78 Chapter 78

Chapter 78

"That's where Sora's idea came into play. Katsuragi is a cautious man – in fact, he's so cautious that it borders paranoia. We could use this and the fact that Class A has a divide in it to our advantage."

Class A were currently split between the Katsuragi faction and the Sakayanagi faction. Consequently, Katsuragi had to be wary of his own classmates as well as the other classes, which greatly restricted his options.

"Katsuragi would never even consider appointing one of Sakayanagi's supporters as the leader – he'd choose someone that he trusted, but would never choose himself, because he'd reason that that would be too obvious. Sora showed up at the Class A camp on the third day and publicly insulted Katsuragi. Class A presumed the was simply trying to divide them even further, but his true intent was to actually observe the reactions of the students to his insults."

For Sora, who was extremely proficient in reading even the smallest reactions in a person, this was a trivial task. By gauging who reacted positively and who reacted negatively to Sora's denouncements, it was possible to deduce where their allegiance lay.

"Yahiko, the first suspect, reacted angrily, getting heated up while defending Katsuragi. The other guy, however, showed a faint smile. From this, we deduced that Yahiko was part of the Katsuragi faction while Kitō was aligned with Sakayanagi – in other words, there's no way Katsuragi would've made Kitō the leader."

"All that just to find one leader... You guys really did your work."

"Well, the other leaders were much easier to discover than Class A's was. In truth, Ryūen was gathering even more information than we were. By using his spies, he was able to find out the identities of all the leaders. Except for ours, of course."

"W-wait, he found out the identities of all the leaders... But that doesn't make sense... Class D and Class E both ended up with pretty good scores, Class D especially. How could that be if our leaders got guessed?"

"Well, in Class E's case, it's because somebody had Horikita, your leader, retire. In the manual, it states that 'It is impossible to change the leader without suitable justification.' Retirement is deemed as suitable justification."

"So our leader was changed at the end?! I didn't even know that was possible... But by who? That Horikita would never willingly give in, would she?"

"No... Even I'm not sure who it was that thought of the strategy for Class E. They even outmanoeuvred us on that front. We ended up guessing Horikita as the leader, and were wrong. As a result, we ended up with 100 less points at the end than we should've had."

"Somebody outsmarted even you guys...? W-wait, you're saying you should've had even more points than you got?"

Kushida exclaimed in shock, clearly unable to believe the reality of the situation.

In truth, I'd suspected Kōenji of being the one behind Class E's plan, but there were some holes in that theory. For one, Kōenji isn't the kind of person to get mixed up in stuff like this. Secondly, he'd dropped out around halfway through. He couldn't possibly have set everything in motion before then and then left, could he?

"Anyway, I get that you can change our leader, which is what our class did, but what about you? On the beach, all seven of you were present, which means nobody dropped out but, going off the results, your leader wasn't guessed. How?"

"Well, the answer to that is simple. Changing your leader at the end is a good way to keep your leader's identity from being guessed, but the downside is that it costs 30 points to do. There is actually a better method."

I reached into my pocket and took out the key card, the key card that signified who the leader was.

I handed it to Kushida who stared at it for a few seconds in disbelief.

No, to be more specific, she was staring at the letters engraved on the side of it.

The letters that read: Kururugi Suzaku.

"I'm not Class D's leader. I never was."

"W-what?! But you were seen by everyone, going around with the key card occupying all the spots!"

"That's right. However, that key card didn't have my name on it at any point in time."

"B-but! In the rules, it clearly stated that 'Only the designated leader can use the key card!' Doesn't that mean you cheated!"

"Yeah. If you're caught breaking that rule, it's grounds for a fifty-point penalty. In other words, if you're not caught, it's fine."

This little idea of mine was actually inspired by the student council president himself, Horikita Manabu.

The school rules clearly state that all violence is prohibited and will be punished, however Horikita didn't show me any mercy when he attacked me in that alleyway.

This led me to form a consensus about this school: breaking the rules is not a punishable offence if there is no proof.

"On the very first day, I actually told my classmates to go on ahead while I designated our leader. There, I checked something with Ishihara-sensei."

I thought back to that conversation I had with Ishihara-sensei at the beach on the first day.

"Sensei, can I confirm something with you? It's about the exam."

"Hmm? Of course, go ahead!"

"I want to know exactly how much each class' homeroom teacher will know about this exam."

"Hm? Well, while I don't see how it'll help you, I suppose I can tell you. I won't know any more than you will. All I'll know is who you guess and who the Class D leader is. Regarding the identities of the other class' leaders, and which guesses were right or wrong, even I won't know that."

"I see. I presume that's to prevent bias?"

"Mhm~! The only people who will know all the details are the school's neutral officials who are here to oversee the exam. They'll also be the ones doing the results calculations at the end, see?"

"I understand. In that case, Ishihara-sensei, please can you assign Kururugi Suzaku as Class D's leader?"

The thing that I found most intriguing about this was actually the fact that the school thought that homeroom teachers would have an incentive to be biased in the first place.

In other words, there was a reason why a homeroom teacher would want their own class to prevail. That led me to form a certain hypothesis...

"Ishihara-sensei confirmed to me that the homeroom teachers would not be told any more details about the exam than the rest of their class, in order to prevent bias. This also meant that the words of the homeroom teachers would also not suffice as evidence for me breaking the rules for that same reason."

There was the possibility that, for example, all the homeroom teachers could collude to fabricate something like this in order to attack one of the other classes. The school couldn't allow such a fabrication to occur, which is why the words of homeroom teachers didn't carry any weight.

"This meant that the only evidence that could suffice would be physical evidence, like a photograph. Coincidentally, Ryūen had equipped his spies with cameras, presumably in order to take pictures of the key cards or leaders of the classes they were spying in. When I made my move in the early hours of the fourth day, I took a bottle of water with me to destroy the cameras with. From then on, there would be no proof that I cheated, so the punishment for cheating was completely irrelevant."

"Hmm... But wait, doesn't that mean the whole leader thing was pointless from the beginning? If every class just did what you did, then nobody would ever be able to find the true identity of any of the leaders, right?"

Well, she wasn't wrong about that. If every class was on the same level as ours, then even guessing any leader would be far too risky.

"I didn't think anybody else would think of it. Evidently, I was right."

"So, assuming you spent like 120 points, you'd have 180 by the end, add 50 from guessing Class A's leader and then around 100 give or take total from spots, subtract 50 from you guessing Class E's leader wrong... Hey wait, that's only 280! How did you have 424?!"

Surprisingly, Kushida's estimates and calculations weren't actually that far off. I had to give credit where credit was due.

"Of course, we also guessed the leaders of Class B and C."

"S-so you knew every leader until Horikita-san dropped out?"

"That's right. Class C's was easy to find. We were confident that Ryūen remained on the island right until the end, whereas everybody else dropped out."

"How could you have known that? Did you see him?"

No, that wasn't it.

Well, we did see him, but we already knew that he was the leader by then.

"When Shiina showed up at our camp, we searched her belongings and discovered a radio transceiver in there. Ryūen also had one beside him at his camp. From this, we were able to conclude that he'd be communicating with his spies using them. Retired students shouldn't have been able to use a transceiver which meant that Ryūen intended to remain on the island. After all the spies disappeared, we could be 100% sure that Ryūen was the leader."

He'd casually set the transceiver on top of a table while enjoying his vacation. No one else was controlling it, just him. His mistake was that he didn't trust anyone.

"You found out all of Class C's strategy just from a couple of radios..." Kushida expressed her awe.

"That actually isn't all there was to Class C's strategy. I don't have any evidence for this, but I'm pretty confident in my deduction. The fact that Ryūen had given digital cameras to his spies confused me at first. Why would he need to take a picture of the key cards? Why bother going to such lengths?"

If the discussion just stayed within Class C, there shouldn't have been any need for Shiina to have a camera. In other words, that meant there was a third party involved who didn't trust her words alone; they'd wanted reliable evidence.

"On the third day, I took a tour of the island again, and visited every class. When I got to Class A's camp with Light and Ryuzaki, we noticed that they had bottled water. Now, the spot they were camping at didn't have any convenient water access, however, the other spot they had did."

Even if Katsuragi didn't like being at the heart of the island, it wouldn't make sense to waste points on buying bottled water just to avoid that position.