Chapter 6. Chapter 7

Chapter 6

After just one hour of the exam, Sakayanagi’s Class A had reached the final question. Similarly to Horikita, Sakayanagi had made preparations to always split the first vote. As a result, the first vote had 2 votes for yes and 36 for no. All other students had voted for no. When Hashimoto asked Sakayanagi for her instructions, she instead asked for his opinion. He thinks that they should take some time to think about it since the correct answer was possibly less obvious than it looked. Sakayanagi think it’s nonsense to pick such an option when their class is currently head and shoulders above the other classes

(Arisu, why are you copying Kouenji’s English? )

When Hashimoto says he doesn’t want to regret this decision in the future, Sakayanagi says that there are also demerits to reducing the number of people in their class. The class’ total number of private points will decrease (this is a lie lmao, since they each get 10, 000 extra points) and the class will lose morale and trust in each other. Sakayanagi says that she wouldn’t expel any of her classmates who were working hard for her sake unlike Yahiro and Katsuragi. But internally, she notes that this was a lie and if they were actually in an emergency situation, she would mercilessly cut any of them off. She just judged that keeping her classmates’ trust in her was more important at the moment. Thus, Class A finished the exam on the second vote with 0 votes for yes and 38 votes for no.

Chapter 7

(the POV is back to Horikita’s class)

Results of the 10^th vote: 1 vote for yes, 38 votes for no.

Chabashira: “Since the votes were not unanimous, we will now begin the interval period. ”

Regardless of how much Horikita appealed, the culprit did not name themselves. Chabashira’s face was looking paler with every single time that she had to repeat the exact same words. Hirata asks his classmates to raise their hand if they voted for no. 38 people raised their hands. The only one who didn’t was Kouenji who couldn’t be bothered to raise his hand.

Horikita goes around the class and looks into everyone’s eyes to see if they’re lying. (what are you wasting time for if you basically already know the culprit? )

Thus the break interval runs out and it was time to vote again.

Results of the 11^th vote: 1 vote for yes, 38 votes for no.

All of their classmates thought that this anonymous individual will continue voting ‘yes’ until time is close to running out. Then they will be forced to vote ‘no’ and the class will pass the special exam without having to expel anyone. However, Ayanokouji knew. The only result awaiting for them would be running out of time and losing 300 class points. Ayanokouji didn’t think there was anything wrong with Horikita’s strategy. However, it was fundamentally impossible for them to clear this exam without expelling anyone. The main issue being that the culprit didn’t actually view time running out as a detrimental result. No forms of persuasion would work on them. The basic premise of this exam was that all the students would rank the outcomes from best to worst as:

Don’t expel > = expel > running out of time

However, there was a single student whose priorities were:

Expel > running out of time > Don’t expel

In that case, the only solution was for the class to unanimously elect to expel someone. Hence, Ayanokouji decided to make a move.

Results of the 12^th vote: 2 votes for yes, 37 votes for no.

Horikita looked at the results in despair as if she were stuck in a nightmare. By casting a vote for ‘yes’, Ayanokouji broke the unified solidarity that the class had until then. Opinions in the class started heading in the direction of there being no choice but to expel someone.

Results of the 13^th vote: 5 votes for yes, 34 votes for no.

Results of the 14^th vote: 12 votes for yes, 27 votes for no.

More and more students started to vote in favour of expelling someone because they had confidence that they themselves would be safe. Hirata and Horikita desperately tried to resist against the class’ momentum, claiming that it would be even more difficult to get unanimity in choosing a student to expel. Ayanokouji then speaks out and says that he had voted ‘yes’ in the 14^th vote which had just been held (even though he had actually been voting ‘yes’ since the 12^th vote)

Ayanokouji implies to Horikita that now is their only chance to gain unanimity. If they try to vote to expel after exposing the traitor, that person would simply continue to vote in oppsoition to the rest of the class. Hirata asks him if they had the right to judge whether someone should be expelled just for voting ‘yes’. Ayanokouji answers that they have that right since this person was committing the sin of preventing their class from reaching Class A. Hirata tries to hold out on the hope that this person would change their vote once time was close to running out. However, Ayanokouji asks him if he was willing to bet their class’ future on such an uncertainty. He then reveals that just like Horikita, he also has an idea of who the traitor is. Akito tries to convince him to name that person now and let the class try to convince them together, however Ayanokouji says that this individual will never change their vote after he names them. He warns Horikita that their opponent was fighting a battle to the death. He then tells Hirata that the next vote will be the vote that decides their fate. Whether they will unanimously choose to not expel or decide to expel someone will all rest on the results of this single vote. Hirata tries to protest but eventually acknowledges that he can’t just selfishly continue being a nuisance to the class.

Hirata then announces to the class that he agrees with Ayanokouji’s plan, thus influencing the rest of the class.

Results of the 15^th vote: 1 vote for yes, 38 votes for no.

Everyone in the class could understand from this vote that the traitor was prepared for the class to run out of time. Ayanokouji receives Hirata and Horikita’s consent and then warns the rest of their class that from now on, if they were to choose to vote ‘no’, they would need to provide a reason why.

Results of the 16^th vote: 39 votes for yes, 0 votes for no.

Chabashira gets PTSD as she announces that the class voted unanimously to expel. Everyone looks towards Horikita and Ayanokouji to announce the name of the traitor, but neither of them say anything. Instead, Hirata nominates himself as the first target. He receives 6 votes to expel and 32 votes against. In the break interval, Sudou and Keisei demanded for Ayanokouji and Horikita to name the traitor. Ayanokouji asks them to wait. Many students start asking each other for mutual protection whilst others start crying as they regret voting to expel. Kushida starts crying as well and Mii-chan pats her back. Kushida says she already regrets that things came to this and wonders why she agreed to vote yes. Sudou and Ike start comforting Kushida and tell her not to blame herself because it wasn’t her fault. Kushida continues crying and says that she thinks they could have unanimously agreed to not expel. She says that they would definitely have come to an understanding if they continued persuading the person who voted yes. Kushida then appeals to the class, saying that there’s no metric such as sports or academics or OAA that they can use to judge whether someone should be expelled. She then says that she’s prepared to be criticised for this opinion and then names Horikita and Ayanokouji as the people who should take responsibility for putting the class in this situation. Ayanokouji notes that Kushida is playing this very intelligently. By naming himself and Horikita, if they try to accuse her back of being the traitor, there will be people who think they are just retaliating against her unfairly. But before he could say anything, Kei interrupts and says that she would never vote for Ayanokouji’s expulsion and hence the vote would fail before it even began. Hondou claims that she’s being selfish, but Kei accuses him of doing the exact same thing with Onizuka. Hondou tries to defend himself by saying he wasn’t the one trying to get the class to agree to expel, but Kei says that Ayanokouji was only voicing out the thoughts of everyone in the class. She says it doesn’t matter to her whether they rise to Class B or fall to Class D since Ayanokouji meant everything to her. But before she can continue any further, Ayanokouji stops her and tells her that if she says any more, the class will target her instead. Sudou also says he won’t allow Horikita to get expelled.

Haruka says that she thinks the class should first listen to Horikita and Ayanokouji because at the end of the day, the person who’s at fault is the one who continuously voted to expel. Kushida reflects and says that’s right but mentions the danger of Ayanokouji and Horikita naming the wrong person. But Chabashira first intervenes and says that they need to nominate a target to expel. Horikita nominates herself and receives 16 votes in favour of expulsion and 22 against. Ayanokouji thinks that this was a pretty funny outcome. Sudou yells for everyone who voted yes to raise their hands so that he can kill them. Horikita and Hirata calm him down, saying that she will be safe as long as Sudou continues to vote to defend her. Hirata then urges Ayanokouji and Horikita to name the traitor. Ayanokouji says that if he gets the traitor wrong, he will take responsibility for this incident and let himself be expelled. Kushida shows consideration for Ayanokouji and says that she doesn’t want any of her classmates, including Ayanokouji, to be expelled. Ayanokouji thanks her for her consideration but says that he’ll be fine. He then also gets Kei to promise not to block his expulsion if it ends up happening. He says that just like Kushida claimed, he has responsibility for influencing the class to choose this option. But ultimately, the person most responsible was the anonymous voter who continued voting to expel. Kei, Kushida, Airi, Haruka and Akito all agree to his opinion. Ayanokouji says that the reason why he was able to drop a name was because he was close to 100% certain that he was right. Kushida then says: “Okay, I’ll believe in Ayanokouji-kun. ” Ayanokouji then names Kushida as the traitor.

A moment of silence followed before everyone in the class gasped in surprise. Kushida asked if Ayanokouji was naming her because she had requested for Ayanokouji and Horikita to take responsibility earlier. After seeing Kushida on the verge of crying, Hondou defended her by saying it was impossible for Kushida to be the traitor. Ayanokouji says that he obviously doesn’t know for certain whether Kushida was the traitor since the vote itself is anonymous. However, he had enough reason to believe he was right. Kushida tries to play the victim again by saying that she can’t complain even if she gets slandered by lies since she was the one who decided to put herself in the firing line for the sake of the class. Ayanokouji then reveals that Kushida had always tried to expel him and Horikita. He talks about Kushida’s middle school history with Horikita and the fact that she had a hidden personality. However, Ike told him to shut up because it was impossible for Kushida to be the traitor. Numerous other people also came out in support of Kushida while mocking Ayanokouji for taking so long to name a person only to end up naming Kushida. They also started badmouthing him for acting out of character even though the usual impression of him within the class was that of a quiet guy. As a result, many of his classmates didn’t trust what he said. Kushida urges everyone to stop blaming Ayanokouji since she says she can understand why he would want to blame someone else in this situation. Their classmates praise Kushida for being so kind even when someone else was talking shit about her. Hirata tries to calm the class down and get them to listen to Ayanokouji but Ike tries to shut him down by saying that no one can bear to continue listening to Ayanokouji’s nonsense. Hirata demands for Ayanokouji to show some evidence. He tries to continue but once again gets interrupted by Kushida who pleads for him to stop lying. Haruka also tries to urge him to drop the subject, saying that while she’s Ayanokouji’s ally, Kushida is also her friend. Ayanokouji says he needs to continue because he has the obligation to everyone in the class to prove who the traitor was. Haruka still can’t believe that the traitor could ever be Kushida. As Ayanokouji talked about Kushida’s dark history, Chabashira interrupted them and told them it was time to nominate a candidate. The students want to nominate Ayanokouji but Kushida nominates herself saying that she doesn’t want to make Ayanokouji to lie any more. She says she hopes that the class will return to normal once she gets expelled and then asks for everyone to please vote for her.

The result of the 19^th vote: 5 votes for yes, 33 votes for no.

Ike says that they can’t possibly let Kushida be expelled and the other 32 students also nod in agreement with him. The class calls Ayanokouji pathetic for trying to expel Kushida to protect himself. They point out inconsistencies in his story such as Kushida never having made an attempt at expelling him or Horikita. Ayanokouji points out the Class Poll special exam held last year where Kushida collaborated with Yamauchi to try to expel him and then says that expelling one’s own classmates is a difficult thing to do. Hondou angrily demands that he provide evidence if he wants to continue smearing Kushida’s reputation. Ayanokouji then talks about the deal he made with Kushida where he provides half of his private point income in exchange for a non-aggression pact. Kushida tries to lie and say that Ayanokouji was merely lending her his private points for safekeeping, but he reveals that even if Kushida already moved her version of the recording from her phone to some other device, Ayanokouji himself recorded the conversation on his phone. He begins recounting the conversation but Kushida keeps repeating that he’s lying. He says that they can ask Chabashira to take out his phone as evidence but Kushida says that she doesn’t mind but it would be impossible because they’re in the middle of a special exam. Ayanokouji says that he doesn’t need to be the one to press the buttons himself since he can just get Chabashira to do it in his place. Kushida anxiously looked towards Chabashira. She hadn’t considered the possibility of phones being used as evidence in this exam since they had been confiscated beforehand. As Ayanokouji continues recounting the conversation, Kushida tells him to shut up. But he ignored her and continued until she finally snapped and forcefully screamed over him. She apologised to her classmates for lying to them and says that she actually had an argument with Ayanokouji and then made up with him in exchange for half of his private points. But she insists that she never once thought of voting to expel during this exam. She then accused Ayanokouji of perhaps being the person who repeatedly voted to expel. She theorises that Ayanokouji wanted to expel her so he took action in this exam to force the class to unanimously vote to expel. She then explains that Ayanokouji had non-consensually touched her chest soon after enrolling at this school. All the girls in the class as well as many of the boys who had a crush on Kushida immediately started sending looks of disgust towards Ayanokouji. Kushida says that she also has evidence and that she kept the uniform which had his fingerprints on them. When Kei asks him to explain himself, he says that she’s straight up lying and either way, it’s scientifically impossible to store fingerprints for one and a half years. He also adds that if he really touched her breasts like that, she would have reported it to the school immediately. Ayanokouji then revealed that Kushida had also cooperated with Ryuuen in the past to try to expel Horikita. Kushida walks up to him and grabbed him by the collar before demanding to know why he betrayed her.

Ayanokouji replies that neither he nor Horikita had wanted to do this. But he says that Kushida herself was the one who forced his hand since she didn’t accept any outcome other than expulsion. He had no choice but to expose her for the sake of protecting their classmates. Kushida’s classmates still want to believe in her and hope that Ayanokouji was lying. But Kushida admits that everything he said was true. She then goes on a rant and spills the beans on everything. Ayanokouji asks her why she uncharacteristically tried so hard to expel Horikita despite knowing how difficult it would be. Kushida averts her eyes for a second before saying that she didn’t have any special reason but simply couldn’t help herself. Ayanokouji knows that at this point it would still be difficult to convince the class to unanimously vote for Kushida’s expulsion so he needs Kushida to direct more hatred towards herself. He goads Kushida into revealing the class’ secrets. First, she says that Kei, Mori and Matsushita were laughing about Shinohara being ugly and hence she was only able to get ugly boys to chase after her. Kushida says that she tried to stop them at the time, but inside she was actually thinking the exact same thing as them. She then said that Shinohara had been indecisive about whether to go out with Komiya and Ike and asks her whether she was using Ike as a test run before going out with her true love Komiya. She then also reveals that Mii-chan had feelings for Hirata and says she finds it disgusting when Haruka calls her by a nickname and that she only does it to disguise the fact that she has no friends.

(Horikita’s pov)

Only a few minutes after Ayanokouji exposed Kushida, everyone’s attitude towards her had completely changed. Even though Kushida’s bonds with her friends should have been just as strong as those between members of the Ayanokouji group, their friendships had been completely shattered. Even though she was the first to know of Kushida’s dark history, Horikita doesn’t think she would be able to achieve the same effect if she tried the same thing. That alone showed her the infathomable depths of Ayanokouji’s true ability. As the classroom around her descended into the pits of hell, time slowed down for her as she began to think. She began to weigh Kushida on a scale. She believes Kushida is worth more than 100 class points but finds herself struggling to justify saving Kushida at the cost of 350 class points. However, by slowing time to a complete stop and reaching even deeper for an answer, she was able to find a solution which would allow her to sacrifice neither Kushida nor the class points.

(the second half of this part is translated by me on the Classroom of the Elite discord channel)

(I translated the dialogue portions of Horikita’s defence of Kushida and Ayanokouji’s subsequent nomination of Airi as the candidate for expulsion. )

Horikita’s defence of Kushida

Ayanokouji’s nomination of Airi and subsequent conflict

One of the notable things to mention is that in his monologue, Ayanokouji realised that Horikita was about to namedrop Airi. He took over because of two reasons.

1. He needs Horikita to retain the class’ trust to continue being the class leader in the future.

2. Horikita’s plan was half baked and she wouldn’t have been able to successfully convince Airi (and by extension Haruka).

Eventually, Haruka considers leaving the school together with Airi in the final vote, but Airi breaks the exam rules to shout at her and convince her to vote for her. Haruka does so out of respect for Airi’s wishes. At the end of the exam, Chabashira reveals that the they were the last class to finish the exam and that they gained 150 class points while every other class only gained 50 class points.

(This part is also translated on the Classroom of the Elite discord channel)

After the exam, Horikita apologises to Ayanokouji for leaving him alone to take the brunt of the class’ hatred. She thinks that Ayanokouji’s friendships were left in an irreparable state but Ayanokouji tells her that the current situation may end up being more convenient for him and then refuses to provide further clarification. Airi then appears so she can show her new ‘makeover’ image to Ayanokouji before she leaves the school. They say their farewells to each other before Airi turns and leaves. Ayanokouji feels nostalgic as he remembers seeing a similar scene numerous times within the White Room.

(This part is also translated on the Classroom of the Elite discord channel)

Epilogue

After the special exam, Chabashira calls Ayanokouji out for a meeting on the rooftop. She recounts her own story of this special exam from back in her school days. Her Class B were only 73 points behind Class A and this special exam was their final special exam before the graduation exam. Their class were also able to smoothly proceed to the final question. However, many of her classmates desired the 100 class points since it would allow them to reach Class A. The day before the exam, Chabashira had started going out with a leader figure in their class who she described as a mix of Hirata and Ike. She described him as someone who was cheerful and acted as a mood maker for the entire class. He was unable to bear the thought of expelling any of his classmates who he had worked alongside tooth and nail for three whole years so he nominated himself for expulsion instead. Usually there would be many detriments to expelling a class leader, however, the only exam left was the graduation exam. The only person in the class who objected to his self-sacrifice was Chabashira. No matter how much her friends tried to persuade her, she stubbornly refused to vote to expel him. Eventually, the class grew irritated of her and tried to expel her instead. But this time, her boyfriend protected her and refused to let her be expelled either. Eventually, the class ran out of time and lost 300 class points, completely ruining their chances of reaching Class A. To add insult to injury, Class A not only expelled a person to gain 100 Class Points, but won the Graduation Exam as well. Chabashira broke up with her boyfriend immediately after the exam which had left irreparable scars on their minds as they had all sorts of abuse hurled at them by their classmates.

Chabashira says that during her three years of high school, that man and reaching Class A meant everything to her. She now thinks that she was stupid since three years of high school are very insignificant in the grand scale of a person’s life. She thinks that even if she were unable to reach Class A, she should’ve strived to have an exam where she wouldn’t have any regrets. She asks Ayanokouji what he thinks was the correct answer. Ayanokouji replies that he doesn’t think there is a single correct answer for this special exam. Unless there was a truly incompetent and unnecessary student, people will always doubt whether they made the right choice. Chabashira starts reminiscing and says “If only I had a student like you in my class…” but then stops herself, saying that it’s impossible to return and fix the mistakes of the past. She then asks Ayanokouji about why he chose to nominate Airi even though she was a close friend to him and even held romantic feelings for him. She asks him if there was any option where he could have saved her and instead sacrificed another student. He replies that at the time, Horikita had the momentum and the class’ opinion was aligned with her. He says he didn’t have enough time to convince their classmates. Chabashira asks whether he felt hurt at all by expelling Airi. Ayanokouji says that he too would have preferred a different method to pass the exam. But someone needed to be expelled for them to pass that exam. He didn’t expect Horikita to protect Kushida. The moment that happened, the only method he could choose was social darwinism. Amongst the students with low grades, Airi was the easiest to expel. The other students would have many friends on their side whilst Airi only had Haruka as a major obstacle. He predicted that even if Haruka were to nominate herself, they would only waste ten minutes. Additionally, Airi’s personality also made things easier. He knew that Haruka would never cast a vote to expel Airi except for the case when Airi herself desired it. He knew that Airi wouldn’t be able to burden the class by making them lose 300 points for her sake. Lastly, if someone important to Airi were to tell her that she was the most unnecessary student in the class, she would have no choice but to listen to them.

Ayanokouji says that people may call him a demon or human trash. But he says that this was a role that someone needed to take. Chabashira says that she’s accepted expulsion as a logical everyday aspect of this school. But she will never be able to be as ruthless as Ayanokouji. She wonders how many people he’s abandoned to reach this level of emotional apathy. Ayanokouji doesn’t know either just like he doesn’t remember the colour and shape of all the pebbles he kicks by the wayside on a road. Chabashira thanks Ayanokouji for listening to her and says that she had been trapped in her past for a very long time. But she finally realised that she needs to move on and doesn’t have the time to dwell on the past. She promises to fulfill her responsibilities as a teacher so that her students will be able to continue their fight without having any regrets. In the past she often dreamed about her class helping her fulfill her unfulfilled dreams but she would always recall a painful memory and be unable to properly face her students. Chabashira smiles at Ayanokouji and promises him that she will make sure their class graduates as Class A. Ayanokouji thinks that Chabashira will be fine from now on.

⇐ Предыдущая 8 9 10 11 121314 15 16 17 Следующая ⇒