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ArabicClassroom of the Elite: Surviving with the Intel System — Chapter 12
Chapter 12: The Perfect Trap and the Kleptomaniac
Before he had even agreed to her little wager, Shimizu Akira had been tapping away on his phone.
Sakayanagi Arisu pieced it together in an instant. That lengthy text exchange hadn’t been idle chatter; he had been coordinating with his homeroom teacher, Chabashira Sae.
Her mind raced, analyzing the sheer perfection of the layout. As an adult, Chabashira could legally purchase alcohol. By acting as a proxy, the teacher had indirectly transferred ownership of the can to Akira. It formed an exquisite, legally airtight closed loop. Whether or not a theft had actually occurred depended entirely on the subjective determination of the owner. And the owner was Akira.
“Truly…” Her voice carried a faint tremor of unwillingness, yet it was laced with undisguised admiration. “A flawless, foolproof method.”
The most terrifying part wasn’t the trick itself. It was the timing. Akira had woven this web of traps before he even accepted the bet. The moment she proposed the challenge, he had already engineered an absolute winning strategy. She felt a rare sting of inferiority. With her inherent pride, she never would have stooped to asking a homeroom teacher for assistance., she had been so fixated on crushing him in a battle of wits that she had neglected the most fundamental scrutiny of the game’s rules.
“I admit defeat.” Sakayanagi tilted her head up. The corners of her lips barely managed to hold their signature elegant smile. “Let us exchange contact information. One hundred thousand Private Points… I will transfer them to you right now.”
“Sure.” Akira raised an eyebrow, mildly surprised.
He had expected the silver-haired girl to press him for the gritty details of his operation. But looking at her, he realized she didn’t need to. With her intellect, Sakayanagi had already mapped out the entire board.
They exchanged details. A moment later, his phone chimed with the notification. One hundred thousand Private Points, deposited directly into his account.
‘Earning a net profit of eighty thousand on the very first day of school… not a bad feeling at all.’ A faint, satisfied arc touched his lips.
Deducting the ten thousand he promised Chabashira for her errand fee, plus the actual cost of the beer, he was walking away with a massive windfall. More, he had just forced this impossibly arrogant girl to swallow the bitter taste of defeat.
‘Will she hold a grudge over this?’ he wondered, pocketing his phone.
He met Sakayanagi’s complex gaze. Those lilac eyes swirled with a mix of confusion, lingering frustration, and an emotion he couldn’t quite place.
“I really cannot understand.” Her tone, usually so measured and airy, carried a rare ripple of fluctuation. “With a mind like yours, how could you possibly be assigned to Class D?”
“I simply interviewed poorly,” Akira lied smoothly, brushing off the inquiry. He certainly wasn’t going to bring up the absurd reality of his transmigration.
“…Just how poorly did you interview?!” The elegant facade cracked. “To the extent of ending up in a place like Class D! Wait… could it be that the interviewer took a personal dislike to you and deliberately tanked your score? Regardless, I will investigate this matter thoroughly.”
Her voice had dropped to a freezing temperature. But just as quickly as the ice appeared, it melted away. When she looked up at him again, the refined, haughty smile had returned to her pale face. “Shimizu-kun, I will not lose next time.”
“You’re welcome to try anytime,” Akira replied, offering a casual shrug. “As long as you bring interesting games and enough Points to the table.” He wasn’t about to turn down a walking, talking sponsorship.
Still, her parting words lingered in his mind.
Why would a mere student use the authoritative tone of the School Administration? Did Class A possess some hidden privilege that allowed them to audit enrollment records? Or… could this frail, cane-wielding girl actually be the apple of the Chairman’s eye? A daughter, or perhaps a granddaughter?
‘Come to think of it,’Akira mused dryly, watching her walk away.’Did I just scam the daughter of the school’s top brass on my first day?’
Meanwhile, on the other side of the campus, Kamuro Masumi kept her head down, feigning perfect calm as she blended into the flow of students.
The canned beer sitting at the bottom of her shoulder bag felt impossibly heavy. It was as if the aluminum cylinder might tear straight through the thin fabric at any second, exposing her sin to the entire world.
‘Was someone watching me just now?’She shifted her gaze, letting her peripheral vision sweep the area behind her. A few blurred figures milled about the convenience store aisles. No one had stopped. No one was paying her any mind.’Just my imagination.’
She exhaled a soft, shaky breath. The moment the automatic doors slid shut behind her, she subconsciously quickened her pace. The warm summer breeze filled her lungs, doing little to dilute the tight knot of tension in her chest.
Through the fabric of her bag, she could almost feel the cold, hard shape of the can.
The corners of Kamuro’s mouth twitched upward. A strange, intoxicating rush of pleasure surged through her veins.
‘I did it again.’
She cheered silently, tasting a faint, metallic sweetness on her tongue. This was far from her first offense. Ever since a suffocatingly hot afternoon in junior high—when she had slipped a cheap eraser into her uniform pocket—the sheer thrill of her heart leaping into her throat had been permanently branded into her soul.
She had barely taken a dozen steps away from the storefront when a calm, unfamiliar male voice drifted from behind her.
“Kamuro-san. Wait a moment.”
Her spine locked. The blood in her veins turned to ice.
‘Did… did I get caught?’
Moving with agonizing slowness, she turned around. A male student she didn’t recognize stood a few paces away, his hands resting casually in his pockets.
“Is there something in your bag?” he asked, his dark eyes dropping pointedly to her shoulder.
Kamuro’s throat constricted. She forced her facial muscles to remain entirely blank, projecting an aura of absolute indifference. “…What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”
The boy closed the distance by a single step. “Your technique was quite clean. This shouldn’t be your first time, right? But why beer? Do you really like drinking that much?”
‘This guy! He even knows exactly what I took?!’
Her pupils shrank to pinpricks. Her heart gave a violent, painful lurch against her ribs. For the first time in her life, she had been caught red-handed.
Panic overrode her usual cynical detachment.
“Take it!” she snapped, violently yanking the beer can from her bag and shoving it toward his chest out of pure spite. “If you’re going to report me, just do it already!”
The boy blinked, clearly taken aback. A wry, almost disappointed look crossed his face. “…Wait. Why are you handing the physical evidence straight to me? You surrendered way too easily, didn’t you?”
“Shut up!” She wrenched her face away, her earlobes burning a furious, humiliated red. “You saw the whole thing anyway, didn’t you?!”
“Are you really from Class A?” The boy tilted his head, studying her with a strange, analytical gaze. “This reaction… you act almost exactly like someone from my own class.”
Kamuro’s temples throbbed with a sudden, blinding headache.
‘How does he know my class? How does he even know my name?!’
But what infuriated her more than the exposure was the look in his eyes. It was a mix of mild astonishment and a hint of disgust. Was he actually disappointed by how quickly she folded?!
“What exactly do you want?!” she demanded, her voice rising in pitch as her fingers gripped the beer can hard enough to dent the aluminum. “If you aren’t going to report me, I’ll just go contact the school myself!”
She glared at his calm, unbothered expression, a sudden, terrifying thought crossing her mind.
‘Wait… if he’s not reporting me, and he’s letting me keep the beer… could he be…’