I'm in a real religion, why are all the people who confess to me girls?

If others praised Fujiwara Mayumi, President Fujiwara might have thought they were just being polite. But if Marina praised Fujiwara Mayumi so highly, it could only mean that Fujiwara Mayumi has a unique personal charm. It's just that she and Fujiwara Mayumi didn't see things from the same perspective, which is why she failed to recognize Fujiwara Mayumi's strengths.

"Seriously, how did the conversation turn to that troublesome guy? Tell me about you, Marina, how are you feeling? Have you adjusted to being a student after so long?"

Chairman Fujiwara jokingly looked at Marina wearing the sportswear that Gao Yu had specially customized for girls, which she was wearing under her trench coat.

With Marina's looks, wearing this tracksuit makes her look like a female college student who has just started working as a homeroom teacher at a high school. To be honest, even Chairman Fujiwara is a little envious of Marina.

Time seemed to have passed by Marina without leaving a trace. Marina, whose child was already a high school sophomore, now looked like a young woman in her early twenties who had just gotten married.

"It's still a bit difficult to adjust to suddenly becoming a student."

Marina smiled wryly and tightened her trench coat. It had been more than a decade since she last wore this style of tracksuit.

However, even though she has been out of school for many years, she still longs for her school life back then.

Because of something, she was forced to suspend her studies to prepare for pregnancy.

But she never returned to the campus after that.

To this day, Marina's two biggest wishes are to stay by Amane's side forever and to experience the feeling of graduation.

"However... I really enjoy this kind of campus life. It's just a pity that Tianyin is still recovering from her injury. If I could experience campus life with Tianyin, it might become a cherished memory in the future."

When Chairman Fujiwara saw the faint smile on Marina's face, he couldn't help but shake his head with a wry smile. Marina was already quite an adult, so why did she still think like a little girl? Even putting aside Marina's achievements, the title of swordsman alone made it impossible to associate the woman in front of him who longed for school life with the legendary cold-faced swordsman.

"Maybe there will be such an opportunity in the future. How did the physical fitness test go? Is Amane's partner, Shiina Hiyori, able to accept the fact that her partner has been replaced?"

The main reason why Chairman Fujiwara came here was to find out whether Marina's partner would accept Marina as her partner.

This was done so that Marina could clock in for Amane to ensure Amane's attendance record, and then Marina could take the exam separately after the written exam, in order to provide Amane with results for participating in special training. The same applied to physical fitness scores.

In this way, Amane only needs to recuperate in the hospital for a month, and everything else will be handled by Chairman Fujiwara and Marina. Finally, if she gets a good ranking in the final test at the end of the special training, she will be qualified to participate in the special exam. Moreover, since all the exam records and attendance records are complete, even if the reviewers notice something is wrong, they can't say anything and can only assume that Amane was not accidentally injured during the special training.

The school can also maintain its reputation while giving the higher-ups and Kuninobu Miyago a perfect explanation.

For the school, the difficulty of this task, as well as the potential challenges, is practically zero. Not to mention the once-famous Kiryuin Marina, even if you just randomly pulled someone off the street, as long as they follow the plan, they can definitely complete this task.

But ironically, this plan, which had zero difficulty level, went wrong.

The school conducted a detailed evaluation of the results of the grain storage construction and swimming lessons, and concluded that the attrition rate after this special training program might be as high as 35%.

Although the attrition rate seems high, it is actually within the school's acceptable range. After all, those participating in the special training are students who may not even have traveled far from home. It is unlikely that the school itself would believe that they could become survival experts and sports champions within a month.

Therefore, from the beginning, the school stated that a dropout rate of around 30% was acceptable. If there are 160 students in a grade, a 30% dropout rate would mean 48 students. This means that if the dropout rate could be controlled at 30%, it would be considered a success, because there are still more than 100 students participating in the special exam. In terms of the number of students, it doesn't really have a significant impact on the special exam.

The school only felt that the estimated 35% elimination rate was a bit high and did not intend to interfere with this special training.

However, upon further analysis, the school discovered a very serious problem: almost all of those who were eliminated were top students.

Those top students who spend years immersed in books have such poor physical fitness that it's embarrassing to even mention it. Some of them can't even run 500 meters without collapsing on the ground and needing to rest for ten minutes to recover.

With such physical abilities, it is obviously impossible to expect them to be active in the mountains, and it is understandable that they were eliminated. However, the question is whether the large-scale elimination of top students to participate in special exams indirectly proves that there are extremely serious flaws in the school's education system or special exams.

Moreover, in each class, these top students serve as the backbone and brains of the class. If you eliminate them, wouldn't the special exam become a pure violent brawl?

The reason the school went to such lengths and spent so much time and resources was to prove that the sports festival was just a minor mistake, that their school was capable of holding large-scale special exams, and that they hoped to use the students' outstanding performance to attract companies or social investment that were willing to cooperate with the school.

Therefore, the special exam, which was originally scheduled to last a maximum of two weeks, was extended to a month and was even broadcast live. Of course, some segments that might have a negative impact could not be broadcast, but the strategies of each class, the competition between classes, and the performances of the geniuses would provide the audience with a visually stunning feast.

This is why schools cannot allow these classes to turn into mindless, violent brawls after losing a large number of top students. Such an outcome would certainly disappoint many companies, and might even lead to a reduction or cancellation of their investments in higher education.

Realizing that they couldn't allow a large number of top students to be eliminated by the physical fitness test, the school decisively changed the content of the second week's physical fitness test, turning the original swimming test into an intelligence-based test. This gave the top students an advantage over the muscular ones. If the top students could win this test, they would basically have one foot in the door of the special exam.

Marina was already used to such backdoor practices, so she didn't raise any objections. However, to everyone's surprise, this sudden change caused a serious conflict between Marina's plan to take the exam for someone else and the physical fitness test in the second week.

There were no other plans prepared for this physical fitness test, and the results were announced in groups. If Marina didn't participate in this unified pairing, she wouldn't be able to substitute for Amane in this test. Unfortunately, the school set an exceptionally high score for this physical fitness test in order to increase the pass rate of top students. If Amane didn't participate in this physical fitness test, even if she got full marks in the other tests and the overall test, she wouldn't be eligible to participate in the special exam.

This sudden turn of events left both the school and Marina completely bewildered. But now that things had come to this, Marina had no choice but to grit her teeth and go for it. Fortunately, her partner was Shiina Hiyori. Based on past records, Shiina Hiyori was a student with a relatively mild personality. So, Chairman Fujiwara instructed Marina to work on Shiina, to get her to accept the arrangement, and on the condition that Shiina Hiyori be able to participate in the special exam, she would accept Marina's victory.

Simply put, it's cheating.

Such matters might not require such elaborate efforts in other schools, but in Gaoyu, a school that upholds merit to the extreme, any unfairness must occur in a hidden place. This is the first time Gaoyu has brought unfairness to the forefront, which makes Chairman Fujiwara quite nervous. If Shiina Hiyori is unwilling to accept this result and arrangement, then the school will launch another plan.

“Shiina-san has already accepted this result, but I don’t want to further burden her with the idea that I must win. Participating in this physical fitness test will result in a high score, meaning that for students whose scores are already low, this test is crucial. Victory is our goal, but…”

Marina took off the hood of her trench coat, revealing her long, silver-white hair.

She first rubbed her eyes, then looked at the sea, which had become incredibly dark.

"These colored contact lenses are really uncomfortable to wear... Getting back to the point, with my grades, I don't need to win at all. Just participating in this physical fitness test is enough for Tianyin to take the special exam. So there's no need to trample on the 'fairness' that Gaoyu has built up over decades. Besides... I don't want to use such despicable means to win over a girl who likes my Tianyin."

Marina's face lit up with a happy smile again when Amane was mentioned.

President Fujiwara didn't find anything wrong with Marina's willful answer. When she belatedly realized that her tolerance for others had reached such a level, two figures involuntarily appeared in her mind.

One is Fujiwara Mayumi, and the other is Miyako Amane.

Forget it, she can't stop a genius's ideas and his love of causing trouble. Anyway, as long as Shiina accepts that her partner is Marina, who will take the physical test in place of Amane, there's no need to start another plan—arranging for Shiina to transfer schools.

It's a pretty good result, I suppose.

As for the outcome of the physical fitness test? It doesn't matter whether Shiina agrees with the arrangement or not, because Shiina will soon understand Marina.

He's no pushover at all, especially when he's overseeing Tianyin.

Chapter 149: Feeding the Heavenly Sound

"Hmm~"

Hayasaka, who was preparing breakfast for Amane in the kitchen, was humming a song that had recently become quite popular online while concentrating on... cooking the noodles in front of her.

Although she didn't know what had gotten into Miss Amane, insisting on eating noodles so early in the morning and waking her from her deep sleep, she had no choice but to swallow her anger because of Amane's status.

It was rare that Amane didn't bother her much last night; Hayasaka hadn't slept as soundly as she had last night in a long time. Unfortunately... beautiful things are always fleeting.

The only thing that made her feel fortunate was that Tianyin was the easiest type of young lady she had ever met to raise.

She once saw a young lady who had a super luxurious breakfast consisting of six main dishes, eight drinks, twelve dishes, and six desserts.

Putting aside whether that young lady has the amazing appetite of Tianyin, just preparing these ingredients is enough to give the maids a headache. How to deal with the leftover ingredients is also a problem that gives them a lot of trouble.

The sugar content in these meals is far too high, and the maids often engage in intermittent fasting and increased exercise to maintain their figures and avoid being fired for going out of shape.

For this reason, no matter how expensive the food is, people will choose to discard it without hesitation.

However, such wasteful behavior is unlikely to occur with Amane. Amane does not have an extreme pursuit of food. Even when talking about food with Hayasaka, she mostly asks Hayasaka, "Is there any more? If so, please give me another serving."

Therefore, rather than focusing on the refinement of the dishes, Hayasaka pays more attention to how to increase the portion size.

"Add two eggs to the noodles, one poached and the other stirred..."

Just as Hayasaka was muttering to herself, her phone rang.

Hayasaka picked up the phone and glanced at it. It was a call from the security personnel in charge of the Amane ward.

"This is Hayasaka. What can I do for you?"

"Hayasaka, a female visitor who claims to be a friend of Ms. Amane has come to visit and wants to meet Ms. Amane on the top floor. We dare not make a decision on our own and can only report to you, Hayasaka. Would you like us to grant her access to the elevator on the top floor?"

A female visitor? Ms. Amane's friend?

The simultaneous appearance of these two words gave Hayasaka a very jarring feeling.

Although Amane has many girlfriends at the high school, there are probably only a few who can call themselves Amane's friends. In addition, considering the female gender characteristics, Hayasaka almost instantly thought of Sakayanagi Arisu.

Moreover, among those so-called friends, only Sakayanagi currently knows where Amane is. It would be strange if the person who comes is not Sakayanagi or Hayasaka.

but……

A female visitor? Why would the security personnel address Sakayanagi Arisu as such? Given Sakayanagi's personality, even if the security personnel didn't know her, she would have openly introduced herself by name. However, the security personnel referred to her as a female visitor, indicating that she hadn't proactively revealed her identity. This shows that she was quite cautious, which is not typical of Sakayanagi's style.

Did the other party mention her name? Or were there any distinctive physical characteristics?

“We’ve already asked, but they won’t say. They only said that Miss Tianyin will know who she is when she sees her. As for her appearance, she is very similar to Miss Tianyin. Both have long silver-white hair and purple eyes. She is wearing casual clothes and there is no sign of her carrying any Class C items. Her age is similar to Miss Tianyin.”

With white hair, purple eyes, and a similar age, and not being Sakayanagi Arisu, the answer is almost obvious when multiple clues are combined.

"Please hand the phone to the other party."

"Ok."

Hayasaka heard a brief burst of static before a slightly wary female voice came from the phone.

"Hello? You're the one in charge here, right?"

"I'm sorry, I'm not in charge of anything. I'm just Miss Amane's maid. May I ask if you are Miss Kiryuin?"

After Hayasaka revealed the other person's surname, the person on the other end of the phone was clearly taken aback, seemingly not expecting her identity to be discovered so quickly.

"You know me?"

“Miss Amane often mentions you and Miss Sakayanagi, and says that you are close friends, so I dare to guess that the friend of Miss Amane who came to visit is you.”

Although Hayasaka's answer made Kiryuin a little suspicious, since the other party could say her name so readily, it was still trustworthy.

"Can I go see Tianyin? I heard she was seriously injured. Shouldn't it be possible to visit her now?"

Kiryuin asked hesitantly. She had only learned about Amane's injury from Sakayanagi. Kiryuin's plan for the weekend was to sleep in, spend the afternoon at the swimming pool, and then have dinner at that pretty good barbecue restaurant...

As a result, she was woken up early in the morning by Sakayanagi to help calculate the supplies needed for the special exam. Kiryuin, naturally, couldn't stand this attempt to freeload off others...

After Sakayanagi offered to treat them to dinner as payment, they compromised.

Why not take advantage of a free meal?

Just as Kiryuin was leisurely processing data and chatting with Sakayanagi, he suddenly heard that Amane was injured, and that it was so serious that she would have to be hospitalized for a whole month.

Upon hearing the news of Amane's injury, Kiryuin immediately became agitated. He shook Sakayanagi for a long time, almost breaking her frail body, before finally getting the address of the hospital where Amane was located and how she left the school from her.

then……

Kiryuin used the same method to annoy Fujiwara Mayumi, who was making sweets, so much that he had no choice but to drop her off here and rush back to prepare for the bakery's normal business hours for the day.

When Guilongyuan arrived at the hospital, she was completely dumbfounded. She was so focused on seeing Tianyin that she had no one to guide her and was empty-handed. Would they really let her see Tianyin?

Feeling that it seemed suspicious for him to visit a patient without bringing anything, Kiryuin went to a nearby hospital to buy several kilograms of fruit. It wasn't until he was about to pay that he suddenly realized a serious problem.

She has no money.

No, to be precise, all she had was credits, but people outside the school didn't recognize credits at all.

In the end, the stall owner, fearing that Kiryuin's presence would affect his business, gave her some flawed fruit that was about to be disposed of, as a free gift.

Kiryuin thanked the stall owner for a long time, completely unaware that the owner was just trying to get her to leave as quickly as possible.

"Of course, I'm sure Miss Tianyin will be happy to see you."

Following the security personnel to the top floor, Kiryuin immediately spotted Hayasaka dressed as a maid, standing at the end of the corridor with a steaming bowl of noodles, seemingly waiting for her arrival.

"Sorry to keep you waiting. Hmm... I feel like we've met somewhere before?... Um, that's not what I meant... I just think you look familiar."

Kiryuin was afraid that Hayasaka would misunderstand her as trying to flirt with him, so she quickly waved her hand and began to explain the moment she spoke.

Seeing the panicked Kiryuin, Hayasaka simply smiled and didn't say anything.

But Hayasaka's actions only made Kiryuin more uneasy.

dong dong dong.

Hayasaka knocked on the door of the hospital room.

Come in~

The powerful voice emanating from the room reassured Guilongyuan somewhat.

Hayasaka gave Kiryuin a look before opening the door to the room.

"Is my Hayasaka noodles ready?... Kaede!!!"

As Tianyin looked up in her pajamas, she met Guilongyuan's worried eyes.

After Tianyin happily shouted Guilongyuan's name, she casually tossed the game console onto the bed next to her and then skipped and hopped towards Guilongyuan.

"Tianyin...you, eh? Wait a minute! Stop!!"

Originally expecting Tenon to stop in front of her, Kiryuin keenly noticed that Tenon showed no intention of stopping and subconsciously took a half step back. However, Tenon still did not let her go.

Tianyin leaped and landed on Guilongyuan.

"Maple blossoms, maple blossoms, maple blossoms~"

"Idiot! Get down here right now! My back is broken, you bastard!!"

Kiryuin threw the bag in his hand on the floor, grabbed Tenon's pajamas with both hands and started to pull hard. As a result, apart from Tenon's pajamas being pulled until they were covered in fur, Tenon still clung to Kiryuin like a koala and rubbed against him affectionately.

"Hey, is this guy really a patient? I don't see any injury on him at all!"

After trying to pull Tenon off him several times without success, Kiryuin simply gave up.