Book 14: Chapter 6: The Aloof Wunderkind of Class 2-D, Part 1
Nanase and I were making our way south toward the starting area, but along the way, a Task appeared near the summit of area C5, so we adjusted our route accordingly. The Task in question was a one-on-one match of Tug of War. It had a short registration deadline of 40 minutes, and the number of participants was limited to two boys and two girls, so overall the conditions were iron-clad. However, you would earn five points just for participating, and if you won, you would earn an additional ten points, for a total of fifteen.
Due to the fact that the summit was just a short distance ahead of us, it would be more or less impossible for other students to beat us there unless they were already in the area. After taking into account the fact that I would be missing my fourth designated area in a row soon (and would be losing two points as a result), I decided that we should go for it. Plus, there was a good chance that we would have fifteen points simply fall into our laps if nobody else showed up.
Despite the high elevation of the mountain, we pushed forward at a rapid pace and arrived at the Task with around five minutes to spare.
I thought that we would be the first to arrive, but apparently somebody had beaten us to the punch.
This ‘somebody’ seemed to have noticed our presence, but they made no effort to look in our direction.
“He got here pretty quickly didn’t he? He must’ve been even closer than we were.”
“I wonder.”
Even if he had been toward the south side of C5 when the Task was announced, it should’ve still taken him a decent amount of time to get here.
“I’m not sure whether this will help clear things up for you or not, but that’s Kōenji Rokusuke.”