COTE :  Oh No, I've Become the Substitute

The wall clock ticked and tocked, shrouding the entirety of Class D in silence.

The Class D classroom, contrary to its usual rowdiness, found its students sitting stiffly in their seats. Sudo flipped through the pages of his book restlessly, over and over, the friction producing an irritating rustling sound, as if trying to claw back the study time wasted on basketball. Most of the others glanced periodically toward the classroom door, their gazes returning with a mix of wishful thinking and disappointment.

Amid the quiet classroom, the conversation between two people was particularly grating.

"Haruki, the exam questions this time were simple, weren't they? I might even get a perfect score."

Ike sat sideways, facing Yamauchi's direction, leaning back with only two legs of his chair touching the ground, rocking smugly.

"Right, right! A measly midterm exam is hardly worthy of a versatile genius like me. After all, I'm the kind of student who only needs to review a tiny bit to score high marks."

Yamauchi rubbed his nose with his finger, and for good measure, mimicked Koenji's manner of speaking, flicking back nonexistent long hair with an air of affected coolness.

"Kanji, do you think now that the school has witnessed our transcendent academic abilities, they'll be stunned and promote us to Class A?"

"No way, stuff like that has to happen step by step, just like playing a video game, right?" Ike waved his hand dismissively.

Quite a few Class D students furrowed their brows, looking at the two proudly smug boys in bewilderment.

However, the dissatisfied stares of their classmates did not draw the pair's attention—or rather, it was exactly what they wanted. The two exchanged a glance, then burst out laughing simultaneously.

Two peals of laughter, as if intoxicated by some wondrous western leaf and lost in their own world, drifted out of the Class D classroom and echoed through the quiet corridor.

Ten minutes later.

The sound of high heels striking the floor approached from afar, unhurried and unhasty, reaching the ears of the Class D students. Soon after, Chabashira Sae, carrying a poster, appeared punctually at the classroom door, sweeping her gaze across the entire class.

"It seems the whole class is present. Good. Then I'll get straight to the point and announce the results of this midterm exam."

"Bring it on, I'm ready. Now let Class D witness the greatness of the one and only Yamauchi Haruki."

"And me too, me too, Ike Kanji, currently still recruiting for a girlfriend. Just don't fall in love with me later, okay?"

Ike awkwardly winked in Kushida's direction, leaving her, who had just been working hard to console a classmate, utterly stunned and frozen.

"You two sure are confident," Chabashira chuckled lightly.

"Not bad, not bad~"

"However..."

The moment she pasted the poster with Class D's scores onto the blackboard with a sharp swoosh, the laughter so brimming with confidence just seconds ago came to an abrupt halt, and was subsequently cast into the abyss by a cold verdict.

"Yamauchi, Ike, Sudo, you three failed."

Chabashira stood with one hand on her hip, the other propped on the lectern, looking down at the two in disbelief beneath her and Sudo, who was clenching his fists. She revealed a faint smile and stated matter-of-factly.

"As expected of comrades who always hang out together, I suppose? Dropping out together too. Conveniently, after you leave here, perhaps you can still attend the same school. How wonderful."

"I failed? How is that possible? Sae-chan, you're joking, right? Or maybe there's a mistake somewhere. Right! The test papers must have been mixed up!"

Ike shot up stiffly, his chair legs screeching violently against the floor. He stared at the blood-red numbers on the poster and forced out a strained smile.

"No, no... why is my English score even lower than Sudo's? This is absolutely impossible!" Yamauchi stood up in a panic, fine beads of cold sweat seeping from his forehead, muttering incessantly, "I should have scored very high, we clearly had... someone must have been jealous of my brilliance and changed my score."

Unlike the other two, Sudo, who had some awareness of his own level, slammed his fist into the nearest wall with a dull, heavy thud and closed his eyes in anguish.

"Ah! Damn it! I still didn't pass?!"

The other Class D students also showed signs of unease. Never mind that these three had been their classmates for two months; if expulsions occurred, any potential increase in class points would vanish in an instant.

Horikita, with a grave expression, locked her gaze onto the scores of the three on the poster and took out a notebook to jot down their scores in each subject.

Something was wrong. Sudo missing the passing mark by three points was still within reason—his foundation was poor to begin with. But why were Ike and Yamauchi's scores so far from passing? One was short by eight points, the other by six points. The exam questions this time were quite simple. Even if they had taken it normally, they shouldn't have done this badly.

Suddenly, Horikita's pupils constricted, and her gaze fixed on the nearly perfect scores of Ike and Yamauchi in the other subjects.

"T-Teacher, do Sudo and the others really have to drop out? Is there any way to remedy this?"

Hirata immediately stood up from his seat and anxiously asked Chabashira.

"Don't be so naive. Didn't the school inform you of the rules from the very beginning? The fact that you didn't pass is your own problem." Chabashira raised a hand to her forehead and sighed in exasperation. "Also, I anticipated this possibility long ago. I've brought your test papers. You're free to check them or whatever."

Having said that, she pulled a stack of test papers from beneath the lectern.

"There must be some mistake on your end! Haruki and I should have gotten very high scores!"

"Right! There's definitely a problem somewhere! I should have done brilliantly on this exam!" Ike chimed in.

Seeing Chabashira bring the test papers, Ike and Yamauchi rushed the lectern, almost snatching their respective papers away, and began comparing them to the standard answer sheet.

However, within a matter of moments, their expressions visibly shifted from absolute certainty, to faces full of confusion, then to sweat-drenched brows, and finally, they started stammering incoherently.

"W-why is it wrong, this question... it shouldn't be like this."

"Where exactly is the problem, Haruki? Why doesn't it match up?"

Horikita, who had been pondering with her arms folded, opened her eyes. Her cold, piercing gaze shot toward Ike and Yamauchi.

"You two, why were you so certain that you would score highly?"

The frantic movements of the two halted instantly.

Yamauchi's face flushed red. He stiffened his neck, trying to reclaim his previous arrogance, but his voice was clearly lacking conviction. "Wh-what's it to you? Haruki and I are just geniuses, alright? Right, Ike?"

"Yeah! Can't Haruki and I just be geniuses?" Ike puffed out his chest bravely.

"Hmph haha!"

The sound of heated protest jolted Koenji from his world of narcissistic self-admiration. He took out a hand mirror, tidied his dazzling blond hair, and caressed his own face as he spoke nonchalantly.

"What an unsightly display, you two boys. Shielding the very enemy who has cast you into such an unbeautiful predicament at a time like this—it's truly an eyesore."

"What do you mean?"

"Still don't get it?"

Horikita sighed wearily. "Though I don't know how you two got your hands on the answers to this midterm exam, there's no doubt that a portion of those answers were wrong."

"Th-there's no way that's possible." Yamauchi stammered. "No way, he told me these were the correct answers."

Hirata, who had been pleading with Chabashira all along, finally grasped the crux of the issue. For the first time, a serious expression surfaced on his gentle face. He stepped over to the two, his eyes lowered.

"Ike, Yamauchi, take out those answers and let me have a look."

"Wh-why should we—"

"You're about to be expelled!!"

Hirata's voice instantly jumped several octaves. Not only Ike and Yamauchi right beside him, but even the girls in Class D were startled, instinctively shrinking their necks.

"A-alright, fine, I'll take it out." Yamauchi shakily pulled his phone from his pocket, unlocked it, and handed it to Hirata.

Having gotten the phone, Hirata said nothing. He grabbed both of their test papers and began checking them on his own.

Seeing this, Horikita also stood up, picked up another test paper, and took Ike's phone.

"I'm very curious what kind of answers could fool you two into remaining so clueless even now."

At that moment, no one in Class D spoke. They held their breath, silently watching the center of the classroom. Gradually, the expressions on the two checking changed, from initial calm, to midway confusion, and finally evolved into...

"Bang—!"

A tremendous noise from a fist slamming into the desk top spread throughout the class. Every girl in the class stared in terror at the center of the room, at Hirata, who was suppressing his fury.

"This isn't an answer sheet at all. This is, from start to finish, a trap designed to get Ike and Yamauchi expelled!"

Yukimura, whose academic ability was second to none in Class D, frowned and asked, "Hirata, what do you mean by that?"

"I'll explain."

Horikita, her face grim, raised a hand to massage her brow.

"This answer sheet—or whatever this midterm exam paper whose origin we don't know is—shares a ninety percent similarity with the actual midterm exam. The Japanese Literature, Social Studies, Mathematics, and Science sections are even the original midterm questions. However, it's only in the English section where the first part is correct, but the latter parts have had punctuation changed, or the order of certain letters swapped, or the question rephrased into a different format. The kind of thing you wouldn't notice any hint of unless you looked very carefully."

Horikita turned her head toward the two, who had completely frozen, their eyes vacant.

"Especially the English exam, which was last, was mostly multiple choice. Knowing the personalities of these two, they probably glanced at it, saw no major problems, and then cheerfully copied the answers down!"

Horikita paused, even she couldn't help but let out a sigh.

"And under these circumstances, they still only missed by that small a margin. That means they even memorized part of the answers wrong. Had they bothered to actually take the test properly, start to finish, this crude yet precisely targeted trap exploiting their weaknesses would never have worked. That enemy truly knows their personalities inside and out."

"Chabashira-sensei! Is something like this... really allowed?" Hirata seemed to be clinging to one last shred of hope.

"R-right! It's all the other person's fault! This kind of thing shouldn't be overlooked, right? Our exam scores should be invalidated and we should get a retest, right?"

In their despair, Yamauchi and Ike shouted desperately at Chabashira as if grasping at a lifesaving straw.

"Don't be so naive. As long as no school rules are violated, everything the opponent did adheres to this school's meritocratic principles."

Chabashira pressed a hand to her forehead in exasperation. She hadn't imagined that someone would specifically set a trap for these two profoundly poor students. The same tactic, if aimed at Class C, could likely send Class C plummeting into the abyss in one blow, never to recover.

Chabashira's words mercilessly snuffed out the last glimmer of hope in the two's eyes.

"H-how can this be... only two months into school, I haven't gotten a girlfriend yet, I haven't experienced a dreamlike high school life, I haven't even done that sort of thing... how can they make me drop out like this!" Tears streamed from Ike's eyes as he collapsed to his knees, wailing in despair.

"I don't want to drop out. Going home like this, in disgrace, is way too lame. I already told them all about it. It's all that guy's fault, sending us those exam answers. Everything is that guy's fault!" Yamauchi continued to blame everyone and everything but himself.

The emotions of the two infected Sudo, who was in the same boat facing expulsion. He flailed his arms in frustration, letting out low growls one after another.

"Argh! I'm about to become a regular on the basketball team this month! How can it stop here?!"

"Wait a moment, Chabashira-sensei." Hirata seemed to recall something. "What about Sudo's test paper? He didn't memorize those answers, and he's only three points short. If we look closely, maybe we can find enough for him to pass."

"Give it up, Hirata-kun. If it were just one point short, you could still try hard and find it. But three points? Chabashira-sensei wouldn't make such an obvious mistake. And isn't that only natural?"

Returning to her seat in the corner, Horikita folded her arms, watching the three clutching their heads and wailing, and spoke before Chabashira could.

"If you can't even stick to something as simple as studying, then dreams like basketball are better abandoned sooner rather than later. Knowing this exam meant possible expulsion, yet still not taking your studies seriously in the slightest—ending up in this sorry state is hardly unexpected, is it?"

Initially, Horikita had organized a study group, but it had ended on a sour note due to attitude problems on both sides. Horikita hadn't made any further attempts. The resulting outcome was plain to see.

"What did you say? Say that again, woman, and see if I don't flatten you, argh!"

Sudo was instantly ignited with fury. He kicked his own chair, sending the desk tumbling and crashing into the wall with a massive bang that echoed throughout the class, making everyone's heart lurch. He raised a fist and rushed at Horikita, only to be stopped by Hirata, who had dashed over.

Horikita, utterly unconcerned by Sudo charging at her in rage, sneered and said.

"Did I say anything wrong? When it's time to study, you don't study. You casually make some excuse, toss your textbooks aside, and run off to play. You think, I'll just flip through the books when exams are near. When exams actually arrive, you comfort yourselves with excuses like, 'Something will work out when the time comes.' For a person like you, I can't think of a single reason for you not to be expelled. After you go back, you'll probably just find some part-time job at a convenience store to support yourself."

As if struck right in his deepest sore spot, Sudo struggled and roared at Horikita, "I'll kill you, you woman!"

"Sudo, calm down. Horikita-san, please say less." Even with the class in such disarray, Hirata was still striving to maintain peace.

The other Class D students currently remained in their seats, showing no intention of stepping in to mediate. These three were usually the type everyone in Class D found annoying and avoided. Aside from a few small groups they hung out with themselves, they had managed to offend practically the entire class.

"If a fight breaks out, that's immediate expulsion. And since you would no longer be a student of our school, all your actions would be handed over to the police. That way, not only will you be expelled, you won't even be able to play basketball anymore."

With one sentence, Chabashira silenced the raging Sudo. He seemed utterly drained of all strength, slumping powerlessly back into his seat.

Glancing at the time, Chabashira's peripheral vision subtly observed a certain spot in the class, a flicker of anxiety passing through her eyes.

"The first period is about to start. You three should enjoy your last day at this Advanced Nurturing High School. After classes end this afternoon, I will notify your parents to come to the school to take you home. I still have a class to teach, so I'll be going now."

The classroom door slammed shut, leaving only Class D, still enveloped in silence.

In the span of a mere twenty minutes, from heaven to hell, from smug delight to despairing wails—an interesting little drama, was it not?

In the corner of the classroom, Sakayanagi Arisu, who had been utterly silent from start to finish, took an elegant sip of her tea, a look of pleased amusement spreading across her face.

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