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ArabicClassroom of the Elite: Standing Firm in Class A — Chapter 40
Chapter 40: Midterm Exams
The day of the midterm exams arrived precisely on schedule.
For the vast majority of the first-year students enrolled at the Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School, this morning heralded a brutal judgment. It was a day of reckoning that would dictate their immediate future. Yet, stepping into the classroom of Class 1-A felt like crossing the threshold into an entirely isolated dimension.
There was no suffocating tension of last-minute cramming, nor was there any lingering dread of the unknown. In its place hung a lazy, almost decadent atmosphere that felt more suited to a long holiday weekend.
A cluster of girls gathered near the windows, happily gossiping about a newly opened dessert parlor in the Keyaki Mall. A few desks away, Hashimoto Masayoshi leaned casually against a classmate’s chair, using grand, animated gestures to recount a flawless victory he had achieved in a video game the previous night. The rest of the students were either dozing quietly on their folded arms or staring blankly at the drifting clouds outside.
Kaedehara Tetsu sat reclined in his chair at the back of the room. One leg was crossed casually over the other, his dark eyes fixed lazily on the pages of a paperback novel resting in his lap.
Having successfully acquired the actual exam papers from the previous year, this highly anticipated midterm had fundamentally shifted in nature. For nearly everyone in Class A, it was no longer a life-or-death elimination match designed to weed out the weak. It had devolved into a remarkably boring, perfunctory open-book test. In truth, it was even less demanding than an open-book exam; nobody needed to frantically flip through pages to find the correct responses when every single answer had already been carved into their memories.
The sharp ringing of the class bell finally cut through the relaxed chatter.
Mashima Tomoya strode into the classroom, a thick stack of test papers resting in his hands. The idle conversations died down to a respectful murmur, but a quick glance across the room revealed an absolute lack of the usual pre-exam reverence on the students’ faces.
“Maintain strict silence during the examination period,” Mashima announced. His deep voice carried a perfunctory weight as he recited the standard academic regulations before moving down the aisles to distribute the papers.
When the crisp white sheets finally landed on Tetsu’s desk, he barely offered them more than a passing glance.
It was exactly as he had anticipated. Over ninety percent of the printed questions were identical word-for-word to the past papers he had purchased from that desperate upperclassman. The remaining ten percent featured only the most superficial adjustments—a swapped integer in a math problem here, a slightly reordered multiple-choice sequence there. It was nothing more than a fresh coat of paint over the exact same foundation.
He picked up his pen and set the tip against the paper.
There was no need for calculation or deep thought. His wrist simply moved on its own, guided by a deeply ingrained muscle memory that allowed the ink to glide across the answer sheet with fluid, uninterrupted ease. He filled in one bubble after another, writing out short-form answers with the mindless efficiency of an assembly line worker copying a manual.
In less than twenty minutes, the entire packet was finished.
A heavy silence settled over the classroom, broken only by the synchronized, rhythmic scratching of dozens of pens against paper. Yet this quiet atmosphere did not stem from intense academic focus or desperate contemplation. It was a hollow, mechanical dullness.
Tetsu shifted his posture, his gaze drifting inadvertently toward the front corner of the room.
Sakayanagi Arisu.
She sat with perfect, elegant posture, but unlike the rest of their classmates, she was not writing furiously to get the chore over with. The pristine test paper lay flat on her desk. She had not even bothered to uncap her pen. She simply stared down at the printed text in absolute silence, regarding the exam with the same detached apathy one might reserve for a dreadfully boring painting in a second-rate museum.
Only after a long, drawn-out moment did her slender fingers finally grasp her pen to begin filling in the blanks. She was not taking an exam. She was merely killing time.
Even from a distance, Tetsu could read the immense, suffocating disappointment radiating from her small frame. It was the posture of a grandmaster chess player who had arrived expecting the match of the century against a bitter rival, only to discover her opponent had set up a child’s game of checkers on the board.
When the bell finally chimed to signal the end of the first subject, the students of Class A instantly discarded their quiet facades and returned to their previous rowdiness. They clustered together in small groups—not to nervously compare answers or debate difficult questions, but to loudly complain about how utterly tedious the last hour had been.
“Hey, Kaedehara, how was it for you? Was it so simple you almost fell asleep halfway through?” Hashimoto leaned over Tetsu’s desk, a playful, knowing smirk plastered across his face.
“It was tolerable. If we had a classical literature teacher lecturing in the background, the time probably would have passed a bit faster,” Tetsu replied, stretching his arms casually above his head.
“The next one is math, right? Now that is the real torture.” Hashimoto let out a long, dramatic sigh, slumping his shoulders. “Knowing the final answer instantly but still being forced to write out every single boring calculation step one by one… it feels like a genuine waste of my youth.”
“You have the exact answers handed to you on a silver platter, and you still find the energy to complain.”
“Well… having the answers is definitely a blessing, but the process is still incredibly boring. Those are two entirely separate concepts, aren’t they?”
Tetsu did not offer a response. His attention had already drifted past Hashimoto’s shoulder, locking onto the figure standing quietly at the classroom door.
Sakayanagi rested her weight lightly against her wooden cane. Her sharp, calculating gaze cut through the noisy room and landed squarely on him.
Tetsu raised a hand, waving Hashimoto off. “Excuse me for a moment. It seems someone is calling for my attention.”
He pushed his chair back and stood up. Ignoring the quiet, teasing whistle that escaped Hashimoto’s lips, Tetsu handled through the crowded aisles and walked straight toward Sakayanagi.
The rooftop of the main school building remained one of the few sanctuaries where a student could temporarily escape the suffocating hustle of the academy.
The gentle May breeze carried a pleasant, lingering warmth, brushing softly against the chain-link fencing and producing a faint metallic hum. Sakayanagi stood with her back turned to the heavy metal door, gazing out quietly over the distant, sprawling scenery of the campus. The wind caught the ends of her silver-white hair, making the strands flutter delicately around her shoulders. Against the vast, empty expanse of the rooftop, her petite figure looked unusually solitary.
Tetsu closed the distance at a leisurely pace, stopping only when he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her. He slipped his hands into his pockets and directed his gaze toward the same distant horizon.
“The scenery up here is quite nice,” he noted, his voice breaking the long silence.
“You disappoint me, Kaedehara-san.”
Sakayanagi did not entertain his casual pleasantry. She turned her head slowly to face him. The usual airy playfulness that danced in her violet eyes had completely vanished, replaced by a chilling, interrogative coldness.
“Distributing last year’s exam papers to every single student in Class A. Was this your choice?”
“Is there a problem with that?” Tetsu offered a perfectly innocent, unbothered smile. “This strategy guarantees that our class achieves overwhelmingly high scores across the board, further consolidating our lead in Class Points. As a dedicated member of Class A, isn’t it only natural for me to contribute to the collective success of my peers?”
He delivered the righteous excuse with a theatrical flair.
Sakayanagi stared at his smiling face for a long moment before a smile of her own finally broke across her lips. It was a sharp, deeply sarcastic expression.
“Put away that hypocritical ‘collectivism’ rhetoric, Kaedehara Tetsu. That kind of naive garbage is only fit for an idiot like Katsuragi Kohei to believe. You are not him, and neither am I.”
Her voice remained soft and measured, yet every single syllable struck with the precision of a blade.
“You orchestrated this entire situation for one reason alone. You wanted to render our bet completely meaningless.”
She shifted her weight slightly on her cane, her eyes narrowing. “When every student can effortlessly achieve a perfect score, a bet based on ‘who has the higher total score’becomes an absolute joke. Without a clear winner or loser, the agreement we made naturally dissolves into nothing. You no longer have to risk becoming my obedient limb, and I no longer have to risk becoming your’girlfriend’. What a truly beautiful, cowardly move—sacrificing the exquisite pleasure of our duel in exchange for absolute safety.”
She took a slow breath, the cool air doing nothing to temper the edge in her tone. “Tell me. In your heart, is our duel really just a trivial thing? Something you can sacrifice at a moment’s notice the second you wish to avoid a little risk?”
Beneath her refined anger, there was a faint, almost imperceptible trace of indignation at being slighted—an emotional leak that even she herself had likely not noticed.
Tetsu listened in total silence to her sharp accusations, the faint, dry smile never once leaving his face. He waited until the last echo of her voice faded into the wind before he slowly shook his head.
“Sakayanagi, you have misread two crucial things.”
His voice was calm, carrying a low, magnetic weight that instantly shifted the atmosphere between them.
“First. I never avoid risk. I simply prefer… to twist the risk itself into a piece on my own game board.”
“Second…”
He let the word hang in the air for a fraction of a second. Pulling his hands from his pockets, he turned his body fully toward her and took a deliberate step forward. The polite distance between them vanished instantly, replacing the cold air with a sudden, intimate tension. He looked down into her wide violet eyes.
“Who told you that our bet has become meaningless?”
Sakayanagi’s delicate brows furrowed slightly, a rare, genuine hint of confusion finally breaking through her composed facade.