Chapter 49: Hikigaya's Victor Declaration
"Hold on a second—I won?!"
The suffocating fear forced Aiura Kokoro's mind to snap back to reality, making her face the cruel truth head-on.
Her hands clutched tightly onto the edge of the desk, all of her earlier arrogance and confidence from the start of the bet gone. She screamed wildly:
"This can't be happening! Why did it turn out like this?!"
Hikigaya's dead-fish eyes fell into Aiura Kokoro's gaze, and in her eyes, they were no longer dull and lifeless—they had transformed into the eyes of a predator, like a man-eating shark tearing off her clothes, baring her tender body, and ripping it apart piece by piece.
His sharp gaze turned into glowing white shark teeth that prowled her body. That cold, deathly, threatening aura made Aiura Kokoro instinctively cross her arms over her chest, trembling all over.
But those seductive fox-like eyes of hers were now filled with confusion and furious disbelief.
"You're asking why, huh..."
Hikigaya Hachiman slightly lowered his head, his messy bangs falling over one side of his face, obscuring his expression.
"Why did you manage to pull everyone to your side, yet still lose to me—is that what you're asking?"
"Urgh—"
"Do you really have to ask...? It's because..."
"You, and all of you—"
Hikigaya lifted a finger and pressed it against his temple. His expressionless face now carried a faintly mocking smile:
"Are nothing but complete idiots."
"You..." Aiura Kokoro clenched her fists, gritting her teeth. "Fine, maybe I was unlucky to draw your test sheet. I couldn't just switch it in front of everyone... but why?! Saotome Mary is a total genius! Even if she messed up one subject, she could've switched her test in advance!"
"There's no way she could've scored only 69 in Japanese!"
Aiura Kokoro grew more agitated the more she spoke. She became increasingly convinced that someone had betrayed her. She needed to root out the mole to restore her authority.
She glanced around frantically, finally locking eyes on the person closest to her—Mizuka.
"Hey, Mizuka, it was you, wasn't it?! You're the traitor! You betrayed me, didn't you?! Tell me—what did Hikigaya bribe you with?!"
"Eh? N-no, it wasn't me!"
Mizuka was so terrified she backed away repeatedly, her body pressed up against the teacher's podium.
Looking at her like this, there was no way she could've been the mole. Aiura Kokoro's eyes turned vicious as she swept her gaze across the crowd below.
"Then who was it?! Tell me—who betrayed me?!"
No one answered her.
In the end, it was the ever-so-kind Hikigaya Hachiman who stepped forward to solve her little mystery:
"Who betrayed you? Aiura-san, you really don't know when to quit, huh? You're asking who among your teammates sold you out?"
"The truth is the complete opposite—Mizuka here tried to protect you. At the very last second, she wanted to warn you that Saotome Mary's Japanese score was only 69. But you cut her off."
"No way..."
Aiura Kokoro trembled, unwilling to believe it.
"Still don't get it?" Hikigaya sneered coldly. Other than the trick itself being somewhat interesting, Aiura Kokoro's lack of awareness in gambling strategy was just plain boring...
"Let me give you a hint: the first round."
The first round?
A spark went off in Aiura Kokoro's mind as she recalled the scene from the first part of the exam bet. In that first round, Hikigaya had used Yumeko Jabami's 77 in World History to defeat Saotome Mary's 69 in Japanese.
Her eyes glazed over. Her mouth slowly opened in a blank stare.
It all connected. Everything finally made sense.
Back then, she was the one who had personally ordered Hikigaya to win, which led to selecting a deliberately losing Japanese test paper to replace Saotome Mary's original one.
She murmured, "Once a test paper has been publicly revealed, it can't be revealed a second time. Otherwise, it would raise obvious suspicions—how could the same person's score in the same subject suddenly change?"
"If the student council discovered something like that, it would be seen as a violation of the rules…"
"So, the Japanese test paper couldn't possibly be switched again."
Aiura Kokoro stared at Hikigaya Hachiman in fear, full of regret in her heart. She thought—I should have seen through this! I should've been able to figure this out! Why didn't anyone remind me?!
"This is so unreasonable! You already knew the Japanese score—so why didn't you just compete on that subject alone?! Why compete on total score?! That only increased your risk of losing! What if Saotome Mary had scored just one more point in Physics…"
Aiura Kokoro snapped sharply, trying to grasp at any loophole she could to turn the situation back in her favor.
Hikigaya Hachiman let out a slightly exasperated sigh and touched his ahoge (that strand of hair sticking up):
"Use your brain a little. If I hadn't said that, would you have bet with me? Any halfway sensible person would suspect something if we only bet on one specific subject. If that happened, you'd start connecting the dots—and in the end, I would have lost."
"I kept raising the stakes and even agreed to your second round of doubling the bet, all to make you so blinded by greed that you'd fall right into the trap."
Hikigaya's voice carried a sort of magic that seemed to penetrate the human psyche—as though all defenses were transparent before him.
"But... but that's way too much of a coincidence! If I hadn't happened to draw Saotome Mary's test paper, the one with the lower score would've been me, and in the end, you'd still win!"
"Yeah. It was entirely a coincidence," Hikigaya said as he casually blew the dust off his hand.
"Haha, see?! Just a coincidence! You're not some genius victor, stop acting like one. It was just—"
"But so what?" Hikigaya cut in. "If I hadn't confirmed you drew Saotome Mary's test, I wouldn't have increased the stakes. Worst case, I would've just taken the 300,000 yen, and a month later they'd hold class rep elections again. Your mockery doesn't mean a thing to me."
"But since there was a more profitable way to gamble, of course I took it."
"This wasn't gambling. It was a guaranteed profit."
A finishing blow—absolutely inescapable.
The light faded from Aiura Kokoro's eyes. She collapsed back into her seat, staring blankly at the ceiling.
From the audience below, a wave of shrill chatter hit her ears.
One particularly dense idiot still couldn't grasp the situation:
"Uh, so what's the result? Did Aiura-san win or lose?"
Someone replied instantly:
"She both lost and won. But it looks like she has to pay Hikigaya a full 10 million yen."
"Huh?"
"That's... so humiliating."
They didn't mean any harm, but the words pierced her heart. Aiura Kokoro felt something deep within her begin to crack and fall apart.
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