A Normal High School Life (CotE Fanfic)

Chapter 5.5: Decryption

Day 3

Unlike the first two days, today was uneventful. Early in the morning, we all woke up to renew the beacon. We then had breakfast before heading out to participate in events. We made sure that there is at least one person watching the beacon during the day ever since the incident that happened with Horikita's team the other day. At night, we had agreed to increase that number to two persons.

Then at around midday, we returned back to base to take some rest and renew our beacon before heading back for a second shift of participating in events. We also attempted to find and forage food since we didn't buy enough food to last the week.

When the sun is about the set, everyone returned to base to have dinner. We had decided that it was not worth it to continue pursuing events until the end-time at 19:00 since the sun would already be out. After having dinner, we made our daily reports. During the first three days of the exam, we managed to earn more than 100 team points.

After having dinner, we then chatted amongst ourselves before renewing the beacon for the last time of the day. After that, we went straight to our tent to get some sleep. Well, at least everyone that didn't have to do the first night shift.

Tonight's first shift was assigned to me and Hiyori. We sat down near the campfire overlooking the beacon. Both of us were fully guarded at that time. We talked about various things for what seemed like to be like two hours before we were finally relieved by Amikura and Matsushita.

Now that I think about it, Matsushita had been putting a distance from me since the exam started. I wonder what made her act that way. Is she still sick? Whatever the case, it was obvious that she was acting really strangely. It's a shame I couldn't ask Maya about this since I practically had no clue regarding this matter.

I decided to put aside my thoughts and went to sleep.

6:08 - Day 5

The fourth day went by almost exactly the same as the third. The only noticeable difference is that Shibata went back to the compound to buy 5 meal packs. We were very short on food so we agreed to buy enough food to last us at least until the first half of the sixth day.

It was quickly becoming a routine. Even though the exam had some of us going through our limits, it was the special moments we experienced with each other that kept our spirits up. Like when we hung out and goofed around with friends near the campfire after a long day of work. 

For me, it was truly relaxing.

I had just showered and finished my breakfast. I was currently in the boys' tent looking over a piece of encrypted message. It read:

075 - 101 - 106 - 107 - 112 - 113 - 117 - 103 | 068 - 103 - 117 - 118 | 073 - 107 - 116 - 110 - 035

(Can you figure out the message?)

After looking at the message for a while, I noted down the most commonly occurring numbers and tried several combinations. After messing around for a while, I finally cracked the code. I decided to decrypt some more messages before I noticed that I had accidentally cracked all of them. Looks like I had too much fun.

Thank goodness there was no one else here.

I had noticed that one message was noticeably more difficult than the others. I assumed that the message belonged to Arisu. Well, it was nothing that I couldn't solve, though.

7:21 - Day 5

I was currently walking with Shibata towards some mountains in the north of our camp. We were going to participate in a team-based event.