Chapter 87: Side Story - The Symmetrical Mirror

Chapter 87: Chapter 87: Side Story - The Symmetrical Mirror

Nanami’s monologue, POV

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?The fifteen-second countdown on the central monitor bled away in a flurry of harsh, pulsing red digits.

?[PREDICTION WINDOW: 00:15]

?The moment the interface unlocked, both rival factions moved with disciplined, almost mechanical speed. Across the aisle, Fāng Xuě’s fingers flew across her tablet, locking in her faction’s inputs. A few rows away, Ginton mirrored her movements, inputting his own selections with absolute calm.

?When the system logs registered the final tallies, the screen displayed a brief diagnostic update:

?[Faction A: 2 Predictions Submitted]

?[Faction C: 2 Predictions Submitted]

?[Faction B: 0 Predictions Submitted]

?From my seat, I stared across the hall at the two rival leaders. A quiet, cold curiosity prickled at the back of my mind. Two predictions each. That wasn’t a random scattershot; it was a deliberate, tightly budgeted allocation of their remaining prediction points.

?They’re predicting each other, the realization hit me with sudden, sharp clarity.

?More than that, their synchronized inputs meant they believed they had successfully mapped my erratic pivot from a moment ago. By splitting our capital equally between both sides of their axis—sending one hundred units to A and one hundred units to C—I had given them an anomaly. And both Ginton and Fāng Xuě were betting their remaining points that they could model how a leading faction reacts when pushed into symmetric ambiguity.

?Beside me, Reina didn’t say a word. She simply slid her tablet slightly to the left, revealing her active screen. Two prediction parameters were pre-loaded and glowing softly against the dark glass, exactly matching the structural logic we had just discussed in silence.

?A fraction of a second later, Masayuki leaned forward from the row behind us, tapping a finger against the back of my chair. He didn’t offer a smirk or a cynical remark this time; his expression was entirely locked onto the problem, his eyes confirming he had arrived at the exact same conclusion.

?They didn’t need to ask. They already knew what my next move had to be.

?I didn’t hesitate. With two sharp taps on my screen, I locked in Faction B’s counter-strikes right as the final second of the countdown ticked away.

?{{PREDICTIONS LOCKED}}

?The monitor chimed, flashing a heavy, solid border across the entire board.

?Before anyone could catch their breath, the system skipped past the live input state and automatically populated the next sequence on the display. The classroom monitor shifted, opening up the retroactive ledger to reveal the official prediction results from Interval 2.

?The hall went dead quiet as the itemized list rendered on screen:

?■○ RETROACTIVE PREDICTION RESULTS: INTERVAL 2 ●□

?Faction A’s Prediction Log:

?• Target: Faction B → Faction A (100 Units) — CORRECT

Reward: +50 Prediction Points, +10% Transaction Value (Deducted from A/C)

?+10% Liquidation Units (Deducted from A/C) — deduction will be done after prediction logs calculation are completed.

?The moment the text settled on the screen, a low, collective murmur broke out across the rows.

?In Faction B’s section, several students slumped back in frustration, whispering anxiously as Fāng Xuě’s predictions flashed on the screen.

?Meanwhile, Faction C’s rows let out a collective breath of validation as Ginton noticed the one tracked inputs flash green, pulling a pair of successful evaluations back into their account.

?She tracked our one-hundred-unit transfer to her, no both factions, I noted mentally, watching the green highlight pulse on the board. This is bad.

?Both Ginton and Fāng Xuě had recovered a vital foothold, and the one who was completely destroying us ruthlessly was Fāng Xuě. But as the system prepared to transition into the next phase, a strange, dissonant chord rippled through the classroom.

?Down in the front rows of Faction B, a student abruptly stood up, staring at the monitor with a blank, uncomprehending expression.

?"Wait... hold on," the student stammered, pointing a shaking finger at the board. "Look at the retroactive inputs. That doesn’t make any sense."

?Another student in the middle rows of Faction B leaned over his desk, twisting around to look at his peers. "Why did they log those specific numbers? If A and C were supposed to be coordinating, doesn’t that mean both factions knew?"

?"This doesn’t make any sense; does that mean Faction C let us off the hook this time?"

?Confusion began to spread like wildfire across the room. Students from my faction turned toward each other, voices rising in overlapping waves of complaint and bewildered debate as they tried to reverse-engineer a puzzle that no longer fit the narrative they had been fed.

?Up front, Fāng Xuě stared at the screen, her fingers pressed to her lips as if deep in thought.

?I didn’t realize the trap hidden beneath the surface of the data. I was too careless.

?Across the aisle, Ginton’s calm facade remained passive, his eyes darting across the confused sea of students before snapping back toward me.

?I sat back in my chair, keeping my expression entirely neutral. The others close to me immediately quieted down.

?Noticing this, the others decided to react by trying to figure out a way out of the position we were in.

?"Y-you know what, maybe we should focus on how to solve the problem at hand first. Nanami-san is trying as hard as she could," one student from the group muttered.

?"You’re right," another approved. Just like that, it became quieter, but it still didn’t remove the lingering pressure the other factions were giving us.

?My eyes turned to Kinko sitting next to me; he wasn’t the least bit interested or pressured.

?Honestly, that was one of the traits I liked about him. Ever since I’ve known him, he was always like this.

?Noticing these minor things gave me more confidence in myself. At this moment there more things going on the background than on the surface. It was true that it seemed as though Ginton and Fāng Xuě were cooperating but for some reasons my intuition is telling that they had different goals in mind.

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"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."

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