They had met on Tuesday. The following day, Sakayanagi proceeded to receive phone calls from Yamauchi with updates, as per their recent conversation.
She was in the midst of playing both sides of a chess match in the dorm room while she relayed instructions to him on how to survive the upcoming exam. She picked up a piece and moved it forward on the board.
"Really? That many people have already agreed to vote for Ayanokōji-kun?"
There were twenty-one people in total, an impressive number that had exceeded her expectations.
Yamauchi probably wouldn't have been able to make things turn out so well if he had done everything on his own.
"Yamauchi-kun."
"W-what?"
"As I expected, it seems that asking Kushida-san to act as your mediator was the right thing to do."
Kushida was the type of person to take action with her classmates in mind.
"Yeah, I guess. It went just like you said it would, Sakayanagi-chan."
Sakayanagi had judged that, if Yamauchi came asking for her help, Kushida wouldn't be able to turn him down easily.
Moreover, Sakayanagi had also gotten her hands on some interesting information about Kushida.
"When you asked her to help you, did you persuade her with tears like I told you to?"
"I-I wouldn't do something so uncool!"
Sakayanagi glanced at Kamuro, the look in her eyes saying that he had indeed used tears to persuade Kushida.
"Oh? It seems your negotiation skills handled everything flawlessly, then?"
"I guess…"
"Anyway, I'll contact you tomorrow about who you should reach out to next."
"Gotcha."
Tomorrow was Thursday, and the important decisions would have to be made then.
Sakayanagi would have to decide how Yamauchi would convince these students to join his faction.
After the call had ended, Kamuro spoke up.
"Is this Kushida person really the type who'd help get someone expelled?"
"If someone approached her, sobbing, begging for her help, there's no way she wouldn't lend a hand. Be that as it may, it's important to have a way with words in order to get as many supporters as possible, and Kushida-san seems to have quite the silver tongue."
Taking hold of her queen in one hand, Sakayanagi looked at Kamuro.
"What do you think will happen next?"
"If it keeps going on like this, Ayanokōji will amass censure votes and get expelled from school… but, if he's as powerful as you say he is, won't he do something about it?"
"Even if he doesn't know that he's personally being targeted?"
"He doesn't know about the strategy, though."
"He's always on guard. Putting aside whether or not he knows he's being targeted, if you were to consider the reality of this exam, you wouldn't be able to rule out the possibility that you may ultimately be voted for. That being the case, you should be putting in the effort to come up with countermeasures ahead of time."
"…What do you mean by countermeasures?"
"Just prove to everyone that somebody else is a hindrance to the success of the class. Whatever the reason, the more incompetent this somebody is, the better the result."
Sakayanagi momentarily envisioned the spectacle that may take place within Class C in the near future.
"Yamauchi-kun, for example, is colluding with me to have one of his own classmates ostracized and expelled. If this were to come to light, I imagine that he'd fill the role perfectly."
"So, what you're saying is that it doesn't matter to you which one of them gets expelled?"
With her other hand, Sakayanagi picked up the opposing side's king.
"No. We have to save the king for last."
Until the very end, Sakayanagi controlled every last piece on the chessboard.