Gifted Academy: The Perfect Student

Once again, I approached her and asked.

"Do you need help carrying your laundry?"

Her unwelcoming glare shone against me once again. I decided to commit to the venture, so I just stood there waiting for a response. After staring at her for a few seconds, she finally decided to speak.

"You\'re a weirdo."

Ouch.

Then again, she probably had clothes in the pile that she didn\'t want a random boy touching. After realising my mistake, I turned around for the final time and walked out the door.

"—wait."

This time she called out to me. I didn\'t want to turn around as I\'d already had enough of dealing with this person.

"—I said wait!"

It appeared that she was quite adamant about my attention all of a sudden.

"What is it."

She placed a few dresses and shirts on the top of the basket and handed the basket towards me.

"Here, I\'ll let you carry these for me, don\'t do anything weird."

"Um, okay then."

She dropped the basket into my hands and went back to grab more clothes out of the dryer. I stood there waiting for her to finish picking up the rest of her clothes. After stacking a few on her shoulder, she was finally able to carry them all. She stood and looked at me.

"What\'s your name?" She asked.

"Mizuhara."

"Okay, Mizuhara, help me take them to my floor and give the basket to me once we arrive. I don\'t want you to see where my room is."

"Uh, alright."

I reconsidered why I was helping such a nasty person. Since I had already gone this far, I decided that I\'d help them bring it to their floor at least.

I followed behind her as we walked towards the elevator. The boys\' dorms were on the upper floors whilst the girls\' dorms were on the lower floors. During the elevator ride, a student id fell out of one of her clothes. I was about to tell her about it when I noticed the name on the id, Aiko Hamasaki.

Eventually, we arrived on her floor, and I left the basket on the ground as she had requested. I wanted to figure out who she was, so I looked at the key she had pulled out from her pocket, room #042, luckily that room was right by the elevator—I guess that was why she was confident that she could carry the laundry from the elevator to her room. Beside the door, I noticed that there was only one name. I guess her roommate had been expelled.

Aya Akasaka.

I remembered her from the point rankings during the first exam. She was ranked third in class 2-D throughout the entirety of the exam.

She waited for the elevator door to close between us. I guess she really didn\'t want me to see which room her room was. As I was going up the elevator, I picked up the student id from the ground.

Why did she have Hamasaki\'s student id?

There was a chance that Hamasaki may have just lost it, and Akasaka managed to find it somewhere. However, it seemed somewhat unlikely due to it falling out of her laundry.

I guess I\'d think about it later.

I considered immediately returning Hamasaki\'s student id. However, I wanted to use it to compare with my own to see if I could see any correlation.

The student id card consisted of a picture of the cardholder, their name, their date of birth, and their student number. There wasn\'t really anything too interesting on the cards themselves, so I wondered why Akasaka would steal such a thing. There was still the possibility that it was pure chance and she had just picked up the lost card.

It was too early to make an assumption, so I decided to just keep the card for the time being.

*

Classes restarted the next day, and I walked into class 2-C, my new class for the time being. There were a few empty seats, so I just chose a random seat near the back. I didn\'t bring anything with me, so my table was empty—after attending a few classes, I realised that I didn\'t really need to learn anything.

It was easier to move around without having to carry books and stationery, so I stopped bringing them around altogether. The teachers didn\'t care at all. I guess that was the mindset of this school—with expulsions handed out left and right; all the students had plenty of motivation to work hard.

I would find out that today was another special day.

"At this school, we do exams a little differently. Everyone will be receiving a message from the school detailing the conditions of the first academic exam. This one will be pretty gentle as it is the first one you\'ll be doing at this school besides the special exam a few days ago. Be warned that the midterm exams will be a lot harsher."

As soon as the teacher finished her briefing, a notification popped up on all of our phones.

-

National High School

Here is the information for your academic exam:

The exam will consist of four topics, the ones you have been learning in class; Maths, English, Science and Humanities. Each exam will be out of 100 marks. Class rankings and scores for each exam and the overall result will be displayed.

[The highest-scoring student in the cohort will receive a special bonus in the next special exam.]

In each class:

Rank 1 - Gain the option to either transfer to the class above or receive 10,000 points (Class A students can only pick option 2)

Rank 2-10 - Receive 2,000 points

Rank top 50% - Receive 500 points

Rank bottom 3 - Lose 1000 points

Rank Bottom 1 - Move down a class (Class E student loses 5000 points)

~

If two or more students receive the same score, the result will be decided by weighting the results in this order:

1. Maths

2. English

3. Science

4. Humanities

Any further draw will result in both students receiving the same lower rank. (e.g. #5 and #6 will both get #6)

-

The school was definitely letting us off easy with this exam. There were way more rewards compared to punishments. The class change rule was pretty interesting. I assume that the school was intending to set a precedent that class changes are likely very common.

Anyhow, the rest of the classes for the day went without any major incidents. Most people were studying harder than usual.