21 Chapter 21

kushida thought that Horikita and I were friends because of the lie that I had told her when I ran into her outside Class B. She'd probably expected that I'd have gotten her contact info by now.

"Unfortunately not. You've seen it yourself, right? She's cold as ice." I said, apologizing to Horikita in my head.

"I hate to say it, but Horikita would probably never come if I asked her, and you have no way to contact her. In other words, we've reached a dead-end, huh." Kushida said, her smile wavering slightly.

"Seems like it. If I ever do manage to get her contact information though, I'll be glad to help you."

"Really? Thank you so much, Ayanokōji-kun!" Kushida brightened up again and looked up at me with sparkling eyes.

I probably just got myself needlessly involved in more trouble, I thought to myself.

"Say, can I ask you something unrelated, Ayanokōji-kun?"

"Feel free," I replied.

"Do you know someone called Kururugi Suzaku?" she asked. "I met him on the bus during the journey here but since then I've barely seen him and no one really seems to know him. There are some other people that no one seems to really know as well, like you, Lelouch-kun and there was also a boy who came in to our classroom around a week ago called Sora-kun that I haven't seen since. I hate to blow my own horn but I have quite a large social network so I'm sure I should've heard about them and their friends by now, but I haven't. Do you know anything, Ayanokōji-kun?"

It seems like Kushida was a lot smarter than she originally appeared. Originally, I had thought she was just your average run-of-the-mill popular and friendly girl, but it seems I was mistaken. She was very perceptive and had noticed an oddity that no one else had thus far. Maybe, though, she had only managed to do so because of her vast number of friends and acquiantances.

"I don't. What makes you think I do?" I tried my best to respond naturally.

"Well, similarly to Lelouch-kun, many of the girls say they've seen you around but nobody really knows who you're friends with or even what class you're in. I've got some friends in every first-year class so I've visited each classroom a fair amount of times but I've never seen you in any of them."

"Couldn't it be that you just never noticed me? I don't exactly have a big presence, after all."

"It would be believable if it wasn't for the fact that there are three others in the exact same situation as you. What class are you in, Ayanokōji-kun?"

This is bad. No matter which class I say I'm in, Kushida is bound to know at least one person in that class and she'll soon realize that I lied about being in that class. I worked my brain to it's maximum in an attempt to come up with any decent cover-up, but in the end I couldn't think of anything.

"Well, that's--" I started, but Kushida cut me off.

"Class 1-E, right?"

Those words were like a punch to my brain, and I felt a wave of confusion wash over my body. It was certainly impressive but still understandable how Kushida had noticed something unusual with me and the rest of the Class E students, but her actually coming to the definite conclusion that there is a secret fifth class based on that simply wasn't feasible.

All the other classes should still be, for the most part, in the dark about almost everything regarding this school's inner mechanisms and workings. As a result, nobody should have any reason to think that the school lied about there being only four classes, not even the most genius of students. Even if I were placed into Class D, I don't think I would've been able to figure it out either - it was that much of an arbitrary deduction to make. The only answer, then, is that she had already found out about the possible existence of Class E beforehand.

"Class 1-E? What makes you think a class like that exists? The school said that there was only classes A to D, right?" I had to find out exactly how Kushida had reasoned that Class E exists.

She could become a very dangerous adversary, even more so if we don't know anything about how capable she truly is.

"I met Kururugi-kun on the bus travelling to this school. There, he introduced himself as belonging to 'Class 1-E,' at the time I didn't think much of it but when the school said that there were only four classes I was confused. At first I thought that maybe Kururugi-kun had simply made a mistake, but once I found out that nobody had seen him in any of their classes I became pretty much certain that Class E must exist. Tell me, Ayanokōji-kun, are you also in Class E?"

"....."

Thinking back to the bus ride, it was true that Kururugi had introduced himself as Class 1-E. I probably couldn't cover it up anymore, then. Kushida seemed sure of her conclusion, and it would be near-impossible for me to lie to her when she had already checked every class for traces of the Class E students. If that's the case, then I should change my approach and instead try to discover how much of a threat Kushida Kikyō actually was.

"That's right. I'm a student of Class 1-E," I admitted. "Does anybody else know about it?"

"No, I'm the only one. Tell me, why was Class E never mentioned by anyone?" Kushida asked.

"The school decided not to mention it, so the students in my class also decided to keep it a secret for as long as possible."

"But why though?"

"Just for fun, I suppose. Are you going to tell people about it?"

"No, I don't think I will. Figuring it out on my own is enough for me, so I'll help you keep your secret."

"Thanks," I thanked her on behalf of my class.

"In return, you also won't ever let on that I figured it out. Okay?"

"Sure, that's fine by me."

Kushida and I began to walk, with no particular destination in mind.

"Say, don't you feel a strange bond of mutual trust forms between people who share a secret, Ayanokōji-kun?"

"I don't know about that. I sure hope so."

"Thank you," replied Kushida.

I didn't really know what she meant by that.

Sigh.

I unconciously let out a sigh as I stared out the window during second-period history. It'd now been three weeks since the entrance ceremony and, in that time, nothing much had really happened. The one thing to note was that, astonishingly, after three weeks we still didn't know the name of the Class B leader who we'd dubbed 'Stawberry-chan'. It seems like our class is seriously lacking in the social department.

Looking around the room, I noticed that not many were actually paying attention to our teacher, Chabashira-sensei. Save for Kururugi and Light, every student was either looking at her apathetically or staring somewhere absentmindedly. We weren't explicitly misbehaving, per se, but we had certainly become far too lax over the last three weeks.

Initially we had decided to not do anything that could possibly endanger our class, but I guess that in a room full of geniuses it was to be expected that some students would eventually start to get bored with class. Myself was included in that - I only found our classes tedious and I was sure that Blank and Lelouch felt the same way.

"Hey, Ayanokōji, do you want to have lunch with me?" Lelouch whispered from beside me.

Lelouch was one of the students I had grown closest to during my short time at this school. I found him easy to relate and talk to because we often shared the same viewpoint and ideology.

"Sure. It's not like I have anything better to do anyway." I replied, half-jokingly.

Our class still hadn't really branched out and made friends within other classes yet which meant that if I didn't hang out with my classmates then I wouldn't have anyone to talk to.

For third period, we had English class with Ishihara-sensei. When the bell rang, Ishihara-sensei walked into our quiet classroom, seemingly in a more serious mood than usual.

"Today's lesson is going to be a bit more serious than normal."

Ishihara-sensei stood at the podium and looked around as if she'd expected someone to speak up, but everyone simply looked at her and waited for her to continue. It seemed that our whole class was interested in whatever she was about to say, which was quite unusual by now.

"It's the end of the month, so we're going to have a short pop-quiz test. Please pass these along your row."

She handed a stack of papers to Shiro and they began making their way along the line until the final one reached me, by the window.

"This test will just be for future reference, which means it won't be reflected in your report cards and there is no risk involved - not that I have any concerns about your class anyway. Obviously, cheating is not allowed."

No risk involved, huh? Those cryptic words worried me a little - the way Ishihara-sensei said that our grades wouldn't be reflected in our report cards made me think that the grade could be reflected in some other way. Well... perhaps I was just overthinking it. If this had no effect on our report card, then there was no need to be so cautious.

As soon as the pop quiz began, I scanned the questions. There were four questions per subject, for a total of twenty. Each question was worth five points, for a total of one hundred points. Most of the questions were extraordinarily easy, to the point where it was almost a letdown. In fact, the questions seemed to be about two levels less difficult than the ones on the entrance examination. It appeared far too easy.

However, just as I thought that, I reached the end of the test. The final three questions were an order of magnitude higher in terms of difficulty. The final math problem couldn't be solved without complex formulae.

These questions couldn't be geared toward a first-year high school student. The final three questions were clearly of a diferent quality than the others, so it was possible they'd been put on the test by mistake. Even though the results wouldn't be reflected in our grades, what in the hell were they evaluating with this?

Well, I guess I'll just solve all the questions correctly. If I do what I did on the entrance exam, my classmates will probably notice straight away.

Ishihara-sensei monitored us. She slowly waltzed around the classroom, keeping a cheery but watchful gaze on the students to dissuade us from cheating. Seriously, Ishihara-sensei was very strange - she always acted cheery and overly-friendly, but also seemed to have more insight than she let on.

I quickly finished my test and continued to stare at it until the bell rang