76 Chapter 76

Chapter 76

Horikita's POV

I was still in a weakened state, but that didn't prevent me from walking around the whole ship, searching for him.

After around a half hour, I found him. Walking down a corridor, wet, dripping water off of his body onto the carpeted floor underneath. Gazing at his reflection in his signature hand mirror. I stepped out and shouted at him.

"Hey! Kōenji-kun!"

He stopped in his tracks, and addressed me without turning around.

"How did I know that you'd seek me out, Horikita-girl?"

"Because you know you have some explaining to do." I replied.

He let out a haughty laugh, and turned around to face me. I stared him in the eye, ignoring his muscular chest which glistened with water droplets.

"Hm? I do? I don't see why a perfect existence should bother explaining things to somebody like you."

"What do you mean, 'somebody like me?'"

"An ugly existence who thinks of herself as superior, even though her ability is mediocre at best. That's you."

I clicked my tongue in annoyance.

"Fine. I'll admit it, Kōenji-kun. You're better than me. This test made it all to clear – there were countless things going on under the surface that I frankly have no idea about, but you seemed to understand all of them and even manipulated them to Class E's gain."

"Hmph. I derive no pleasure from your praise, Horikita-girl, nor do I care that you've come to realise your place. However, I suppose I can squeeze some time for you into my schedule. There are some instructions I have for you, too, after all."

With that, he continued walking. Without bothering to change his clothes, Kōenji led me to a deep floor of the ship that I didn't even know was accessible.

We slipped through a metal door and, closing it behind us, descended down into a dark area of the Speranza. Down here, only the sound of machinery could be heard, the very machines that mobilized the ship itself.

A deep resounding noise echoed throughout the dim floor. Perhaps that happens whenever the ship changes course, or perhaps the ship had hit something. The overall atmosphere made me feel uneasy.

Once we were sufficiently far down into the depths, Kōenji stopped and turned to look at me.

"Why have you brought me down to this secluded area? Do you plan to do something to me?" I asked him warily.

Rather than take offence, though, he simply laughed at me.

"Ha! Don't be ridiculous. As a peak male specimen, I already have plenty of outlets for such urges within this school's third year population! Now, let's have a chat then, shall we, Horikita-girl?"

I should've expected him to say something like that.

Radiating a silent pressure, I demanded answers straight away.

"What do these test results mean? What in the world happened?"

"Ah, you are quite clueless after all, Horikita-girl. Let me just confirm, you remember our little agreement, yes?"

"Of course. You saved Class E in the exam so, in return, I won't tell anyone about it, and I'll cover for you."

"Good, Horikita-girl. Soon enough, you'll probably be confronted by your little classmates. When they express gratitude for your leadership in the exam, you're going to act like it was all your idea. Got it?"

"Right. But, why are you so fixated on staying out of the spotlight, Kōenji-kun? I was under the impression that you don't mind the attention."

"It's not that. Certainly, I don't mind attention, but I value by freedom even more. It would be troublesome if people knew that I was the one behind Class E's results today. Not only would I be targeted externally, but the little ones within our class would also bother me all the time, requesting for my help in the future, as well. I'm not interested in petty things like the class competitions."

So that was it. He simply didn't want to be bothered, and wished to live freely, like a regular high school student. It makes sense, but that begged one question...

"If that's the case, then why did you help us now? What do you gain?"

"I already told you, didn't I? I didn't do it because I wanted to. That Sensei-girl forced me to, threatening to expel me if I didn't help her pitiful class reach Class A. She seems quite desperate for a promotion, don't you think?"

Kōenji let out a deep laugh, and ran his hand through his damp hair.

Chabashira-sensei threatened to expel Kōenji-kun if he didn't help Class E? A teacher shouldn't be so nonchalant about wielding expulsion as weapon.

"Doesn't that mean that you'll still have to help in the future, too?"

"Don't be silly, Horikita-girl. I'm not stupid enough to fall for the same trick twice. As I predicted, after the results were announced, Sensei-girl pulled me aside and praised my good work, and told me that she expected me to continue working for me in the future, less I want to be expelled."

He shot me a sly grin, before continuing. "It wasn't difficult to prepare my phone to record in advance."

I furrowed my brows in confusion.

"Surely, if she's going to threaten you, she would be more vigilant when it comes to stuff like recordings?"

"Ah, well, she did decently, but it wasn't enough. She caught me out and forced me to stop the recording on my phone, but little did she know that I'd also prepared Hirata-boy's phone in advance as a backup. My phone was just a decoy."

So, Chabashira-sensei assumed that she was safe after forcing Kōenji-kun to stop his recording. She didn't consider the possibility of him having a second phone recording as well.

I couldn't blame her, though – I wouldn't have seen through it either.

"Hirata-kun? Why him?"

"He's the only other person that knows about the work I did behind the scenes. I had to have somebody write down the leader guesses for me, after all. I also needed him to lie to Ichinose-girl about you remaining on the island."

"Lie to Ichinose-san? What's the point of that?"

"When you told me about the deal you'd created with Class D, I had to do some extra work to ensure that I wasn't found out because of that, though it did result in us gaining 50 extra points. When one of the Class D's came to fetch you and Ichinose-girl, as per the condition, I had to make sure that Ichinose-girl was under the impression that you were on the island and still resting."

"Why not just have Hirata-kun tell her to lie? Keeping her in the dark infringes on our alliance with Class B."

"I'm not an idiot, Horikita-girl. There's no reason for me to place my faith in Ichinose-girl's ability when I can use my own instead. If her lie wasn't perfectly said, then whoever it was that came to meet her from Class D would've noticed it. By making her genuinely believe that you were still on the island, I turned a lie into a truth. There was no way for anyone to spot the lie. The best way to trick your enemy is to lie to your allies."

Kōenji-kun's modus operandi was unfathomable to me. He'd even taken into account tiny details like the quality of Ichinose's lying ability. It was unsettling, just how far he'd thought ahead.

"The part about tricking your enemies by lying to your allies... Is that also what you did with your dropping out?" I asked.

"Hmm, what's this? So you do have some brain capacity after all. Yes, that's correct. I had Sensei-girl lie to everybody about me dropping out. If she's going to force me to do stupid stuff, she might as well make herself useful, after all. In reality, I was still on the island. I wasn't the only one doing that, though."

"'Not the only one?'" I echoed. "What does that mean?"

"Ryūen-boy also remained as the sole Class C student on the island. From that, it was easy to conclude that he was the leader of Class C."

"How did you know that, though?"

"Because I was waiting in the shadows when you got battered by Ibuki-girl, and was easily able to confirm that he was still lurking around. He had his little spies drop out when he thought no one was watching."

Kōenji-kun laughed scornfully, as if Ryūen-kun was simply a pest that he'd slapped away, rather than an actual enemy.

"It still doesn't add up, though... How did we end up with so many points? We should've lost almost all of them because of our leader being guessed."

Simply gaining 50 from guessing Ryūen-kun correctly didn't make it all add up at all.

"Ah. In truth, Horikita-girl, I knew you'd confront me, and I knew you'd ask that. So I held on to this, especially for you. You can keep it."

He reached into the pocket of his swimming trunks, and pulled out a green key card. The key card that signified that I was the leader. He handed it to me and, upon looking at it, gasped in bewilderment.

Unmistakably, engraved into the card itself, were the words Kōenji Rokusuke. This meant that I was not the leader at all, but Kōenji-kun was.

"H-how is this possible..." I breathed.

"You should pay more attention to the rules, Horikita-girl. The manual clearly states that 'The leader cannot be changed without a justifiable reason.' In other words, it's possible to change your leader, provided you have a good reason to do so."

He smirked at me triumphantly before continuing.

"Our great leader falling ill and then getting beaten to a pulp, before lying asleep in the mud sounds like a justifiable reason to me, wouldn't you agree?"

He mocked me once again, just like he did during that night. I suppose you reap what you sow, and I'd definitely sown this by deluding myself into believing I could win all by myself.

"I-I see... But, at the end of the test, we gained over 100 points worth of bonus points. How did you manage to do that?"

"Remember on the first day when I found that second spot of ours? Well, when I reported it to Hirata-boy, I also told him to return to that spot in the morning of the seventh day, two hours before anybody woke up."

"Y-you thought of this all the way back then?"

I was pretty astounded. He'd had everything planned from the get-go.

"Of course. Such is natural for a perfect human. Once I met up with Hirata-boy on the seventh morning, I instructed him to guess Yahiko Totsuka as Class A's leader, as Ichinose-girl had confirmed from our deal with Class D, and Ryūen-boy as Class C's leader. After that, I just waited around. I'd confirmed with Sensei-girl that we'd have two hours spare to play in the sea before the ship departed, so I hid on the island until the last moment, when everybody had already boarded, and sneaked on."

He'd even used the fact that we were allowed to stay on the island to his advantage. I felt a headache began to form in my mind.

One thing didn't make sense about his explanation, though...

"Why not guess Ayanokōji-kun as Class D's leader, too? We could've had 50 more points and lowered Class D's." I inquired.

"Ha ha ha! What are you stupid, Horikita-girl? When I saw that Ayanokōji-boy wandering around the island, nonchalantly occupying spots, the only thing I could think of was 'what a ridiculously simple trap.' Do you really think that he'd actually do that without some sort of plan in mind?"

Well, when he put it like that, it certainly did seem improbable. I couldn't think of an alternative before, because I wasn't aware of the leader changing rule, but now, things started to make sense.

"So, they switched leaders at the end, just like we did? And you predicted they'd do that, so you told Hirata-kun specifically not to guess anyone for Class D?"

"Well, we can't confirm nor deny the former question, since neither of us were actually there for the announcement. But yes, I saw through Class D's plan, and instructed Hirata-boy not to guess anyone for Class D. It's quite pitiful that anybody fell for such a simple ruse, to be honest. Just one more reason why these little competitions are insignificant to me."

Kōenji-kun scoffed, clearly not impressed. It baffled me how he could be so uninterested in the prospect of reaching Class A but, then again, everything about Kōenji-kun baffled me.

"Shouldn't Chabashira-sensei have been unsatisfied by your results, though? I mean, we didn't even get half the points that Class D got."

"Even that silly teacher can recognise that it was impossible for us to do any better than second place for this exam. I mean, Class D had already secured more than 100 bonus points from spot occupation alone, and they'd also found every leader from what I could tell. Even I can't make a comeback from such a position."

So, he's saying that he could've won if he was going all out and was acting as the leader of Class E? No, more importantly...

"Class D knew every leader? How did they manage to accomplish that?"

"All I know is that they got Class B's leader from Ryūen-boy after you got knocked out."

Ryūen-kun gave the leader of Class B to Class D? Why would he ever do that? I was about to muse about it aloud, but was cut off by Kōenji-kun's boisterous voice.

"Well, that's enough for now, Horikita-girl. As long as you stay true to our agreement, you and I won't have any problems. Don't come running to me when you and the rest of Class E begin to fall apart."

Laughing, Kōenji-kun said that, and then strode away, ascending the stairs and leaving me alone and speechless in the dark lower level of the ship.