Our weekend went by in a flash, and before we knew it, Chabashira-sensei had walked inside the classroom with the test papers in hand. The quiz was moved to today, a Tuesday, because of some rescheduling issues, so we had time to briefly discuss our strategies yesterday.
"We'll begin shortly, but first, I would like to make an announcement. You nominated Class D as your target for the Paper Shuffle, but you were contested by Class C. Unfortunately, the school has decided that Class C will target Class D."
The atmosphere turned heavy as my classmates started to murmur.
"We lost the lottery..."
"How unlucky..."
"And for your chosen target... It will be Class C," Chabashira-sensei continued.
"We'll have to compete with Ichinose-san's class?"
"That means we need to get a higher score than them, right?"
"Do we even stand a chance...?"
Even Horikita started to look tense. This wasn't a favorable match-up by any means. We'll have to fight at a disadvantage.
"Meanwhile, Class D has targeted Class B without any competition. And for Class B, well you could already guess by process of elimination. Their target will be Class A."
"Class B will target us?!"
"Can this get any worse?!"
Sakayanagi targeted our class. That wasn't a surprise by any means. However...
"Seriously...? Ryuuen targeted Sakayanagi's class?"
"That's crazy..."
"Chabashira-sensei." Horikita raised her hand.
"What is it, Horikita?"
"You said that "the school has decided that Class C will target Class D," right...?"
"Yes. Is there a problem?" Chabashira-sensei asked, a small grin forming on her lips.
"As far as I remember, contested nominations will be decided via lottery... But did the lottery even happen?"
Her question confused almost everyone in the class, and understandably so. Unless you paid attention to how the match-ups went, you won't really notice why Horikita would ask such a question.
"What do you mean, Horikita-san?" asked Hirata.
"Well, we nominated Class D... Class D nominated Class B... And Class B nominated our class. It's a three-way nomination with Class C out of the loop. No matter class they choose to nominate, they'd end up attacking themselves if they lose the lottery. So... it made me wonder if the school deliberately made the choice of having Class C attack Class D to prevent a three-way match-up."
The uproar got a little bit louder as our classmates started to understand what Horikita was getting at.
"I see... If that was the case, then we'd lose no matter what," said Hirata.
"And since it was fairly obvious that our choice would be Class D, then maybe..." Horikita's expression turned dark. "Maybe Class D... or rather, Ryuuen-kun, deliberately chose to nominate Class B to guarantee this outcome..."
"Great observation," Chabashira-sensei nodded in agreement. "You're right about how the process went. Because of the three-way nomination between Class A, Class B, and Class D, the school decided to approve Class C's choice no matter what class they nominated. It was the most efficient way to have proper match-ups."
In other words, we never had the chance to get our ideal match-up to begin with.
"That said, whether Class D made their choice while anticipating this outcome isn't something I would know," she shrugged.
YOU ARE READING
Classroom of the Elite: Alter - Solace
FanfictionNOTICE: Please read "Classroom of the Elite: Alter - Self-Test" before reading this. Picking up on where Self-Test left off, Kiyotaka and his classmates finally reached Class A. However, because of this, Kiyotaka decided to permanently step down a...
