Classroom of the Elite: Free Will

V6: Chapter 4 - Pairs

Ayanokouji Kiyotaka POV

After homeroom began at 6 p.m., Chabashira-sensei left the classroom. Yousuke, glancing sideways at the perplexed students, stood up and wet up to the podium. No more time for games. We were about to have a serious discussion.

"During homeroom today, I'd like to discuss our strategy for the short quiz tomorrow. I've received Chabashira-sensei's permission. First, Horikita-san, Matsushita-san, would you please come up?"

They stood up and joined Yousuke at the podium. Some students looked puzzled seeing Chiaki back on the podium after so many time, but most of them had already accepted her comeback. Since I helped her during the sports festival preparations, she has been hanging around and helping our classmates individually to gain back their trust. Thanks to that and Yousuke and Suzune's support, she could stand on the podium once again.

"Okay, first of all, the partner selection process has already been made clear as you can see on the blackboard. If we handle things right, each student could feasibly end up with their ideal partner."

Chiaki had begun writing out the rules on the blackboard as soon as she had arrived at the podium.

Deciding How Pairs Are Formed:

After the school looks at the class as a whole, it will pair the highest-scoring and lowest-scoring students.

This process will continue with the second highest and second-lowest scoring students pairing up, and then the third highest and lowest, and so on.

For example, the student with one hundred points will pair with the student with zero points. The student with ninety-points will pair with the student with one point.

"Simple, right?" Suzune said.

"Wh-whoa! You cracked the code, Horikita! Matsushita! That's awesome!" Miyamoto exclaimed.

"It's fairly obvious. However, remember this: though students who earn lower grades will almost automatically partner with students with higher grades, there are always exceptions. I'm going to explain a strategy that we can use to end up with reliable, appropriate pairs," Suzune continued.

"I'd like to have the students who worry about their grades partner up with high scorers. However, looking at our grades so far, the truth of the matter is that we can't cover everyone."

Thirteen students had an average score of eighty points or higher. Only six students had average score of ninety points or more. Meanwhile, the number of students with an average of sixty points or below made up more than half the class. In other words, it would be impossible to pair every low-scoring student with a high-scoring counterpart.

Therefore, Suzune aimed to create stability by forcing the top ten and bottom ten students into specific partnerships. Chiaki listed the lowest-scoring students' names on the blackboard, one by one.

"Um, I don't really get it. What are we supposed to do?" asked Yamauchi. "And why isn't Ayanokouji doing anything? Isn't his holiday over?"

"Ayanokouji-kun will be creating the four hundred questions, Yamauchi-kun," Chiaki said. "We can't ask him to do that and plan our strategy. His vacation is over, but we cannot let him take care of everything. We are going to divide the tasks as to make it easier for everyone."

"It's as Matsushita-san said. Now, that that's clear. Coming back to the short test, it's okay for the ten lowest-scoring students, whose names are written here, to simply score zero on this test. Since your final grades won't reflect your scores, that'll do you no harm. Conversely, the ten highest-scoring students should definitely try to score eighty-five points or above. Similarly, we'll divide the remaining twenty students in the class into two groups of ten. The higher-scoring of those two groups should aim to score a maximum of eighty points, while the lower-scoring group only needs to score one point. By doing things this way, we automatically achieve a good balance in our pairings," Suzune explained.