Prologue
I’ve already translated this, so just pop over to the reddit thread.
Chapter One
The date was now 1st November. Chabashira enters the classroom and says she will give the class further details about the cultural festival. Here are the rules:
- Each class in 2nd year will receive 5000 private points per person which can only be spent on preparations for the cultural festival (3rd years have 4500/person, 1st years have 5500/person)
- Further points will be allocated for students who have made significant contributions to the student council or club activities.
- Unspent private points will not count towards the class’ final profit and will be confiscated at the end if left unused
Additionally:
1st – 4th place classes gain 100 CP
5th – 8th place classes gain 50 CP
9th – 12th place classes’ CP doesn’t change
In total, 12 people from the class made significant contributions and helped the class gain further private point allocations. In particular, Horikita, Sudou and Onodera each helped the class gain +10,000 points. In total, the class gained a further 39,400 private points allocation due to club contributions. Sakayanagi’s Class A gained 18,800 bonus points, Ryuuen’s Class C gained 17,000 bonus points and Ichinose’s Class D gained 26,600 bonus points.
The guests invited to the cultural festival were staff that worked at ANHS as well as their family members. Additionally, people who worked in Keyaki Mall or surrounding convenience stores would also be invited and treated as guests. Chabashira showed the class the age distribution of the guests. Most of them were in their 30’s and 40’s followed by people under 20 and then those in their 50’s. Each adult guest would receive 10,000 points to spend whilst minors would only receive 5000 points. In total, there were going to be 283 adults and 202 minors for a total pool of 3,840,000 points.
Chabashira mentions that the teachers were also participating but weren’t allowed to spend points on anything from the grade of the class they were in charge of. Additionally, guests will only be allowed to spend the points they were given and wouldn’t be allowed to pay out of pocket. The school will only count sales collected before 4 PM on the day, so Chabashira advises everyone to collect payment before providing services. When she asks if there were any further questions, Horikita raises her hand and asks what the school would do if all classes earned 320,000 points and were tied in first place. Chabashira says the school would treat any ties as having ranked equally, so in Horikita’s example, every class would be equal 1st place and gain 100 CP. However, Chabashira warns her that sales can only be checked once the cultural festival was over and it was also impossible to split up the sales afterwards. Maezono doesn’t think there’s any point to asking such a question since ties were highly unlikely and Horikita simply replies that it was always good to have more information about the rules.
Seeing that no one else had any other questions, Chabashira announces the results of their midsemester exams. The names of all 38 students were lined up in order from highest to lowest. Keisei was 1st and Horikita 2nd. Everyone was surprised that Sudou was in 11th place with 73 in modern literature, 76 in chemistry, 70 in social science, 78 in mathematics and 70 in English. The only students with a higher score than him were the honour student group (i.e. students such as Hirata, Matsushita and Mii-chan). Ayanokouji was in 14th place. He got a perfect score in mathematics but held back on all the other subjects. Instead of suddenly getting a perfect score in all subjects in the 2nd semester of their 2nd year, he wants to make others think he slowly improved like Sudou. Ayanokouji mentally notes that even in the lower ranks, a fierce competition had begun because Airi’s expulsion had lit a fire under everyone’s ass.
The next day, the original members of the maid café + Horikita and Ayanokouji gathered together to inspect the potential classrooms where they were thinking of setting up their maid cafe. While they were on the way there, Matsushita asks Horikita and Ayanokouji what they were planning on doing about Haruka and Akito. She points out that even though the two of them were coming to school, neither of them were willing to talk to anyone else. She says it was clear that they thought of their classmates as their enemies. She warns Horikita that Haruka might try to take revenge on the class. Horikita is willing to leave them be for now since they hadn’t made any openly hostile moves yet. When Matsushita asks if she’s just going to let them take revenge, Horikita says that wasn’t the case. She understands why Haruka would be angry but says that as long as the two of them don’t take any hostile actions, she doesn’t want to make any pre-emptive moves that would make them feel alienated. Matsushita sums it up as Horikita wanting to leave them a lifeline so that they can continue being allies, without putting them in charge of any important jobs. Ayanokouji warns them that they were about to arrive and hence there was a risk of someone overhearing them.
The closer a classroom was to the stairs, the higher the cost. Additionally, the classrooms on the 3rd floor were less expensive and cost 10,000 – 13,000 points, while classrooms on the first floor could cost up to 50,000 points. Since a higher room cost would mean there was less that could be spent on purchasing other things, there were a lot of different factors to consider when choosing room location. Mii-chan remarks that the distance to this room on the 3rd floor was longer than she’d thought. She asks for Satou’s opinion, but after a while of spacing out, she agrees that she thinks it’s a bit too far. Horikita also thinks that it’d have to be something spectacular to attract guests all this way. Maezono, Mii-chan and Matsushita have a fervent discussion about the pros and cons of choosing a room on the 1st, 2nd or 3rd floor. Even though Satou was usually very talkative, today she was being rather reserved. Noticing that Ayanokouji was curious about Satou, Matsushita whispers to him that Satou had been like this for a while now. After seeing Ayanokouji’s reply, she says she was wondering if Ayanokouji knew something about Satou’s condition but it looked like that wasn’t the case. Ayanokouji wonders if Matsushita had mistaken him for being an esper😂. Matsushita thinks that Satou has something she wants to talk to someone about but it’s something that’s also hard to talk about. She says that Satou was the type of person to keep unpleasant things bottled up inside. Ayanokouji tells her to just watch over Satou and wait for her to consult someone about her troubles. Perhaps noticing that they couldn’t keep whispering to each other for long while Satou was still around, Matsushita reluctantly agreed.
Just as they finished their inspection of the 2nd floor classrooms, they ran into the trio of Sakayanagi, Hashimoto and Kamuro. Hashimoto tries to probe Ayanokouji for what kind of shop they’re planning to set up for the cultural festival. Horikita cuts in and says there’s no point in asking him since he’s not in a position to know about everything that goes on in the class. Hashimoto then asks, “If that’s the case, is he just strolling around enjoying being in a harem situation?” 😂😂😂
Horikita retorts by asking him if he had any self-awareness that he was in the exact same situation with Sakayanagi and Kamuro. Hashimoto then decides to try his luck with Maezono, Mii-chan and Matsushita but Matsushita says he won’t be able to get any of them to spill any information. Hashimoto says he’s worried for their sake about their cooperation with Ryuen’s class. He asks them if they really believe they can trust Ryuen just because everything went well during the sports festival. He says Ryuen has no qualms about backstabbing allies. Horiktia says that just like Sakayanagi, Ryuen was also an enemy that they needed to defeat and hence there was no way they’d trust him. She says the sports festival and cultural festival were different and they weren’t cooperating with Ryuen’s class. Eventually, the Class A trio leaves. From beginning to end, Sakayanagi just smiled and didn’t say a word.
After they move away, Maezono asks if Hashimoto had caught on to the fact they’re working together with Ryuen. Here it’s revealed that Horikita and Ayanokouji had told these members that they’d be working together with Ryuen’s class. It was something they’d agreed on back when they’d agreed to cooperate for the sports festival. The general details were to choose topics that were different to each other, and in the case when that was unavoidable, they were to choose locations far away from each other. Additionally, they were to lend human resources to each other whenever necessary. Maezono says she hadn’t been worried until now because the sports festival went well, but Hashimoto’s words had given her new doubts. Horikita agrees that Ryuen was untrustworthy but she thinks it’ll be okay since Katsuragi was also involved. To quell Maezono and Mii-chan’s worries, Horikita says she can’t imagine Ryuen’s class leaking information on the partnership since there’d be no benefit in doing that.
Afterwards, the 6 of them decide on which floor to set up shop on by majority vote. There’s 4 votes for 1st floor and 2 for 2nd floor. The two votes for 2nd floor were Ayanokouji and Matsushita. Thus they decided to choose to set up on the 1st floor. Just as Horikita was about to reserve a room on the first floor and everyone was about to go their separate ways, Ayanokouji told them that he’d recently been researching about maid cafes. He says that while the primary target of maid cafes are male customers, recently there’s also been ‘butler cafes’ targeted at female customers and the most important point of a maid café is cleanliness. He tells them to thoroughly check for any damage to the floor, walls, ceiling or chairs. He also mentions that they shouldn’t overemphasise the eroticism of the uniforms. Horikita asks him wtf is he talking about but he says that eroticism and eros have been an integral element in art since ancient times. He says that while it’s out of the question to show their underwear, it was important to maintain the illusion that the customers might be able to catch a peek if they were lucky. Horikita looks at him speechless before asking why he was so familiar with maid cafes. He said that since he was appointed the maid café’s manager, in order to make it succeed, he needed to give it his full attention which included doing research. He’d actually talked to several of his classmates while pretending he was personally interested in maid cafes. Although it was a little painful when that caused some of them to mistakenly believe he’d awakened to his otaku instincts, he was at least able to get the information easily since “There’s no need for compensation if it’s for the sake of increasing our comrades!” For a while after that, Ayanokouji continued to lecture the girls about maids and maid cafes. He also suggests that in addition to selling food and drinks, the maid café should also sell photos of the maids, 800 yen for a maid by herself and 1200 yen for a photo of the customer with a maid. Originally, he’d proposed that they take the photos using their phone cameras and then print them out, but ‘the Professor’ had rejected that idea, saying nobody would buy low quality photos, insisting that a camera was necessary. Horikita then goes on to explain the strategy for the boys’ stalls. They were planning on selling light meals that came with a coupon ticket for a half-price discount on one drink at the maid café. In this way, they’d be able to advertise the maid café from outside as well.
After the meeting on the maid café, Ayanokouji headed for Keyaki Mall to research prices of ingredients. On his way there, he met Sudou who was squinting while looking at the building layout map. He commends Sudou for his midsemester exam results. Sudou reveals that he’s gotten a little anxious because recent content had gotten more difficult and he’s been finding it harder to improve. Ayanokouji mentally notes that until now, Sudou had been playing catchup but he’d finally caught up with the syllabus of a 2nd year high schooler. From now on, effort alone wouldn’t be enough but he doesn’t want to dampen Sudou’s motivation so he doesn’t say it out loud. He asks Sudou why he wasn’t at club activities, to which Sudou reveals that recently his eyesight had gotten worse. Ayanokouji thinks that eyesight is very important to people who have aspirations to become a pro athlete, however, Sudou insists that even if his eyesight got worse, he’ll continue to study hard. Although he had no intention of giving up basketball, recently he’d begun to think that there might be other career pathways available to him rather than becoming a pro. Sudou wants to leave open as many possibilities as he can for his future. At that moment, he gasps as he sees Akito walking together with Haruka. He asks Ayanokouji whether it was fine to leave them alone, to which Ayanokouji says that there was nothing he could do even if he spoke to them. Sudou also reminisces that he had a similar experience with Yamauchi but the relative strength of their feelings are incomparable since unlike Haruka, Sudou wasn’t willing to be expelled for Yamauchi’s sake. He tells Ayanokouji that if he ever has any troubles, he could feel free to consult him about it. Although he also doesn’t think Ayanokouji would ever need his help.
The next morning, Ayanokouji and Kei walk to school while holding hands. It’s revealed that last night, Kei had stayed in Ayanokouji’s room. They get to school and Satou started talking to Kei before the rest of the girls in the class start to join in their conversation. Although Ayanokouji thinks that Horikita has begun to show her strengths as the class leader, it was different from Kei’s ability to form and lead small groups. But at that timing, Ike suddenly rushes into the classroom and asks if they were really going to run a maid café. Upon interrogation, Ike reveals that Ishizaki, Suzuki and Nomura were openly talking about it in public. Just as Maezono was angrily yelling at Horikita about Ryuen’s betrayal, Sudou comes in and tells them that Ryuen was coming over. Horikita meets him in the corridor and after throwing some barbed words at each other, Ryuen describes the contents of their cooperation contract that Horikita had proposed after which Kaneda gleefully announces that yesterday Horikita had announced the location of the classroom where they were going to host the maid café. Ayanokouji internally monologues that the cultural festival cooperation agreement was his idea. Many classmates including Hirata are surprised, since not even he knew about the agreement with Ryuen. Horikita asks Ryuen about the reason he’s seemingly pointlessly betraying her, to which Ryuen replies that it was pointless if he crushed Sakayanagi’s Class A only for Horikita’s Class B to rise up and take their place. He says he’s going to beat them with a similar idea to their maid café. Horikita doesn’t see the benefit for him in doing this, but Ryuen says he’ll aim for the top rankings while beating down their sales. He proposes a game where the loser has to pay the winner’s class 5 million private points. Ryuen says he would’ve preferred betting with even higher stakes versus someone else, but Class 3A’s Nagumo rejected him with the excuse that he wasn’t going to involve himself in the cultural festival. Horikita tells him to stop dreaming and says that she has no intention of accepting Ryuen’s proposal. However, after he provokes her, she says that she won’t let him mess around with her class without any consequences and says she’ll be favourably considering the bet. After Ryuen leaves, Hashimoto looks Ayanokouji in the eyes and shrugs his shoulders as if to say “This is what you get for making deals with Ryuen”.
Maezono and the other girls start to panic and Hirata asks if they should just ditch the maid café idea and do something else instead. Horikita says they’ve already spent a significant portion of the budget on the maid café so they have no choice but to take on Ryuen’s challenge. In addition to Horikita class’ maid café, Nagumo’s class was now also publicly known to be renting out the gymnasium for a haunted house/maze. It seems like they never even considered hiding their plan and were flaunting their privilege as the winners from the 3rd years and were doing whatever they wanted. Winning was only a secondary concern for them. Even just from looking at the equipment being carried into the gymnasium, it was obvious that they were spending quite a lot of private points on it. They announced that they were holding a pre-opening for the students so they could gather feedback before the main event. After school, Ayanokouji also went to the gymnasium to participate in the pre-opening. As he lined up and waited for his turn, Ayanokouji heard Ichinose and Kanzaki’s voices as they approached from behind. When Ichinose sees him, she quickly bowed her head and looked away. For some reason, the line was barely moving so after a short while, Ichinose made up an excuse and ran away. Only Ayanokouji and Kanzaki were left behind in an awkward situation. Ayanokouji breaks the tension by asking Kanzaki if he was doing well, to which Kanzaki sternly retorted “Do you think I’m doing well?” Ayanokouji thinks that Ichinose’s class was obviously in a bad state so anyone would interpret his words as mockery. While Ayanokouji reads the haunted house’s rules, Kanzaki leaves the line, perhaps in order to wait for Ichinose to return. Ayanokouji enters the haunted house by himself and is impressed by the quality of it which far exceeded his expectations of what high school students could make. Suddenly a ghost leaped out at him shouting “Boo—OWW!?” as she screams while tripping over a step. Said ghost was Asahina Nazuna. Ayanokouji didn’t immediately help her since he thought it might have been a feature of the haunted house, but was convinced that it was an unexpected accident when he saw her grimacing in pain.
Ayanokouji lets Asahina lean on him and asks her to show him to the exit, but Asahina doesn’t sound very confident, so he decides to just take her back to the entrance of the haunted house instead. But Asahina insists that he should trust in his senpai and tries to make a cool pose before screaming in agony again. Ayanokouji decides that it’d be easier if he just obeys her and follows her instructions to head for the exit. After getting lost a few times from Asahina’s instructions, they finally manage to reach the exit. After getting out, Ayanokouji inspects her injury and advises her to go to the infirmary. She tries to go by herself but seems to still be in pain. She seems reluctant to let Ayanokouji support her all the way there, to which Ayanokouji guesses that she’s holding back because of Nagumo. Asahina confirms his suspicions and says it wouldn’t be a good look for a Class 3A student to be together with Ayanokouji. She is worried about what would happen to Ayanokouji if Nagumo found out about it. Ayanokouji reassures her and says that Nagumo was no longer looking to compete against him since he’d probably realised that he’d overestimated Ayanokouji. Ayanokouji helps Asahina to the infirmary but just as he is about to leave, Asahina starts talking to him and expresses her sympathies about the maid café being leaked by Ryuen. The infirmary nurse treats her and tells her she’ll be able to walk again after resting for a few days, making Asahina breathe a sigh of relief since she’ll still be able to make it in time to help out during the cultural festival. Ayanokouji says there shouldn’t be a need since her class wasn’t lacking in class points, however Asahina says the extra private points earnt from class points was necessary to help as many students as possible graduate from Class A. To prevent the dissatisfactions of the other 3 classes, it was also necessary for Class 3A to at least pretend they were doing their best to earn class points. Asahina warns Ayanokouji that whilst he might think Nagumo’s feud with him was over, since the matter was never settled, she doesn’t think Nagumo is done with him. Whilst Ayanokouji doesn’t intend on paying Nagumo any attention, Asahina warns him that Nagumo might do something to someone close to him.
When Ayanokouji asks about it, Asahina tells him that she’d never even seen Nagumo encounter any setbacks, let alone lose to anybody. However, Ayanokouji says that in his opinion, Nagumo wasn’t the number 1 student at their school. He admits that Nagumo isn’t a weakling, however his opponents were all too weak. He thinks that Nagumo’s current twisted personality is a product of having never experienced the pain of losing or the difficulty of competing against a worthy rival. Ayanokouji analyses the reason Nagumo was so insistent on taking revenge against him, wasn’t due to an inferiority complex, but instead because he simply wanted somebody to compete against. In Nagumo’s eyes, defeat wasn’t even a possibility. Even though things had seemed to calm down recently, Ayanokouji knew that it was just the eye of the storm. He was certain that in the near future, Nagumo was going to do something to the people around him. As he continues to listen to Asahina, for the first time ever, Ayanokouji develops an interest in Nagumo.
Ayanokouji leaves the infirmary and heads back to the gymnasium to spy on Kanzaki and Ichinose. After a few minutes, Kanzaki comes out of the haunted house exit by himself and approaches Ayanokouji. He tells Ayanokouji that Ichinose wasn’t coming back because there was the risk of running into him. There were still several days left of the pre-opening, so she was free to take her time. Kanzaki praises Ayanokouji’s class and says that a class like his will eventually fight against Sakayanagi’s class for Class A. Ayanokouji asks if he had given up on reaching Class A, to which Kanzaki replies “Perhaps”. He says that nobody in his class has realised that they’ve been slowly sinking. He says that if they were only just pretending not to notice, something could still be done about it, but all of them genuinely didn’t believe they were in trouble. He says that he’d also given up since there was no point in rebelling alone. He says he’s now changed his focus to finding a way off the sinking ship. He wants to help as many people off it as he can and says that they might be able to save up enough private points to help 2 or 3 people escape to another class. He also mentions the class change tickets on offer in the recent sports festival and says that there’s a possibility that similar rewards may be offered again in the future. When Ayanokouji asks him why he’s saying all this to him, Kanzaki replies that he doesn’t know. He then says that perhaps he just wanted to vent his frustrations to somebody. He considers Ayanokouji the only person he could have spoken to who wouldn’t have leaked this conversation to somebody else. Ayanokouji also thinks that Kanzaki has a grudge against him for influencing Ichinose, however, Kanzaki says that he couldn’t care less about what happened between Ayanokouji and Ichinose. Ayanokouji asks him to meet up again sometime to discuss about the future. Kanzaki accepts and tells Ayanokouji to contact him whenever he wanted to.
On the next Friday, Ayanokouji visits Nagumo in the student council room. Just like Asahina said he would be, Nagumo was alone without any other students or teachers in the room. Nagumo praises Ayanokouji for daring to show himself in front of him. Ayanokouji says every student has the right to be absent if they’re sick, but Nagumo says that there were witnesses who saw him in Keyaki Mall the following day. Since Ayanokouji isn’t consulting ‘Student Council President Nagumo’ but just Nagumo the individual, Nagumo pretends to not be interested in what Ayanokouji had to say. However, Ayanokouji knows that he’s bluffing and threatens to leave. After a few moments, Nagumo tells him to take a seat. Nagumo throws a few barbed words Ayanokouji’s way and says that since Ayanokouji skipped out on competing against him, there’s nothing left for him to do until graduation. He says he’ll let his class do whatever they like for the rest of their time in school. This was also the reason why he didn’t accept Ryuen’s bet; he’d already lost interest in this school. When Ayanokouji asks if this would lead to students from other classes being dissatisfied, Nagumo says that no one can object to him since doing so would mean they can no longer get to Class A. He urges Ayanokouji to move on to his main topic. Ayanokouji says that the reason that he’d avoided Nagumo until now was because someone like Nagumo stood out too much for someone like him who dwelled in the shadows to compete against. Nagumo tells him to stop BSing and tell the truth. Ayanokouji says he simply wasn’t interested. Although he’d acknowledged that Nagumo had a certain level of ability, he thought that was all there was to it. That’s why regardless of what Nagumo did, Ayanokouji didn’t think he needed to bother with him. But unlike before when he didn’t hesitate to attack, Nagumo was now acting cautiously around Ayanokouji. That was proof that in Nagumo’s eyes, he was now recognised as an enemy rather than as prey.
Nagumo says that there aren’t many opportunities to compete between different grades and says that he doesn’t have much time left at school. Ayanokouji says that the school’s exams follow a pattern and proposes a plan, the details of which the reader isn’t privy to. Nagumo says he doesn’t particularly mind accepting Ayanokouji’s challenge, but wants to hear his reason. Ayanokouji says he has a favour he wants to ask of Nagumo. Nagumo is dissatisfied since Ayanokouji is only reluctantly competing against him to get his cooperation. Ayanokouji says that was half-true but the other half was that he’d genuinely changed his mind about Nagumo. He tells Ayanokouji to stop messing around and says it’s ridiculous that there’s extra conditions attached even though Ayanokouji was the one challenging him. He asks Ayanokouji if he really thinks that these conditions would be accepted. Ayanokouji tells him that if he refused, they would never compete against each other again, even if Nagumo were to take someone like Kei hostage. Ayanokouji says that if Nagumo doesn’t want to accept these conditions, he can just carry on with life and graduate in due time. Nagumo tries to use the bargaining chip that Ayanokouji would be troubled if he didn’t cooperate, but Ayanokouji says he already has a backup plan. Eventually Nagumo relents and agrees to Ayanokouji’s conditions. He then asks Ayankouji if he’s really okay with this. He says that if they go along with Ayanokouji’s plan, there will be damage to his surroundings. Ayanokouji says he doesn’t mind since that would have happened anyway even with Nagumo’s original plan. Nagumo is surprised that Ayanokouji realised what he was planning on doing. He laughs and says “I’ll take back my statement that I’ll play around with you. After all, you’re the only person who Horikita-senpai ever acknowledged. I can finally understand why.”
Finally, he asks Ayanokouji to tell him the truth about whether he’d really just stand by and let Kei get expelled. He says that he’s asking this because he didn’t detect any anxiety at all when he’d mentioned the possibility even though she was supposed to be someone special to him. Ayanokouji thinks that normally if he received such a question, he’d say “I was only trying to hide my true feelings”, but he feels like a different approach would be more effective against Nagumo. Instead he replies, “If she disappears from my life, then that’s just all she is worth. Nothing more and nothing less. In fact, I’d be grateful since it makes it easier for me to take care of things afterwards.”
For the first time, Nagumo loses his calm and questions if Ayanokouji has some screws loose in his head. Ayanokouji leaves the student council room and thinks back to Nagumo’s statement that he has some screws loose in his head. If anything, he thinks that those who’d make a mistake in judgment due to ephemeral, fleeting feelings are the ones who actually have a loose screw in their head. It doesn’t matter even if they’re feelings for a lover or family. He thinks that at all times, one must prioritise their own safety.
[Note: I spent too much time on C1, rest of the summary will be less detailed]
Chapter Two
On Monday, 8 November, Horikita receives the class’ permission and gathers a total of one million private points for the bet against Ryuen. Ayanokouji then contacts Kanzaki and leaves the classroom to meet up with him in a place where they can be alone. On the way, he overhears some other teachers talking to Mashima about how Chabashira recently had a softer demeanour and smiled more often than she used to. Ayanokouji asks Mashima about hidden rules for the cultural festival. He asks Mashima whether a certain thing is possible (the reader doesn’t know what he asked) and Mashima replies that it’s exactly as he thinks. Just as Ayanokouji is about to leave, Mashima asked him to describe what happened during the unanimous vote exam to cause Chabashira to change. But he then changes his mind and decides that it wasn’t something he should be asking a student.
As he heads towards the meeting with Kanzaki, Ayanokouji thinks that even more importantly than the cultural festival, he needs to do something to change Ichinose’s class because they were collapsing at a faster rate than he’s anticipated. He thinks that the first step was to change Ichinose’s classmates rather than the person herself. The only person with the capability of fulfilling that role was Kanzaki. Ayanokouji says he wants to talk about the future with Kanzaki, but Kanzaki first asks him to listen to his story and goes on a rant about how he feels hopeless about his class. He says that in academics, sports and coordination, he doesn’t feel like his class was inferior to the others. However, he realised that those things alone weren’t enough to win. Kanzaki asks Ayanokouji for advice on what his class should do in the future. He says that Ichinose wasn’t willing to listen to other people’s opinions. Ayanokouji points out that his impression of Ichinose was that she’s someone who listened to and incorporated everyone’s opinions. Kanzaki replies that this only applied if you were someone who was facing in the same overall direction as her. He reveals that during the unanimous vote special exam, he tried to convince the class to expel a classmate for class points, but it ultimately ended in failure. He says that Ayanokouji was someone who Ichinose idolised and only someone like him would be able to convince Ichinose to change. However, Ayanokouji thinks that even if Ichinose were to change because of something he said to her, that wouldn’t truly help her grow. Ayanokouji says that he’d actually invited one of Kanzaki’s classmates to their meeting. Kanzaki thinks it’s pointless since he was the only one in their class who disagreed with Ichinose, however, Ayanokouji tells him there are many students who go along with the flow and are afraid to express their own opinions. At that timing, Himeno shows up and expresses her surprise at Kanzaki also being there. Kanzaki doesn’t think Himeno is the kind of person Ayanokouji is making her out to be, but Ayanokouji says that he’ll prove it to him right here and now. Himeno on the other hand, has no idea what they’re talking about.
Kanzaki then suddenly realises that even though Ayanokouji called both he and Himeno here, so far he hadn’t said anything about the reason why he called them. Kanzaki had been the only one talking and driving the conversation, yet as if Ayanokouji had predicted everything in advance, the conversation still went in the direction that he wanted it to. Even though he was the one who wanted Ayanokouji to do something, he didn’t understand why Ayanokouji would want to help change their class without even being asked to. Ayanokouji says that what they needed to do was to change the class itself, and by doing so, they will be able to change Ichinose as well. Kanzaki thinks it’s pointless based on his first-hand experience, but Ayanokouji says that’s because he tried to go against her decision all by himself. He says that things will change if the rest of the class are all against Ichinose’s decision. Neither Himeno nor Kanzaki are convinced and they think that Ichinose would rather lose 300 CP than have one of her classmates expelled. Ayanokouji tells him to simulate a situation where Ichinose was facing the opposition of the entire class during the unanimous vote exam. Kanzaki imagines Ichinose’s will would eventually break and she’d then manipulate the class in the direction of expelling herself. While Kanzaki muses the possibility of doing that and cutting off the shackles of justice known as Ichinose, Himeno doesn’t think gaining class points would be worth losing Ichinose. Ayanokouji says he isn’t telling them to expel Ichinose, but just showing them how the situation can change if they first changed the class mentality before approaching Ichinose. He says that the two of them can be the trigger for this change. He asks Himeno to convey her true feelings when Kanzaki tried to rebel against the class’ opinion. Kanzaki also becomes keenly interested and wants to hear what she has to say. Himeno says she only wanted Kanzaki to stop resisting because she thought resistance was futile. Kanzaki then demands why she never spoke up until now if she had misgivings about the class’ way of doing things. She says that peer pressure is very powerful in their class and if the majority thought something was black, she would be coerced to agree with them even if she thought it was actually white. Even if she tries to insist that it’s white, she’d only find it painful to be surrounded by others trying to persuade her until she agrees to give in. Hence, she’s always gone along with the flow and plans to continue doing that in the future. She tells him not to think of her as a comrade and when he moves towards her, she retreats away from him in an act of rejection. When Kanzaki asks her if she’s really okay with that, Himeno says that her first priority was always her own safety. She thinks her current class is comfortable and doesn’t want to destroy that environment. Himeno tells Kanzaki that she’ll only side with him if he manages to get over half of the class on his side. Just as Himeno tries to leave, Kanzaki tells her that he has no intention of sinking together with Ichinose and was planning on betraying and jumping ship to another class. He asks Himeno if she’s really okay with that. When Himeno asks if he meant that as a threat, Kanzaki says that he thinks the correct course of action is to mobilise the class to change Ichinose just like Ayanokouji had described. He knows Himeno doesn’t want to do it, but he says that if she wants to win and reach Class A, then somebody needs to take action now. Himeno says she understands what Kanzaki is trying to say, but Kanzaki cuts her off and asks her if she really is delusional enough to think they still have a chance at winning under Ichinose’s policies. Himeno screams at him, saying she wants to graduate from Class A as well. But she continues and says there’s nothing she can do about it. Kanzaki says he understands her feelings which is why they need to do something about it now before it’s too late. He shouts back at her, insisting that he doesn’t want to lose to other classes either. Himeno is taken aback by surprise at Kanzaki raising his voice, prompting Ayanokouji to think that Class D’s students probably didn’t show much of their real selves to others.
He compares this to his own class which used to be full of defective students, listing Horikita, Sudou, Kei and Kushida as examples. All of them experienced failure and crawled their way back up, undergoing significant growth along the way. As Kanzaki and Himeno both remark that they were learning new things about each other, Ayanokouji tells them that in the truest sense, it was time for them to become comrades. He tells them to find others like them who keep their own feelings bottled up, and by adding new perspectives, their search range will expand and eventually their small flame of rebellion will rouse into a large fire. He tells them that it isn’t too late and encourages them to grow stronger and defeat Horikita’s class at the end of year exam. Himeno says she wants to go see someone that comes to mind as a potential comrade and Kanzaki tells Ayanokouji that he’ll repay this debt by winning at the end-of-year exams. He says that they don’t have a single second to spare and both Kanzaki and Himeno walk off in search of new comrades to join their cause. Ayanokouji thinks that if they continue like this, they might really be able to defeat Horikita’s class at the end-of-year exams. Regardless of which side wins, it won’t affect his plans, but nevertheless, he’s looking forward to how far the two of them can go.
Chapter Three
On the next day, Ayanokouji walks to school alongside Horikita. They talk about Nagumo’s announcement to hold a school-wide trial run of the cultural festival on the day before the real event. The student council is offering to pay for the expenses and since their maid café is already known by the entire school, Horikita and Ayanokouji decide to join in as one of the participating classes. Horikita asks Ayanokouji why he doesn’t feel anxious about losing. Ayanokouji muses that last year, Horikita wouldn’t have been worried about such trivial things and thinks that it’s once again proof that she’s begun to expand her horizons. He thinks that the fact that Horikita was hard to convince was both her strength and weakness. Sakayanagi and Ryuen would ignore his suggestions whilst Ichinose would strictly follow his every word. Horikita has traits of both sides. Horikita says that she’s been trying not to rely too much on Ayanokouji but is finding it difficult since he’s recently been acting more cooperative. Ayanokouji then says “Alright, then from now on, allow me to take the policy of not helping you out at all”. He tries to walk away, but Horikita grabs his shoulder and says “Rejected”. Horikita wants to buy lunch at the convenience store, so Ayanokouji decides to follow her inside. They see Kouenji who is buying a bottle of soy milk and two chicken salads. Horikita tries greeting him, but Kouenji merely smiles and walks past. There’s a bit of information revealed in Horikita’s following conversation with Ayanokouji. Namely, Kouenji won’t be contributing during the cultural festival and Ayanokouji is no longer paying private points to Kushida, nor has she come asking for them.
The next day, Ichihashi tentatively hands Horikita a love letter for Nagumo. She says it’s from a friend who’s too nervous to hand it to him herself. She’s also nervous to hand it to Nagumo since he’s a senior who’s also the student council president. She asks Horikita to pass it along since she works together with Nagumo every day and hence should have an easier time. Horikita accepts her request since she wants to rebuild her bonds with her classmates which had been destroyed in the unanimous vote special exam. Ichihashi says that the letter doesn’t appear to have a name on it which causes Horikita to worry about whether Nagumo might interpret this as being a love letter from her. Ichihashi tells her to just hand it to a boy in the student council and tell him to pass it on to Nagumo. After contemplating it for a bit, Horikita agrees to deliver the letter.
As Horikita heads to the student council to deliver the letter, she feels frustrated as she remembers her past in which she was unable to directly convey her feelings to her brother and instead tried to write him a letter. However, she continuously rewrote the letter over and over again and in the end wasn’t able to hand it to him. She suddenly remembers that she left that letter in her brother’s drawer at home and panics as she realises that he might have found it by now. She decides that there’s nothing she can do about it at this point and having remembered her own struggles and feelings that she’d tried to pour into her letter, reaffirms her determination to pass the letter on to Nagumo. Other than Nagumo, there were only 3 boys in the student council: Yagami and Aga from the first years, as well as Kiriyama from the 3rd years. The only one Horikita was on good terms with was Yagami. She immediately tries to hand the letter over, but Nagumo enters the room and orders everyone to take a seat in a moody tone. When Ichinose fearfully asks him why he appears to be angry, he replies that he heard a rumour claiming he was playing around with a large amount of private points and using it in a bet to expel a particular student. When Kiriyama asks where he’d heard such a ridiculous rumour from, Nagumo replies that he’d heard it from Kishi in Kiriyama’s own class. Nagumo is upset since such rumours would hurt his reputation as the student council president. He declares that student council meetings will be temporarily adjourned while he searches for the culprit. After the student council meeting, Horikita approaches Yagami who had been writing the meeting minutes on a notebook. Everyone else had left already so it was only the two of them in the room. She asks Yagami to hand the love letter to Nagumo. After Yagami teases her for a bit, he agrees to head to Nagumo’s dorm room later to hand it to him. After Yagami stares for a few seconds at the letter, he frowns and asks Horikita if it really was a love letter. He’s concerned that it would be disrespectful if he were to hand the letter to Nagumo and it turned out to not actually be a love letter. He decides to just hand the letter over to Nagumo without mentioning that it’s a love letter and Horikita agrees with that decision. She then conveys her surprise that Yagami is writing the meeting minutes by hand even though everything was done digitally nowadays. Yagami says that all of the student council meeting minutes had been stored physically since the school’s conception, and hence there would be confusion if he suddenly switched to digital. As the two continue to have a relaxing talk with each other, they touch on the topic of Nagumo’s foul mood. Yagami slowly flips back the meeting minutes notebook to find the name of the person who was discussing the rumours. At first the meeting minutes were from last year and were written by a current 3rd year student. However, in the middle of the notebook, they changed to Yagami’s handwriting which was very neat. Yagami holds up the notebook and shows Horikita the page with ‘Kishi-senpai’ written on it. However, Horikita finds the handwriting exceedingly similar to that of the note she’d received during the uninhabited island special exam. Horikita panics and quickly excuses her before leaving the room. Just as she’s closing the door, she can see Yagami smiling while watching her as if to gauge her reaction.
Chapter Four
On the day before the cultural festival, Ayanokouji’s class was preparing for the trial run of the cultural festival. The class’ first shop was the maid café which primarily focused on selling beverages and photos of the maids. Their 2nd and 3rd shops were stalls selling flour-based foods such as Takoyaki and okonomiyaki. Their 4th and final shop was a stall that sold western foods such as pastas and breads. While Kushida was rostered to work as a maid and had even contributed some ideas of her own, she hadn’t joined any of the after-school practice sessions with her other classmates who were also working as maids. Just like usual, she also wasn’t interested in participating in the trial run either. However, this time Satou confronts her and while Horikita tries to break up the conflict before it can begin, Hirata stops her, deciding that it would be better to let the two of them settle things between themselves. Kushida reassures Satou, saying she remembers everything and doesn’t plan on holding the class back. However, Satou insists that she needs to at least participate in this trial run rehearsal, otherwise she can not be entrusted with the all-important job of being a maid. Kushida mocks her and dares Satou to remove her from the job, saying that there aren’t any replacements available anyway. After Kushida leaves, Matsushita asks Horikita whether it’d be better to remove Kushida from the job, however Horikita says that she believes in Kushida. Seeing Horikita’s confident expression, Matsushita decides to trust in her decision.
Ayanokouji then heads to Ryuen’s class’ traditional kimono café on the 2nd floor which serves traditional Japanese sweets and tea. He spots Hiyori reading a book at the counter. She greets him while using her book to hide her face.
When Ayanokouji asks about it, she reveals that while she has been visiting the library, she’s changed her usual times. She’s working as the cashier because she wasn’t very good at it when she tried working as a waitress. She also mentions that Ibuki was going to participate in the café because she lost a bet to Ryuen. Just as Ayanokouji is wondering about Ryuen, she says that he had headed off to see what Class A was doing. She advises him that Ryuen had gone to the 3rd floor and tells him that she’ll be going to the library again in the future and invites him to visit her there. Since the classrooms on the 3rd floor were cheap, Sakayanagi’s class had rented all 3 rooms. Currently, the only things present were a few unopened cardboard boxes. Hashimoto approaches Ayanokouji and tells him there’s nothing to see until tomorrow, pointing at Ryuen who was silently leaving a classroom and heading back downstairs. Ayanokouji also decides to return to his class but Ryuen looks back at him and tells Ayanokouji to warn Horikita that his class was going to win tomorrow. Ayanokouji says that his kimonos must have been more expensive than maid costumes and asks why he didn’t choose to match, to which Ryuen replies that kimonos were just his personal preference.
When Ayanokouji returned to his classroom, he notices that there were a lot of boys from other classes who were visiting to see the girls in maid cosplay outfits. Ayanokouji doesn’t mind it and thinks it’s good for the maids to get some experience being ogled at. All of the girls seemed to be tenser than usual. Mii-chan even drops a plastic cup of water onto the floor. Matsushita moves to clean up her mess and apologises to the guest. Horikita, who was standing by the sidelines as a spectator, praises Matsushita’s quick action and Ayanokouji also agrees with that judgment. He confirms that Horikita was also going to work as a maid tomorrow, to which she replies she’ll mostly be doing promotion work although she’ll also serve guests when things get busy. Unlike her usual self, she doesn’t seem to be very confident in herself. Ayanokouji agrees that she wouldn’t be suited to being a maid and much to Horikita’s annoyance, points out that she isn’t very good at smiling. Since most of his job as maid café manager was already done, Horikita wonders if she should reassign him to the cooking team, to which Ayanokouji tells her not to reassign him on a whim just because she has a grudge. Horikita wanders off to take a look at the other classes’ stalls before returning one hour later and asking Ayanokouji about the state of the maid café. He tells her that there were some small mistakes, but says that everyone was steadily improving. When Horiktia thanks Matsushita for her hard work, Matsushita grimaces and says that she’d been anticipating Ryuen sending someone like Ishizaki to come and sabotage by putting bugs in their cups or something like that. Horikita and Ayanokouji turn to look at each other before reassuring Matsushita that it wouldn’t happen because students won’t be customers during the real event. Matsushita feels relief from their words and staggers out of the classroom to take a break. Horikita says she learnt a lot from watching the other classes and suggests for Ayanokouji to go and take another look. Kei pipes up and insists on going together with him. Horikita warns them not to forget their top priority is reconnaissance.
Many of the 1st year and 3rd year stalls were festival games. Ayanokouji asks Kei whether they should try playing quoits, to which Kei enthusiastically agrees and says she wants the teddy bear which is one of the rewards. However, since today was only a demo, they wouldn’t be able to get the prizes even if they won. On the other hand, Class 1B (I’m 90% sure this was an error that got through editing and was supposed to be Class 1D) was hosting a shooting game and had replaced the actual prizes with candies for the students who won. Kei encourages Ayanokouji to give it a try and he proceeds to miss his first 4 shots. He hits the target on his last shot, but the force isn’t strong enough to make it fall. He blames his failures on the crap quality of the gun and cork bullets but thinks he’s got the hang of it now, however, students are only allowed to get one go each during the demo period.
When Ayanokouji returns the gun, Housen comes out from the back of the stall and mocks him. He puts a lighter on the shelf and picks up a toy gun before proceeding to shoot at the lighter. His shot hits the lighter directly, but although it shook a bit, it didn’t topple over. Housen says they can’t let the big prizes be taken easily, however, Ayanokouji points out that this might discourage the customers. Housen says, they can just make a lot of participation prizes. Said participation prizes are photos printed from a printer which are then laminated. He says that since there would be many guests involved in politics, it would be good PR for them to have photos with students to appeal that they were active participants in community activities. When Ayanokouji returns to Kei, she’s grinning even though he didn’t win any prizes. When he asks her about it, she says she’s satisfied because she got to see an adorable aspect of him. As the two of them continue to look around, they find Ishizaki who’s selling protein shakes that he made together with Albert. Kei jibes at him for being unable to set up Ayanokouji and Ryuen’s joint birthday party, however Ishizaki complains that he tried but got kicked by Ryuen when he mentioned her apology condition. Ishizaki swears he’ll make it happen next year and tells her to wait, but Kei says that nobody was going to being waiting for him with bated breath. Ishizaki urges her to try their protein shakes but Kei doesn’t want to because she doesn’t want to grow all muscular. Albert reassures her by saying “You can’t build muscle just by drinking protein shakes” in English. Ayanokouji tries one and although the flavour is a little different, it makes him feel nostalgic about the past. Kei then tries one as well and finds it disgusting. Ishizaki hands her a cup of water to rinse her mouth with and then tells them to try a citric acid drink instead. Ishizaki then asks the two of them for their overall impressions. Kei still says that she didn’t like the protein drink. Ishizaki ignores her and asks Ayanokouji for his impressions instead. He says that they weren’t bad. Ishizaki then suggests that they add citric acid to the chocolate flavoured protein drink. Urged on by Ishizaki, the two of them try it at the same time and Kei spits it out immediately. Ayanokouji notes that it tastes like gastric acid that rises up from your stomach when you vomit. While Kei quickly grabs a bottle of water to rinse her mouth, Ayanokouji simply comments that it’s mysterious how combining two things that tasted fine could result in such a flavour. Ishizaki said he was going to sell this experience for 500 points/per cup tomorrow. Ayanokouji is more surprised about how they got permission from Ryuen for this. Apparently, Ryuen’s class were going to do something else here and Ishizaki and Albert were just going to do their own little gig on the side. Kei glares at Ishizaki and grumbles that her fun date had been ruined by him. Ayanokouji had thought that they’d begun to patch things up between each other, but it looks like there was still a long way to go. The two of them continue walking around for a while before returning to the maid café. There were many students there and whenever one of them got a little rowdy, Sudou would come in and escort them out like a bouncer.
After the trial run is over, Ayanokouji was cleaning the classroom together with Sudou. Onodera comes in and laments that she was unable to see the maids since she’d been sent out to work on cooking in one of the outdoor stalls. She thinks that maid clothes wouldn’t look good on her because of her thick legs, prompting Sudou to crouch down and inspect her legs. Onodera’s face turns red and she runs out of the classroom like a rabbit, leaving Sudou behind in a state of confusion. Ayanokouji knows that in such a situation, bystanders should normally just watch on without saying anything, but he wants to run an experiment to see whether the results would change if he says something different to the usual pattern. Ayanokouji tells Sudou that Onodera probably has the same feelings for him as he has for Horikita. Sudou doesn’t believe him, but Ayanokouji says that recently Sudou had matured a lot and it wouldn’t be strange if girls started to become interested in him. Sudou doesn’t seem to know what to do since he still holds strong feelings for Horikita. Part of Ayanokouji’s experiment was to see which way Sudou’s feelings would swing after telling him about Onodera’s feelings. After Sudou leaves to cool his head, Hirata approaches Ayanokouji and wonders whether that was really the right choice. Personally, he thinks that they should have left Sudou and Onodera to their own devices. Ayanokouji brushes him off by saying that he doesn’t know much about such things and will apologise to Sudou if he’d made a mistake.
After everyone else has cleaned up and left the classroom, Ayanokouji tells Horikita that he can’t help but think the idea of Horikita in a maid uniform is strange. Horikita says that she would’ve preferred to not have to do it either, but they were lacking manpower. She tells Ayanokouji that everything could have been resolved if his girlfriend had agreed to work as a maid. Ayanokouji tells her to respect Kei’s wishes. Apparently, both he and her friends such as Satou had tried to persuade her, but she’d rejected all of them. He thinks that her reason was probably because she didn’t want to change clothes together with the other girls. He hands a notebook to Horikita that contains the adjustments and changes that he thought should be made based on today’s trial run. She reviews it and thanks him, saying she doesn’t have any issues with his proposed changes. It is also mentioned that all students participating in the cultural festival must apply to their homeroom teacher and take a one hour break during which they were forbidden from helping out with anything, regardless of how busy their classmates were. This made break rotations another important strategic element of the cultural festival.
While all the other students were busy practising for the cultural festival, Yagami and Kushida were facing off from one other on the path to Keyaki Mall. Kushida confronts him for having avoided her all this time. Yagami says it wasn’t deliberate, but it’s also revealed that Kushida had visited his dorm room countless times but he’d always pretended to be absent. Kushida theorises that he cut off contact with her after deciding she was no longer useful. Yagami keeps trying to make excuses but Kushida calls for him to stop lying. He asks her to tell him the details of what happened that day during the unanimous vote special exam, however, Kushida says she didn’t do anything and Airi was naturally expelled due to having the lowest OAA. Yagami smiles and puts a hand on her shoulder while saying “Lying isn’t good, you know?”. He says that whilst Kushida was still behaving like usual with people from other classes, ever since that exam, she’d grown distant from her own classmates. He points this out as evidence that her true nature had been exposed to her classmates. Yagami laughs and says that it was clear that Ayanokouji had driven her to the point of exposing her past to her classmates. However, Kushida denies all his speculations. Yagami tries to excuse himself, saying that if she isn’t willing to talk about herself, he has no obligation to keep her company since he also had things he needed to get done for the cultural festival, however, Kushida simply tells him that she doesn’t want him involved in her life any longer. He speculates that she’d begun to feel that she could move forwards in her current environment, which was why she wanted to cut off the dregs of her past. Yagami asks her if she’d reconciled with Horikita and judges from her reaction that he’d guessed right. He expresses his disappointment in her. Kushida picks up that his words had lost some of their politeness, but she stands firm thanks to her experience of dealing with unusual students such as Ayanokouji, Ryuen and Amasawa. He theorises that she’d come here to stop him from exposing her past. When he threatens to blackmail her with it, she says that he had also done plenty of devious things in the past that she can publicise to get him in trouble. She says that as long as he protects her secret, she’ll protect his. As Yagami leaves, Kushida contemplates whether she should try to get rid of him just in case. However, she quickly changes her mind since her repeated losses had made her realise that she needs to abandon this naïve idea that she can take on anyone by herself. She realises that before taking on Yagami, she needs to first make solid contributions to her own class to ensure her own survival.
Later that night, Ayanokouji receives a phone call from Sakayanagi. It’s revealed that her father was worried about the possibility of outsiders coming to the cultural festival to bring Ayanokouji back to the White Room, but Ayanokouji had rejected his proposal to sit out the cultural festival like he had with the sports festival. Sakayanagi asks him if he’d taken any actions to prevent such a thing from happening. Ayanokouji simply responds that he wanted to experience as much of school life as possible, and there were no guarantees that the next sports festival or cultural festival wouldn’t have any external guests. Since that was what he had decided, Sakayanagi agrees that it was probably for the best. She tells him to consult her if any problems occur again in the future and says that she can’t let him disappear on her until they’ve had their rematch.
Chapter Five
The next day, the cultural festival was scheduled to begin at 9 AM, however, Ayanokouji and Horikita headed to school at 6 AM to do a final check of everything since that was when the gates opened. Unfortunately, Matsushita had called in sick that morning and said she wouldn’t be able to come. Coughing and sneezing would’ve had a negative effect on the maid café’s image so she wouldn’t be able to work as a maid, and even if they tried to reallocate her role, she wouldn’t be able to carry anything heavy thanks to being sick. Horikita was worried because there were rumours going around the class that Akito and Haruka were the ones who’d leaked the menu for the maid café. She was frustrated at herself for being unable to do anything to help them. She asks Ayanokouji if he often interacted with any first years, and he replies that he only occasionally talks to Nanase and Amasawa. He then says that surely even she interacts with the first years in the student council. Horikita admits that initially she didn’t see the point in being on the student council and thought it was only a waste of time that she could have spent on studying. But she’s started to learn and see things that she couldn’t have otherwise, and hence thanks Ayanokouji for making her join it. She says that it gave her newfound appreciation of her brother’s abilities in handling the student council whilst effortlessly staying on top of his studies. Ayanokouji thinks that he isn’t inferior to Horikita Manabu in academics or physical ability, however, if the two of them were enemies competing in the same grade, Manabu possessed enough strength to make him unable to tell who would come out on top.
Just before the cultural festival is about to begin, everyone is encouraging each other and rearranging the maids’ break schedule to make up for Matsushita’s absence. Horikita whispers to Ayanokouji that Haruka and Akito were absent. She worries about whether she should do something to quell the rumours but Ayanokouji tells her to just focus on winning the cultural festival. She calms down and trusts that Ayanokouji will do something about Haruka.
Customers soon start to enter the maid café and most of the seats are taken. Their classmates scattered around the school constantly provide updates using their phones about the most popular areas in the cultural festival to help provide a general idea of the sales rankings. Ike and Hondou rush into the classroom and shout that they got an order for food so they’re going to go collect it from the outdoor stalls, but Horikita scolds them for being too loud and startling the guests in the maid café. Kanzaki pops in and comments that things seemed to be going well for the maid café. Although they hadn’t sold them during the trial run, Ichinose’s class was selling sweets such as crepes and chocolate bananas. When Ayanokouji asks about his class, he says that the sweets were selling well amongst children, but weren’t very popular with adults so they probably wouldn’t be able to reach the top ranks. However, Ayanokouji points out that he was looking far better, theorising that he and Himeno had successfully taken the first step in convincing their classmates. In the maid café, Ayanokouji’s job was to take photos using the camera. The maid café continued to gradually gather steam and laughter started to spread from all corners of the classroom. However, in the middle of all this, Ayanokouji could hear Horikita’s monotone voice as she guided guests to their seats. Even though she was in charge of promoting the maid café from outside the classroom, she wasn’t smiling at all. He reckons Horikita would’ve been fired by now if she was working at a real maid café.
Two hours passed and things in the maid café continued to proceed smoothly. Ayanokouji starts to wonder about why his father hadn’t sent anyone after him yet even though it was a perfect opportunity to do so. He can’t imagine Tsukishiro setting up the opportunity for outsiders to come to the school during the cultural festival and yet not make a single move at all. Just as he’s getting lost in his thoughts, Mii-chan interrupts him by announcing that they’d run out of Darjeeling tea. Darjeeling tea was their expensive option priced at 1200 private points, but they hadn’t expected it to sell so well, so they hadn’t prepared a lot of it. On the other hand, the cheap tea bags they’d prepared weren’t selling very well at all. They couldn’t buy any more stock on the day of the event, so Ayanokouji instructs her to put sold out stickers on all of the menus. However, just as Ayanokouji finishes writing “Sold out because it was very popular” on the large menu at the entrance of the café, someone’s hand reaches out to him from his left and hands him a folded sheet of paper. The person is wearing a suit instead of a uniform and is clearly very skilled because they were able to approach him without him noticing. The person tells him to take the note without turning around and Ayanokouji only moves again after he’d confirmed that the person’s presence had disappeared. When Ayanokouji reads the note, it says:
[I came to pick you up. Decide for yourself whether you want to come. I’ll be waiting at the main entrance.]
There was also a phone number written on the note. Ayanokouji rolls the note up, puts it in his mouth and swallows it. His monologue, quote on quote:
Paper is originally plant material and is primarily composed of cellulose. Since it doesn’t have any proteolytic enzymes, it cannot be digested and hence will retain its form when being excreted. There’d be no problem if this note was picked up by an unrelated 3rd party, but there were various disadvantages to having this note with me. Since I couldn’t easily move around during the cultural festival, it was easier to take care of it in this way so I wouldn’t even have to think of how to dispose of it later.
Around about noon, Ayanokouji receives a report from Ike and heads out to the school entrance where he sees girls from Ryuen’s class shouting that they were competing with Class 2B in sales for their concept café, all while handing out brochures that advertised this competition. Unlike all the students from other classes advertising with smiles on their faces, the girls wore sad expressions as they desperately appealed that someone might be forced to take responsibility and be expelled from their class if they lost. From the sheer desperation in their voices, Ayanokouji reckons that Ryuen had actually threatened to expel one of them. However, he explains to Ike that there was no way Ryuen would actually expel someone if they lost, listing the demerits in doing so. Just as Ike starts panicking, Ayanokouji opens the box that Hondou and Sotomura had carried here and reveals that he’d prepared similar brochures and instructs Ike to get Hondou and the other boys to tell the girls in their class who were free, to begin distributing these to guests. In this manner, everyone in the school would soon learn that Class 2B and Class 2C were having a concept café showdown. Soon, the rumours started to spread like a wildfire and Ayanokouji could even hear people mistakenly say that the leader of the losing class would be expelled.
Just as Ayanokouji was walking back to the maid café, he encounters Ibuki in a kimono as she unenthusiastically handed out brochures in a place where there weren’t many people passing by. He asks to take one and Ibuki gives him the same robotic reply and is about to hand one over to him when she grimaces upon seeing his face. Ayanokouji teases her for a bit but she tells him to piss off. Ayanokouji theorises that the reason why she didn’t go back on her promise after losing the bet was because if she did so, then nobody would accept her challenges again in the future. Hearing that Ryuen was the one who’d picked the card game they’d played, Ayanokouji thinks she might have gotten tricked by him. Ayanokouji promises to tell Ryuen later that Ibuki was handing out her fliers in such an unpopular place, to which Ibuki tries to kick him but misses. He tells her to try saying “Welcome back, Sir” to him which was their café’s official greeting, but Ibuki says she’ll only say it if he agrees to get kicked in the face. He leaves her behind and returns to his class which had gotten busier with even more guests than there were before. He tells Horikita that their class and Ryuen’s were going to be pushing each other for more sales now, to which Horikita replies “it seems like everything went according to your plans”.
There were also problems that arised when there were too many customers. There was a limit to the number of guests that could be welcomed into the room and the line outside the classroom had become very long. Some of the guests had started to leave and just as Ayanokouji was trying to think of a countermeasure, Kushida walked up to him and asked for permission to leave the café to take care of the guests waiting in line. She says that the biggest reason for guests leaving was due to feeling hungry, hence she started passing out handmade cookies to the guests waiting in line. The primary aim was to make the guests feel guilty if they tried to leave without paying after receiving a free handout.
In addition, she stayed there and continued talking to the guests with a smile on her face. In this way, only a very shameless person would have the guts to leave the queue. Kushida did not have any qualms about talking to adult men were a smile on her face or occasional acts of skinship such as shaking their hands. She fully put all her skills at making people her allies to use. Whilst all of the other girls had also been working hard, Ayanokouji thinks that Kushida had long since perfected this craft. She’d never practised even a single time before today, which showcased just how much natural talent she had. But Hirata interjects and says that he thinks it was a result of Kushida’s hard work since she’d actually been going to Horikita’s room every night to practise. Ayanokouji realises that’s why Horikita was so confident that Kushida was going to be fine. Around about 30 minutes later, Mii-chan comes to Ayanokouji asking about the whereabouts of Kushida, since one of the guests wanted to take a photo with her. Ayanokouji and Hirata ask around and one of the guests lining up says that the girl handing out cookies had been called out to and taken away by a student with her hair tied up in twintails. Hirata doesn’t have any clue about the identity of this twintail girl, but Ayanokouji has a good idea of the culprit and heads out to look for Kushida.
Ayanokouji uses his mobile phone to get information from someone and marvels at their information network which tells him in a matter of only a few minutes that Kushida was at the school’s indoor pool. He finds her arguing with Amasawa about something. Kushida apologises to him for leaving her job without telling anyone but says she had something she needed to talk to Amasawa about and intended on returning as soon as possible. Ayanokouji chastises her for leaving for 20 minutes which was far too long. He tells the two of them to leave their discussion for another time. Amasawa asks Ayanokouji if he knew that she and Kushida were acquainted with each other. He says he didn’t, but was now able to understand why Kushida had acted so recklessly during the unanimous vote special exam. Amasawa and Kushida both plead with him for a little bit more time, but he rejects them and asks for Kushida to return to the class imminently. Amasawa says “Senpai’s eyes are really lustful. They’re able to strip me and see through everything”, whilst seductively pushing the tip of her finger against her lips. Ayanokouji reveals that he knows about Amasawa and another student blackmailing Kushida using her secret and coercing her during the unanimous vote special exam. Amasawa tries to claim she wasn’t doing anything with malicious intent, however Ayanokouji then asks her “What about the other person?”
Amasawa eerily grins and then firmly grabs Kushida’s wrist while blocking her mouth with her other hand. She tells Kushida that if she reveals the other person’s name, they were going to get her expelled. She asks Ayanokouji to give her 10 minutes to talk with Kushida alone, otherwise she’ll break Kushida to the point they can no longer make use of her for the cultural festival. Ayanokouji refuses and dares her to try. However, just as Amasawa was able to break Kushida’s arm, Ayanokouji instantly closes the 5 metres distance between them and grabs Amasawa’s hand before locking her into the same position she just had Kushida in moments earlier. From the look in her eyes, he can tell that her pride was seriously hurt. He asks her if she really thought there wasn’t much difference between the two of them. He thinks that students with some fighting experience such as Horikita, Ibuki or Ryuen wouldn’t even be close to a match for the White Room-trained Amasawa, but all of them were the same to him. If his fighting strength was a 100, it’d just be the equivalent of raising the difficulty of his opponents from 5 to 20 or 30. Amasawa asks him from which point he’d thought he would be able to suppress her like this, to which Ayanokouji replied “from the moment I saw you”. She says that would be far too demoralising a line if it were someone other than him saying it to her. He asks her whether she’d realised why he’d never asked for the name of ‘the other White Room student. When Amasawa’s smile fades, he says that at no point had he ever thought they could be a match for him. He tells her that both she and her companion should’ve taken him on earlier without playing with their food and getting a bunch of unrelated third parties involved. Amasawa realises that he knew the reason why she was trying to contact Kushida. He tells her to go to the student council room at 3 PM and watch things unfold from outside without showing herself to anyone. He says that all the answers to her questions can be found there. He tells Kushida that she can go back to the maid café now without having to worry about her past being exposed. Kushida follows after him and asks him about who he is. She says that she doesn’t know much about fighting but knows that Ayanokouji’s actions just now were abnormal. Ayanokouji simply replies that boys were stronger than girls, indicating that he wasn’t willing to talk about it. Kushida then bows her head to Ayanokouji and thanks him for his help. Ayanokouji says he was only doing what was natural as a classmate, in which case Kushida tries to confirm with him that she didn’t need to treat this as a debt to him. Since he figures Kushida wouldn’t faithfully return the favour anyway, he says “No problem”.
Chapter Six
Kushida got back to work and the long queue outside the classroom continued to grow without shortening. However, this time there was the problem of there not being enough manpower, especially since all the maids needed to take a 1 hour break at some point. They were so shorthanded that even Horikita was now serving customers in the classroom with her stoic face. Ayanokouji would’ve liked one of the other girls to take on the job, but it wasn’t like anybody would do. Kushida pops in and tells Ayanokouji and Horikita that most of the new customers joining the end of the line were now leaving after hearing the approximate waiting time. Kushida asks if they could get Kei in as an emergency substitute, but Ayanokouji says her break began at 2 PM so she wasn’t able to help now. In addition, he monologues that it’d waste another 20 to 30 minutes if she were to return to the dorms to change her clothes, since Kei was unable to use the changing rooms at school. When Ike comes in, Kushida proposes having Shinohara come in and work as a maid. Horikita tells Ayanokouji that she needs to take a break at 3 PM, but Ayanokouji tells her not to worry and says he already has someone on his mind as her replacement. Later, when Shinohara is serving the customers, Kushida frowns and says that her visual impact was too weak nor was she particularly good at serving the customers (basically a nice way of calling her ugly). She asks Ayanokouji if they could possibly get Haruka to help. Ayanokouji explains that although Haruka was originally supposed to help out, part of her revenge was to make it difficult to find a replacement for when she chose to not participate in the cultural festival. Kushida thought that Ayanokouji would have prepared a backup plan if he already knew that in advance, but he says that there was a limit to the number of people in the class. However, Kushida doesn’t think this would be effective as revenge and would only be a mild inconvenience at best. Ayanokouji then reveals that Haruka and Akito were planning on leaving the school after the cultural festival and the only reason they hadn’t done so until now was because Airi and Haruka had been looking forward to enjoying the cultural festival together. He says that if Haruka and Akito both left the school, their class would lose approximately 600 class points. Kushida despairs that she wouldn’t be able to reach Class A anymore if that were to happen. Ayanokouji thinks that if Haruka had tried to sabotage the class from within, he could’ve utilised the rules of a special exam to forcefully expel her. However, Haruka knew that her abilities paled in comparison to his, so she was planning on playing the unstoppable move of leaving the school by her own will. Kushida asks if he was planning on doing anything to stop them, but Ayanokouji said it was all up to Haruka and Akito to make the decision for themselves. However, Kushida uses the example of Ayanokouji saving her, saying that she knows he wasn’t planning on abandoning them. She theorises that Ayanokouji had left the two of them alone until now to test them. Ayanokouji admits she’s right and says that after narrowing down the options throughout the day, he was now certain that his guess had hit the mark. He shows Kushida a text message on his mobile phone that states the current location of Haruka and Akito. Kushida remarks that he has a reliable ally and muses that this must also have been the method he used to find her location. Ayanokouji then picks up the cardboard box he’d left in the classroom that morning and headed off to try to persuade Haruka and Akito.
He finds them sitting on a bench on the path to Keyaki Mall. Haruka commends him on being able to find her, to which he replies that he knew she used to hang out around here together with Airi. She says “As expected of a member of the former Ayanokouji Group. That’s the correct answer.”
She asks Ayanokouji what he’d come here to do, to which he says that there weren’t enough maids because the maid café was more popular than expected. Haruka cynically replies that things would have been different if Airi was still around, but Ayanokouji says that they would actually be worse off because Kushida was worth more than both of them combined. He tries to persuade her to help the class for the last hour but she resolutely refuses. He puts the cardboard box he was holding down on the ground and tells her to try opening it, but she just looks at him suspiciously and says she doesn’t feel like going along with his whims. She takes an ‘intention for withdrawal from school’ note out of her pocket and comments that Ayanokouji didn’t seem to be surprised. Ayanokouji then reveals that he knew Akito was intending on doing the same. Haruka praises him for being amazing and says that this must have been why he was able to easily drive Airi to expulsion. She says that the cultural festival was supposed to be Airi’s grand stage for changing herself and taking a big leap forward. She says that Airi needed her, and Ayanokouji himself also needed the Ayanokouji Group. She asks him if he’d ever wondered how Airi felt after being expelled by the person she loved. Ayanokouji asks her to elaborate. Haruka angrily shouts that Airi must have been crying all this time, suffering all alone in pain and frustration in a tiny corner of her room. Ayanokouji asks her if that was the Airi in her imagination, but Haruka denies that and says she knows Airi better than anyone. She claims that Ayanokouji was simply running away because he didn’t want to face the fact that he’d driven Airi into despair. Unfortunately for her, Ayanokouji says he didn’t have any time nor brain cells to waste on students who’d gotten expelled. Ayanokouji continues on to say that he didn’t think Haruka understood Airi’s feelings. He tells Haruka to stop pushing her own prejudices onto Airi and claims that she only wanted Airi to remain helpless and rely on her forever to satisfy her own superiority complex. Ayanokouji says that there was a hint to Airi’s true feelings in the cardboard box that he’d brought with him which contained Airi’s final message. Haruka thinks he was tricking her and had prepared it himself, but he tells her to look at the name of the sender which was an online shop that she’d ordered maid outfits from together with Haruka. Haruka reaches out and repeatedly tries to rip off the sticky tape on the box. After a few tries, she succeeds and opens the box to find a single maid outfit inside. Ayanokouji says that he can read Airi’s feelings and hopes in that maid outfit and suggests that she wanted for Haruka to stop standing still and continue moving forwards. Haruka hugs the maid outfit and repeatedly cries out Airi’s name.
However, Haruka keeps denying Ayanokouji’s interpretation and says that this was a sign of Airi’s grudge against Ayanokouji and claims that she’d sent him the maid outfit to show him what he’d denied from her. She claims that if Airi had wanted her to wear the maid outfit, she would have sent it to Haruka instead of Ayanokouji. At this point, Akito also starts trying to convince Haruka that Ayanokouji was right. He suggests that Airi had sent the maid outfit to Ayanokouji because she wanted to create an opportunity for the two of them to reconcile with each another (???). Haruka grabs Akito’s chest and yells at him to stop interpreting things conveniently just because he wants to forgive Ayanokouji. She says that even if they were right, it didn’t change the fact that Airi was currently in the throes of despair. But Ayanokouji says that the most important thing was how the person herself was currently coping. Haruka says she’s going to leave the school and go see how Airi was doing for herself. But at that moment, Kushida walks over and interrupts. She says she came to see Haruka and Akito off since Ayanokouji had told her that the two of them might be leaving school. Haruka gets angry at her for being the root cause of why Airi was expelled in the first place, however, Kushida says that she didn’t regret doing what she did because that incident was a big turning point for her which also opened all sorts of pathways that she hadn’t previously seen. Haruka threatens to tell the class that it was all Kushida’s fault that she was leaving. Kushida tells to go ahead if she wants to leave, but Haruka calls her bluff and says that Kushida herself was the one who’d said that the only reason she was putting up with the class was because she wanted to reach Class A. Kushida says she doesn’t think Airi would want Haruka to take revenge, to which Haruka tells her to stop acting like Ayanokouji as if either of them knew what Airi wanted. Kushida says that Airi was expelled because she was weak. Haruka points out that Kushida was the same and had also lost pathetically. Kushida agrees with the assessment that she was weak, however, she claims that Airi was the one who ended up being expelled due to being even weaker than her.
Ayanokouji thinks that Airi would’ve been an exceptional human resource if she’d participated in the cultural festival, however she had no hope of matching Kushida’s customer service and conversational skills. And even before that, Kushida achieved very good results in the midsemester exams. Haruka agrees that Airi was weak, but insists that was the reason she needed to be protected. Kushida says that was just Haruka’s arrogance, thinking that Airi would forever remain a weakling that needed her protection. She reveals that she knows about Airi’s social media account as an idol. She condemns Haruka for just wanting a sense of superiority over Airi and not actually caring about Airi’s wellbeing. She asks Haruka if she was just seeing her own family in Airi. Ayanokouji has no idea what they’re talking about, but Haruka starts to panic and tells her to stop talking about it. Kushida says that she’s free to talk about other people’s secrets if they’re going to leave the school anyway. Kushida says she was going to return to the maid café, but Haruka calls for her to stop and asks to see Airi’s social media profile. The ’Shizuku’ account was only a few days old since it had only recently been reactivated, but it already had more than 1000 followers. Haruka still suspects it was a fake made by Kushida or Ayanokouji. Ayanokouji asks her if she really thought it was a fake even after reading what was written. The first post said she was restarting her idol activities. It later said she was going to do everything she could so that her precious best friend could be proud of her when they reunited after graduation. Ayanokouji says that Airi had grown an unbelievable extent since she’d been expelled. The posts continued to say that Airi was going to continue facing forwards and wanted her best friend to give her best too. Ayanokouji says he can’t see the supposedly miserable Airi that Haruka was speaking of. Kushida smiles at Ayanokouji and tells him that he now owes her a debt. Ayanokouji thought she didn’t like that kind of thing, but Kushida clarifies that she doesn’t like owing other people debts, but liked it when other people owed her. Just like that, Kushida turned around to return to the maid café. Akito opened up Shizuku’s social media page on his phone and tells Haruka that he doesn’t think it’s a fake. Haruka says that this was a new discovery for her since she’d never imagined that there could still be something left for someone after they’d gotten expelled. Ayanokouji also didn’t know that there could be a new beginning after someone got expelled. He wonders if the same thing happened to any of the children who were expelled from the White Room. Ayanokouji asks Haruka if she really was planning on disappointing Airi like this. When she asks him what she should do, he tells her to work hard to graduate from Class A and become someone who would be able to stand by Airi’s side without feeling ashamed. Akito asks him if their classmates would really accept Haruka. Ayanokouji says that Kushida, Horikita and Hirata would ensure everything went well regardless of what anyone else says. Akito then lines up the two withdrawal notes and tears them apart. Akito asks Ayanokouji what he would have done if Kushida hadn’t arrived to save the day. Ayanokouji says that there would’ve been nothing he could do, before he subtly takes out his phone and deletes all his browsing history of Shizuku’s social media account. Since Kushida was the one who showed Haruka and Akito the path forward, he decides that she should be the one to take the credit for it.
Akito returns to the food stalls and was warmly welcomed by the boys in the class. The unexpected warm welcoming made him a little teary-eyed. Kushida was once again handing out cookies to the lined up guests with a smile, when she notices Haruka breathlessly running towards the classroom while wearing a maid outfit. She says that she’d changed her clothes in the girls’ toilet. Horikita also warmly welcomes Haruka. Although Haruka wasn’t originally supposed to work as a maid and hadn’t done any practice, Horikita says that they were currently so overwhelmed that she’d even welcome help from a cat. Horikita asks if it was okay to interpret this as Haruka being willing to contribute to the class. Haruka replies that she wasn’t going to do anything that would ruin the class’ efforts and hard work, although she doubts whether anyone would actually believe her. However, Horikita says that she believes her because of the look of determination in her eyes. Horikita delegates some light tasks to her and asks Ayanokouji to take care of the rest since she was going to be forced to go on break soon. After Horikita leaves, Ayanokouji takes a look at the maid photo sales leaderboard to see who was selling the most photos. Even with her repeated disappearances, Kushida was in first place with 56 photos. Satou was in 2nd place with 24 photos. Horikita only had 11. When Ayanokouji tries to take Haruka’s photo, she’s unable to properly smile due to her instinctual aversion towards him. He asks her if he should get Hirata to take his place, but Haruka braces herself and raises her hand in a wave. Ayanokouji decides that it’s good enough and takes the photo.
Ayanokouji takes a look at Ryuen’s class and sees that they also have a long queue waiting outside their concept café. As things stand, he reckons there probably isn’t much difference between their two classes. For the final hour, he calls out to Chabashira and asks her if she’d finished spending all her private points. She says that she only has 80 points left, so all of it was more or less spent. He asks Chabashira to cooperate with their class for the final hour. She doesn’t seem to understand what he’s talking about, so he clarifies things by asking Chabashira to work as a maid in their maid café to increase their sales. Chabashira is stunned and says that as a teacher, she was supposed to be impartial and hence wasn’t allowed to aid a specific class. Ayanokouji says that there were only 2 rules:
- Teachers were to be treated the same as guests.
- Homeroom teachers weren’t allowed to spend their points on any shops run by the grade of the class they were in charge of.
He says that there was no rule that only students were allowed to participate in the selling of a product or service. According to these rules, teachers were even allowed to solicit guests to buy things from their class. To further convince Chabashira, he lists some examples. E.g. if a student was carrying something heavy and a guest helped them carry it to the classroom, it wouldn’t be in violation of the rules. Additionally, if 2 classes collaborated and lent students to help each other out, that also wouldn’t constitute a violation of the rules. However, Chabashira still disagrees and says that other people will view it as her favouring her own class. Hence, Ayanokouji says that they need to make it a transaction to ward away suspicions. He reminds Chabashira that she’d once told him “There’s nothing at this school which you can not buy with private points”. If Chabashira were to reject him here, she’d be going against the school rules. She hurriedly pulls out her mobile phone and looks up the rules before begrudgingly saying “…The price for getting a teacher’s cooperation is 100,000 private points per hour”. Chabashira repeatedly keeps asking him if he was sure about this and reminds him that 100,000 private points was a very high cost to pay. He tells her to stop being stubborn and says that they were running out of time. She panics and suggests for him to go to Hoshinomiya for help instead. She says that Hoshinomiya should be better at this kind of thing. However, Ayanokouji says that a clumsy maid would be more effective and insists on choosing Chabashira. Before she can protest any further, Ayanokouji pays her the private points and says that their contract was complete. She calls Ayanokouji a coward for taking advantage of the school rules. In his mind, Ayanokouji doesn’t understand what she’s going on about, since how could following school rules be considered a cowardly move? Chabashira says she doesn’t know how to work as a maid, but Ayanokouji says that he doesn’t mind and isn’t expecting anything from her at all. Just her mere presence in the classroom would be enough to help them win.
After forcefully shoving Chabashira into the changing room, he sends his classmates a message using his phone, telling everyone who was free to advertise all around the school that Chabashira was going to be working as a maid for the last hour. A red-faced Chabashira then turns up at the classroom. She asks him what he wants her to do, and he replies that she doesn’t need to do anything and says that it would be enough for her to just stand still in the classroom. As a result, Chabashira didn’t talk to anyone and just stood shyly by herself in a corner of the classroom. Even if she looked pleadingly at someone, Ayanokouji had sent out instructions for everyone to refrain from helping her. According to him, this was the absolute peak of eroticism. At this point, there were too many guests to fit inside the classroom, so the class started to charge a standing entry fee of 1000 private points to guests who were willing to stand. Additionally, photos with Chabashira cost 2000 private points. In particular, there were many school staff and staff working at Keyaki Mall who were interested in this absurdly rare sight of a usually strict teacher wearing a maid outfit. As more and more people swarmed into the classroom to see a standing Chabashira, Kushida feels a little depressed since it was as if all their efforts and hard work had amounted to nothing. Kushida asks Ayanokouji about when he’d thought up this plan, to which Ayanokouji says that this ace up the sleeve had been in the works since 2 weeks ago. Kushida wonders if it could have been more effective if used earlier, but Ayanokouji says that using it earlier would’ve given the other classes a chance to copy them and do the same thing. Kushida is deeply impressed and realises once again just how amazing Ayanokouji is and just how troublesome he would be as an enemy. He points out that her eyes weren’t laughing, to which she replies that she was 50% relieved that he was her classmate and 50% irritated about the gap between their abilities. Meanwhile, Sudou and the other classmates formed a wall to prevent people from trying to stick out their neck to catch a glimpse of Chabashira. Mii-chan shouts out that it was impossible to let in any more guests, so they start a discussion about whether they should carry out the furniture to make more space. However, Ayanokouji forcefully creates more space by asking guests lining up in the corridor to pay all their remaining private points to see Chabashira. He opens the door, all the windows and the curtains that were previously blocking people outside from looking in. In the end, Chabashira sold 63 photos and took first place in the photo rankings.
Chapter Seven
Just when Ayanokouji pulled out his trump card of Chabashira, Horikita left the classroom and headed for the student council. She’d been skeptical about the Chabashira maid plan when she heard about it from Ayanokouji, but it turned out to be more effective than anyone could have predicted. This was convenient for Horikita since there’d be less people around in other places as they all swarmed to the maid cafe. Her aim was to return to the student council room so she could check the meeting minutes that Yagami had written. Thanks to Nagumo putting student council meetings on hold, this was a perfect opportunity to peek at the minutes without anyone else around. She’d already gotten permission to get the key from the staff room that morning by telling Chabashira that she might have left her notebook in the student council room.
Just as Ichika braces herself to fight against Yagami, 5 adults show up and Yagami suddenly starts quivering like a child who got caught doing something bad by his parents. Apparently, they’d received a phone call telling them come pick someone up from the student council room. The 5 adults take Yagami and Ichika away and say that they’re responsible for them. Mashima and everyone else in the room just lets them walk off with the two white roomers. Ryuen instructs Komiya to help Ibuki up and they leave the student council room together. Horikita asks Nagumo how much he knew about this and whether he worked together with Ayanokouji. He says he only came here to talk with Ryuen, however, Horikita points out that in such a case, there would’ve been no reason for him to bring along the love letter. Nagumo dismisses it as a mere coincidence. Horikita can tell that he’s lying but decides not to pursue any further and returns to her class.
Epilogue
As soon as the cultural festival ended at 4 PM, Chabashira ran out of the classroom like a rabbit. Ayanokouji muses that she’d actually stand out more that way, however decides to let her be. Horikita gives a speech congratulating the class and thanking them for their hard work. She then gives Haruka a chance to speak. Haruka says she still hasn’t forgiven the class but realised that the one she couldn’t forgive the most was herself for underestimating Airi. She reveals that she originally was going to leave the school after this cultural festival. Akito also says that he was going to join her. Haruka asks for a second chance and says she wants to stay in the class. She says that Airi was spreading her wings in the outside world, and hence, Haruka also wanted to graduate from Class A and show a version of herself that she could be proud of when they reunited again. She apologises for the inconveniences she caused to the class and asks to be punished. Akito asks to be punished as well. Horikita says that they didn’t break any rules and only acted the same as Kouenji who didn’t do anything either. She says that if she had to give a punishment to the two of them, she simply wants them to continue being her classmates from now on. They all reconcile and everyone cleans up the classroom together. Keisei looks a bit awkward as he walks up to Haruka and Akito, but feels relieved when Akito starts things off by apologising to him. Haruka follows and soon the three of them are smiling again like the old days. The three of them then turn and look in Ayanokouji’s direction. He thinks that they’d be able to reform the Ayanookouji Group if he joined them right now, however, he decides that he’s no longer necessary and chooses to instead talk to Satou and co. to thank them for their hard work. The final results of the cultural festival were:
- Class 2B +100 CP
- Class 2C +100 CP
- Class 3B +100 CP
- Class 2A +100 CP
- Class 1A +50 CP
- Class 3C +50 CP
- Class 2D +50 CP
- Class 1C +50 CP
- Class 3D
- Class 1B
- Class 3A
- Class 1D
The class celebrates their victory but Horikita wonders how Sakayanagi managed to finish in 4th place. She says that she’d only seen them cheaply selling brochures introducing the school and hadn’t really seen them do anything else. Ayanokouji suggests that she must have struck some kind of deal with Housen. He’d seen Housen’s game stalls selling rather well and thought they’d be one of the top rankers. He can’t imagine them ranking below Class 3A who had tanked on purpose for the sake of providing entertainment to the guests. Horikita wonders if Sakayanagi had paid him private points or offered him some kind of payment contract similar to the one between Ryuen and Katsuragi. Ayanokouji thinks Housen’s class probably accepted payment using Sakayanagi’s class’ mobile phones and also used Class 2A’s allocated funding to help set up their grand-scale festival game stalls.
After the rest of the class had left, Horikita called the key maid café members together to apologise for deceiving them. She reveals that she’d been working with Ryuen all along and leaking the information about the maid café had actually been a part of the plan. Although she also mentions that the part about a bet had actually been Ryuen going off-script. However, in this way, they were able to deceive Hashimoto who was Sakayanagi’s primary source of information. Unfortunately, since the bet was never agreed upon, they wouldn’t be receiving a million private points from Ryuen. The only people who knew about this plan were Horikita, Ayanokouji, Ryuen and Katsuragi. That’s why everyone else from these two classes thought that it was a serious competition. In this way, they were able to appeal to the guests that there was a showdown going on between the two classes, which naturally drew in more customers. By choosing concept cafes with similar themes and announcing that early on, they also warded off any other classes from picking anything similar. Satou, Maezono and Mii-chan received her apology with smiles and said all’s well that ends well.
After the three of them happily leave, Horikita asks Ayanokouji if he was really okay with this. She reveals that he was the one who’d come up with the majority of these strategies, including the pretend conflict with Ryuen and the maid Chabashira plan. He replies that it was only possible to execute by using Horikita’s position as the leader. Ayanokouji advises her to never hesitate to manipulate her comrades for the sake of victory, even if she felt like the choice was risky. She says that she feels like she had begun to gain an understanding of the world seen through his eyes. Just as he is about to leave, Horikita tries to ask him about the events that occurred in the student council room. However, Ayanokouji receives a phone call from Tsubaki of Class 1C who asks him to meet up with her. He asks Horikita to wait for him for around about 20 minutes to which she agrees. After he moves out of earshot, he calls Nagumo and thanks him for lending the use of the 3rd years’ information network to help find Kushida and Haruka’s whereabouts. Nagumo muses that he’d never expected the system he’d set up for himself to one day be used for Ayanokouji’s sake. He says that he thought Yagami was just going loony and asks Ayanokouji if there actually was a trick behind that love letter. Ayanokouji admits he’d prepared a slightly complicated anagram that only Yagami would be able to solve. He also sprinkled some words here and there which would be of interest to him and naturally drew him to the student council room. The envelope and seal were also common ones bought from Keyaki Mall which could easily be replaced. If they had been ordered online, Yagami may have been afraid of opening and reading the letter due to leaving behind evidence that it had been opened. Additionally, Yagami would be able to tell that the letter was sent to him by a White Room student since they have been strictly trained in handwriting. He then used Kei to pass the love letter on to another girl in the class, eventually having it end up in the hands of Horikita. He then manipulated Horikita to hand it to Nagumo via Yagami. To prevent her from handing it straight to Nagumo, he had Nagumo pretend to be in a bad mood that day so that she would struggle to find an opportunity to pass it to him directly. Nagumo couldn’t imagine Yagami was the type of guy to do crazy stuff on the uninhabited island. He asks Ayanokouji about how much he knew. Ayanokouji admits he didn’t know anything and Yagami had simply confessed to everything himself. Nagumo asks him why Komiya and co. had named Yagami as the culprit. Ayanokouji says that he’d simply namedropped Yagami as someone suspicious. Ryuen chose to believe in it since he was hungry for any hints. Nagumo wonders how much of what he was telling was the truth and Ayanokouji simply replies that he’ll leave it to up to Nagumo’s imagination. Nagumo then confirms that he’d kept his side of the promise, to which Ayanokouji agrees and tells him to look forward to their eventual confrontation.
Ayanokouji meets up with Tsubaki while Utomiya was also present a fair distance away and appeared to be talking to someone on the phone. Tsubaki tells Ayanokouji that she was satisfied with the results that he’d produced which exceeded her expectations. She forms an ‘okay’ sign with her hand while praising him for extracting information out of Satou and using it to drive Yagami to expulsion. In the conversation, Ayanokouji reveals to the readers that Tsubaki had repeatedly visited Satou to drive her into a corner. Satou was unable to handle the pressure and was eventually forced to confess about it to someone. After greeting Satou outside the women’s toilets in Keyaki Mall, Tsubaki had invited Satou to her room upon which she then threatened Satou. He theorises that the true purpose of this was not to drive Satou to break him and Kei up, but to instead inform him about the presence of a threat and drive him to take action against it. He says he noticed several incongruencies from the unnatural actions that she’d taken. Even though Satou was ignoring her, she repeatedly kept visiting and eventually started threatening her until Satou inevitably succumbed to the pressure and talked to Ayanokouji about it.
Furthermore, even though Satou hadn’t even asked her about it, she went out of her way to mention that she was acting under Yagami’s orders. When Satou then talked to Ayanokouji about this case, he called Kei over to talk about the bullying she’d received in the past. Since Satou had chosen to side with him rather than with Tsubaki, he was confident that she was someone trustworthy. As a result, Satou and Kei’s relationship changed from being good friends to best friends. Tsubaki blames Yagami but Ayanokouji tells her to cut it out and says that Yagami had zero involvement in this case. He says that if Yagami had actually been ordering her around, there would’ve been no need for her to say his name. Tsubaki then asks why Ayanokouji decided to expel Yagami if he knew that Tsubaki was trying to frame him. She says that there weren’t any signs that Ayanokouji had done any investigation into the truth. Ayanokouji says that there was no need for him to investigate either of them, but refuses to elaborate any further. He was now convinced that Tsubaki wasn’t the one who’d manipulated everyone. Tsubaki beckons for Utomiya who then hands his mobile phone to Ayanokouji. The person on the other end was the same person who’d spoken to Ayanokouji once on the phone and once from outside his room. He says that Tsubaki and Utomiya collaborated with him because they wanted revenge on Yagami for expelling their classmate. He reveals that he knew Ayanokouji could defeat Yagami at any time and simply didn’t make any moves because there wasn’t any need to. However, he needed to get rid of Yagami to prevent any more innocent casualties. But Yagami was not an ordinary student and hence couldn’t be easily expelled. This was why Ayanokouji’s help was required. He’d sent Ayanokouji a message saying that people close to him would soon be approached and when that time came, someone would be expelled. However, he hadn’t expected Ayanokouji to immediately take action to expel Yagami. He ask whether he’d ever considered the possibility of Yagami being innocent. Ayanokouji replies that Yagami’s expulsion was dependent on his own actions. If he hadn’t gone around provoking everyone, he wouldn’t have met this end. Ultimately, he wouldn’t have fallen into the trap if he hadn’t tried to peek at the love letter. And if he wasn’t a white room student who could decode the anagram, nothing would have happened to him either. Ayanokouji says that whilst Yagami didn’t leave behind any evidence of his activities, the noose around his neck only got tighter with every time he played with fire. All Ayanokouji did was set the stage to test his innocence. The man on the phone marvels at Ayanokouji’s abilities and says that he was glad to come to this school on Ayanokouji-sensei’s advice. He says he planned to enjoy his school life and promises to stay out of Ayanokouji’s way as long as the two of them didn’t butt heads with one other. He then promptly cut off the phone call.
Tsubaki says that she’d initially thought Housen was the one who’d expelled her classmate but was recently told that Yagami was the one responsible. Ayanokouji thinks that Yagami had quite a lot of innate potential, however his downfall was his obsession with Ayanokouji and the fact that he didn’t care about the rivals he was actually supposed to be competing against. As a result, there were people who didn’t like the fact that he was ruining the battle between the first years. Utomiya warns Tsubaki not to stop just because she’d taken down their enemy. She says that she’s aware and continues on to say that although she didn’t initially feel much attachment to this school, she’d recently found it unexpectedly fun. The two of them say their goodbyes and leave for the dorm while Ayanokouji heads back to the classroom.
On the way there, he encounters Chabashira and thanks her for her hard work. She replies “what hard work” and glares at him childishly. She complains to him about seeing her maid photos all over her colleagues’ desks when she’d returned to the staff room. Ayanokouji brushes off all her complaints by saying it was fine since they’d won. Chabashira further complains that she wasn’t even necessary since they would’ve finished in the top 4 anyway even without her help. Ayanokouji brushes her off by saying 1st looks better than 2nd. Realising that she wasn’t going to get anywhere by complaining any further, Chabashira switches the topic to the surprise of everyone in the staff room when they’d learnt that the conflict with Ryuen’s class was a sham. She continued to talk about the cultural festival but didn’t touch on the topic of Yagami’s expulsion. When the two of them returned to the classroom, Horikita was lying down on her desk asleep. Both he and Chabashira decided not to wake her up. Ayanokouji contemplated wrapping his jacket around her, but decided not to since it’d only make Horikita angry later if she found out he’d approached her while she was asleep. He closed the window and then returned to the corridor to tell Chabashira he’ll wait for Horikita to wake up as a special service for her hard work in winning the cultural festival. She tells him to return to his dorms and says that she’ll take over the job of waiting as a special service for the eminence in the shadows who’d led the class to victory.
The final class points at the end of the cultural festival were:
- Class A led by Sakayanagi: 1201 CP
- Class B led by Horikita: 966 CP
- Class C led by Ryuen: 740 CP
- Class D led by Ichinose 675 CP
Trollcity Translations 
Thanks for the summary!!😉
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Thanks man , deeply appreciated this . KUDOS
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Thank you!
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