Akito, the observing man he is, immediately tried to focus back on the importance of the exam.

But this is Haruka Hasebe we are talking about.

"D-Don't worry Akito-kun, there is nothing between me and Kiyotaka."

"Huh?" Even though he was surprised, usually, she left it uncommented or tried to skip the topic.

But this time, she just surrendered to it. It's insanely unnatural for me to see her give up.

Just Haruka was the only one of us who didn't get the hint. Or she did and ignored it.

"Anyways! We need to take some points this time as well!"

Haruka said proudly looking on the leaderboards of my watch. I was brutally caught off guard.

14th place? Out of 80? How?

I am not gonna question why or what happened, I am just gonna thank god it happened.

Normally, I thought of these two playing around at the bottom, but seeing them casually be in the Top 15 made me sweat a little.

There is no way that children could make me sweat.

Not these fools.

In the end, or there is no end to it. I am going to win and repeat that process.

Because I have never lost. And never will.

Winning is everything to me, and there will be nothing changing that rule.

I think, only if I will face men who have greater education and training than me, will get close.

But sadly, there is nobody who even reaches this league of height.

"Something's wrong Kiyotaka?" Akito patted my shoulder.

"Ah nothing, there was just something weird in my mind again. What were we talking about again?"

"About the fact that Class C is up to something. Mysteriously, there are now 6 duos of Class B being almost fully disqualified, making it 6 solos in one class alone. Just Class C and D aren't suffering from it." Alya continued it.

But we aren't suffering from it, yet. The problematic possibility of someone having to fight all alone is frightening and pressuring.

Regardless of that, there will be one student in our class having to fight and win all alone. And the problem is, the chance of the student being me is high.

"Don't worry about that, Alya. Class B would have reported immediately, just like the A class. So there is a different problem behind that."

The danger zone from earlier disappeared finally from our maps, which then was replaced by a zone called 'Caution'.

Class C is playing dirty. An eye for an eye.

They are trying to not fully disqualify the duos but only downgrade them into solos, because the probability of them getting caught when sabotaging both duo mates is high.

And it will make the score look more natural in the end, lowering the alertness of the staff in this area.

"We should maintain a distance from them, and we should tell everyone in our class to do it as quickly as possible." Just like a leader would naturally do, Alya took action immediately.

Reducing the chance of that happening, she decided to break relations and all sorts of contact with Class C. This probably also happened for Class A.

But, for one side of Class A. Katsuragi is on Ryueen's side, both share the same interest of disarming the Sakayanagi friction.

The problem is, that Sakayanagi is aware of the fact that Katsuragi will suffer from a betrayal by Ryueen's side.

Class C has an interest in maintaining the conflict between both parties of Class A, to hold them off and unconsciously overtake them until they finally unite into one striking strength.

That is also the reason why Class B is promising Sakayanagi a lot of support. Sakayanagi and Ichinose are on good terms because Sakayanagi is strictly against giving Yuki any power.

She has the top priority of eliminating enemies and potential threats as early as possible. Just like her goal is to try and eliminate all the influence Katsuragi is holding.

"Good decision," I muttered to myself, barely a split second after she made that idea of hers public.

In short, Class B is a supporter of Sakayanagi and Class C is a supporter of Katsuragi.

Class D themself is neutral I suppose, but neutral in the way that we don't like both equally.

Knowing that Class A is in the most problematic phase with a power distribution, Class C could use this to overtake not only Class B but also Class A in one exam. If they did so, we would have no chance of catching up.

Except, we make them lose.

To do that, I might need a plan to intercept theirs, to make them fail the plan of weakening Class A and B.

Ryueen hasn't thought this through carefully. Striking on two enemies at once in an exam where they will easily come out on top is nice.

But being caught off guard by his enemy isn't that nice, is it? He underestimated Class D to the point where he began to see us as completely unnecessary to be on guard by.

For now, our priority is more to get a fine start on the exam, instead of focusing on sabotaging the other classes to change the Class rankings.

There were fair play rules after all, but just as the Geneva Conventions and like the speed limit on a highway, it's just a suggestion in the end.

This means nobody on earth will resume to maintain their fair game in this exam where every single rule is being broken 24/7.

Rules are meant to be broken after all.

□Bonds and Betrayals□

Not shortly after, our event finally was announced, and this one is pretty complicated to explain.

Hide and seek? Really? Isn't this supposed to be a hardcore-rough special examination to test us on our full capabilities and reach the last drop of our remaining potential?

And the staff uses this as an opportunity to play children's games?

Not that the exam itself is not a children's game.

But, that was what I thought at first glance. The rulework was a bit different. Instead of playing regular hide and seek, we will play a modified version.

The seeker doesn't just get selected like that. Everyone gets an information letter. But this letter has only one word written on it.

Seeking, Hiding.

The problem is, nobody knows who is hiding and who is seeking, since this game is pretty complex. The chance of hiding at a location with somebody else, and that person being truly innocent isn't that high anymore.

This means, you need to be a sharp one and need to somehow manage to hunt without anybody noticing.

A game built on who you should trust.

Not even the hunters know who is trustworthy and who isn't. The last hiding person who remains until the end will receive first place. However, the person who gets to be a hunter will receive first place, only then if he finds everyone before even the timer runs out.

The more students he finds, the more rankings he climbs.

The timer is set to 30 minutes. More than enough time, but huge space, and bad visibility.

And hard to find out.

Putting my hand in the box and grabbing a random letter, after I pulled it out, it was...

Out of every single participant I was the hunter. After all, there is only one hunter. The rest are hiding.

And well, here we go again huh?

After everybody got their roles, and the timer started, everybody went on and hid themselves. My tactic is quite simple, take out one after the other. And avoiding areas where more than one person is hiding.

To get the more important ones out, I was following Haruka, who could make some noise, so I thought of making it seem natural for her to get caught since she was rattling the leaves around.

Producing a lot of noise.

However, one thing which I was aware of, was that around 6,3 meters to my south, somebody was watching me. And to catch Haruka, my first target is that girl keeping an eye on me.

However, due to the worse visibility in a cloudy sky, I had it a lot easier to move around.

Slowly changing directions twice, her eyes lost my position, and probably some sort of panic was creeping up inside of her.

But that panic will vanish, once she has to help me out. After all, the 'virus' of being a hunter will now begin to spread, 30 minutes, 68 students.

I am impressed that the North was now occupying the most students. With 68 it was around a third of all the students on the island.

Shortly after I began to move, I scanned the area for the last time with my eyes and ears, nobody except Haruka was around.

Nanami Yabu was the name of the girl right in front of me, she was scanning the area that I just left earlier. And with that, I moved from Place 68 to Place 67.

To avoid making too much noise, I closed her mouth with the palm of my hand.

"(Oops. I guess you were caught. Better luck next time.)"

As she finally noticed that she was caught by the person she had an eye on earlier, she looked at me in terror and just nodded, whilst her mouth was closed.

"(Find more students and you will climb up the rankings)"

With that, I was not alone in hunting anymore, and thus, I switched my targets from Haruka to another girl.

I must say that I am some kind of professional when it comes down to hunting girls.

Just joking...I am terrible in that matter.

However, as Nanami then went on to catch Haruka and do the same as I did, we were now three. Haruka being the last place currently also jumped further to push her rankings.

But, we were caught as well. As I found Nanami Yabu from Class C, I heard some wood crunching, probably producing noise whilst trying to move from the spot.

One thing I was certain of, was that she was a girl out of Class A and pretty good at staying unnoticed for a timespan.

However, the biggest problem on this island is, that there is a brown-haired guy, who was trained to the limits in his childhood, competing with regular children.

By her dark hair, one person came to mind. I assume Kamuro. Kamuro Masumi, the girl who talked with Sakayanagi and Hashimoto. We caught them with Matsushita, but I doubt she is aware of my abilities.

Just like everyone else. They will find out, once it's too late.

For now, I can simply ignore her and continue since wasting time on outplaying her is stupid enough.

Currently, because I started as the hunter, I moved up 11 places, since Haruka and Nanami quickly infected the event. But I am still in 57th place.

This means I will catch her anyway. The problem is, that there are only 20 minutes left from the original 30 minutes of game time.

And apparently, there are going to be rounds.

So speeding up the process is more likely to push me up the rankings.

Beginning to move into the less open space in the event area, I finally lost Kamuro, but unfortunately, I approached a Person, who wasn't originally my plan to see.

Because that person is no other than Kitou. And passing that guy without being noticed or called out aloud is a serious skill to obtain.

A guy who looks like a beast. [A/N he is in the Y2V10 Cover I suppose]

"(Were you already caught, Kitou?)"

"(You should answer me that first)"

His uncomfortable voice was thrilling through my ears. And after looking at his stance, he was surely aware of the fact that I was somewhat curious about something else.

The game was going on naturally. And passively, I was moving up the event ranking, since the others pretty much did my work.

Now being placed 42nd, this is going to be the toughest opponent I suppose.

But there is seriously something off with the game Kamuro and Kitou were playing. Could it be...

That they knew that I was aware of being stalked by Kamuro?

This is rather annoying, to be honest.

"(Then, I will assure you that I was just moving my spot, since there is a chance that the people who were close to me were already caught.)"

But this insurance is completely useless to him. The possibility of me talking the complete opposite is still there.

"(There is no wa-)" Before he could raise his voice further, I closed the distance and tapped on his shoulder.

His watch was blinking red which means, that he was caught just right now.

"(Oops. Didn't mean to do that. Good luck, Kitou. And tell Kamuro that I know where she is if you find her.)"

Naturally, even if you start as the hunter, you shouldn't let your teammate be caught by one, protecting them.

If your teammate is the last surviving and you are in second place because you were the first hunter, means that she will win the first round of the event, and you will receive plenty of event points for being second.

This means I have to manipulate my fellow hunters, into that Alya was already caught, and I exactly how to.

Yup, I will use a tiny bit of violence throughout.

But well, it's not my goal to do a one versus 66. Even though I am sure that it will still be unfair...to the others.

First, I need to find Alya before anyone else does.

And this is quite hard...

What would I do in her position? Would she trust me? No...The better question should be, how much she trusts me.

So I adjusted my pace and started to run, letting Kitou stand in the same spot.

On my way to her, wherever she was, I began to catch many other students, unconsciously, just tapping them, without them even noticing they were a hunter now.

I even tapped Satou without making her realize.

Thus, I began to search for the most realistic hiding spots. Alya is scared of random noises, mostly in the dark and open space.

This means she will go to a more cramped and quiet place.

But how will I quieten her down? Without touching her with my hands?

I could stab her with a sharp stick, or throw a sharp rock into her face. Of course, that would be the most effective, but, she would never forgive me for that, if she is even capable of that.

So, I found a great alternative to violence.

But putting that aside now, I started to hurry up a little, since only 14 are remaining.

...

After a tiny bit of searching, I finally found her, hiding and trembling, right inside a bush. It was such an adorable sight to see her like that, but for now, I need to find an alternative to protect her and silence her completely.

Without using my hands as well, because the slightest touch on her watch with a finger will catch her.

So I did what everyone would do, I slowly crept up to her from behind, entering the same bush, but waiting behind her.

...

After some while, she noticed that something was blocking the wind behind her.

I am impressed by how she turned around by sensing something like this.

"(Hu-)"

Before she could talk, I shut her mouth with a great alternative to violence.

And I could muffle her sounds with that as well. And also I am getting experience by kissing her.

Most importantly, I wanted to know how a kiss on the lips feels since I never experienced that.

"(!!!!)"

As we finally parted and she needed to catch her breath, she noticed that it was nobody else but me.

"(Sorry but I needed you to be quiet. I am a hunter, so don't make any sounds. Currently, there are only six remaining, and as long as you are the last remaining, our duo will win this first round)"

"(...Y-You did it because of that?)"

She sounded disappointed, and honestly, I thought she would be glad to receive this.

Why is she sad?

I need to ask her that later I guess...

Or now, depends on how far the nearest hunter is away.

"(Hmm?)"

"(I-I just thought...forget it...)"

"(Okay? Alya, remain quiet. Stay close to me and just wait.)"

"(Сделайте это еще раз, пожалуйста...)" [Do it again, please...]

I really would, but I will talk about it later on with her. I guess I have a lot of explaining to do with her. She has no idea why I rejected her...and then I went on to have our first kiss.

And I still am not in a relationship with her, if this continues, I have to take things into my own hands and speed the process up as much as possible.

Mostly because I still have to learn a lot from her. And doing so is the best when being in a relationship with her.

She controls the class and I can control her. This is a match made in heaven.

"(I quite couldn't understand your whisper. Could you repeat that?)"

"(I will stay quiet-)"

Suddenly she was interrupted. A huge announcement was made.

"Showdown! Last one remaining, 47 seconds left!"

This was the signal I was waiting for, with this, I wasted a lot of time and finally, the last checkpoint to win the first round and secure one million event points.

"(Sorry, Alya.)"

I touched her voice and there it was. The first round is over.

"ROUND IS OVER! Winner: Kiyotaka Suou, first place. Second place and last remaining, Alisa Mikhailovna Kujo! The next round starts in 10 minutes! Get back to the starting point!"

Thus, I won one million points for our duo, and Alya won 900.000 points. Totaling the won points for us in this event 1.9 million.

Giving us a huge jump... With that...

"Oops. I did it again..."

First place.

☆Bonds and Betrayals☆

[A/N Lately, I've been drawing A LOT. From cars to mommy Alya, to Kiyo to even dang recoloring Illustrations...

Also, Today we finally did it, one month of constant updates :D

This will be the second part of the special exam for many... However, the next chapter will be a pre-story again before they continue discussing the state of their friendship:)

Also, I am not finding any good translations of Roshidere anymore. Where do y'all read them?

Have a nice day. The next chapter is estimated in three or four days. Here are some of my drawings;