SWNOVELXO Chapter 92
Chapter 92: People Who Haven’t Grown
“Yay!”
When the red-haired boy saw his 39 points in English, his face lit up, and the weight on his heart finally lifted. He couldn’t help but stand up and shout. The three idiots—Ken, Ike, and Yamauchi—also stood up to celebrate with him for passing the exam.
How should I put it… it was like three monkeys joyously shouting “Awooo~!” in celebration, which was really hard to watch.
“Haha, Teacher, did you see? As long as we focus, the midterm exam is nothing but child’s play!”
Ike was smugly showing off, especially since he scored above 70 in every subject in this exam, which was indeed something to brag about for someone who had consistently been at the bottom of the class… not that it was anything to be proud of!
“Don’t you know how you got these scores?”
The “dead fish-eyed” boy was complaining bitterly in his mind.
At the same time, Hachiman noticed that Horikita, who had been tense ever since the results started being announced, seemed to have finally relaxed, as her name wasn’t marked with a red line indicating failure.
Hachiman sighed. Was that really the case?
It seemed that Horikita had also noticed Hachiman’s sigh, as her face stiffened. Her gaze immediately turned to the class’s English scores. Without needing to calculate precisely, she could see that nearly 90% of the students had scores above 80, which made it clear that the failure line was likely somewhere around the 40-point range.
This is bad!
Just as Horikita was preparing to calculate the exact number, Chabashira-sensei had already picked up a red pen and drawn a line over someone’s name.
“Yes, it seems like this exam was indeed easy for you all, but…”
Chabashira-sensei’s smile had long since disappeared. She looked coldly at the red-haired boy who was frozen at his desk.
“But no matter how easy something is, it becomes difficult for an idiot. So, Sudo, you failed.”
“Huh?”
“What, what just happened?”
As Sudo’s good friends, Ike and Yamauchi immediately expressed their disbelief, and the once lively atmosphere in the classroom instantly turned as cold as Siberia, freezing to the point of utter silence.
“There’s nothing hard to understand. Sudo’s English score is failing, so he should prepare to be expelled,” came the cold, merciless words from Chabashira-sensei.
“Hah? Impossible! There’s no way! I clearly passed!”
Sudo stood up with a slam, glaring at Chabashira-sensei like a ticking time bomb, pointing at the score on the board and shouting, “Hey, are you kidding me? The failing score was 32, right? I got 39, that’s clearly passing!”
Sudo, burning with anger, completely ignored the boundaries of “student and teacher” etiquette, but at that moment, it seemed no one was paying attention to that detail. The more angry Sudo got, the more it showed how panicked he was inside.
“Oh? I’d like to ask, who exactly said the failing score was 32?”
Chabashira-sensei’s face held a cold smile in response to Sudo’s outburst.
“What? It was clearly 32! It was 32 last time!”
Sudo slammed his fist on the desk, causing a loud noise.
“That’s right! Teacher, you said it was 32 last time!”
Ike and Yamauchi quickly chimed in, backing up Sudo.
Chabashira-sensei showed a disappointed expression, and her gaze shifted toward Hachiman. A bad feeling surged in Hachiman’s heart.
“Hachiman, explain this to these idiots.”
“…”
What the heck? Why is it me? Don’t tell me this is some kind of personal vendetta?
Betrayed and cornered, Hachiman, under the gaze of forty pairs of eyes, reluctantly stood up with a face ashen as if facing death. “I-I don’t know, but I think Horikita might know something.”
The “dead fish-eyed” boy wasn’t even trying to take the ball himself, instead passing it directly to Horikita. The girl shot Hachiman a sharp glare but didn’t refuse. Then, without changing her expression, she stood up and looked toward the entire class and Chabashira-sensei, calmly saying, “Last time during the quiz, Chabashira-sensei did indeed say the failing score was 32.”
“See! Even that smug Horikita is saying the same thing!”
Yamauchi immediately jumped at Chabashira-sensei, completely unaware of the murderous look Horikita was giving him from behind. Hachiman, on the other hand, almost couldn’t help but laugh out loud—this was really a case of “friendly fire,” wasn’t it? At least he didn’t have to take the blame for this.
“But!!!”
Horikita, suppressing her anger and the murderous gaze directed at her, continued, “But that was the failing mark for the quiz, not for the midterm exam. Chabashira-sensei never said that the failing mark for the midterm exam was 32!”
“Hey! Horikita, whose side are you on?! You backstabber!”
Yamauchi hadn’t finished speaking when Hirata, who had finally had enough, stopped him.
What a useless teammate!
“Chabashira-sensei, may I ask what the failing mark is for this English midterm?”
“Sure, the answer is 42 points.”
Horikita showed a “just as I thought” expression, then looked at the high scores on the board and sighed, “So, this means that the average score for English in Class D is 84, and if you divide that by two, the failing mark standard is 42 points, right?”
“That’s correct. That is the failing mark for this midterm exam. Sudo passed all the other subjects, but unfortunately, his 39 in English falls below the failing mark, so Sudo, it’s time to prepare for expulsion.”
Chabashira-sensei confirmed Horikita’s explanation and added the details.
“What kind of joke is this?! I worked so hard!!! Damn it!!!”
Sudo seemed to have lost control of his emotions, kicking the chair beside him with a loud crash, scaring the nearby students.
“Teacher, is there really no way to make an exception? It’s unreasonable that failing an exam means being expelled. Are there any remedial measures like a retake?”
As the class leader, Hirata immediately stepped forward and pleaded with Chabashira-sensei.
Even though Hirata had always been disliked by Sudo and often picked on, he still chose to stand up and plead for Sudo. This scene surprised many, but some had a sense of, “Ah, that’s Hirata for you.” Of course, not everyone appreciated it—especially one person who was still “about to explode.”
As expected, Hirata really was the angel of Class D!
“Unreasonable?”
Chabashira-sensei sneered as if she had heard something utterly ridiculous, staring coldly at Hirata and the students below her. “I thought you all had already understood the harsh reality of this school, but it seems you’re still so naive. And now, after the exam is over, you want to talk to me about ‘unreasonable’? You’re all so selfish, only thinking about yourselves. Do you really think you mean something in the grand scheme of things?
The most useless thing in the world is ‘regret after the fact’! Anyway, no matter how much you complain or protest, the failing mark for this midterm is 42 points. That is an unchangeable fact.”
At this point, Chabashira-sensei glanced at the English scores on the board and mocked, “If you want to blame someone, blame yourselves for scoring so high.”
Everyone realized then that if the English scores hadn’t been so high across the board, Sudo’s 39 points might have been enough to pass!
But as Chabashira-sensei said, the most useless thing in the world is ‘regret after the fact’!
“The first class is about to start. If there are no more questions, I’ll leave now.”
The students couldn’t refute Chabashira-sensei’s explanation. All they could do was remain silent and helpless. Chabashira-sensei, seeing this, said no more. She had said everything that needed to be said and had given her warnings. Before leaving, however, she couldn’t help but glance at Hachiman.
“Damn it, really a bunch of useless idiots! If I had known, I wouldn’t have attended that study session! What a complete waste of time!”
Suddenly, Sudo, like he was venting his anger, kicked the desk in front of him over, and everyone could sense that he was like a ticking time bomb. Anyone who dared to touch him would likely get hurt. As expected, he had “exploded.”
Hasn’t he reflected on himself by now?
Hachiman felt disappointed as he watched the red-haired boy, who was still dodging responsibility. When he had worked hard to study earlier, Hachiman had thought Sudo had finally changed, but in the end, it was all just an illusion.
Because the midterm exams were at the end of the month, today was just the beginning of June. It had already been two months since arriving at this school. Had he made no progress at all?
Even a pig would have gained a few pounds after two months—let alone a human!