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ArabicClassroom of the Elite: Standing Firm in Class A — Chapter 36
Chapter 36: Pushing Class D into the Abyss
The midday sun filtered through the pristine glass windows of the hallway outside Class A’s classroom, casting long, sharp shadows across the polished floor. Three days had passed since the trap was set.
“Kaedehara-san, these are the points you asked for earlier,” Kushida Kikyo murmured, her voice carrying that signature, sugary sweetness. “Fifty thousand points. Not a single point less.”
She brought her phone closer to his. A soft, electronic chime rang out, and a substantial sum of income materialized in Kaedehara Tetsu’s account.
Regarding the fundraising, the collection process within Class D had proceeded with exceptional smoothness. Faced with the overwhelming temptation of a guaranteed safety net—packaged neatly by Kushida as a way for everyone to be saved—almost no one had raised a single objection. They had emptied their digital wallets willingly.
“Thank you, Kaedehara-san. The materials you provided were a huge help to our class!” Her face beamed with a bright, grateful smile as she bowed deeply to him, the very picture of an innocent maiden.
“It was just a small favor.” Tetsu slipped his phone back into his pocket, his expression softening into a gentle, reassuring mask. “As long as it helps you. After all, I can’t bear to see a cute girl worrying herself sick over an exam.”
“Don’t say things like that…” Kushida’s cheeks flushed a delicate shade of pink, her eyes darting away in a display of perfect coyness. “It makes me a bit shy. Anyway, thank you so much! I won’t disturb you any further; my classmates are waiting for me to study with them!”
With a final, energetic wave, she turned on her heel. Her light, rhythmic footsteps echoed down the corridor until she disappeared around the corner.
Tetsu stood perfectly still, watching her retreating figure. The moment she slipped out of sight, the warm, approachable smile resting on his lips dissolved into a cold, calculating line.
Fifty thousand Personal Points, acquired.
Yet, this sum was never his primary objective. It was merely the most insignificant appetizer in a much grander, far more devastating banquet. The true main course was only just entering the oven.
There was a specific, calculated reason why he had provided the actual test questions so early. For a group of fundamentally undisciplined students like those in Class D, holding the answers in their hands would breed a fatal illusion. They would convince themselves that simply memorizing the provided sheet would guarantee their safety, prompting them to completely abandon any genuine review of the basic curriculum.
This was especially true for the worst offenders—students like Sudo Ken and Ike Kanji. Given their track records, they would likely be utterly perfunctory even in the simple act of memorizing the answers. It was an unavoidable weakness of human nature: the path of least resistance always leads to ruin.
In the original timeline of events, Class D only learned about the sudden change in the Special Exam’s scope through sheer luck, stumbling upon the information during a heated conflict with Class C. That process relied far too heavily on random coincidence., as things stood now, holding the actual test questions meant that very few Class D students would bother attending any rigorous study groups, drastically reducing the chances of them crossing paths and clashing with Class C.
Tetsu despised coincidences. He preferred absolute control over the board.
He needed a catalyst—someone to deliver the news of the altered Special Exam scope to Class D at the exact right moment. To achieve this, he would simply have Sakayanagi Arisu dispatch a few of her pawns to instigate a targeted confrontation with the Class D stragglers. Once the conflict reached a boiling point, a kind passerby would inadvertently let slip the crucial detail about the scope change.
The most critical linchpin in this entire operation, however, was Chabashira Sae.
That woman. The defective teacher who remained trapped within the lower echelons of this academy, harboring a desperate, burning ambition to claw her way back up to Class A. She had known from the very beginning that the scope of the midterm exam would be altered, yet she had chosen to remain completely silent.
Her intention was clear enough: she wanted to force her students to quickly familiarize themselves with the academy’s hidden rules and grasp the true nature of the Special Exams, rather than allowing them to scrape by through mindless rote memorization.
But her silence birthed a fatal contradiction—an unpatchable loophole that Tetsu was more than happy to exploit.
What a remarkably stupid, pathetic strategy.
By tossing the issue of the scope change into Class D’s lap at a delayed juncture, the advance test questions Tetsu had sold them took on an entirely different, venomous nature. Because the actual test questions were distributed before the revelation of the scope change, the students of Class D would naturally assume that the curriculum shift rendered the old material obsolete.
They would subconsciously conclude that last year’s test questions held little to no value. After all, if the exam scope had changed, why waste time studying outdated material? The poorest performers would toss the cheat sheets aside without a second thought.
The brutal reality, however, was that this year’s midterm exam was virtually identical to last year’s.
This was a catastrophic miscalculation made by Chabashira Sae herself.
Yet, relying on that psychological trap alone was insufficient. The pressure bearing down on Class D needed to be absolute.
The passing line for these exams was never a fixed value. The formula was ruthless: the total class score divided by the number of students, divided again by two. It was dynamically adjusted based on the class’s overall average.
The fools in Class D currently believed this midterm was no different from their daily quizzes. They assumed that as long as they memorized the answers and scraped together thirty-something points, they would be perfectly safe.
They would never anticipate that the passing line for this specific exam might skyrocket to forty points, or perhaps even higher.
This created a beautiful paradox. If the diligent students memorized the actual test questions perfectly, they would score exceptionally high, dragging the class average upward. This, in turn, would artificially inflate the passing line, directly threatening the academic bottom-feeders with immediate expulsion.
Those lazy students who only memorized a fraction of the answers, and those with foundations so rotten they memorized the answers incorrectly… they would plummet below the newly elevated passing line in droves.
And so, the board was set for the final move.
This was the true objective Tetsu had spent so much time and calculated effort to orchestrate.
When the list of failing students was finally published, Class D would be forced into a hellish ultimatum: Save them, or abandon them?
If they chose abandonment, those failing students would be expelled. Class D would suffer a permanent reduction in numbers, triggering a massive penalty to their Class Points. The points they had desperately hoped to accumulate through daily performance and the midterm would be instantly reset to zero. An entire month of grueling effort would be reduced to ash. Worse still, their income would likely remain at zero for months on end.
But if they chose salvation? They would have to bleed an astronomical amount of Personal Points.
In the original plot, saving a single student like Sudo Ken required a staggering one hundred thousand Personal Points for a single test point. One student, one hundred thousand points.
What would happen this time, when it wasn’t just Sudo Ken who failed, but three people? Five people? Or even more?
The students of Class D, who had already squandered nearly all their savings during their first month of ignorant bliss, would be forced to drain every last drop of their remaining funds. They would have to beg and borrow from one another just to fill this bottomless financial sinkhole.
And the teacher responsible for overseeing this disaster, Chabashira Sae—that truly defective instructor—would find her hands tied. She could not simply offer a convenient one hundred thousand Personal Points per point rescue package like she did in the original timeline. Class D simply did not possess that kind of wealth anymore.
While Chabashira, as their homeroom teacher, possessed the authority to negotiate the transaction price downward, she could not make the rescue cheap. The School Authorities were always watching. If the number of failing students was too high, exploiting such an obvious loophole in the rules would inevitably trigger the administration’s absolute scrutiny.
Her maneuvering space would be infinitely compressed. She might lower the cost slightly, but the final price would still far exceed the original one hundred thousand Personal Points.
In the end, the surviving students of Class D, having exhausted every last fraction of their personal wealth, would be forced to look at those laggards who had dragged them all down into poverty.
Would they feel thankful that their classmates were spared from expulsion?
Such a naive sentiment did not exist in this academy.
All that would remain in the aftermath was endless, suffocating hatred and bitter resentment. The fragile unity of the class would be completely, irreparably shattered. And as long as those failing students remained in the classroom, breathing the same air, that fractured trust would never, ever recover.