Classroom of the Elite: The New Elite

Chapter 25

After Ryuuen's warning, I expected the last few days leading up to the exam to be problematic for me, but surprisingly, they went by without a hitch. Unfortunately, Ryuuen wasn't the only one I had to worry about in this exam.

"You look kinda nervous, Hisashi."

"Yeah, you're usually super calm on exam days considering your grades and how much you study. Are you afraid you might not do well?"

"No, it's not that."

"Then, are you worried that Karuizawa might do really badly?"

"Y-Yeah. It's not that I want to doubt her, but she doesn't exactly have the best track record."

"Don't worry. I talked with Karuizawa a ton during the past week, and she told me she's been attending all of Hirata's study sessions."

"I see. That's a relief."

I wasn't being entirely honest here. While it's true that Karuizawa isn't the brightest student, she'd have to do an especially horrid job for us to be at risk of getting expelled. The problem rests with Horikita's bet with Kushida. I can't exactly tell my friends that Kushida's a psycho bitch, and I'll have to drop out of school if she scores better than Horikita on the math exam. Speaking of Horikita...

"You three go on ahead. There's something I need to take care of."

With no one else around, I made my way to Horikita.

"Please tell me you're gonna ace the math exam."

"You're more on edge than I expected. Are you that scared you might go home?"

"Can you blame me? I know I wasn't exactly forced into this situation, but that doesn't exactly calm my nerves."

Horikita wore an unusually caring expression after my confession.

"It'll be fine. I won't let Kushida get the better of me. Oh, and, before I forget, thank you for your help during this exam. You helped with the tutoring, exam questions, and even got intel on Class C's performance on previous exams. It really saved us a lot of time and effort."

"Oh, umm, no problem."  

Even though Horikita's been a lot friendlier towards me recently, her response still felt a lot more heart-warming than I anticipated. Well, at this point, I should probably override the image I had of her at the start of the school year. 

After our quick talk, I entered the silent classroom and took my seat. The first exam we'll be taking today is Japanese and the last one is the dreaded math exam that carries our fates.

____________________

"Time's up. Pass your papers to the front."

Whew. We're done for the day, meaning we've cleared four out of the eight exams. The questions were pretty tough in comparison to previous exams, but I'm confident I did well.

While I was discussing the exams with my friends, Karuizawa came up to me.

"Hey, so listen. I don't think I did that good of a job today. I'm pretty sure my grades will be in the forties. But, that's enough, right?"

"You can make up the difference, Hisashi, right?"

"Yeah, I'm positive I've scored in the nineties on all of today's exams."

"T-That much? Well, I guess I was worried over nothing."

I might be able to get enough points on my own, but that's not the kind of response I want to hear from my partner.