COTE: A Man On A Mission || Love is War?

”Ahem.”

Teacher Sakagami pretended not to notice Ryuen’s use of violence and coercion.

The bell rang. For him, head teacher, to get to work.

”Alright, quiet now.”

Mr. Sakagami wrote class evaluation scores of four after sports festival on the blackboard.

Grade 2

Class A (Sakayanagi) 2420 points

Class B (Ichinose) 1758.1 points

Class C (Ryuen) 1625 points

Class D (Horikita) 555.7 points

”Congratulations to everyone for your steady improvement. We are only one step away from Class B.”

In fact, he was a little excited.

Because ever since Hikigaya joined the class, it seems that Ryuen has never lost.

Even for sports festival students in the class who don’t have any cheats, they can still provide stable output.

As a teacher, he was very touched.

But there are also ambitions.

That is, it was originally thought that Class A was difficult to break through, but students in this class were outrageous.

Both Class B and original Class D had touched Class A once, so does Class C, which he teaches, also have a chance?

Judging from current score difference, it would be better to rush to Class B first.

”First of all, I need to say this month’s special exam is a little special. The main focus is on school trips.”

”This was determined by your unanimous special examination two months ago.”

”Three out of four classes chose Hokkaido, so this time we, second graders, are going to Hokkaido.”

Sakagami, the homeroom teacher of Class 2 C, pushed up his glasses and began to introduce.

But based on Hikigaya’s understanding of Mr. Sakagami, the fact that he would talk so much now means this special exam will not involve many class evaluation scores.

So, he never entered the main storyline.

”The school trip starts tomorrow. It will last for 5 days and 4 nights. After the school trip, this month will be holiday for this semester.”

”That means congratulations to everyone on making it through last semester of sophomore year.”

”You can treat this school trip as the final exam for this semester, but don’t worry.”

This means there will be no changes in class evaluation scores for this school trip.

But school is also very stingy and will not let students do nothing during the holidays and earn money for nothing, so the holidays and school trips are arranged together.

”Before specific schedule of the school trip is arranged, everyone should take an hour.” Sakagami-sensei said as he checked the time.

Then he said, ”Take out your tablet and open the email from school.”

All students did so.

Hachiman took out his tablet, opened his mailbox, and found that what he received was a roster sent by the school.

The roster was in an Excel spreadsheet and seemed to be editable.

The roster contains three columns: name, gender, and score. Name and gender have already been recorded.

Only rating column is blank, which means you need to fill in a number in this column.

That’s not all.

The first 39 students in this roster are the information of Ryuen’s class, including Horikita Suzune who just arrived today.

But if you continue to scroll down, you can see there are other classes below the table.

From A-class Arisu Sakayanagi to B-class Ichinose Honami and then to D-class Karuizawa Kei.

The rosters for entire grade are here.

Similarly, rating column is empty.

”This is a second-year roster that contains a list of all students in our class. See the empty grade column next to name and gender?”

”Including Horikita, there are now 39 people in the class. First, for sake of convenience, please fill in ”myself” in your serial number column.”

”Then, rate everyone.”

”The evaluation score is -5 to +5.”

”You are free to fill in all the information.”

”You can rank evaluation scores according to your impression of others.

For example, you admire their strong ability so give him 5 points.”

”Of course, if you and that person have the best relationship, you can give 5 points.”

”You can also give him 5 points because he/she is very interesting. In short, just follow your own standards. What matters is the impression the other person leaves on you.”

To put it simply, you can evaluate all students in grade except yourself based on your own preferences.

Hachiman noticed that his name and student number were not written on form he received, which meant that he was completely anonymous.

”So is evaluation this time very important?” Hiyori inquired a little, raising her little hand.

”No. This school trip will not involve the class evaluation scores. This evaluation is only for trial use in this school trip.”

Then impression you have on others is irrelevant.

So, everyone started to grade papers one by one according to teacher’s instructions.

For Hikigaya, the job of evaluating others is not complicated, after all, he is a human observer.

But even if we rely on impression points for evaluation, he still need a standard.

So, let’s choose this as evaluation standard.

Overall strength and whether you have grown after entering this school.

Ryuen, Ibuki, Hiyori, as well as Horikita and Ishizaki all received high scores from him.

Of course, this is also based on his standards.

Most students should have given Ryuen very high scores.

After all, if Ryuen somehow knew that he was given bad reviews by students in his class, then this guy would be in trouble.

However, Hikigaya didn’t know that he also received high scores from other classmates.

Ever since he came to this class, Ryuen has not lost.

So, students in class still gave him face.

Sakayanagi, student council president, also received high scores.

After all, although it was an anonymous vote, no one wanted to offend student council president for no reason.

So, even the dumbest students have learned some social skills.

xxxxx

In Grade 2 Class B, same grading was also taking place.

”That means school trip can be considered end of this semester. So now ratings can be arbitrary?”

”Of course, Kanzaki-kun. But I don’t recommend being too casual.”

In other words, this rating is still valuable.

”Could it be a project related to school trips?” At this time, a student said.

This is Chihiro-chan.

It seemed that after a classmate dropped out of school, she seemed to become more stubborn.

Not that introverted and weak, but hope to do something.

This was probably because she got accused by other boys and even girls from behind in class, regarding the face she was responsible for points deduction.

To not be targeted again, she wants to do something.

In fact, at that time, both Ichinose and Kanzaki were responsible, and even other students were responsible, because everyone was too naive and underestimated the shamelessness of Ryuen’s class, who actually used espionage as a method.

”Forming a team...huh? I wonder, if this will... Ah, I was just talking to myself. Never mind.”

Um...

Oreki-san asked a good question.

It immediately made people understand something.

If it is just a grading exercise, it would be similar to last year’s in-class voting for withdrawal from school, where one of the votes was a vote of appreciation for a student from another class.

However, according to Hoshinomiya, this time on school trip everyone can relax during stressful exam.

Then class evaluation scores are not involved.

Therefore, even if the score is about to be caught up by Class C, can slow down a bit.

So what is the purpose of requiring everyone to give ratings now?

It turns out that you form a team.

The duration of school trip is five days and four nights. It is not too long, but if the team is well organized, it is possible to obtain information from a specific target, or plant a spy.

The class can’t be too relaxed.

After all, whores are now burdened with the task of recruiting classmates who have dropped out, and one day they will aim to join Class A and buy them back.

So other classes are playing, and their class is working hard. So there is always some hope.

”What if we form a team?” Ichinose also began to think.

’After sports festival, I heard from my classmates that during halftime break, Sakayanagi-san took people to the base camp of Class D. Just a few words shook the morale. In fact, overall level is not good, but according to rules of sports festival, as long as everyone follows the steps, even poor students can bring points to class.....Then you can place high hopes on reliable classmates...Sudo-kun, Onodera-san, Horikita-san, Kikyo-chan, Hirata-kun, and Ayanokoji-kun who can stand on equal footing with Koenji-kun. Meow! Why are there so many? It’s unfair.....?’

So in fact, Class B also regards Class D as a dangerous existence.

As a result... Class D’s results were disappointing, and they didn’t even climb up.

But Ichinose can’t deny role that Sakayanagi played in this.

Ichinose herself was able to confirm in own rumor incident that one of the people behind it was Sakayanagi-san.

She can’t easily let the classmates here stay with Sakayanagi-san for long.

”Sakayanagi-san is student council president and representative of Class A. Her class should give her a high evaluation. Given nature of the class competition in this school, I think it would be more likely for students with high evaluations to team up with each other....So, please give me a high opinion. If someone from our class must team up with Sakayanagi-san, I hope that person is me.”

Um. Very good, Ichinose.

Hoshinomiya Chie stood aside and watched students.

As a teacher, she knew that grading this time was actually for purpose of grouping students for school trip.

Students from each of the four classes will form groups of 8 and act together.

While school trip seemed to be a way for students to relax, it was actually an open conspiracy to give more opportunities to students who wanted to compete in class and to give them the opportunity to secretly plant their own spies.

Now Ichinose and others have recognized this and have learned to protect their students.

’That’s a very good point. It’s just a little regrettable. Because of Ichinose-san. Although your current goal is to protect Sakayanagi-san, have you ever thought that there is another way to go? That is to manipulate the score and choose to team up with Hikigaya-kun from Ryuen-kun’s class...Contact him openly during school trip and take him down....In other words, it seems like it would be a good idea to just take down Sae-chan’s confidant.’

Hoshinomiya Chie thought to herself.

Because Chabashira suddenly gave up... no, she was directly reborn, leaving her alone in the quagmire of past obsessions.

This feeling is not good at all.

xxxxxxx

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