Ayanokouji What If: Popularity Time

V4 Chapter 5: The Path To The Truth

                          Kiyotaka Pov

Stepping into my dorm room with Hirata, we both sat onto our beds to relax. We were both still absorbing the information given by our proctor and my molester.

This exam would test everyone's ability to cooperate, think critically and assess problems to then be fixed. Cooperation between classes would be extremely difficult however, especially in the Dragon Group.

The flames of conflict already released their billowing black smoke into our conference room, and it would take but one single sly comment or accidental insult to set the whole room ablaze.

Tomorrow will be the first discussion, and perhaps one of the most important ones to make impressions in. Perhaps letting someone else act as a moderator would be beneficial.

Hirata and Kikyo would likely push themselves forth into the group's focus so as to help initiate the conversation, however, there is a chance that either of them might let slip important information.

Allowing someone like Ichinose or Katsuragi to lead the discussion would be beneficial, covering both Class D from accidentally letting information slip but also from Ryuen in the case he decides to use an aggressive system to moderate.

As for what condition our group and the others should try to clear? Condition 1 seems to be the most beneficial to everyone, and I could see everyone being happy at the end of that result.

On the other hand however, with a strategy to just trust everyone in the group, the traitor could easily screw the VIP over and report them to the school, thus gaining their 50 class points.

I have no particular need to try and force my class into getting 50 class points or more, in fact 500,000 private points would be more beneficial in the long run to prevent any unforeseen circumstances.

Going to bed, I decided to speak to the class tomorrow about the potential strategies.

I met Horikita on the ship deck. She was sitting at the bar, ordering black tea, when I sat down next to her.

"Ayanokouji-Kun, good morning. I suppose we should start?"

I nodded, "firstly, who's in your group Horikita?"

She pulled out her notebook and flipped to a page with a green bookmark. She cleared her throat and started, "in Class D: Karuizawa-San, Sotomura-Kun, and Yukimura-Kun. In Class C: Ibuki-San, Manabe-San, and then two other girls who I do not know. In Class B: Hamaguchi-Kun, Beppu-Kun, and Shibata-Kun. And Class A: Machida-Kun, Takemoto-Kun, and one boy."

"Interesting, your group seems to be an even mix of loners and popular kids."

"I suspected as much about my group, what about yours?"

I listed off the group members, and her eyes widened, "all the class leaders in one group?"

"I'm curious if there's a pattern of some sort to it. Any ideas?"

Horikita furrowed her brow and leaned forward onto the counter, "perhaps they are divided by grades?"

"That doesn't make sense, since in our class we have two high ranking and two low ranking students, but the other three classes have higher ranking students and less lower ranked students."

"So if not grades, perhaps something else?"

"Well," I started, "perhaps it isn't fully selected off grades, but rather the fairness of each group?"