COTE x Naruto: New Beginnings

Chapter 31: Secret Conversations

Sakura had once again been invited to Palette by Horikita to discuss the Paper Shuffle. For someone so anti-social, Horikita sure did invite people out often. Since Sakura had been shopping with Kei that day, Horikita had been forced to invite Kei along as well.

For whatever reason, the two girls did not get along at all. Sakura honestly found it hilarious.

Hirata, Ayanokouji, Kushida and even Sudo had been invited as well. The seven of them had discussed the exam, or rather Horikita and Hirata suggested ways the school would choose the pairs for the Paper Shuffle.

In the end, they had all decided that it'd be best if Kushida talked to some of the upperclassmen she was friends with and found out how the exam had been done in their classes. After all, Chabashira-sensei had mentioned to them that the exam was a reoccurring event.

Sakura herself was trying to get some information on the exam. She had decided to start taking her de facto role as the class leader seriously and make sure that no other blunder like the sports festival happened again.

Luckily, Class D had passed the mid-terms once again. Even more surprisingly, Sudo hadn't been in the bottom three. In fact, he'd had maybe seventh worst score in the class, which was a massive improvement. Horikita's tutoring appeared to be working.

Sudo's sudden improvement sparked some hope in Sakura that Class D could change after all. With the ridicule the entire school gave Class D, they were the class with the highest levels of motivation to change and improve.

Perhaps, they could do it after all.

As Sakura made her way back to her dorms, a strategy for the exam suddenly occured to her, making her smile. She took out her phone and opened a new chat with Horikita, who'd given Sakura her phone number some time ago in hopes of not being left out of loop by Sakura.

Today was Horikita's lucky day, Sakura supposed.

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It had not taken any time at all for Kakashi to find out the nature of the exam and how the pairs for the Paper Shuffle would be chosen. He'd also decided that it was impossible for Class A to have anyone expelled even if he didn't know the pattern and didn't do anything about the exam.

That was why he decided to instead get his class to focus on studying for the finals rather than stressing about the pairs. Instead, he chose to focus on a more immediate danger.

Ryuuen. He was planning something big, Kakashi just knew it. He'd started monitoring Ryuuen closer ever since Kakashi noticed that Ryuuen was aware of the cameras Kakashi set up and obviously conscious of them, repeatedly trying to find blind spots and testing the limits. He acted exactly like someone who was used to meeting people in private to discuss rule-breaking and unsavoury strategies.

Kakashi had tried to send his lackey - ehm, Hashimoto - to spy on some Class C people once again, but not much had been revealed to him. Still, he did notice an increase in people sniffing around Class D for whatever reason. Why was Ryuuen interested in Class D, the defects? Sure, they had earned the most points out of everyone so far, but besides the island exam, all of their wins were caused by the other classes either underestimating them or sparing them because they didn't see them as a threat.

At the beginning of the year, when Kakashi had collected information on the other classes who hadn't even known that class competitions would be a thing at that time, he'd been startled by just how flawed everyone in Class D was. Sure, they were called the defects of the school so one might expect them to be weird, but he hadn't expected just how much they truly didn't belong.

There wasn't a single person in Class D that could even hope to compete with the other classes. There were a few people with some talents, but they usually had flaws so great that their talent didn't matter at all.