Classroom of the Elite: Free Will

V5: Chapter 6 - For the Points

Ayanokouji Kiyotaka POV

The Hurdle Race came next.

It was like the 100-meter dash in that it was based on speed. However, you also needed to clear hurdles while running. If you knocked down or touched a hurdle, your time was penalized.

If you knocked the hurdle down, the penalty was 0.5 seconds. If you only touched it, 0.3 seconds. There were ten hurdles in all, placed at ten-meter intervals. If you knocked them all down, you'd have five seconds added to your time. It'd be completely hopeless.

This time, Sudou was starting in this competition's final group.

"If you guys place last, I'm gonna beat you all," he warned.

The unathletic students trembled at the pressure.

"Dude, you're harsher than Horikita," Ike complained.

Leaving them at that, I joined my lane, since I was on the first group.

In what must be like the twentieth coincidence of the day, the seven sprinters I would compete against were the same ones of the 100-meter dash.

"Yo, King! Try not to crush us so badly this time," Hashimoto taunted.

I gave a slight nod not really understanding him. I hadn't crushed anyone. Hashimoto's time on the 100-meter dash had been more than acceptable despite not entering the top four.

Since Koenji wanted me to focus on the race I suppose I could comply to his request... I was curious to know how my opponents would perform, though.

We positioned ourselves in the starting position and I turned to my left to see Matsuo. His face was somewhere between a frown and a focused expression. When I was going to ask what was wrong, he stormed off running at full speed.

It took me a second to understand the signal had been given and when I did, I began running to try and recover from that mediocre start. Sudou's curses were quite audible from the distance, but I had no reason to complain. Thanks to my distraction I could see how everyone was doing.

I quickly overtook Kaneda and Yoshimoto. Shibata despite noticeably being out of shape because of his injury was on pair with Hashimoto. Their race would have been breath-taking if they weren't competing for the sixth place. Just as I left those two behind I realised I was already on the second half of the race, from what I had seen everyone except for the Class C students had cleared all their hurdles so far. Koenji was already unattainable, but I could get the second place. Since I didn't want to hear Sudou lecturing me, I decided to speed up and surpass Kito and Matsuo.

When I finished the race Koenji addressed me an unsatisfied look before turning away and leaving in the opposite direction to the tent.

Hmm... I suppose it's true that I'm not treating our competition seriously enough.

As I joined my classmates to apologise for my distraction, I noticed that Karma and Nao were laughing their heads off at me while the platinum-blonde-haired girl Karma had introduced to me earlier was addressing me a playful smile.

I ignore the three of them and joined Sudou and Horikita. Surprisingly, instead of lecturing me, they praised how I recovered from the bad start.

The other races for the boys and the girls continued and I was pleased to see that our overall performance had been slightly better to the one at the 100-meter dash. Despite still having a bad performance, Class B did a bit better as well.

As the second-year students entered the track to begin their races Hirata and Karuizawa approached me.

"Ahhhh..." Karuizawa sighed as she sat at my right. Hirata sat at my left. "I'm drained."