible lines drawn between the desks were sharper than any vocal argument.
Tetsu drifted effortlessly outside these twin vortexes. Though the rest of the class assumed he was a loyal pawn in Arisu’s camp, he offered the silver-haired girl no actual assistance. His daily life was rigidly compartmentalized and entirely his own.
Outside of class hours, he practically lived in the library. The photographic memory he possessed turned reading into a terrifyingly efficient data extraction process. History, economics, law—he absorbed volumes of knowledge far beyond the curriculum of a normal high school student. Occasionally, he would cross paths with Hiyori. The two would retreat to a quiet, sunlit corner, dissecting the narrative structures of obscure novels for hours. The Class C girl’s gaze had gradually shifted over the weeks. What began as the warm recognition of a fellow enthusiast had cooled into the quiet, absolute reverence reserved for a mentor.
When he had spare time and an invitation arrived, he would sit across from Arisu over a chessboard. These matches served as their true dialogue, a silent exchange of threats and calculations. Backed by his master-level proficiency, Tetsu dominated the board. Yet, every so often, he would deliberately leave a microscopic opening, allowing her to claw her way to a narrow, agonizing victory. Arisu always noticed his condescending mercy, her smug smile tightening just a fraction at the edges.
Then came the nights, which belonged entirely to the sporadic visits of Masumi.
Ever since that fateful evening, she had become a ghost haunting his dorm room. In the dead of night, beneath the pale moonlight filtering through the curtains, she used her toned, athletic body to pay off what she deemed her repayment. The heavy silence of the room was broken only by the friction of sheets and breathless exhales. Their illicit arrangement remained an absolute secret.
By day, Masumi reverted to her solitary shell. Strangely, in the wake of the Yamauchi false accusation incident, her social standing among the girls had violently inverted. She was no longer the gloomy outcast; she was the tragic heroine who had been framed by a despicable villain, yet stood tall and survived. Girls who had previously ignored her now flocked to her desk, offering bright smiles and lunch invitations. Faced with this suffocating wave of sudden kindness, Masumi would stiffen, averting her eyes and offering only silence. Naturally, the girls interpreted this coldness as a trauma response—a fragile girl terrified of trusting others after being deeply hurt. It only fueled their protective sympathy.
In the final week of April, a surprise quiz dropped onto their desks without warning.
It covered all five core subjects. For the academic elites of Class A, the difficulty felt insulting—two full grades below the entrance exams, mostly a rehash of middle school concepts. A simple warm-up. However, the final three questions on the paper spiked in difficulty, presenting logic traps and advanced theorems entirely unsolvable for the average teenager. Tetsu set his pen down before half the allotted time had passed. Even those final three hurdles were painfully simple to him.
Time marched relentlessly toward May 1st.
This was the day that would dictate the reality of every freshman in the school, though the vast majority remained blissfully ignorant. During the morning homeroom, the Class A classroom was eerily quiet. Dozens of eyes were glued to their mobile terminals, staring at the glaring digital numbers on their screens.
“Ninety-two thousand? What is going on? Weren’t we supposed to get one hundred thousand every month?”
“Mine says ninety-two thousand too… Did the school’s system glitch?”
“We are short eight thousand points. It is not a massive loss, but there should at least be an explanation.”
The hushed murmurs rippled through every row. Katsuragi sat rigid at his desk, his heavy brows knitted together as his thumb aggressively swiped across his screen, hunting for a hidden system notification. Across the room, Arisu looked entirely unbothered. She rested her chin on her hand, a curious, entertained smile playing on her lips.
Tetsu simply leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. He stared out the window at the morning clouds, his posture radiating lazy apathy. He didn’t even bother checking his phone. Everything was proceeding exactly as he had calculated.
The morning bell shrieked, slicing through the whispers and plunging the room into absolute silence. Mashima strode through the door the very second the bell stopped ringing. He carried his signature black folder, his expression as stern and unyielding as a stone statue.
“It seems the majority of you have already noticed the discrepancy in your Personal Points.” Mashima’s heavy gaze swept over the seated students, his voice echoing with authority. “Before I explain the mechanics behind that, I will announce the results of last week’s surprise quiz.”
He turned and taped a printed sheet to the blackboard.
[Class A Average Score: 87.3]
It was a stellar average. It proved that a significant portion of Class A had managed to crack at least one of those brutal final three questions. Yet, the students’ eyes immediately bypassed the average, locking onto the single name isolated at the very top of the ranking.
[Kaedehara Tetsu: 100]
The sole perfect score.
The suffocating silence in the classroom finally shattered, replaced by a collective gasp and a flurry of frantic whispers.
“A perfect score?! Is that guy a monster?”
“I always see him staring out the window or sleeping. He doesn’t look like an academic genius…”
Bathing in the shocked stares of his peers, Tetsu didn’t twitch a single muscle. He maintained his lazy slump against the chair and let out a quiet yawn, acting as if the perfect score belonged to a stranger.
Mashima allowed the murmurs to run their course for a few seconds before speaking up, dragging their attention back to the podium.
“That concludes the matter of the quiz. Now, let us return to your primary concern—the Personal Points deposited into your accounts this morning.”
He picked up a piece of chalk and dragged it across the blackboard, writing out a clean equation.
“In this institution, the absolute standard for measuring a class’s worth is Class Points. Upon enrollment, every class is granted a baseline of one thousand Class Points. On the first day of every month, the school evaluates your standing, multiplies your current Class Points by one hundred, and distributes that exact sum as Personal Points to every student.”
Mashima turned back to face the stunned teenagers, tapping the chalk against the board. “In other words, the reason you only received ninety-two thousand points today is because…”
He wrote a new number on the board: 920.
“This is Class A’s current standing. Within a single month, this class has suffered a total deduction of eighty Class Points due to various disciplinary infractions.”
Mashima began reading off a sterile, emotionless list of minor violations—tardiness, talking during lectures, using phones in class.
Listening to the list, Tetsu closed his eyes, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. According to his knowledge of the original plot, Class A was only supposed to lose sixty points. As for the culprit behind that extra twenty-point deficit? One would only need to look at the boy currently slumping in his chair, who had spent the entire month deliberately spacing out and sleeping through lectures just to test the boundaries of the S-System.