It was only our third day of school when the school surprised us with a notification.
It was 6:00 am in the morning. Haruto was also awake at this point, so we decided to check it together. The notification was on the Preseqta app—Special Exam Notification. I pressed on it to reveal a message.
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Balanced Society Special Exam
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Exam
In this special exam, we will be imitating the struggles of the lower class and the exploits of the upper class. The details are below:
Condition A) In two days, 4000 points will be loaned from every single student's bank account. The points will be deducted on the 5th of January at 6:00 am and returned on the 6th of January with 35% added interest.
Condition B) At the same time, any student with more than 8000 points will lose 90% of their excess points. E.g. If a student has 8900 points, then 810 points will be deducted and not returned.
Students are free to send any number of points to each other. However, in these two days, the maximum number of points able to be spent at any school-registered store is 500. Lunches and dinners will be provided by the school.
If, at any point, a student has less than 0 points in their accounts, they will be immediately expelled.
~
Packages
Every class also has two options which they are allowed to choose from via a majority class vote.
1. Every person in the class will pay 500 points, and the class will be allowed to skip the special exam. However, the five students with the lowest number of points in the class will be expelled regardless of how many points they own.
2. Every student in the class will be given a loan of 2000 points; however, after the exam, every student must give up 50% of their total number of points, and they will not receive any added interest, and 800 points will be deducted from every student's account at the start of every month for five months.
Once your class decides on an option, every student in the class will be forced to comply with the requirements. For a vote to be valid, at least 61% of students must vote. If less than 61% of students place a vote, neither option will be selected, and 500 points will be deducted from every student's account. Any student who doesn't vote will have a further 500 points deducted regardless of the result. Students must be in the classroom to vote.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtA vote must occur before 8:00 pm tonight otherwise, it will be considered invalid.
The total number of points of the three students with the most points in each class will be displayed at 8:00 am every morning for one hour until the end of the exam.
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!
This was a lot to unpack.
"So this is a special exam." Kimura finally spoke after we finished reading the message.
"Yeah, it's really complicated."
"So, what are your plans? How many points do you have?" he asked.
"I think I'll be fine for the most part, although I'd like to borrow some points from you if possible."
"I'm going to fall victim to condition B, so I'll lend you my points."
"Well, we can talk about this a bit more in the afternoon. I still have to see what option my class pick for the packages."
It was true. If Haruto lent me a large number of points and his class picked the first option, then he might be expelled due to the condition. Even if it seemed the packages were made to help the classes with people who lack many points, they were just as much made to cause problems amongst the richer classes.
It was truly an exam which challenged both the poor and the rich.
I prepared to go to class for the day—however, there was likely going to be a lot of chaos.
*
It was 8:00 am. A huge crowd of students were gathered in front of the board; it was the biggest group of students I had seen in the class since the beginning of the first day. The highest point owners were displayed, as explained in the exam.
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Class 2-A
1. Tachibana Emi - 16,189 points
2. Hasegawa Mio - 16,003 points
3. Fujiharu Sara - 14,287 points
>
Class 2-B
1. Naegi Saka - 13,177 points
2. Ayakuma Linda - 11,233 points
3. Kinoshita Chitose - 10,022 points
>
Class 2-C
1. Kobayashi Lucy - 9,843 points
2. Hiroto Kaoru - 9,601 points
3. Suzuki Touma - 9,015 points
>
Class 2-D
1. Katsuki Andria - 7,990 points
2. Akasaka Uya - 7,370 points
3. Tamura Ritsu - 6,902 points
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏm>
Class 2-E (My class)
1. Itsuki Akane - 7,027 points
2. Hamasaki Aiko - 5,800 points
3. Mizuhara Ayato - 4,195 points
>
Class 2-F
1. Yogi Fukuda - 72,946 points
2. Kanako Hanae - 2,945 points
3. Hayashi Yoshida - 145 points
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Class F has something very interesting. Fukuda seemed to be holding onto all the points in his class for some reason. However, now wasn't the time to be worrying about other classes. It was to be expected that Tachibana was stocking up on points. She likely knew about this exam in advance.
Also, as expected, Itsuki had the most points in our class due to the birthday party yesterday. I felt like their intention for having a birthday party in the first place was related to this. It was like someone was feeding them information.
It didn't take long to figure out what this special exam was about. The best way for the lower classes to pass is to hold onto the points from the students in higher classes who want to keep their wealth. This way, both sides are benefitted, and both sides are able to pass the exam with no repercussions. However, the packages threw a spanner into the works.
The first major decision we had to make was what package we pick. I wasn't quite sure which one our class would decide on. I would prefer either package one or no package as I'm already past the 4,000-point quota, and I was currently third in the class in terms of total points.
I was pretty thankful that I spent such a large sum of points on groceries for the month. Otherwise, people might have gotten suspicious of my abnormally large point balance.
I guess I'd think about this a bit more after school.
The class was quite restless.
*