COTE x Naruto: New Beginnings

Chapter 10: Trouble Brewing

The first week of May was nightmarish for the students of class 1-D.

Somehow, most of them had managed to spend all the 100,000 points they had received in the first month.

Despite her previous reservations about spending points and not knowing what she would spend them on anyway, after befriending many of the girls in her class and even in some other classes (namely Class B), Sakura had also spent almost all of her private points.

Between lunches with friends, movie nights, and shopping sprees with overspenders like Kei, Sakura was down to 5,000 points.

"Ahh, this feels familiar," she muttered to herself as she dug into her free vegetable meal set. Next to her, her classmate and one of her recent friends Mori Nene, looked as if she was about to cry.

"How can you eat this, Sakura-chan?!" She wondered, digging through her own vegetable meal set.

"Ah, I dunno, sure it tastes bad, but if you think about other things, you can sort of ignore the flavor. Try it! Think about today's history class or a boy you find cute..." Sakura suggested.

That was sort of bullshit. Sure, not thinking about the flavors helped, but Sakura was okay eating foods like these because she was used to them, not because of some secret method. She wasn't quite ready to admit to her past though.

"I think we just have to get used to it, don't we?" Chiaki said from her seat next to Nene.

The two of them were pretty good friends, so it wasn't uncommon for them to sit together at all.

Occasionally, Sakura joined them too for a chat. She enjoyed keeping up with all her friends, and she had many. She was especially grateful to them now.

After receiving the news from Chabashira-sensei, Sakura had avoided everyone for a week, only going to classes and doing Judo to take her frustrations out.

She hadn't believed that there was a way that they, Class D, could ever surpass Class A. Chabashira-sensei hadn't even told them how!

But now, the mid-terms were drawing near, and she'd realized that wallowing in self-pity and avoiding her friends would do her no good. Her friends had been worried about her too. They all were downtrodden after the events of the first of May, but nobody had taken it quite as hard as Sakura had. It was her friends' determination to get her out of her dorm room to hang out that had ended up snapping her out of her self-pity.

She wasn't sure if there was a chance for Class D to get themselves out of the situation they were in, but even if there wasn't, there were still so many things for her to do at this school, and by living here, her mother didn't have to feed her anyway, so at least she was helping her in that regard.

Yeah, she wouldn't do anyone any good by avoiding them and constantly glaring at people.

So she stopped, and her life was almost the same as it had been before, except now, instead of thoughtlessly spending their points, her classmates were forced to get by with the freebies the school offered.

Thanks to that, the atmosphere was much gloomier, especially so with the exams that could get some of her classmates expelled drawing near.

To combat this, Hirata had created a study group for those who felt unsure they would pass.

Unfortunately, not everyone that needed it had joined.

Sudo, Ike, and Yamauchi, the so-called idiot trio of their class, hadn't joined for whatever reason.

Honestly, Sakura didn't particularly think she'd mind if those guys got expelled.

She wasn't particularly fond of them; they constantly acted like perverts, and hardly any girl in the class liked them, especially Yamauchi and Ike.