3 Chapter 3

Despite all the restrictions like being forced to live in dorms, being forbidden from leaving campus and being prohibited from contacting anyone on the outside, no one seemed to have any complaints. In fact, you could say that we've been given such preferential treatment that it was lik we'd been transported to paradise. Of course, the Advanced Nurturing High School's most impressive statistic was its near 100 percent placement rate for students advancing into higher education or entering the workforce.

This government-sponsored school's thorough guidance of its students hoped to ensure a better future. In fact, the school heavily advertised this. Many of its alumni went on to achieve fame. Typically, no matter how famous or impressive a school might be, the areas of specialization are limited. For example, one school might specialize in sports or in music. Another might focus on something related to computers. However, at this school, any student could hope to succeed, regardless of their field.

Only this school had that kind of name-brand value. I'd assumed that the atmosphere would be cutthroat, but the majority of students looked like typical kids. In fact, the seven of us in class 1-E are probably the ones that look the least like typical kids.

"This all seems a bit too generous..." I heard my raven-haired neighbour mutter.

"Hey, can I have everyone's attention for a quick second?"

The spiky, maroon-haired student who entered the classroom last spoke up from his desk, which was second from the door on the other side of the classroom from mine. Normally, you'd picture someone who speaks up in a classroom of strangers as an outgoing honor student, however this boy was the antithesis of that image. Not only was his appearance disheveled and messy, but he wasn't outgoing either - he seemed like he was speaking up out of obligation rather than genuinely wanting to talk to his new classmates.

"It seems like the seven of us here are gonna be acquaintences for the next three years. We have an hour before the school requires us to go somewhere so we might as well use some of that time to get to know each other, right?" he continued.

His manner of speech was was informal compared to the brown-haired boy who asked a question earlier. While he was polite and calm while talking, this boy was much more upfront and blunt.

"I have no issues. You can introduce yourself first, and we'll make our way down the line towards this way until everyone has introduced themselves." the raven-haired boy next to me said.

"Sure. I'm Sora and this is my cute little sister, Shiro." he said, gesturing toward the white haired girl he entered with.

Ah, sister. I had a feeling they were close but weren't dating. That's it, then.

"Shiro doesn't do that well with other people, so I'll just introduce us both. We've been shut-ins our whole lives, this is the first school we've properly committed to attending. If you put the kanji from our names together, you get Kūhaku, or Blank as we go by. Throughout the thousands of games we've played before, Blank has never once lost and this school isn't going to change that. I hope we can get along with you all. Oh and also, both Shiro and I abandoned our last names long ago so we go by just out first names now."

It seems Sora and Shiro were similar to me in the sense that this is also the first school I have ever attended. They made a rather bold declaration that they'd never lost before while working together despite playing thousands of games. I wondered if that was actually true - normally I would brush it off as a ridiculous claim but after what Ishihara-sensei said about this class, there is a chance it could be true. The matter regarding their last names also seemed interesting, but I didn't think too much about it.

"Your turn." Sora said, nodding towards the boy sitting to his left.

This boy was the person I had paid the least attention to so far. He looked very slim and pale, and had extremely messy neck-length black hair. His eyes were like black holes, deep orbs of black that stared in to whatever he was looking at. He also sat in an excessively strange posture. He was perched on the edge of his seat, rather than sitting in it like everyone else. Judging by his appearance, I don't see how he could be considered a once-in-a-generation talent. He didn't look like a very good athlete and he didn't give off the impression of being particularly intelligent either. But then again, looks can be deceiving.

"My name is.." he began, but hesitated before saying his name.

He paused for a couple of seconds before looking like he made up his mind and continuing.

"My name is Rue Ryuzaki, feel free to call me Ryuzaki. If you asked me what I like, I'd have to say sweets and solving crimes. I'm also very good at tennis, I was a junior tennis champion in Britain, though I'm not sure how useful that particular talent will be at this school. Nice to meet you."

The fact that he hesitated before saying his name is odd, but probably not worth thinking about. It seems my surface-level evaluation was incorrect, as Ryuzaki claimed to be very good at a sport. He spoke in a rather flat tone, so I was genuinely unable to figure out whether he was joking or not when he said he likes to solve crimes.

"Im next, then? My name is Yagami Light and I'd rather you use my first name than my last name. Coincidently I am also quite proficient at tennis. Aside from that, I don't have any particular interests - I think that I'd like to become a detective in the future. I can be friends with pretty much anyone as long as they aren't a delinquent."

So far, Light seems to be the 'most normal' out of all the introductions. He just seemed to be an ordinary student with a general plan for his future job. Sora and Shiro had made an extremely bold introduction claiming to have never before lost, and Ryuzaki was just pretty unusual in general. He didn't strike me as the type to climb far up the social heirarchy.

Everyone looked towards Kururugi and it took him a few seconds to realise it was his turn.

"I'm Kururugi Suzaku. From the short time I've spent in this classroom I already get the feeling that I'm significantly below everyone else here in intelligence," he said with a small chuckle.

"I entered the military at a young age and so haven't really had the chance to go to a normal school before. In fact, the only reason I'm here is because I was ordered to enroll. Because of this I'm confident in my physical abilities, but never really had a thorough education. I hope to be friends with you all."

Kururugi bowed slightly before sitting down. I think I'm beginning to understand a bit about Kururugi; he seems to value benevolance and discipline due to his background, which was probably what contributed to starting the debate that I walked in on.

The raven-haired boy next to me stood up confidently and began his introduction once Kururugi sat down.

"My name is Lamperouge Lelouch; I'm going to ask you all to just call me Lelouch because it makes me uncomfortable being called Lamperouge. Before enrolling here, I used to gamble on chess games instead of attending P.E classes. It was quite an effective way of making money and I'm seriously not cut out for anything that requires physical prowess. Pleased to make your acquintance."

Lelouch had a relatively normal introduction. The one thing that caught my attention was him mentioning that he used to gamble on chess games. I've played a lot of chess and basically never lost, so I wondered if Lelouch could be a match for me. I doubted it, but in my head I secretly hoped that he would be able to beat me.

Then I realised that it was now my turn. It just occured to me that I hadn't said a word since entering the class and was now expected to stand up and introduce myself. Everyone was looking at me expectedly and I hadn't planned my introduction at all. Not good.

Clack! My chair rattled as I hastily stood.

"Um. Well, my name is Ayanokōji Kiyotaka. And, uh, I don't really have any special skills or anything. I'll do my best to get along with all of you. It's, uh, nice to meet you."

Well. Was that my introduction?

I completely blew it. My social standing was pretty much doomed in this class now. I instinctively burned my head in my hands. I hadn't had the chance to properly construct an introduction since I'd been too busy analysing everyone else's. Ishihara-sensei interested me by saying all my classmates would be outstanding, so I had spent too much time judging them and completely forgot about my own introduction.

Just when I thought I would be stuck being unpopular and a loner for the rest of my years at this school due to my complete failure of an introduction, a voice called out to me.

"You should loosen up a little. I don't know about everyone else but personally I don't care for all the social heirarchy crap. The seven of us are expected to go up against the other classes even though they have somewhere around five to six times they amount of students as we do. We'll probably have to work together to accomplish this so you may as well tell us a bit about what you did before enrolling here." Sora said to me in his usual, blunt tone.

"Nii, what do you mean about going up against other classes?" Shiro spoke up for the first time since entering the room.

"Ah, so you didn't notice it? It seemed quite obvious to me. What other reason could there possibly be to segregate the brilliant students from the rest of the student body if we didn't have to compete with them? If we are just going to sit here in our class and get taught like at a normal school there would be no need for this 'experimental class' of ours. At first, I thought that the reason could be that our class will be taught much harder material than everyone else, but since Suzaku is here that can't be the case. As such, my conclusion is that the reason we're here in Class E is because if we were all placed into one of the regular four classes it would be unfair on the other three when we compete against them." Sora explained to his sister.

It was an impressive deduction, given that we had almost nothing to go on but Sora already seems pretty confident that he's figured out the point of class 1-E. I had come to a similar conclusion during Ishihara-sensei's explanation which pretty much confirms Sora's deduction is correct.

"That doesn't make sense though. Why not just spread us out among the other classes if us all being in the same one would be unfair?" Kururugi interjected.

"Hmm, well, I haven't been able to come to a definite conclusion regarding that yet. We don't know enough about the school at this stage. One thing we do know is that our class is an 'experimental class', perhaps it's just that - an experiment. Maybe the chairman just wanted to see what would happen." Sora replied, his voice giving the impression that he was pondering multiple possibilities.

"If we in fact do have to compete against the other classes then we are already at quite the disadvantage. As far as resources go, our class will cumulatively have much less than the others. If I'm not mistaken, this school has forty students per class and, usually, four classes per year, meaning each class cumutively has 4,000,000 points as of the start of this month whereas our class E only has 700,000. If points are just something used for our day to day lives then it won't make a difference, but if we need them to purchase things during class competitions then we really are going in to this from a very unfavourable position." Lelouch added.

What Lelouch said was also very important. If things like points and possibly other resources given out on a per-student basis become important in the future, then we will be expecting to lose practically every class competition we enter.

Before I realised it, our class of seven had already come together in discussion and started analysing the school after just one short interaction with out homeroom teacher. The deductions made by Sora and Lelouch were certainly convincing, and not something your average high-schooler would come up with immediately after hearing Ishihara-sensei's explanation. Perhaps my classmates truly are elites on my level after all.