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

"The full details will be revealed on the day of the sports festival."

"Reveal it that day? Are you sure?"

The news was so absurd that even Amane couldn't help but look at Matsushita beside her.

Matsushita nodded, tacitly agreeing with Katsuragi's statement.

"The challenge is..."

Katsuragi seemed to want to explain, but his hesitant expression made Amane raise an eyebrow.

"Could this have anything to do with me? If I remember correctly, Mr. Chabashira said that I might have a chance to participate in the competition. Hey, it looks like I guessed right?"

Tianyin sneered and looked directly at Wang Meiyu, who was sitting not far from her.

"Xiaomei, can you explain to me what this challenge is?"

When her name was called, Wang Meiyu looked around at the people on both sides of the group of boys and girls with a long face. Seeing that no one was willing to take over the topic, Wang Meiyu could only carefully explain to Tianyin.

"Challenge projects are essentially gambling."

"gamble?"

Tianyin frowned. She didn't understand how the competition was related to that kind of thing. The school had invited a lot of foreign guests this time, so she shouldn't embarrass herself in front of them.

"That's right. The challenge is that a mysterious challenger will compete against the champions of eight special skills events. Each match can be bet on using personal points and class points, with betting done on a class-by-class basis. Those who guess correctly will receive a reward according to the odds."

Tianyin's expression turned a little strange after hearing the details of the challenge.

"You mean this mysterious challenger is me?"

"Well, based on everyone's discussion, we all think that this mysterious challenger should be Tianyin, because only you have the strength to be on par with those eight people."

Wang Meiyu, her face slightly flushed, clenched her small fists and said to Tianyin.

Tianyin tilted her head. She thought this challenge was going to be difficult. Even if she didn't know what those eight clubs were, Tianyin was confident she could defeat them all. So, wouldn't it be easier to just bet on Tianyin to win and break the deadlock?

Tianyin shared her thoughts with everyone, but to everyone's surprise, they exchanged glances, their eyes filled with helplessness.

In the end, Kanzaki told Amane why everyone felt helpless.

"The mysterious challengers are selected from three grades. The selected grade cannot bet on the challengers of its own grade. This means that we can only bet on the champions to win. If we want to profit from the bets, there is only one way: Tianyin, you have to lose to the champions. But if you lose to the champions, the entire class will have 50 class points deducted. If you lose all of them, the entire grade will have 400 class points deducted."

As soon as Kanzaki explained the rules, Amane couldn't help but want to ask what kind of nonsense was going through the minds of the people who designed the rules. Wasn't this just deliberately preventing match-fixing and forcing the second-year students to gamble on those champions, resulting in the deduction of class points, and then blaming her for the main responsibility?

No, do Chairperson Fujiwara and the others know the rules of this sports festival?

"That's not necessarily true... You can just bet bigger or not bet at all, right? With my skill level, there should be quite a few classes betting on me to win, so there should be fewer classes betting on the champions to win, and the odds should be higher."

Tianyin found a way to solve the challenge in the blink of an eye, but there was still no joy on everyone's faces.

"We had already thought of this. Horikita and I spent the whole morning calculating the odds on the blackboard until the afternoon. We finally found a way, but then Chabashira-sensei told us that she had checked with the school and that we had misunderstood. We could only place one bet, and it was either a fixed 100 class points or 10 million individual points. Every class had to place a bet and we couldn't refuse."

Kanzaki finished speaking and let out a heavy sigh, and even Amane fell silent.

This sports festival is probably because the school tasted the success of the last one. No wonder they've been giving away class points like they were free for a while now. It turns out they'll all be deducted back in the end.

Last year's sports festival was marred by Amane's overwhelming dominance, so the school found a reason to deduct a large number of class points from all classes as punishment.

But this time, Amane isn't even participating in the sports festival, so they can't find an excuse. What should they do if the second-year class has too many points?

They're not even making excuses anymore.

As a result, Tianyin was disgusted by the school's actions. Although it's not necessarily true that Tianyin lacked those personal or class points, she has never been one to suffer losses.

"It's alright, we'll just do whatever the sports festival is supposed to do, leave the rest to me."

Should we leave the rest to Tianyin?

Horikita glanced at Ichinose, who shook her head slightly, indicating that she didn't understand what Amane was talking about either.

"Tianyin, you said the rest is yours... what are you going to do?"

In response to Horikita's question, Amane held up a finger and waved it back and forth in front of Horikita.

"It's a secret. You'll all know on the day of the sports festival opening ceremony."

The more Tianyin said this, the more uneasy everyone present felt.

"Amane, you're not going to do anything reckless, are you? There will be a lot of foreign guests coming to watch the sports festival. If you do something reckless, I'm afraid the school will..."

Kanzaki clearly thought that Amane was going to cause a scene at the opening ceremony of the sports festival to 'get back' at the school for messing with them. However, the school had invested a lot of energy and money in preparing and promoting the sports festival. If the sports festival was ruined, the consequences of the school's wrath would be something that Class 2-A could not afford. Moreover, the cultural festival was right after the sports festival, and the cultural festival could make up for some of the class points lost in the sports festival. Therefore, unless absolutely necessary, Kanzaki did not approve of Amane taking extreme measures to protest the school's rules.

Amane naturally knew what Kanzaki was worried about, but she didn't care whether the school's higher-ups would get angry.

And she hasn't even lost her temper yet, unlike the school.

Not being able to participate in the sports festival was already frustrating enough, but now she has to perform some kind of champion-smashing act for others. If it were just about crushing some weaker opponents to calm her down, that would be one thing, but instead, people are betting on her wins and losses.

So what has she become? A cricket?

It's just that Tianyin vented her anger yesterday, so she was planning to annoy Gaoyu. Otherwise, if Tianyin got angry, she really dared to shut down the school on the spot.

"Don't worry, the school won't do anything to me or Class A, and what I did wasn't anything outrageous, so Kanzaki, you can rest assured."

No one present believed Tianyin's words, but since Tianyin had said so, everyone had no choice but to believe her.

Since Amane's plan was to proceed with preparations for the sports festival as usual, Katsuragi and Kanzaki went back to start studying the training schedule, while Matsushita left with Wang Meiyu, supposedly to buy some props for the cultural festival.

As for the cultural festival... Horikita ultimately chose Amane's favorite option: a maid café.

In order to make the project a hit at the cultural festival, Horikita appointed Amane to be in charge of distributing flyers at the entrance.

Horikita didn't believe that no one would come in to drink coffee when Ame-on handed out flyers; this was much more effective than the other maids standing at the door shouting.

After Horikita had arranged everything for the sports festival and the cultural festival, he looked at Amane, who was planning to sneak away, with a serious expression.

"Hui, could you please close the door and remember to lock it from the inside? I want to see how you're going to sneak out this time."

After Hui agreed, she gave Tianyin a look that said, "Good luck to you."

Yesterday, when she secretly delivered Amane and Airi's phones and shoes to Arisu, Horikita was a little unhappy with Megumi's actions. She thought that as long as Megumi kept the phones, Amane and Airi would eventually come back to get them. Amane would never stay overnight in someone else's room. But once the phones were given to Arisu, given Arisu's personality, she would definitely return the phones to Amane and let Amane do whatever she wanted.

As a result, Horikita couldn't find Amane in the morning and couldn't get through to her by phone. In the end, she had to contact Arisu and found out that Amane hadn't come home all night. Horikita was more anxious than anyone else.

Now that Amane is back, she'll probably get a lecture from Horikita, so she'd better take this opportunity to leave.

Just as Megumi was about to leave, Horikita's gaze fell on the entrance hall.

"I told you to lock the door, not to leave. Didn't you say yesterday that we were going to punish Tianyin together? If you leave now, you won't get a turn later."

Upon hearing that Tianyin was to be punished, Hui immediately ran back happily.

"How could I possibly leave? I just wanted to check if Fanbo had been locked out."

Ichinose, who had been sitting there without moving the whole time, shook her head slightly. Megumi's lying skills were as bad as ever.

The door was locked from the inside, and the three of them had finally arrived. Now it was time for Tianyin to make up for what she had missed yesterday.

"Rin... what are you trying to do?"

"What are you doing? The atmosphere's already this heated, do we need to say anything more? Should you do it yourself or should we?"

Horikita took off his school uniform with a disgruntled expression and casually put it aside before sitting down in front of Amane.

Seeing Horikita's stance, Amane's expression immediately turned ugly.

"Um... could we discuss paying in installments?"

"Huh? Are you kidding me? If it's okay, it's okay; if it's not okay, it's not okay. What's installment payments? If you don't have anything else to say, I'll be going now."

"Wait, wait a minute! Damn!"

Chapter 266: Who is trying to drain me dry?

Ring ring.

The wind chimes that had recently been hung outside the bakery made a crisp and melodious sound as they bumped against each other.

Marina, who was taking stock of the unsold desserts, turned her gaze toward the door after hearing the sound of the wind chimes.

"Sorry... I'm a little late today. I don't know what got into the school, but they insisted on having extra physical training after school, so I had to... Hmm? What's that smell? Is Principal Fujiwara back?"

As soon as Maple Flower stepped into the bakery, she began to complain about the physical training that the school had recently mandated all students to participate in in order to enhance the spectacle of the sports festival. However, before she could finish her sentence, Maple Flower caught an unusually sweet aroma.

Since Marina was temporarily entrusted with managing the bakery, Kaede has not smelled this tempting aroma, like the scent of bread.

It's not that Marina's bread and desserts are bad, but they always seem to fall short of Fujiwara-san's. When I came in this time and smelled that familiar, long-lost aroma, my first thought was that Fujiwara-san had returned.

"Fujiwara will probably be very busy for a while, since she has to start handing over her work and such. Someone came to help her today."

Marina rarely showed a happy smile.

"Someone is helping? Who is it? I didn't expect that besides me, there would actually be someone else who was tricked by you, Master, into doing this for free..."

Seeing Marina's mysterious expression, Maple couldn't help but smile knowingly. There must only be one person who could make Marina so happy.

Even though Kaede had already guessed the person's name in her heart, she pretended to know nothing in return, just like Marina.

"You'll find out soon enough. I can give you a little hint: it's someone you know!"

acquaintance.

Indeed, Fenghua felt that she and her were already as close as they could possibly be.

After changing into her shop assistant uniform, Fenghua headed towards the kitchen. As soon as she opened the kitchen door, she quickly retreated behind it, and a wave of scalding heat and steam rushed towards her.

The temperature in a bakery's kitchen when making all kinds of bread is no less than that in a restaurant's kitchen.

After the steam carrying the aroma of cream dissipated a little, Fenghua walked into the kitchen, and then she saw Tianyin lying on the kitchen table.

"Tianyin, what's wrong? Did you faint from the heat?"

Maple quickly walked towards Tianyin. She had only swayed a couple of times when she saw Tianyin eating a cookie and blinking her eyes in confusion.

"I'm not even heatstroke yet, but you're shaking me so hard! It's just two cookies, why are you shaking me like this?"

Tianyin stood up to ease the strange feeling in her arms and shoulders before looking at Fenghua, whose face was dark.

"No normal person eats cookies while lying down. I thought you had fainted from the heat."

Maple Flower snatched the half-eaten chocolate-flavored bear cookie from Tianyin's hand, put it in her mouth, and picked at it while eating.

"The chocolate flavor is too strong. Next time, you can add more cream to make the cookies sweeter."

Is this some new formula ratio?

"No, it's mainly because I love sweets."

"..."

Tianyin rolled her eyes at Fenghua, then silently picked up a biscuit, threw it into her mouth, and began to eat as if seeking revenge.

In no time, the entire tray of freshly baked cookies was devoured by Tianyin. Now Fenghua finally understood why the bakery smelled of all kinds of cookies but couldn't see any cookies at all.

However, compared to the missing cookies, Maple Flower was more concerned about Amane's heavy dark circles.

"Have you been staying up all night with your girlfriends again lately?"

Tianyin was about to reach for the biscuit when she heard Fenghua's words and froze in mid-air.

"How could that be... I'm not interested in risqué things..."

"Come on, do I need to tell you what kind of person you are? Look at your dark circles, even a panda would have to admit defeat and admit that you are the real deal."

"Is it that obvious?"

Tianyin felt that Fenghua was exaggerating a bit. Although she had been physically exhausted every day recently, she had also made sure to get enough sleep, so she shouldn't have any dark circles under her eyes...

Without saying a word, Fenghua picked up her phone, took a picture of Tianyin, and then showed it to Tianyin.

"Where did this panda come from?!"

"See? I told you your dark circles were really bad. If it's really that bad, you should find a quiet place to hide away for a few days and let it rest. Otherwise, you might just suddenly die in someone's bed one day... Waaah..."

Feng Hua was only halfway through speaking when Tian Yin covered her mouth.

"Maple Flower, you're such a jinx, so please stop cursing me. I'm afraid I really can't handle it."

"Who cursed you! I'm just telling the truth. Besides, when did I become a jinx? It's Arisu who's the one who's a jinx; everything she says comes true..."

In Maple's memory, almost all the bad things that Arisu mentioned would come true in some strange circumstances.

If anyone's a jinx, it should be Arisu!

"But speaking of which, Maple, your suggestion is quite good. It's just that a quiet place... No matter which of their dorms I go to, they can immediately tell me where there is a quiet place for me."

From the beginning, Tianyin knew that her whereabouts would often be exposed, but she could not find the reason. She only thought that when she went to someone's dormitory, one of the other people saw her and then the word spread.