Chapter 54

Chapter 54

Katsuragi reminded me of Ichinose, in a way. They were both terribly naïve, and thought that they could win by being fair and square about everything. Such a childish strategy, however, would not work against someone like Sakayanagi or Ryūen.

"After failing to get results multiple times due to Sakayanagi's sabotage, Katsuragi will lose his influence within the class. Knowing him, he probably won't even say anything about the traitors working against him, either." Light said.

"At this rate, Sakayanagi will gain full control over Class A before long." Ryuzaki surmised.

"Unless..." Light placed his hand against his chin, and adopted a thoughtful expression.

"Unless what?" I prompted him to continue.

"Unless we help Katsuragi."

Out of all the possible things he could've said, that was the one I'd least expected.

"Why would you want to help him, Light? Do you feel bad for him or something?" Ryuzaki inquired.

"What? No. Well, I suppose I do feel some pity for him. But that isn't my main reason for suggesting this."

Ryuzaki and I just looked at him, waiting for him to elaborate.

"Think about it. Class A in the future will either be ruled by Katsuragi or Sakayanagi. As we just established, Sakayanagi is superior to Katsuragi, which means she'll almost certainly take control of Class A. It would also be in Class A's best interest to have Sakayanagi lead them, as she is far more capable. However, for every side of a coin there's an opposite side."

"I think I see what you're getting at," Ryuzaki said after a moment of thought. "You're saying that, because it'd be in Class A's best interest to elect Sakayanagi as the representative, that it would be in our best interest if Katsuragi became the leader."

Class A lead by Sakayanagi would be much stronger than Class A lead by Katsuragi. Thus, it would benefit us, as well as all the other classes, if Katsuragi was the leader. It would neutralize the threat of Class A massively – I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped to Class D or even E in that situation.

Helping Katsuragi now would allow us to defeat Sakayanagi very early on, before she can develop into a much more powerful adversary. In other words, we'd be nipping the problem in the bud.

"I see. It would certainly be an effective method. What would you do with Sakayanagi?" I said.

"Expel her?" Ryuzaki suggested nonchalantly.

"We can't do that!" Light exclaimed.

"Why not? It's the simplest solution." Ryuzaki pressed.

"Once the whole class rallies around Katsuragi, it'd be fine just leaving her in the class. It's not like she can regain any influence once everyone is against her." Light protested, seemingly against the idea of expelling a student on purpose.

"I agree with Light. Going as far to expel her would be overkill." I spoke up, settling the argument.

Light Yagami was a person with very strong principles. Also, to put it bluntly, his views on justice were rather childish. As a result, I didn't think he'd resort to methods such as expulsion unless he deemed it absolutely necessary. He was by no means naïve, but he also wasn't Machiavellian like Lelouch was, either.

"In either case, we'd need to discuss the idea with the rest of our class. We should wait until this exam is over to think seriously about it." Ryuzaki said, turning his attention back to the window where he could see the Class A path.

In his hand, he held a pair of binoculars. They could be purchased for a small total of five points, and so we decided to buy two before setting off. Ryuzaki and Light took one pair each to use for this mission.

Ryuzaki peered down the lens, and scanned the binoculars over the area. Without the binoculars, if you squinted and strained your eyes, you could most likely make out the figures of students from this distance, but Ryuzaki probably wanted to make sure he didn't miss anything.

"There are two possible cases," Ryuzaki stated, removing the binoculars from his eyes and turning to us. "First, that Class A is doing something similar to us, only occupying their base camp and just going on a round trip to reclaim the other spot when it's about to expire. Second, that they're making full use of both spots."

"At this point, we can't be sure which is the case..." Light pondered aloud.

"However, if the former is the case, that makes our lives much easier." I said.

"That's right. In that case, it'd just be a matter of watching who moves between the two spots at the right time. If not, though..." Ryuzaki replied, motioning towards the worktable in front of him.

On it, there were nine small pieces of paper that looked like they'd been ripped off of a page. There was a name on each of the slips, presumably corresponding to a Class A student each. Four of the papers were currently divided into a left side and a right side by a line of potato chips, while the other five were in a separate pile.

"Keeping track of which notable students are at which spot right now, huh?" I deduced.

"Yes. If the latter is the case, then that means we need to know exactly how the Class A leader suspects have been behaving, especially around the times of the spot's renewal. We'll only get a few opportunities to observe them during that time frame, so we need to make sure that we know where they all are." Light explained.

After he said that, he picked up his manual from the desk in front of him and showed it to me. There were a multitude of blank pages at the start of the manual, presumably so that the students can jot down notes if they wish.

Light had made good use of these pages, as he had drawn neat tables in a similar format to how the names were set out on the desk by Ryuzaki. Each table had 2 columns and as many rows as required – each column represented the spots left and right of our current location, and were labelled 'Spot-L' and 'Spot-R' respectively.

Each time someone crossed over, Light had written a new table with that change in it, and noted the date and time next to this table as well. All in all, it was a very clear and useful record of Class A's activities – I was impressed.

Light is quite good at writing names in a notebook, I thought.

"I see... So right now, the majority of our suspects are in Spot-R or, in other words, likely the first spot they occupied. If the first hypothesis was correct, it's most likely that this spot is also their main spot and Spot-L is essentially just a point-generator." I surmised as I skimmed my eyes over the notebook.

"That's right. Hopefully, that hypothesis is correct." Ryuzaki replied.

"Is it not important to also track the rest of the students, though? Knowing where the rest of their class is wouldn't tell us who the leader is, but it would help us figure out whether Spot-L is being used or not."

"Aha!" Ryuzaki exclaimed, picking up his manual.

Sure enough, scrawled on the blank pages, were multiple sets of letters and numbers, each in pairs separated by a vertical line between them.

"Your handwriting is awful." I said bluntly, ignoring the main point of his notes.

"You didn't have to point that out," Ryuzaki retorted expressionlessly.

"Hmm? This is..." I muttered, taking a closer look at the notes.

The pairs of numbers on Ryuzaki's notes read:

Time Spot-L | Spot-R

08:23 a | b

08:26 a – 5 | b + 5

08:28 a – 11 | b + 11

08:33 a – 10 | b + 10

People seemed to have been moving between the two spots very frequently just a moment ago. More interestingly, though...

"You used variables." I noted.

"Of course. When we first got up here, there was no way for us to know where any of the Class A students were. Thus, we can only observe the changes in number relative to the number when we first got up here – 'a' and 'b.'" Ryuzaki explained.

It made sense. Until the first observation of students crossing over, 'a' and 'b' could've been any number from zero to thirty-nine. At 08:26, five students were spotted moving from Spot-L to Spot-R. From this, it could be inferred that 'a' must be five at a minimum and, likewise, that 'b' could only be thirty-four at the most.

Then, at 08:28, six more students moved from Spot-L to Spot-R, bringing the total number of students that had crossed over to eleven. This meant that 'a' must be eleven or greater, and that 'b' must be twenty-eight or lower.

"Spot-L contained at least eleven people at 08:23. It could mean that they are using both spots, seeing as the absolute minimum number of students at Spot-L was over one-quarter of their class." I reasoned.

"Alternatively..." Light began, pointing to the watch strapped to his wrist. "It's currently 08:49, which means there's been no activity for sixteen minutes. That could mean that those eleven were only there to provide cover for the real leader reclaiming the spot, and now that that's done, there's no need for further crossing."

That was also a possible explanation, but something about it didn't quite add up.

"But then, why is the most recent movement a sole person going from Spot-R to Spot-L? And why have they not returned after this long?" I pointed out.

"I think you'll find this quite interesting," Ryuzaki said, shifting in his seat. "That person was none other than Katsuragi Kōhei himself."

Katsuragi went to Spot-L alone, and hasn't been seen since? For what reason? Could he perhaps have gone there alone to hide and see if anybody comes to check out the spot? It was far-fetched knowing Katsuragi, but he could've staged occupying the spot, and then gone back to hide and see if any other classes come along to occupy it instead, discovering their leader in the process.

"Katsuragi, huh? Maybe he's waiting for someone to come by the spot?" I mused.

"Perhaps. However, I have a different theory." Light interjected.

"Go on," Ryuzaki prompted him, an unusually intrigued expression on his features.

"We've assumed that, if there is a main base, it's Spot-R because Spot-R is the objectively better spot – it has easier access to water, has more shade from the sun, and is also closer to resources and important locations on the island due to it being more central then Spot-L." Light explained.

Well, he was right about that. When asked which spot would be better as a main base, almost everyone would say Spot-R because of those reasons.

"However, if it were me, I'd choose to make Spot-L the main base purely because of those reasons." As Light said that, Ryuzaki cracked a grin. "Everyone would expect Spot-R, so using Spot-L instead could actually be overall beneficial. Also, considering Katsuragi's personality, he might not like the idea of being at the heart of the island, the place which is passed through most out of any place."

The only problem with Light's theory is that it was not him, but Katsuragi, making the decision. Would Katsuragi think that deep about it? Just knowing his personality wasn't enough to deduce whether he'd come up with an extensive idea like this or not. We'd have to learn more about just how proficient he is at planning.

"That's interesting, Light, because I was thinking the exact same thing." Ryuzaki smiled.

"Following that logic, then, this would mean that the reason Katsuragi moved back over to Spot-L was because Spot-L is where most his classmates are?" I inferred.

"Right. And the other ten that moved over with him originally were going there just to renew Spot-R. We know that Katsuragi would never make himself the leader, which means that he would've only gone with the leader-team to keep up appearances if they bumped into someone while reclaiming the spot and also to ensure that everything went smoothly." Light elucidated.

"As for why the other ten haven't returned to Spot-L yet, it could be because they thought that they might as well go and harvest some nearby resources while they're at the central Spot-R before coming back. Katsuragi himself wouldn't have joined them because he'd need to supervise the rest of the class back at their base." Ryuzaki added.

This was getting complicated. In total, there were three completely solid possibilities. The first was that Spot-R is the main base and that the eleven students that moved over had just finished occupying Spot-L. The second was that Spot-L is the main base, and that the students had moved over because they were on their way to occupy Spot-R. The third was that both spots were being used equally.

"Well, it'll probably be possible to narrow down the possibilities soon. The next movement will either be Katsuragi returning to the main base Spot-R, or the ten resource gathering students returning to the main base Spot-L." I stated my thoughts.

"Yeah. We'll be able to cut down one of the possibilities that assume only one spots are being properly utilized. As for the theory that both spots are being used... the only way to confirm that would be to monitor them for quite a long time." Ryuzaki responded, placing the binoculars to his eyes once more and pointing them out of the window.

This tactic probably wouldn't be enough to narrow down the leader to one person. There were too many things that couldn't be exactly confirmed. No, this tactic was meant to narrow down the possible leaders to a very small group. I checked my watch. It read 08:57.

"I should get going. I lied to Shiina that I was going to fetch food. I should probably go and get some, to make it believable."

"What will you say about where we are?"

"I'll just say that the two decided to stay at the tower for longer. I'm sure most of the others are expecting this operation to take a long time, anyway."

"I see... I suppose that Shiina won't really learn anything important from that." Light muttered.

"What time are you two going to be returning?"

"I don't know about Light, but I probably won't be until roll-call. I've fallen asleep in a chair while working more times than I can remember. This would be no different if I wasn't forced to leave here." Ryuzaki said flatly.

Ah. That explained the dark bags under his eyes, then.

"That's unhealthy! Not getting enough sleep will hinder your performance greatly." Light scolded him harshly.

"What are you, my mother?" Ryuzaki retorted sarcastically.

"Just a concerned third party," Light huffed, crossing his arms in dissatisfaction.

After that exchange, I waved them goodbye and climbed down the ladder. I wondered whether the two would bond over their quest together or not. I was interested to see the results of their investigation