章 142: Chapter 142 – More ruthless than Nagumo
What's missing? Kamuro Masumi, with Sakayanagi's prompting, searched the field with eagle eyes, scanning everything thoroughly.
The temporarily widened tracks, the high-speed cameras at both the starting and finishing lines capturing every moment, the staff recording the results, the students hydrating post-race—nothing seemed amiss.
This left Kamuro puzzled, wishing for a direct answer: "Why not just say it outright?"
"That would be too boring," Sakayanagi replied, leisurely sipping her sweetened tea as if partaking in an English garden tea rather than amidst the bustling sports festival, suggesting Kamuro should hone her insight: "It's about time you trained your observational skills, Kamuro-san."
Kamuro's expression soured momentarily before returning to neutral, possibly picking up on her slight mood. Sakayanagi, finding amusement in her reaction, generously offered the answer: "People."
People? Missing people? How could that be? Instinctively, Kamuro looked again towards the finish line, counted eleven participants, and realized the incongruity.
With three grades and twelve classes, there should have been twelve participants.
But at the time, with everyone clustered together, it was indeed difficult to notice one less participant without a careful count.
This revelation startled Kamuro: "No wonder Yukio said he didn't need help. Could it be the missing one…?"
Hashimoto continued, "The missing participant must be from the second-year Class A."
Second-year Class A, Nagumo's face was ugly.
What Kamuro belatedly realized, Nagumo had noticed right from the start. When his class member failed to show on the track, he immediately called to inquire, but couldn't get through. Efforts to find the missing student within his class yielded nothing.
While other second-year classes managed to block Oda successfully, easing Nagumo's frustration, Sakayanagi's class's unexpected intervention helped Oda break through, infuriating Nagumo further.
By now, it was clear to Nagumo the extent of Yukio's strategies. He acknowledged both sides played dirty, but his loss was overwhelming—underestimating his opponent led to a calculated defeat, and he had failed to consider Sakayanagi's involvement.
Three hours earlier, before the sports festival officially started in the early dawn light, Ryuen, looking weary, followed Yukio, with Ishizaki yawning beside them.
Albert coordinated with Oda to subdue a second-year student named Yusaku in the small woods next to the second-year dormitory.
"What are you guys planning to… Ow!" Yusaku couldn't handle the pain at the back of his neck, finding the burly man beside him, akin to a towering iron giant, excessively forceful.
Why couldn't he just knock him out directly instead of hitting him like that? Before Yusaku could finish his plea or even scream, Albert delivered a powerful punch right to Yusaku's abdomen, effectively silencing him and emphasizing the importance of keeping quiet.
Their path was meticulously planned: they attacked in an area without surveillance cameras in front of the dormitory, then dodged the cameras all the way to the back of the building, leading into the woods. The only camera between the dormitory's back and the woods was sprayed with black paint. Any class member could confess to the school afterwards, paying a hefty cleaning fee to resolve the matter without leaving any evidence.
Thus, Yusaku, without any proof and knocked out from behind by Albert, was brought over directly.
Yukio, too, was feeling the toll of waking up early, his eyelids drooping: "This guy, running in the morning, huh?"
Ishizaki, trying to muster some energy at Yukio's question, put off yawning and replied seriously: "That's him, Yukio-san. Nomura has been monitoring him for a month, there's no mistake."
"Then do it," Yukio nonchalantly commanded, leading to Yusaku's unfortunate transformation into a battered state, further sedated by water mixed with dissolved sleeping pills by Albert, ensuring a solid eight-hour sleep.
Yukio couldn't help but feel a sense of déjà vu observing Albert's methods: a combination of knocking out and medicating. He mused if Albert had silver hair and if Yusaku wore a blue suit, followed by shrinking in size after taking the sleeping pill, wouldn't it somewhat resemble a scene from Detective Conan?
Shaking his head, Yukio concluded that one shouldn't wake up too early; it ruins not just the morning but makes one foolish all day. Focusing back on the task at hand, he checked the information Nomura had gathered over the month on his phone: "Let's go, next one."
"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" Nagumo, usually quite refined, was now nearly contorted in rage, looking almost like a caricature capable of scaring children at night.
His mood darkened further because, with the second 100m race already underway, another participant from his class failed to show up!
In his class, not a single subordinate assigned to find the missing participants could locate them. The faculty had already approached, asking if he was willing to pay 100,000 points to substitute a player, frustrating Nagumo further and fueling his irritation.
How could he accept such a trade? This was just the second round of the 100m dash, and each individual event consisted of five rounds! If he substituted a player now, what about the remaining three rounds? Not to mention, there were over a dozen more individual and team events to follow! Could they afford to substitute a player for every event? Even if his class was powerful and had amassed a considerable amount of private points, where would they find enough substitutes or points for all these events?
Nagumo deeply regretted his underestimation. Initially, when his class members reported that there was a bespectacled male from Yukio's class gathering information nearby every day, Nagumo found it amusing and paid it no mind. He thought, let Yukio investigate all he wants; without the competition list, no amount of investigative work could uncover their strategies. Even if Nagumo were to hand over his class's vital competition list to Yukio, what difference would it make?
Could Yukio simply employ a strategy akin to "matching horses" by matching weak with strong competitors across different classes? Remember, each event involved twelve classes participating!
It was impossible to play such tactical games. The overwhelming force of the second year would simply crush them. With over 40 students in Yukio's class and over a hundred in Nagumo's second year — minus a few non-compliant or dropped-out students — the strategy was simple. If the other three classes in the second year interfered with Yukio's class and his own class effortlessly scored points, they could easily push Yukio's class to the bottom. No matter how cleverly Yukio arranged his competitors, they wouldn't be able to break through, thus avenging the pool incident.
However, Nagumo hadn't anticipated that Yukio would play even dirtier than him. While Nagumo planned to sabotage the games, Yukio went straight for the jugular, ensuring Nagumo's class couldn't even participate in the events.
Now, Nagumo was filled with regret, both for underestimating his opponent and for the penalty for absences. What he desired most was to turn back time, go back to the student council meeting where he proposed increasing the penalty for absences to expulsion, and give his past self a good thrashing.
Fortunately, due to Horikita Manabu's concern for the students, the final decision was merely to increase the penalty points for absences. Otherwise, if the rule was to expel a student for every absence, it would've been like shooting himself in the head — or more accurately, crushing his own head, bones and all, with a boulder.
***
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