I have a life simulator.

"Then I'll leave the specifics to Liang. I have other things to do, so I'll be going now."

"Hmm, there are still fifty minutes before class starts. It should be cool enough for me to take a nap. Sweet dreams—"

"Okay, see you at school this afternoon."

As the energetic Honami Ichinose turned and left with a flourish, Ryo Kitagawa could only stare blankly at the barely touched cup of cocoa in front of him, feeling somewhat helpless.

Although he didn't know what Fanbo was planning, he now felt that Hui was in great danger.

Chapter 287: You did it too?

For the students in Class A of the first year, one thing that is very noticeable is that since the start of the second semester and the release of the rules for the sports festival, the atmosphere in the class has become somewhat subtle. It even gives people the feeling that although they have been promoted to Class A, everyone doesn't seem to be that happy.

The reason for this complex mentality is that, on the one hand, the title of Class A does put a lot of pressure on them. After all, after just one summer vacation, they went from being challengers in the arena to becoming the final boss guarding the arena. Anyone would need time to adapt.

Another problem naturally arose between homeroom teacher Hoshinomiya Chie and class president Karuizawa Kei. As the sports festival drew closer, even the most oblivious students in Class A could sense the discord and disagreements between the two.

Unlike Ryuji Kanzaki and Yuki Himeno, who had previously approached Ryo Kitagawa about this matter, the vast majority of Class A students maintained their characteristic of having extremely poor initiative in the past and remained completely silent on the issue.

Of course, on the other hand, it could also be argued that they genuinely believed either Karuizawa Megumi or Hoshinomiya Chie would voluntarily step down, allowing Class A to return to the happy and harmonious atmosphere they once had, since that's how they got to where they were, and besides, they even got promoted to Class A, didn't they?

As if to prove that friendship, class, and bonds truly exist, with the heartfelt wishes of the students in Class A, a little over a week before the official opening of the sports festival and two days before the start of the prediction contest, Hoshinomiya Chie and Karuizawa Megumi, who had previously been somewhat hostile and distant towards each other, suddenly thawed their relationship and stood together on the stage as if they had reconciled, as if all the previous sordid incidents were just an illusion.

Sitting in the front row, Ryuji Kanzaki didn't show the same surprised expression as his classmates. Looking at the two people on the stage who seemed to have reached a consensus, he couldn't help but recall the scene he had witnessed after school yesterday.

As it turns out, Kitagawa Ryo's promise to temporarily divert Hoshinomiya's attention at the karaoke bar that day was not a lie. However, the method he used was quite cheesy, since it was really just a sarcastic remark to draw attention to himself.

"Ryo might officially transfer to Class D after this sports festival."

When Karuizawa Kei casually uttered those words yesterday, Kanzaki Ryuji, who went with her to see Hoshinomiya Chie, could clearly see his homeroom teacher's facial muscles twitch slightly.

"Ryo and Class D's homeroom teacher, Sae Chahashi, had a private meeting at the special teaching building. The next day, the two classes began joint training for the sports festival."

"Karuizawa, aren't you dating Kitagawa?"

"We rarely see each other after the summer vacation, since he's dating more than just me."

At this point, Karuizawa Kei herself pouted slightly in dissatisfaction. The changes in her expression and tone left Kanzaki Ryuji stunned. If he hadn't heard Kitagawa Ryo say in the karaoke that their lack of contact during this period was just for show, he probably would have thought that the CP he had been genuinely shipping for several years had really collapsed.

"He does have a lot of girlfriends, but none of them are in Class D, right? So what's the point of going to Class D? Is it for that Kikyo Kushida? It can't be because of that Chabashira..."

Hoshinomiya Chie instinctively retorted, but stopped herself halfway through her sentence. As the person who knew Chabashira Sae best (in her own opinion), she was quite clear about how much the other party still harbored resentment towards Kitagawa Ryo after the special exam on the deserted island. This was also evident from their conversation about the 'class ace' on the cruise ship.

People tend to view and measure everything in the world through their own eyes and values, and Hoshinomiya Chie is no exception.

As someone whose private life was so scandalous that it was almost common knowledge among faculty members, Hoshinomiya Chie herself had harbored some unspeakable feelings for Kitagawa Ryo in the past.

On one hand, Kitagawa Ryo's looks are indeed quite striking, so she's not at a disadvantage.

On the other hand, at that time, Kitagawa Ryo was relentlessly pursuing Class A because of Ayanokouji Kiyotaka. Hoshinomiya Chie liked students who were both willing and capable of helping her target Chabashira Sae. In essence, she also had some intention of using her, but the other party was always unyielding, so she made no progress.

Under this mindset, Hoshinomiya Chie never hesitated to assume the worst about Chabashira Sae's thoughts, so her first thought was, 'She did it too!'

Although Hoshinomiya Chie herself didn't think that Chabashira Sae was much prettier than her, she still had to admit that compared to herself, whose reputation was known after just a little inquiry, Chabashira Sae, who had completely closed her heart and kept herself pure after that one-day romance ten years ago, might, probably, perhaps, should be more attractive.

What if Kitagawa Ryo likes her mature, sophisticated vibe?

Moreover, given Chabashira Sae's strange obsession after arriving on the deserted island—"I can't even imagine how many months I'd have to be the homeroom teacher of Class A if Kitagawa came to our class"—she probably wouldn't even need Kitagawa Ryo to say a couple of classic lines like, "Chabashira, you don't want Class D to be Class D forever," before Chabashira Sae herself would come to him on her own.

Of course, Ryuji Kanzaki had no idea what his homeroom teacher, whose expression had suddenly become unpredictable, was thinking. He only heard the other person utter this sentence after a long silence:

"Kitagawa absolutely cannot go to Class D, not even if there is a one percent chance."

Perhaps she herself also agrees with the 'ace theory' proposed by Chabashira Sae, Hoshinomiya Chie said firmly. In any case, she would never allow Kitagawa Ryo to transfer to Class D.

Chabashira Sae and her class should stay in Class D forever; moving forward is something she cannot tolerate.

"I think so too, so we should prepare in advance to prevent this from happening."

Following Hoshinomiya Chie's lead, Karuizawa Megumi held up two fingers:

"We also need to prepare 20 million personal points as quickly as possible, just like the Reversal Revolution in the Monopoly game. As long as the opponent makes the first move, we will use these 20 million points to turn the tide."

"You want to transfer him to our class, right, Karuizawa-kun?"

As if sensing Karuizawa Kei's true thoughts, Hoshinomiya Chie suddenly smiled and asked Karuizawa Kei a question.

"It's better than letting Ryo stay in Class D, right, Mr. Hoshinomiya?"

The two smiled at each other and looked at each other for a while, until finally Hoshinomiya Chie spoke first:

"I will no longer concern myself with the sports festival, but Kitagawa absolutely cannot transfer into Chabashira's class."

"no problem."

Thus, the homeroom teacher and class monitor of Class A, who had reached a consensus on matters concerning Kitagawa Ryo, once again formed an unbreakable alliance, which led to the close cooperation between teachers and students that the students of Class A see now.

Thinking of this, Ryuji Kanzaki couldn't help but sigh again.

After all, this incident made him realize one thing: that his class teacher was indeed a madman who would go berserk whenever it came to Chabashira Sae.

From this perspective, the class monitor in my class is also a love-obsessed person who becomes extremely stubborn when it comes to anything related to Kitagawa Ryo, determined to achieve his goal no matter what.

But Ryuji Kanzaki only had one sentence to say about it.

I'm the one who's hypocritical online!

When is Kitagawa coming to Class A? I don't need this vice class monitor position!

-------------------------------------

Unlike Ryuji Kanzaki, who was already lost in thought and completely absorbed in his own world, Kei Karuizawa remained absolutely calm and clear-headed.

Having previously persuaded Sakura Airi, based on their long-standing friendship, to freeze the ten million personal points that Sakura possessed that could absolutely change the situation, she had been pondering how to raise those twenty million points herself.

The current class points for Class A in the first year are 601, which means that each student received 60,100 points at the beginning of the month. The class has 39 students, totaling 2,343,900 points. Last semester, the class points for Class A hovered around 500.

In other words, even if we start counting from April when school starts, assuming that all the students in Class A don't use any personal points, the total number of personal points that the whole class has obtained through class points is only about 12 million.

But in reality, even if she were to collect all the students' individual points now, she could probably only get five or six million at most, since everyone living in Tokyo Advanced Educational High School couldn't possibly not spend their individual points.

Karuizawa Kei herself wasn't exactly flush with cash. Her group ranked third in the special exam on the deserted island, and she only received a reward of 300,000 personal points from the school. Adding her past savings and the points she earned through winning competitions in the drama club, she only had a little over 500,000 personal points.

But this doesn't stop Karuizawa from choosing to try her luck with a small bet in this contest.

If she can successfully predict a major upset in a highly anticipated project, she has the opportunity to multiply her initial investment several times over.

In the two days leading up to the start of the guessing game, the school issued a new set of detailed rules to explain the specific gameplay to the students.

The school cited the following example:

A and B both bet on student C in the "Who do you think will be the top scorer in the entire grade at this year's sports festival?" contest. A bet 10,000 personal points, while B bet 5,000 personal points. Among the students participating in the contest, only A and B chose student C; the others voted for students D, E, F, and so on. The total prize pool for the entire contest eventually reached 5,015,000 personal points.

However, student C unexpectedly became the overall scorer. A and B's bets were successful. After recovering their principal and paying a 5% handling fee to the school, they shared the remaining 4.75 million personal points according to their betting amount.

That is, A, who bets 10,000 personal points, will eventually receive two-thirds, or more than 3.16 million, in prize money, while B, who bets 5,000 personal points, will eventually receive one-third, or more than 1.58 million.

Simply put, the more personal points you invest, the higher your share will be if your bet is successful.

From this perspective, it is undoubtedly the school provoking the psychology of students who want to gamble on an upset. Even if you invest your thousands of points into those seemingly sure-fire options, the points you can get in the end are only a small amount. So why not gamble on an upset?

If you're the only one who correctly predicted that upset, then you'll get 100% of the winnings.

For Karuizawa Kei now, what she wants to find is a guessing game with high attention, a large prize pool, and the ability to make her feel completely satisfied.

It's probably true that all the students in the school are looking for this kind of project right now.

However, unlike them, Karuizawa Kei certainly didn't think that such a good thing, like a pie falling from the sky, would just fall straight into her head.

What she actually needs to do is to actively create such an opportunity, which is what is known as manipulation.

Creating hype, attracting funds, and then swallowing them all up in the end—it all feels like a scam.

As the school itself cited, the top scorers in each grade and even the whole school naturally attract much more attention. Judging from the forum's popularity these past few days, they will also be the ones with the largest prize pool after the guessing game officially begins.

Thinking of this, Karuizawa Kei glanced at Shibata Hayate in the class with a subtle look. If there was any student in Class A who had the hard power to compete for the top scorer among the first-year students, it would only be Shibata. He was also one of the candidates who had received a lot of attention on the forum recently, and was compared with students such as Hirata Yosuke, Kitagawa Ryo, Sudo Ken, and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka. There should be quite a few people betting on him.

However, Karuizawa Megumi still felt that Shibata Hayate's strength was a bit subtle, and if she had to choose, she might prefer to vote for Amasawa Ichika. It wasn't that she thought Ryo couldn't compete with Amasawa, but rather that the two tracks were completely different. She had witnessed Amasawa Ichika's physical abilities, and such a person, placed among a group of girls, seemed to have a greater gap than Kitagawa Ryo and all the other boys. After all, there was also Ayanokoji Kiyotaka among the boys.

Just as Karuizawa Kei was thoughtfully preparing to wait for the official start of the contest before taking any further action, Himeno Yuki from her class suddenly forwarded her a website address in a private message.

"Including our class, some of the entry forms from the four first-grade classes were anonymously exposed on the forum!"

Chapter 288: I did it too!

As part of the competition information from the four first-grade classes was successively exposed on the school forum by an anonymous account, many second- and third-grade students also cast curious glances in this direction with great interest.

After all, compared to the first year of participating in the sports festival for the first time, the overall situation of the second and third years has been largely stabilized. Unless there are any major unforeseen events, the leading position of Class 2-A and Class 3-A is basically rock solid, and the students in each class know each other very well.

To put it bluntly, just like freshmen can ask upperclassmen for past exam papers for their midterms, even though this year's sports festival has added a new guessing game, it doesn't stop the current third-year students from digging out the competition lists from the two sports festivals they participated in over the past two years.

After all, you can't expect a sprinter who has been running the 100m and 200m for two years to suddenly switch to another event. It's no exaggeration to say that the entire third grade is well aware of the competition situation of other classes. They have already competed in two sports festivals. Everyone knows who in your class will run which event. It's just that the specific order is not clear.

However, things are always a bit different in the first year. Even after the special exam on the deserted island, students in each class only know who has good physical fitness. But in fact, everyone has their own strengths. For example, Hirata Yosuke and Shibata Hayate are rated equally by the school, but the latter has a higher short-distance burst of speed, while the former has better endurance. This kind of difference in track is the key factor that determines which event they participate in this sports festival.

In a sense, this is something that can only be understood after seeing the competition schedule, since apart from the B and D classes that are in joint training, the other classes are unaware of each other's actual training situation and data.

However, most students didn't think much of it, because the anonymous account that leaked the information seemed to have prepared in advance. The leaked content consisted entirely of the most discussed student-on-student conflicts on the forum in recent days, especially the first one, which he heavily emphasized in red:

"List of participants for the first-year boys' 100-meter event, Group 1:"

"First-year Class A: Shibata Sa,?"

"Class 1-B: ?, Takeru Sudo"

"First-year Class C: Daichi Ishizaki, Hago Komiya"

"Class 1-D: Hirata Yosuke?"

Of the five fragmented pieces of information released by the anonymous account so far, this one is undoubtedly the most attention-grabbing. After all, if the exposed list is true, it means that the three players who have been considered by the forum as candidates for the top scorer will face off in the first round.

Just when everyone was still skeptical, Daichi Ishizaki, in a rather shocked tone, hurled two profanities in the comments section below. Considering his usual level of intelligence and style of behavior, this subtly added a bit of persuasiveness.

However, other students quickly raised a question:

"Although the entry forms for each class have been finalized, they haven't been officially submitted yet. Even if what you've revealed is true, the classes can easily modify their entry forms and then submit them to the school."

A few seconds later, someone replied to him:

"Idiot, if what the poster revealed is true, doesn't that mean he has the means to get information about all four classes in the first year? Unless the class leaders are the only ones who can prevent leaks, but if that's the case, the students in the class won't agree. After all, there are penalties for being in last place this time. What if someone throws you out on the field as a second-rate horse to trade with others?"

More students also expressed their opinions in the comments section. Under the influence of some unknown individuals, the trend quickly shifted to the hope that each class would submit the competition forms in this way, without changing the order of each person.

The reason is simple: this way they can place their bets more accurately. Having information to calculate is much better than gambling on pure luck in the dark.

Of course, they wouldn't say that openly. They would use phrases like "I really want to see a fierce battle in the first group of the men's 100-meter event" and "Let's compete fairly and let our strength speak for itself." They would also intersperse some encouragement and sarcasm like "Whoever changes their partner is a coward and a grandson" and "I'm Daichi Ishizaki from Class C. Do you dare to have a match with me? If you don't dare, call me grandpa next time we meet." Kitagawa Ryo himself couldn't help but chuckle at this.

It was lunch break time, and thanks to the fact that most students at Tokyo Advanced Educational High School like to eat in the cafeteria, there weren't many people in the classroom. They were gathered in twos and threes, eating their homemade bento boxes or bread bought from convenience stores.

Kitagawa Ryo and Horikita Suzune were classmates, and since they both cooked their own meals, they eventually got used to putting their tables together and sitting opposite each other to eat lunch at this time.

However, what Horikita Suzune found a little uncomfortable was Shiina Hiyori, who had suddenly and forcefully squeezed into her and Kitagawa Ryo's lunchtime these past two days.

"Um, so what exactly is going on?"

"It's just like what Lingyin saw. I'm feeding a detective lady who can't take care of herself and can only sit in an armchair."

Having already accepted the fact that Shiina Hiyori was throwing a tantrum and acting spoiled, Kitagawa Ryo calmly separated the bento box and neatly placed it in front of Hiyori along with the chopsticks, then pouted and muttered a remark:

"Even Watson never treated Holmes like this back in the day, did he?"

"That's different. Ryo should know the unspoken rule in detective novels that the character designs of the detective and his assistant must complement each other. A hot-tempered person should be paired with a nice person, and a clueless person should be paired with a grumpy person. Ryo and I are like that too."

Shiina Hiyori clapped her hands solemnly, said "I'm starting," and then picked up her chopsticks to savor Kitagawa Ryo's cooking.

Meanwhile, Horikita Suzune, after making a great effort to ignore this third party who seemed out of place on the sports festival set, took the initiative to ask Kitagawa Ryo about the competition list, completely unaware that she was also an outsider to the situation.

"As for the entry form, Katsuragi's movements were slower than I expected, and I felt like I was a little unwilling myself."

Kitagawa Ryo swallowed a mouthful of rice, acting as if he didn't consider Shiina Hiyori an outsider at all, and quite naturally started talking to Horikita Suzune about today's number one trending topic.

"So it really was a student from Class D who leaked the information?"

"Well, our class deliberately let them know. Class C is a sieve, and it's also possible that Ryuen did it. As for Class A, someone probably fell for Hashimoto's charm. That's how scary it is to be obsessed with love."

Kitagawa Ryo remembered noticing something amiss on his first day of cruise vacation when he went on a date with Karuizawa Megumi. After all, Hashimoto Masayoshi was someone who had left an impression on him. So when he returned to school, he did some research and found out that the other person was dating a girl from Class 1-A and had hurt the heart of a girl from Class D who had a crush on him.

It can only be said that the students in Class 1-A probably really didn't expect there to be a scumbag in this grade who would use a relationship to cheat for information. The class's usual atmosphere also ensured that every decision had to be known and approved by everyone, which is why Hashimoto Masayoshi found an opportunity. After all, he had been setting up a plan for more than a month since the summer vacation, so it's normal to reap some rewards.

"However, the information on the entry form is all fake and can be both real and fake, so there's no need to take it too seriously. Don't you think these comments below are funny? It seems that not only first-year students, but second and third-year students are also getting a little excited."

"After all, the school doesn't stipulate that students in this grade can only participate in prediction contests related to their own grade. Moreover, given the situation in the second year, if I were a second-year student, I would probably only put all my personal points into the first-year contests."

As she spoke, Horikita Suzune shifted her chair, realizing that Shiina Hiyori, who was eating the same bento box as Kitagawa Ryo, seemed a bit odd. She couldn't help but ask her a question:

"Shiina-kun doesn't seem too worried."

"Ah, because all my personal points are stuck there, I'm now completely broke, so the predictions have nothing to do with me."