Chapter 136: The Final Day, the Clown Appears (Two-in-One 5k) (Patreon)

The seventh day of the deserted island Special Exam.

At six in the morning, Hikaru Naruse completed his final checkpoint check-in.

Counting the checkpoint at Class A's camp, that made four locations in total. This morning's refresh should be the last one, since the exam would end at ten o'clock today.

"Tallying up the points, the haul isn't bad. Worth all the exhaustion these past few days."

After returning to camp and resting for a while, it was soon time for the exam's final roll call.

At eight in the morning, Tomonari Mashima appeared punctually at the entrance to Class A's camp. Roll sheet in hand, he began checking off the names of all thirty-nine students.

Once he'd confirmed everyone was accounted for, a faint smile crossed the man's face.

"Two hours left in the exam. Thanks for enduring it, everyone."

"You can start taking down your tents now. Pack everything up and carry it to the beach to hand over to the staff for collection."

"The results of this exam will be announced at ten.

As Class A's homeroom teacher, Tomonari Mashima already knew how every class had performed. But there was still one last step to complete.

"Naruse-san, this is the form for submitting the names of the other classes' representatives. You may fill it out now, if you choose to."

Tomonari Mashima studied Naruse. Ever since the term began, the boy's performance had been consistently dazzling, which put the teacher's mind at ease — Class A's standing had never once wavered.

"Understood."

There was no need to worry about anyone eavesdropping now, since every camp was going through the exact same procedure at this moment.

Even Kakeru Ryuen would be with Kazuma Sakagami from his own class right now — there was no way he could split himself in two to come spy on Naruse's identity here.

"Naruse-san…"

Kohei Katsuragi and several others turned to look. It was only now that the rest of the class realized the truth — they'd all along believed Katsuragi was the class representative.

That was the success of the "real card, fake card" tactic — even his own classmates had to be fooled first.

"Don't worry, everyone. I've already confirmed the names of the other three classes' representatives. This time, we're going to win beautifully."

Naruse spoke with total confidence, a warm smile spreading across his handsome face.

"Really?" Katsuragi's eyes widened in disbelief.

"Of course. Did you think I was heading out early and coming back late every day just to refresh checkpoints?"

Naruse's gaze swept over the other students in camp before flicking briefly to Mashima, who was also watching him. He explained with a smile.

"Class B's representative is Chihiro Shiranami."

"Class D's representative is Suzune Horikita."

"As for Class C…"

"Didn't Class C withdraw from the exam?" someone blurted out reflexively.

"Heh. Plenty of them dropped out, sure, but three are still on the island. That's their tactic."

Naruse's expression stayed calm as he wrote the third name on the form.

"Their class representative is Kakeru Ryuen.

With all three names filled in, the other students' stares turned even more astonished.

None of them had imagined Naruse would take things this far, completely nailing down the identities of every other class's representative.

"Why so surprised? Didn't I tell you? This time, I wanted to stir up a real storm.

"It's just that your abilities are honestly terrifying, Naruse-san."

"Yeah, how did you confirm Class C hadn't given up on the exam?" Katsuragi asked, a trace of confusion on his face.

"Simple. I found the cave in the forest where he'd been holed up. That guy's probably going to show up right at the very end."

A playful smile curved at the corner of Naruse's mouth, as if he could already picture Ryuen's smug face.

"When it happens, just play dumb and enjoy the show. He probably thinks his class is about to take first place.

"So that's how it is."

"There's even more to it? Now I really can't wait."

"So you'd already worked this out back when we were buying supplies, Naruse-san?" Masayoshi Hashimoto suddenly realized.

"That was just speculation at the time. I only confirmed it after seeing him with my own eyes."

Naruse handed the form back to the teacher with a smile.

"Mashima-sensei, I've finished filling it out."

"Well done."

Tomonari Mashima gave Naruse a long, deep look. Honestly, he'd taught more than one graduating class over the years, but this was the first time he'd encountered a situation like this.

As a teacher, he obviously knew all three names Naruse had written down were correct — and that was genuinely a little frightening.

Class A had always had capable students, but never one quite like Naruse…

After Tomonari Mashima left, the students of Class A began packing up their things.

"With Naruse-san's tactics this time, we're bound to score a total victory!"

"Fifty points for each correct guess, and we've still got 190 points banked. Could we actually end up past 300?"

"So our Private Points next month… could they really break 150,000?"

"I want to treat Naruse-san to a meal…"

"Me too!"

"He's really incredible…"

As they packed up, the chatter grew excited on all sides. Even the usually composed Katsuragi wore a broader smile than usual.

Naruse packed up alongside Ai Morishita and Miki Yamamura.

Per the rules, even though the camping gear wouldn't be needed again, everyone still had to carry it back to the beach and hand it over to the staff.

Naruse was busy helping dismantle the tent poles when, after a while, a pair of small hands suddenly reached over from beside him.

A moment later, a tiny piece of candy was pushed into his mouth.

"?"

Naruse blinked in surprise, then felt a rich buttery sweetness spread across his tongue.

"Butter candy? Where did you get this?"

Naruse glanced at Morishita, the one who'd fed it to him, and noticed she still had two more candies in her hand.

"I brought it up myself. You just didn't notice before."

"You kept it hidden this whole time?"

Naruse arched an eyebrow. "Then why didn't you let me try some earlier?"

"Because you hadn't made me happy before that, so I didn't feel like sharing.

"Weren't you happy that day?"

Back when he'd parted ways with Kei Karuizawa, Naruse had promised to spend time with Morishita. By the third day, the two of them had shared plenty of intimate moments together in the forest.

"It still didn't feel like enough. Not quite satisfying.

"You…"

Naruse pinched her soft cheek, a doting smile curving at the corner of his mouth.

"Once we're back on the cruise ship, I'll deal with you properly then.

"Mm."

Watching the two of them talk, Yamamura said nothing, though a restless itch stirred inside her too.

Next time… I'll go find him too.

At Class B's camp, Honami Ichinose was also organizing the cleanup.

Her organizational skills were excellent — she could divide up tasks smoothly among everyone, so the whole process moved quickly.

Class C's mole, Miu Suzuhira, was helping out too, saying she wanted to pull her weight after all the meals she'd eaten here these past few days.

Once things had settled down, Sayo Ando and Mako Amikura came over to Ichinose's side.

"Ichinose, if our representative doesn't get guessed correctly, will the checkpoint points go straight into our class evaluation points?"

"That's right, that's how the exam works."

Her tone was gentle. Over the exam's final days, Class B had actually found two checkpoints and successfully helped Chihiro Shiranami scan in at both.

"Though… if someone guesses him correctly, all those points get wiped out."

"It's fine, Shiranami-san has always been careful."

"Yeah, we might actually pull in a lot of points this time. That'd put some real distance between us and Class C behind us."

Just thinking about it, Amikura and Ando both looked forward to it.

"We only spent 110 points on supplies. Add the checkpoint points on top of that, and our final surplus might come out past 200!"

"So our Private Points… would clear 50,000, right?"

"Yeah, let's hope so."

Ichinose agreed with a few words, and though she kept smiling, her mind suddenly drifted to something else entirely.

That day in the forest, she'd finally voiced the question that had been weighing on her for so long.

"Are you and Karuizawa a fake couple?"

The question had come out somewhat abruptly, though Ichinose had already prepared an explanation for herself — after all, she hadn't meant to eavesdrop that day.

But Naruse hadn't seemed to care in the slightest why she was asking. He'd simply given her an ambiguous answer.

"Kei and I started out as a couple in name only… but what we have now is the real thing.

"No rule says pretend can't turn real, right?"

At the boy's frank answer, Ichinose's feelings tangled into something complicated.

Somewhere deep down, she'd been clinging to a faint hope — an idea that felt both strange and a little "unworthy" of her.

Ichinose had wanted them to truly be a fake couple.

If that had been the case, there were so many things she could have concluded — and moved forward with.

But now that she had a definite answer, she found herself retreating instead.

Breaking apart someone else's relationship wasn't something Honami Ichinose would ever do.

And yet her feelings for Naruse weren't false either — if anything, they seemed to keep deepening.

"Ugh…"

A girl's private worries, impossible to share with anyone, could only stay buried deep within Ichinose.

At Class D's camp.

Everyone was packing up here too, though the mood was noticeably more cheerful than at Class A's or Class B's camps.

With just over an hour left in the exam, naturally, all anyone could think about was getting back to the cruise ship soon and enjoying a comfortable vacation again.

Some students were already discussing what they'd do first once they were back aboard.

"I'm sleeping a full day and night in my soft bed. These past few days nearly killed me!"

"No ambition. I'm heading straight for the buffet to make up for every meal I went hungry these past few days."

"Ha ha ha, I'm taking a bath."

All kinds of chatter kept popping up. Off to one side of the camp, Suzune Horikita finished packing her bag, looking a great deal better than before.

Her cold had fully cleared, and she was at her most energetic now.

Of course, even with the cold gone, something else kept nagging at her — Naruse's "arson of the heart" incident.

"Think carefully about it yourself — what do you really think of me?"

The words had planted themselves like a seed, and they'd been quietly growing inside her ever since.

Suzune had never been in love before, so naturally she had no idea what liking someone actually felt like. She simply didn't dislike Naruse, and being alone with him didn't feel uncomfortable at all.

As they spent more time together, she'd grown used to it — even when Naruse teased her, which he sometimes did.

There was also a strange feeling that had crept in: because he'd genuinely helped her solve so many problems, Suzune would occasionally catch herself thinking a thought that even she found "a little frightening."

It was this — sometimes, when she was alone, she'd find herself thinking of Naruse's face without even meaning to.

For her, that was a tremendous change.

But… did she really like him?

That was a question she couldn't answer just yet.

On the other side of Class D's camp, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka wore his usual calm expression as he helped with the packing.

Ever since Naruse had intervened in Horikita's condition midway through, Ayanokoji had scrapped his original plan and switched strategies.

The revised plan was simple enough: prevent Class C's mole from ever learning the name of their class representative.

The plan had two steps.

The first was that Ayanokoji had secretly located the walkie-talkie Nanami Yabu had hidden away, dug it up, and stashed it somewhere she'd never find it.

Without her radio, Yabu had no way of contacting Ryuen.

The second step was that he'd deliberately suggested to Haruki Yamauchi and Kanji Ike that they show this Class C girl some gentlemanly kindness, which had the two of them hovering around Yabu every single day since.

To the rest of Class D, this "friendly attention" seemed like nothing unusual. But in Ayanokoji's arrangement, its real purpose was to make sure Yabu never got the chance to go rifling through Class D's keycard.

As a result, even now, she still hadn't laid eyes on Suzune Horikita's keycard.

Which meant Ryuen was left with nothing but a one-in-three guess.

On the other hand, Ayanokoji also wanted to give Class D a chance to score extra points, so — a rare move for him — he went and sought out Yosuke Hirata.

Hirata was his roommate on the cruise ship. The two weren't exactly close, but Ayanokoji knew him to be a reasonable person.

"What?"

Hirata jolted at whatever he'd just been told.

"You're saying Ryuen-san hasn't withdrawn from the exam, and he's been on the island this whole time?"

"That's right. So tell Horikita-san she should write down Ryuen's name in a bit.

"Seriously?"

"There's no penalty even if the guess is wrong, Hirata. I saw it with my own eyes." Ayanokoji disliked getting involved in things like this, but there was no other way this time. "Please trust my judgment.

"All right… I'll trust you."

In truth, Hirata had been keeping an eye on Ayanokoji for a while now, suspecting this quiet, taciturn boy was anything but ordinary.

Now it seemed he'd been right all along.

So Hirata passed the information along to Horikita.

When Suzune learned that Ryuen had been lying low on the island the whole time, she felt no surprise at all — she'd already discussed the matter with Naruse.

"I'll write down his name.

"These points belong to us.

Around 9:40, the three classes arrived back at the beach in quick succession.

For everyone who'd endured seven grueling days on the deserted island, this moment felt like a cage that had been shut for a week finally springing open. Excitement ran high in every camp.

But just as the students from the three classes were chatting idly, two girls suddenly stepped out from the crowd and moved to stand at the very edge.

Together they formed a tiny group of two, clearly separated from the other three classes.

It was Nanami Yabu, stepping out from Class D's ranks, and Miu Suzuhira, stepping out from Class B's.

"Wait, what's going on?"

"Why is Suzuhira meeting up with another girl? Is she from Class C too?"

"I know her — that's Nanami Yabu from Class C.

"What does that mean… are there other Class C students still on the island besides her?"

All sorts of confused, doubting murmurs rippled through the crowd, but the two girls said nothing at all, watching calmly toward the tree line.

As if they were waiting for someone.

A few more minutes passed before a figure emerged slowly from the shadows of the forest.

The guy's red hair was a mess beyond belief, and his tracksuit looked no better — practically ruined.

Ryuen's stubble had thickened further, but his expression remained as brazen as ever. A black walkie-talkie in hand, his whole bearing screamed "I'm back" with cocky swagger.

His chin — now shadowed with a short layer of stubble — caught the sunlight in an unhealthy, dusky tone — and his dark eyes glinted with that same arrogant "I'm back" swagger —

"This is the very first Special Exam — how could Class C possibly skip it?"

"Afternoon, everyone.

Naturally, the most shocked people at the sight of Ryuen were the Class B students —Output token limit hit. Resume directly — no apology, no recap of what you were doing. Pick up mid-thought if that is where the cut happened. Break remaining work into smaller pieces.even Ichinose was startled.

"Ryuen?!"

"Didn't Class C give up on the competition?"

"Looking at the state of him… has he been hiding out on the island this whole time?"

"Then our class representative's name—" Mako Amikura's expression shifted, and she noticed Ichinose beside her looking just as grim.

"Suzuhira… is a mole?"

"Oh my god…

Ryuen paid no attention to what was happening with Class B, ambling instead toward Class A's group. He spotted Naruse standing at the front of the line right away.

"Naruse-san… this time, I've got you all figured out!"

"Is that so?"

Naruse smiled and waved a hand in front of his nose, as if fanning away a smell.

"But before the results get announced, could you keep your distance? You reek.