I have a life simulator.

"I have iodine and cotton swabs in my room, so I think it would be better to wipe it off."

"Well, actually, the sheets and blankets in my room are already a mess, so Fanbo, please be a good person and let me stay for another night."

After noticing the change in Ichinose Honami's mindset, Kitagawa Ryo revealed the matter later. He himself did not want Honami to approach the relationship with him with the same impulsive and inflexible mindset as before. After all, this was not a manifestation of deep affection taking advantage of the right time and place to indulge desires, but rather a spur-of-the-moment act of venting dissatisfaction and minor emotions.

Actually, Kitagawa Ryo doesn't consider himself a very ritualistic person, but he still hopes that every girl can have a memory like this that she won't regret many years later.

"Okay, but I need to go back to Liang's room first and tidy up my things. I can't leave them all piled up in a mess for another night."

Having just delved into more private topics, Ichinose Honami remained remarkably calm about Kitagawa Ryo's plans to spend the night in her room, even adding this seemingly casual remark in an orderly fashion.

After the initial emotional release, Ichinose Honami, whose mind had cleared up, returned to her usual self. At this point, she was more concerned about whether Kitagawa Ryo had any fresh wounds hidden on his body. It was as if she felt inexplicably choked up if she didn't examine him thoroughly.

So, after the two returned to the first-year dormitory building, they first went to Kitagawa Ryo's room 408 to tidy it up and waited to dry the sheets and blankets again the next day. Then they went to Ichinose Honami's room, where the other person urged him to take off his upper body clothes with some concern.

In fact, during his time with Yuki in the afternoon, Kitagawa Ryo did not stop the girl, whose rationality had been ignited, from doing anything to him, because he was quite familiar with the strange pleasure of this slight pain mixed with comfort.

Just like in the initial rhesus monkey experiments, where researchers deliberately attached a mechanism to the cotton mother that would punch when touched to test the reaction of the rhesus monkey infants, Suzuki Kabushige also set up a similar experiment in the original white room.

The results of this control group were completely convergent.

Like the rhesus monkey infants who, no matter how many times they are knocked away, will still try to hug and get close to their cloth mother again, the appropriate frequency of rough treatment will actually deepen the distortion of this emotion. However, the cost is that the test subjects will have an increasingly greater sense of disconnect between cognition and reality, especially for children with a personality like Xue.

At least Kitagawa Ryo had experienced the other party's emotional breakdowns and unconscious apologies many times before, so today's incident can only be described as an enhanced version of a past one.

But for Honami Ichinose, these were indeed unacceptable or even unbearable.

In this respect, she might be like Yuki, someone who is particularly sensitive to and cares deeply about Kitagawa Ryo's blood.

Both of them have the inherent gentleness of human nature, but they have been shaped into different forms by their different upbringing.

Kitagawa Ryo thought to himself.

Before him, Ichinose Honami was meticulously examining every tiny wound before finally letting out a sigh of relief.

Her treasures should be cherished forever.

Chapter 357: A New Special Exam

For the students of Class 1-A, the cultural festival that ended yesterday was undoubtedly a tiring but rewarding and fulfilling trip. This satisfied mood has continued into today. At least when Kitagawa Ryo walked into the classroom with a yawn, the atmosphere in the class was still quite harmonious.

His sleep quality last night was actually quite good. In this late autumn season when the weather is turning cold, it is indeed a pleasant and comfortable thing to fall asleep while holding another warm girl. However, because he has to accompany Sakayanagi Arisu for morning exercise every day, in order not to be caught in the act, Kitagawa Ryo had no choice but to get up earlier than usual to go back to his room to wash up, and then pretend nothing had happened to wake Arisu up as usual, starting their day with morning exercise.

However, as the weather gets colder, the difficulty of getting out of bed for Arisu Sakayanagi increases exponentially. After all, it's not like summer vacation when you can just throw off the covers, change your clothes, and go straight out the door. It's already a chore to reach out from the warm bed to grab various clothes and change into them. What's more, Arisu herself has a habit of sleeping in pajamas. In fact, this morning, Ryo Kitagawa waited for quite a while for her to get dressed while she was wriggling in bed. In the end, he couldn't stand it anymore and took the initiative to help her.

The size and shape of the clothes were completely different from what he had seen when he opened his eyes a few tens of minutes earlier. Kitagawa Ryo remained calm throughout and even wanted to praise Arisu's figure, saying that it was easy for him to put on clothes. After all, he only needed to raise his hands and he could easily slip his thermal underwear and sweater over his head in one go. The process was incredibly smooth and without any resistance.

"……call."

After settling into his seat near the back, Kitagawa Ryo let out a long yawn, looking a little sleepy. His classmate, Horikita Suzune, sitting next to him, immediately gave him a concerned look.

"Did you sleep well last night?"

"A little bit, I'll catch up during break."

Kitagawa Ryo initially considered making up an excuse like "the school festival was too tiring," but remembering that Horikita Suzune had been looking after the confectionery shop for him all day yesterday, he decisively abandoned that idea and turned his head to speak, resting his chin on his hand:

"I've already divided the total revenue from the dessert shop at the cultural festival into three parts. I'll transfer your share to Suzune in a bit. The extra amount is the additional compensation that Airi and I discussed and agreed upon, since Suzune was minding the shop yesterday."

"okay."

Horikita Suzune didn't seem inclined to refuse, as that's just her personality, and no one ever complains about having too many personal points.

Moreover, for her personally, the most precious thing related to this cultural festival was the memories left during the preparation stage before the official start of the festival; everything else was just an additional bonus.

During the free time before the first class started, Kitagawa Ryo chatted with Horikita Suzune about some interesting everyday topics. When Suzune mentioned that someone wanted to recruit her as a full-time pastry chef after graduation, he jokingly made a comment:

"What does Lingyin think? This is indeed a new career path that can be considered."

"Me? I just think they just came to the wrong person. After all, most of the menu was designed and improved by Liang herself. It's just that they didn't know Liang wasn't there at the time, so they blamed it on me."

As if completely oblivious to Kitagawa Ryo's joke, Horikita Suzune analyzed the situation quite seriously and arrived at a very rational conclusion:

"Compared to desserts, I'd say I'm better at general home cooking, but if I were to really plan to make this my career, it probably wouldn't be suitable for me."

"I'd like to hear why Rinne thinks that way."

"The reason is probably that I feel I can't and don't really want to make dishes that cater to the tastes of the general public. After all, my current cooking habits have been fixed on the kind of tastes that we can both get used to."

Kitagawa Ryo still enjoyed hearing Rin sometimes say these conclusions, which in a sense could be considered sweet nothings, in such a serious tone, so he nodded and responded in a serious manner:

"Me too. After cooking together for a long time, you can really feel the weight of the saying that couples' tastes tend to become more and more similar."

As expected, Horikita Suzune, who hadn't felt anything when she said these things, would feel a little shy when she heard him repeat them like that. She would unconsciously look away, her gaze wandering as if she was looking to see if anyone had noticed them, but in her heart, she couldn't help but start to fantasize about the future.

Kitagawa Ryo was unaware that Horikita Suzune beside him was already fretting about how to prevent the children from getting cavities under his pastry master father's baking, because the bell for the first class had already rung in his ears, and Majima Tomoya, the homeroom teacher of Class 1-A, also walked into the classroom and stood on the podium at the same time.

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

Although the class had achieved exceptionally good results at the cultural festival yesterday, Majima Tomoya looked more serious than usual as he stood on the podium, exuding an inexplicably tense atmosphere.

He really didn't want to dampen the class's high morale at this moment, but he also knew the importance of what he was about to say. So he cleared his throat heavily, took a sip of the tea he had brought to moisten his somewhat thirsty throat, and then began to speak in a heavy tone:

"The cultural festival has ended. I am very grateful to all the students for their hard work over the past month. However, what we need to do now is to keep looking forward, because we are about to face a final exam that is different from previous years."

The exams at Tokyo Advanced Educational High School can be broadly divided into two types: special exams that are announced irregularly and are mostly linked to class points, and the major tests that assess a student's most basic and important academic level, namely the midterm exams and the final exams at the end of each semester.

The latter is also the most stringent minimum standard in Tokyo Advanced Educational High School; students who do not meet the passing score will be expelled.

Majima Tomoya, who has been a homeroom teacher here for several years, is naturally very familiar with this examination system. According to the previous year's process, the second semester for first-year students consists of the sports festival in October, the midterm exams and cultural festival in November, and the final exams in December.

However, this year's situation is different from any previous one, and it was the decision made by the acting chairman at the meeting when Kitagawa Ryo and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka went to see Tsukishiro Tsuneshige before the sports festival.

In fact, Majima Tomoya had already publicly expressed his opposition at that time, but the decision had already been made and obviously would not be changed by the opinion of an ordinary teacher like him. So what he could do now was to explain the new changes that would begin at the end of the semester to his students in as much detail as possible.

"Simply put, the final exams will proceed as usual, but an emergency special exam will be added before the final exams."

As he spoke, Majima Tomoya wrote the date November 19th and the date of the final exams December 22nd on the blackboard.

"Only students who pass this special exam will be able to take the final exam on December 22nd as normal."

It must be said that the students in Class A of Grade 1 have indeed had their mental fortitude fully tested over the past six months. Although they were naturally a little surprised when they heard the news of the additional special exam, they did not show any signs of panic. The atmosphere in the class remained quiet, and no one impatiently asked the class teacher any questions.

After all, not long ago they had already achieved the feat of preparing for both midterm exams and the cultural festival simultaneously and successfully concluding both.

"Regarding this, you don't need to worry too much or that it will affect your final exam preparation, because this additional special exam has nothing to do with intelligence or physical strength, and you don't need to prepare in advance at all. It's a simple exam that anyone can easily do."

After offering some words of comfort to the students in the class, Mashima decided not to keep them in suspense any longer and simply revealed all the information about this special exam:

"The name of this special exam is 'Class Voting'."

"The rules are as follows: From today until December 20th, every student must evaluate their classmates and select three students who deserve praise and three students who deserve criticism."

“In addition to the students in your own class, each student also has one vote for praise and one vote for criticism of students in other classes. The results of these votes must be submitted to the school by December 21st. That’s all you have to do.”

“Each praise vote adds one point to the student, while a criticism vote deducts one point. Every student with a positive final score (greater than zero) will receive a reward of 10,000 personal points. The student who gets the highest total score in the entire grade will receive an extra special reward—protected points.”

This was a new term that no one had heard of before, and Majima Tomoya explained it, speaking slightly faster as well:

"The so-called protection points are the right to invalidate a student's status in case of expulsion. Even if you fail a midterm or final exam, as long as you have these protection points, you can invalidate your status as many times as you have them. However, it should be noted that these points cannot be transferred to others."

Upon hearing about the reward for first place, Kitagawa Ryo, who was initially feeling sleepy and waiting to catch up on sleep after class, perked up a bit. After all, the protection points that could offset a school expulsion penalty were worth a staggering 20 million personal points. More importantly, there were the limitless possibilities that came with these protection points.

To put it simply, the reason why Long Yuanxiang was able to come and go freely and recklessly during the special exam on the deserted island was essentially because he held the only resurrection card. This protection point is equivalent to a chance to revive. The more resourceful the person who gets it, the greater the value they can bring.

"Correspondingly, the three students with the lowest scores in the grade will be expelled. However, since this is a special supplementary exam, the students who are expelled due to this punishment will not have their class points affected."

The punishment was almost identical to the one for the last special test on the deserted island, except that the group was changed to a fixed three people.

"There are also some detailed but important rules, which I will also add here."

"First, the results will be announced on December 21, the day before the final exam. At that time, each student will be able to see their own and others' final scores, but they will not be able to see the specific number of praise votes and criticism votes."

"The voting process was conducted entirely anonymously, including when the final results were announced, the type of vote each student cast and who they voted for was not disclosed."

"Third, whether it's a praise vote or a criticism vote, you cannot consider yourself the subject of the vote, and it is also forbidden to fill in the same person multiple times. In addition, abstaining, that is, giving up filling in a certain type of vote or partially giving up, or having insufficient number of people fill in the vote, are all considered violations, and the person will also be subject to expulsion."

As Majima Tomoya spoke, he thoughtfully wrote the general rules of this special exam clearly and simply on the blackboard in chalk:

Additional exam – class vote.

Rule 1:

Each student has three votes for praise and three votes for criticism of their classmates. The praise and criticism votes will influence each other. The number of praise votes minus the number of criticism votes equals the final score.

Rule two:

You cannot vote for yourself, whether it's a praise vote or a criticism vote. You are also prohibited from entering the same person multiple times, leaving it blank, or abstaining.

Rule three:

This exam will continue repeatedly until the first and last three winners are determined, and tiebreakers will be held for those with the same score.

Rule four:

Each student will also have a special ballot for praising and criticizing students from other classes, which is also mandatory.

After writing down these rules that he, as the homeroom teacher, considered particularly important, Majima Tomoya paused slightly with his hand holding the chalk before finally writing down the last rule, which was also the one that worried him the most.

Rule 5:

The "Investment and Financial Management Mini-Class" shop at Beech Tree Shopping Center has reopened, and this time it will also launch a "Class Voting Column" guessing game. Students can use their personal points to guess who will be the final winner and the bottom three in this special exam. For details, please see the official website.

Sitting in the audience, Kitagawa Ryoya and Majima Tomoya frowned almost simultaneously.

After all, the last sports festival that did this was a complete mess in every aspect. Although more than a month has passed, the aftereffects still linger in the grade. Some people still regret it to this day, while others are eager to try it again.

But unlike that previous competition where losing was simply a loss, this time what was put on the gambling table was a much heavier penalty of expulsion from school.

Chapter 358: Aren't you also feeling heavy-hearted? (4k5)

After listening to the homeroom teacher, Majima Tomoya, explain all the rules of this special exam, Kitagawa Ryo's first reaction was that this was indeed a test that was only suitable for first-year students to take. After all, the core of the entire exam mechanism was not the three praise votes and criticism votes cast for students in their own class, but the one praise vote and criticism vote that students in other classes could use.

Theoretically speaking, this should be the first opportunity since the first year of school to try to eliminate rivals from other classes. Theoretically, as long as all the criticism votes from the other classes in two or three classes are gathered, it is undoubtedly possible to accurately eliminate any student in the grade.

If such an exam were to occur in the second or third year, Nagumo Masaru, who is in charge of the second year, would probably pass it easily through the elimination system, while Horikita Manabu, who is in the third year, would most likely be targeted by the students of the remaining three classes and dragged down to the bottom three, resulting in expulsion. Either way, the outcome would be quite obvious and without suspense. On the contrary, if it were placed in the most chaotic first year, the situation would become the most unpredictable.

In theory, during this special exam, the leaders of the four first-year classes could even collaborate with each other, taking advantage of the rule that students who drop out due to this special exam will not affect the class's points, to come up with a win-win solution to kick out, cough, optimize, those students who have never contributed much to the class and even dragged it down.

From this perspective, the recently launched OAA system can be considered a very suitable auxiliary tool. After all, before this, each student's ability level was a relatively vague concept. Although the OAA system is not comprehensive, it can at least provide a good reference point and a reliable and presentable credential for optimization.

However, Kitagawa Ryo himself did not have much hope for this seemingly beautiful topic. After all, real-life interpersonal relationships are not as simple as a few words, and students are not like Palu who can be used and discarded at will. Especially for the first-year students, although they have experienced more than half a year of school life, they are at least not as clear-headed and foolish as when they first entered school. But to actually follow orders and personally vote out a student they have spent so much time with would still put them under considerable psychological pressure.

Of course, even if the leaders do come up with a suitable list, and the students are willing to vote against each other to eliminate them, no one can guarantee that this information will not be leaked. After all, the more votes are collected, the more students will know, and the more difficult it will be to maintain confidentiality. Moreover, there are reminders from facilities like the 'Investment and Financial Management Mini-Class'.

If the person being pushed out already knows their fate during the month-long voting period, they might completely give up and break school rules before the final results are announced, dragging the whole class down with them.

To put it bluntly, if someone is determined, they could even choose to commit a major mistake and seek expulsion before the final exam, then use up all 300 class points at the last minute to pass the spot on to the next student.

Of course, if we follow this line of reasoning, wouldn't it have been better to just have students from other classes drop out from the start? After all, the rule this time is that the bottom three students in the grade should drop out, and there's no rule specifying which class they should be from.

However, if the initial intention was simply to expel students from other classes, the foundation for cooperation among the four classes would instantly crumble, and they would fall back into a competitive situation.

Moreover, just like Kitagawa Ryo's first impression, this special exam was essentially a great opportunity to attack his class. Compared to eliminating the bottom students in the class, many people might be more interested in taking this opportunity to directly eliminate the leaders of other classes. For example, Kitagawa Ryo himself might already be on many people's list of criticisms at this time.

Although he felt that there were probably quite a few people among them who simply harbored resentment towards Ichinose Honami because of her, they had finally caught her this time, from the sports festival until now.

In addition, the final rule regarding the prediction contest proposed by Majima Tomoya also gave Kitagawa Ryo a headache, because in his view, this thing was essentially a tool for strongly guiding public opinion and manipulating the voting in a disguised way, at least in this special exam.

Thinking of this, Kitagawa Ryo raised his hand again and asked Majima Tomoya:

"Mr. Mashima, last time we could use personal points to purchase additional preparation materials for the school festival. So this time, we should also be able to use personal points to purchase praise tickets and criticism tickets, right? Could you tell me the specific exchange rate?"

"This special exam does allow students to spend personal points to purchase additional praise and criticism votes, but I personally do not recommend that you use this method because the exchange rate is one to one million personal points."

Seemingly anticipating Kitagawa Ryo's question, Majima Tomoya quickly revealed one of the hidden rules. The high exchange rate did indeed shock the students of Class A. After all, although the total prize pool for the popular sports festivals was several million yen, each student's personal points were far less. Having tens or hundreds of thousands of yen in savings was already quite good, especially for the students of Class A, who only started earning personal points through class points in the second semester.

Using a real million personal points to exchange for a single praise or criticism vote that has limited impact in a poll with only a few hundred votes is indeed, as Majima Tomoya suggested, a not-so-worthwhile trade.

Kitagawa Ryo himself wasn't surprised by the astonishing exchange rate. He had originally thought the school would set a higher price to cut off the students' path of using personal points to buy extra votes from the source. This was because the school, or rather the acting chairman Tsukishiro Tsuneaki, had already set up another, more convenient and faster way for students to use personal points to exert influence on voting. That was the facility called 'Investment and Financial Management Classroom' on the fifth floor of the Keyaki Shopping Center.

To give a simple example, suppose Yahiko Totsuka from Class D is clearly aware that he might be expelled, and he happens to have five million personal points. Then he could try betting in a prediction game that he will be among the bottom three and expelled.

There is never a shortage of gamblers in this world who hope to win big with small bets. A considerable number of students who are greedy when others are fearful appeared at the recent sports festival. Therefore, there must be students who want to win those five million personal points and try to help Totsuka Yahiko escape the fate of being in the bottom three by choosing to cast their praise votes for him.

Similar to the last sports festival, this is another special exam with too many variables due to the long preparation time. The ideal situation would be to firmly control the four votes of praise and criticism from each student in the class, observe the situation and act when the opportunity arises. However, this is actually unlikely. After all, Kitagawa Ryo is not Ryuen Sho. He would never do something that is essentially like feeding someone and then being gossiped about afterwards.

Incidentally, because there were only 34 students in the class, Class A of Grade 1 was once again at a disadvantage before the exam even started due to the small number of students. After all, this meant that they would automatically have fewer votes of praise and criticism than the other three classes.

However, to be honest, Class A of Grade 1 does have a huge advantage over other classes: in the worst-case scenario, the class can theoretically come up with 20 million personal points to help the dropout. After all, Koichinosuke Honami already has 20 million points, but Kitagawa Ryo doesn't think he'll actually use them unless the dropout is himself.

"What are Lingyin's thoughts on this exam?"

After sorting out his thoughts, Kitagawa Ryo turned to Horikita Suzune, who was also deep in thought, and asked her a question.

"If the theme of this exam evolves into competition between classes, it is actually a matter of offense and defense. That is, you have to use the praise votes in your own class to defend against the criticism votes from other classes, while also ensuring that the criticism votes within your own class are as evenly distributed as possible."

In response to Kitagawa Ryo's question, Horikita Suzune offered her analysis based solely on one aspect of the situation: