Gifted Academy: The Perfect Student

Chapter 25 Giving What I Once Got - Part 2

?According to what Okatmoto said, due to the fact that we had an odd number of people, someone was destined to ride by themselves. I wonder what decision they're going to come to, I decided to just let them decide and not give any input.

"We could split into boys and girls..."

One of the girls gave that suggestion but it was pretty obvious that no one wanted to do that.

"How about we split into two groups of four?"

People were giving suggestions but no one really knew what they wanted.

"Um, we have nine people here," Fujiharu explained, as soon as she said that, Kinoshita's face lit up. It seemed that that was exactly what she wanted to hear.

There was a brief moment of silence. It seemed that some of the other girls would've preferred it if no one ever acknowledged Kinoshita's presence.

At this point, someone had to ride alone.

"I'll go by myself so everyone else can sit with someone," offered Okamoto.

One of the girls wasn't too pleased by that suggestion.

"But... I'll want to sit with you..."

How bold.

Okamoto's face suddenly went red and he turned around. The girl also looked as if she had just said the most embarrassing thing in the entire world. The entire group went silent as everyone began processing what was going on.

One of the girls suddenly walked over to her.

"...Hina, do you have a crush on Okamoto?"

Her face was red like a tomato.

"Alright then, Takagi and Riku should sit together!" Declared Takeuchi.

No one disagreed with his proposal.

Now that Okamoto and Takagi Hina were out of the equation, we were left with seven people to distribute, three boys and four girls.

Fujiharu then came up with a suggestion.

"I'll ride with Mizuhara, Chitose and Takeuchi, the other three can form a group and try to find someone in this line who's alone."

The suggestion was to have two groups of four and include a member of the public who might be riding alone. It was still a little awkward but no one wanted to argue with Fujiharu. After a short moment of introspection for everyone, there was a somewhat begrudging acceptance of the idea.

We continued to stand in line for almost an entire hour. In that time, all of us were basically completely dry by the time we got to the front of the queue to get the inflatable raft. We were swiftly greeted by an employee who gave us our respective rafts, the employee looked as if he was about to give up on life from tiredness—it certainly was quite a busy day.

Takeuchi and I carried the raft up a very steep flight of stairs as Fujiharu and Kinoshita followed behind us. I looked up at Okamoto and Takagi who were very awkwardly walking up the stairs, the two of them climbed in silence—not even making eye contact with each other.

The chamber with the stairs wasn't as air-conditioned as the main centre so it was significantly cooler. Kinoshita was still sticking quite close to me as we made our way up to the top of the waterslide. A few minutes later, we made it to the top and were once again forced to wait in line. There was a single staff member who was trying to organise the order of people descending.

The line was much shorter than the line at the bottom so it wasn't too long of a wait. Before long, Okamoto and Takagi were boarding their inflatable raft. They sat down before being pushed down the slide by the staff member.

Next was us, I placed the raft onto the flowing stream of water at the top of the slide as all of us stepped into the water. While the staff member was still holding onto the raft, we all sat down and got as comfortable as we could. There was a short radio signal to the staff member as they confirmed that the group at the bottom had dismounted.

"Are you guys ready?"

As we all gave thumbs ups the member nudged the inflatable raft and we descended down the waterslide. Just seconds after, I felt Kinoshita grab my wrist. The slide was relatively fast with lots of twists and turns, eventually, we reached this middle section where there was a large whirlpool-like stream of water. Only around a minute after we began, we were at the bottom of the slide, splashing into a huge wave of water.

We were greeted by another staff member who helped us off of our raft.

"That was underwhelming," commented Takeuchi.

"Yeah."

For a one-hour-long wait, that didn't exactly live up to its excitement. We got off the slide and met back up with Okamoto and Takagi. Just over a minute later, the other three also reached the bottom and our group was reunited again.

"That was pretty boring."

There seemed to be a mutual agreement between everyone that the slide wasn't all that fun.

"What do you guys want to do now?" Asked Okamoto.

"Do guys want to have a swimming race?" Proposed Takeuchi.

"Ooh, I'm down!" Replied Okamoto.

A few of the girls also agreed to race.

"Mizuhara, are you going to race?"

"Uh—"

"Come on! It's only fun with lots of people!"

"I guess."

In the end, everyone aside from Kinoshita agreed to race.

"Chitose can be the judge then," said Fujiharu.

She nodded her head agreeing to the offer.

Our group made our way over to the lap lanes which were mostly empty. There were exactly eight lanes in the pool and no one seemed to be using them. It was likely due to the popularity of the new waterslide. This was convenient for us as we all had a lane to ourselves.

"You guys want to have a punishment for the slowest?" Asked Fujiharu.

It seemed that she was quite competitive.

"How about the first place can ask everyone to do something," suggested Okamoto.

"I think the girls should get a head start though," one of the girls pointed out.

Everyone seemed to think that was fair.

"How about girls get a five-second head start and we race 100 metres," Fujiharu said.

"Yeah, that sounds fair."

"Alright how about this, we race 100 metres of any stroke you want and girls get a five-second head start. The winner gets to ask the people who placed in the last four positions to do anything they want within reason," explained Okamoto.

No one disagreed and thus the rules were set.