The Odd One Out

Chapter 9.1 - Against The Odds

A few weeks went by and it was now the beginning of March. We were rapidly approaching the end of our first year at Tokyo's most prestigious high school.

Asahina had recently been going around and interviewing clubs, writing reports on each one of them as it was almost the end of the semester. She took her role as secretary quite seriously. I was glad I didn't have to do all the boring work.

There was somewhat of an awkward atmosphere in Class D, but the class managed to get good grades on the midterms and got an increase in class points.

Kushida and Horikita got even closer, to the surprise of the vast majority of students. Often, I see both of them having lunch together. It would be safe to qualify them as friends. Who knew such development could happen?

Kushida started coming to my room less and less frequently. She told me that she started feeling really good, and didn't feel the need to let out her frustration as much as before.

As for Hirata, one could tell how he wasn't the same, but he was still as determined as ever to help the class rise to Class A, much like Horikita. Class D were in a good spot, despite what the rankings said.

We were in homeroom when Chabashira-sensei announced the final special exam of the first year. The Event Selection Exam.

Chabashira-sensei went on to explain the special exam.

In this exam, each class will come up with 10 events. The rules of these events will also be decided by the class and must be created in such a way that there are no ties and that a winner can be decided in each game. The events must be popular enough to be ubiquitous. Such events include rock paper scissors or chess.

In the cases of the events being written tests questions and other similar events, the school will decide the questions in order to ensure the fairness of the test.

All 10 events must be unique and must not take too long to finish. For any event, the minimum number of participants is 1 and the maximum number of participants is 20, including substitutes. Each student can only participate in one event, unless all of the student's classmates have already participated in one event each, in which case that student may participate more than once.

Each class must also choose one "Commanding Tower", or more simply, a "commander". If the class wins, the commander earns private points individually, but if the class loses, they will be expelled. However, the expulsion can be overturned using private points or a Protection Point.

The commander needed to be decided by the end of the day. But for our class, the choice was quite obvious as someone had a Protection Point.

"I think Hirata should be the commander."

"I agree, he has a Protection Point so it's the best choice."

Almost instantly, our class agreed on Hirata being the commander.

Chabashira-sensei continued her explanation.

The commander of each class will draw a lottery and the winner will get to decide which class they wish to compete against. For example, if Class D were to win the lottery and choose to compete with Class C, then Class B will be forced to compete with Class A.

Alhough each class has to select 10 events, 5 of them need to be selected as certain events, those are the events the class actually wish to compete in. The remaining 5 have to be selected to deceive other classes about which events are going to be selected. The 10 events of the other class and their corresponding rule will be announced in a week.

Among the 10 certain events of both the competing classes, the school then chooses 7 events and announces them on the day of the test, a week after the certain events announcement. It is in these 7 events that the classes will actually compete against each other. Each event is worth 30 Class Points, meaning the winning class receives 30 points and the losing class has 30 points deducted. The class with the most events won would be considered the winner and receive an additional 100 points.