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ArabicClassroom of the Elite: Surviving with the Intel System — Chapter 43
Chapter 43: Today’s Intel: The Leader of First-Year Class C is Ryuuen Kakeru
Kushida Kikyo’s fingers danced across her phone screen, firing off a message with practiced sweetness. “Thank you for the information~ I’m Kushida Kikyo from first-year Class D. How can I ever thank you, student?”
The moment the message went through, the chat interface immediately displayed the typing indicator.
Tsuki Ao: “No need to thank me.”
Kushida didn’t miss a beat, her thumbs flying over the keyboard. “Oh, by the way! Which class are you in? And how did you find my account?”
A heavy silence hung over the digital chat box for several seconds. Then, a final message popped onto the screen.
Tsuki Ao: “Well… it’s not very convenient to say. I’m going to take a shower now.”
Shimizu Akira pressed the send button and closed the application without a second thought.
He and Kushida had never actually spoken online before. Though they had exchanged contact information early on, their chat history had remained completely blank until today. This brief exchange was nothing more than a calculated move to execute the task assigned by their homeroom teacher.
The crucial information had been delivered. The conversation was over.
He knew Kushida’s personality all too well. That girl, who thrived on being the center of attention, would undoubtedly turn this anonymous tip into prime gossip the moment she had an audience. If she somehow managed to trace the account back to him…
He wasn’t particularly worried about the transaction itself leaking—buying and selling information was already becoming an open secret within the Advanced Nurturing High School. But if those loud, obnoxious classmates found out he was the source, they would swarm him like flies, pestering him for every last detail.
Just picturing them crowding around his desk, their voices overlapping in an endless drone of questions, made a dull ache throb at his temples.
“Troublesome.” He muttered into the quiet of his dorm room, swiping away the chat logs.
This carefully disguised burner account was a valuable asset. It would serve as a vital tool for future negotiations with Class B and Class C, and for handling the treacherous waters of Class A. Letting it burn just because Kushida couldn’t keep her mouth shut would be a massive waste of resources. Maintaining absolute secrecy was the only logical play.
[Ding. Today’s intel has been updated.]
[Intel One: The leader of first-year Class C is Ryuuen Kakeru.]
[Intel Two: Katsuragi Kohei of first-year Class A suffers from alopecia.]
[Intel Three: Tonight at 7:55 PM, Horikita Suzune will be subjected to physical punishment by Horikita Manabu behind the first-year dormitory.]
Tuesday morning arrived, and at exactly eight o’clock, the familiar mechanical chime echoed in his mind.
Akira stared at the floating blue text, his mind already spinning the raw data into actionable threads. Over the past few days, he had naturally begun to categorize the information fed to him by the system.
The highest tier was predictive intel—glimpses into the immediate future. The dispute between Kushida and Kouenji Rokusuke over the bus seat, or Kamuro Masumi’s little shoplifting incident with the beer, fell perfectly into this category.
The second tier consisted of structural information regarding the school’s hidden mechanics and the internal hierarchies of the other classes.
The lowest tier, though occasionally amusing, was personal privacy.
Today’s harvest was exceptionally balanced. A crucial piece of structural intel regarding Class C, a highly volatile predictive event, and a rather unfortunate medical fact about a Class A heavyweight.
‘It seems that outside of Class D, the other factions have already crowned their kings and queens.’
The hierarchy in Class A was the most transparent. Sakayanagi Arisu and Katsuragi Kohei had fractured the class into two opposing camps, jointly controlling the flow of power. Kamuro had practically handed him that piece of the puzzle herself.
Class B was a unified front under Ichinose Honami. Their homeroom teacher, Hoshinomiya Chie, had made that abundantly clear during their brief encounter.
And now, the system had handed him the missing piece for Class C: Ryuuen Kakeru. Akira didn’t yet know what kind of man Ryuuen was, or what brutal methods he employed to keep his classmates in line, but a name was more than enough to start with.
Then there was Class D. The situation was… pathetic.
On the surface, Hirata Yosuke and Kushida Kikyo held the reins of public opinion. But calling them leaders was a gross overstatement. They were merely popular mascots—core figures whose influence stemmed from a superficial, naturally forming herd mentality rather than genuine authority.
There was a massive, unbridgeable gap between a popular student and a true leader.
A real leader understood that hatred was part of the job description. They knew how to draw a hard line, enforce discipline, and maintain an invisible, untouchable boundary between themselves and their subordinates.
Hirata and Kushida possessed none of those traits.
Hirata was paralyzed by his own nice-guy persona, terrified of taking a definitive stance on anything that might upset the delicate balance. Kushida was even worse, obsessively plastering over every crack in the class with a fake, sugary smile to maintain an illusion of perfect harmony.
This desperate clinging to egalitarianism was exactly why they were fundamentally flawed.
‘The reason Class D is still a disorganized, bleeding mess is because there is no one willing to take the helm.”So… that was Chabashira-sensei’s true game.’
Akira leaned back, piecing together the hidden layer of yesterday’s transaction. Chabashira Sae was a sharp woman. As their homeroom teacher, she had easily identified Hirata and Kushida as the two opposing pillars holding up the fragile social structure of Class D.
Her strict condition to inform only one person wasn’t just a rule; it was a trap. It was a test to see which faction Akira would choose to empower.
‘That one million Private Point transaction was a leadership assessment.’
Whichever mascot received the intel would inevitably use it to play the savior, consolidating their power and crushing the other’s influence in the process.
The irony was that Akira couldn’t care less about the petty power struggles of a defective class.
His attention drifted back to the third piece of intel. It was by far the most jarring.
‘Horikita Suzune is going to be beaten by her older brother?”Are those siblings really that deranged?’
Horikita Manabu was the Student Council President. He was the absolute authority among the student body, the living embodiment of the school’s draconian rules. And yet, he was planning to drag his own sister behind a dorm building to inflict physical violence?
Akira’s eyes narrowed. The hypocrisy was almost poetic.
Time bled away, and the final bell of the day rang out. The usual post-school chatter filled the classroom, only to be cut short by the sharp, crisp sound of hands clapping together.
“Everyone, could I have a moment of your time?”
Kushida Kikyo had already taken the stage at the front of the room. She smoothed down the pleats of her skirt with practiced grace, flashing the class her signature, heart-melting smile.
“Of course!”
“What’s up, Kushida?”
The girls in the front row responded with immediate, buzzing enthusiasm. It was a perfect display of her absolute dominance over the female social hierarchy.
“Actually…” Kushida let her voice trail off, milking the dramatic pause until every single pair of eyes in the room was locked onto her. She lowered her tone, adopting a look of grave concern. “Yesterday, I unexpectedly learned a shocking secret from someone.”
She took a slow, theatrical breath. “Besides our Private Points, the school operates on a hidden system called Class Points. And…”
She leaned forward, ready to drop the hammer. “If our Class Points drop to zero, no one will receive a single Private Point next month!”
Silence stretched across the room, but it wasn’t the stunned, terrified silence she had been banking on.
“Ah… right…”
“We kind of already know that, Kushida.”
The grand explosion she had orchestrated fizzled out into a series of awkward, unenthusiastic murmurs.
Hirata Yosuke stood up from his desk, rubbing the back of his neck with an apologetic, strained smile. “Sorry, Kushida. Actually, after I heard about that from another source yesterday, I already went ahead and discussed it with a few of the others…”
‘Damn it…’
Kushida’s perfectly manicured nails dug into her palms. Her carefully crafted bombshell—the revelation that was supposed to cement her as the savior of Class D—was nothing more than stale news. Hirata had beaten her to the punch.
But beneath her boiling frustration, a colder, sharper question gnawed at her mind.
Who exactly had given Hirata that information?