When the first-years entered the school, each of them was given 100,000 private points, which worked like a starting allowance.
But that money also had to cover basic living costs, like buying daily necessities.
From then on, students had to earn their points through their own performance, and the school would decide how many points they got based on that.
For example, right now Class 1-A has 924 class points left, so each student receives 92,400 private points as allowance.
Even the class led by the student council president — Horikita Manabu, said to be the best student in the school's history — only has 2,330 class points. That means each student gets 233,000 points.
But for an individual student, 20 million is a crazy amount. Especially since private points can actually be used like real cash.
So basically, it's like having 20 million yen.
Even for working adults, that kind of money isn't something you can just earn overnight.
So...
For a student to even be talking about that number...
Shirogane looked at Sakayanagi Arisu.
And she seemed to notice what he was thinking, so she explained, "The student council president said that 20 million points can be used to cancel one expulsion."
One expulsion, wiped away.
This school doesn't charge tuition and even gives students living expenses — it already seems like a pretty great place.
But when compared to 20 million points, suddenly that generous system feels a bit heavy.
Setting aside whether anyone could even get that much money, the question is — if you had it, would you use it to save yourself, or someone else in your class who's about to get expelled?
Then again, things might not be that simple.
Shirogane suddenly remembered something Ichinose once looked into — the number of students in the third-year classes. Classes B, C, and D were all missing students. Only Class A still had a full 40 people.
So could it be... that Class A in third year had been using 20 million points to stop their classmates from being expelled and keep everyone together?
To them, their classmates clearly mattered more than twenty million points.
And they had good reason for thinking that way. As long as they could graduate from Class A and receive all the rewards the school promised, this kind of opportunity to rise in status wasn't something money could easily buy—not even ten or twenty million points could guarantee it.
So it made sense they'd spend that much to keep a classmate from leaving.
But for other classes, twenty million points didn't hold the same value. Unless someone really cared about friendship, there was no need to spend that much to stop someone from dropping out.
In fact, it would be better to just give that money to the one who's leaving.
After all, even if someone left the school, twenty million points would be more than enough to pay for their tuition and living expenses at another school—and there'd still be some left.
"With twenty million points, you can cancel the penalty of being expelled. And it also has another use—if a regular student collects that many points, they can transfer into any class they want."
"In other words," Sakayanagi said clearly and slowly, "you could go straight to Class A and become one of them."
You could join Class A right away. You could become part of it.
This wasn't about helping Ryuuen's class reach Class A and defend their points. It was a shortcut. You could simply go solo and skip all the hard work.
"And this is something only Class A students know ahead of time," Sakayanagi said.
And now Shirogane finally understood.
The reason Sakayanagi came straight here after returning from the student council.
"So, what do you want me to do in return?" Shirogane asked.
"Hehe." Sakayanagi seemed to smile a little. "You make me sound so bad. I'm not asking for anything unreasonable."
No, no, no.
The way you said that is even scarier.
Shirogane had actually made a mistake when he spoke. He meant to ask what she wanted to *do* with the information, but what came out sounded more like: "What do you want me to *do* for twenty million points?"
And Sakayanagi responded to the second meaning.
Which meant she didn't notice the slip. In other words, she was actually willing to pay twenty million points to get something done.
Twenty million. That's *twenty million*, you know!
And Shirogane had just been wondering how he could get into the student council to earn that small bonus of thirty to fifty thousand points.
"So what's her goal?"
Shirogane quickly scribbled something into his notebook.
He didn't know much about Sakayanagi, but he did know someone who did.
And soon, he got a reply.
[She's probably trying to carry out some childhood fantasy.]
[When she was a kid, she visited a facility made to train geniuses. There, she saw kids being pushed way too hard in the name of "unlocking their potential." It was inhuman.]
[Back then, she made up her mind—she wanted to destroy that place.]
[Of course, she knew something like that could only be done by adults, and there wasn't much she could do herself. But she later found out that the most successful person from that facility was now at this school, and in Class D.]
[That opened up more options for her. For example, beating the only "successful product" from that facility—proving that place was meaningless.]
[She originally wanted to do it herself, but because of her physical limits, she gave up on that idea and chose to work through someone else.]
[She analyzed the data Hashimoto had gathered after two weeks of following that person, and figured out who could go up against that genius.]
[And that person… is you, Shirogane.]
[You have the potential to go beyond a genius.]