The following contains spoilers for Episode 8 of Classroom Of The Elite Season 2, "The wound is at her heart," now streaming on Crunchyroll.
The previous episode of Classroom of the Elite marked the end of the Sports Festival while announcing a new test/exam the students of Class 1-D will be taking to determine their academic standing. However, of all the tests the anime has revealed so far, the stakes of this one are higher than the past examinations. Interestingly enough, episode 8 also proves that Class 1-D is up to the new challenge, with the sound strategies members of the class proffered to clear the new test.
Apart from the Paper Shuffle saga, episode 8 finally unraveled the mystery behind the show’s popular attention-seeking character, Kushida. The episode pulls fans into another whirlpool of events that credits the series as a masterpiece of the psychological genre. Above all, it finalized the stance between Kushida, Ayanokoji, and Horikita, with the contest that will determine their fates going forward in Classroom of the Elite.
Strategies To Clear The Paper Shuffle Exam
With the Paper Shuffle exam approaching, Class 1-D strategized on the best ways to tackle their newest hurdle. This comes as no surprise, considering the expulsion penalty for underperformance in the exam. To tackle the exam, every member of Class 1-D split into groups spearheaded by academically competent students, such as Horikita, Kushida, Yukimura, and Hirata, who acted as teachers of these groups. However, Ayanokoji is soon roped into the ranks after receiving persuasion from Horikita to assist Yukimura in teaching Miyake and Hasabe. The group mentorship turned out to be an easy one for Ayanokoji and Yukimura since Miyake and Hasabe shared similar strengths and weaknesses.
During the group meeting, an important question pops up regarding the Paper Shuffle exam. Since the Paper Shuffle exam is based on questions from other classes, a key factor will be determining the scope of the difficulty of the permitted questions. This is important to know whether ridiculous questions will be entertained. Surprisingly, Ayanokoji comes up with the perfect solution to this issue. His plan involved sending test questions to the teachers to get a narrow idea of the kind of questions that would be permitted for the exam. While Ayanokoji and Horikita discussed the strategy's effectiveness, Horikita sought Ayanokoji's help in her group. The students in her study group were too much for Horikita to handle, hence the request. In addition, the conversation between the duo also revealed their guarded nature towards Kushida. Although this development isn't surprising considering Kushida's treacherous nature, it hints at Horikita's plan to handle Kushida.
After the short discussion, episode 8 focuses on Sato's obvious infatuation for Ayanokoji, with the smitten girl giving the introverted protagonist more attention than normal. At the end of Horikita's group meeting, she tells Ayanokoji her intent to finalize things with Kushida.
The High-Stake Deal & Kushida's Backstory
A central event in episode 8 was the deal between Horikita and Kushida, which extended to Ayanokoji. After meeting with Kushida, Horikita proposed a deal involving her expulsion – a deal that will give the winner what they wanted. The deal terms involved Horikita leaving the school permanently if she scored lower points in mathematics than Kushida. The deal went two ways; if Horikita wins, Kushida will stop attempting to get Horikita expelled from the school. To ensure that both parties stick to the terms of the deal, the former Student Council President, Horikita Manabu, acted as a witness to the agreement. With a cold demeanor, Manabu oversaw the deal. His reason for doing this is unknown; it could be that he is eager to create a means for his sister's expulsion, or he trusts her to win the deal. Either way, the result of this deal will be interesting for both parties.
Before Kushida and Horikita went their separate ways, Kushida called out to Ayanokoji, who eavesdropped on their conversation, showing her level of intuitiveness. With Ayanokoji's appearance, Kushida then proposes to add another term to her deal with Horikita. The new term involved the expulsion of Ayanokoji if Kushida won the match for points. Although Horikita disapproved, Ayanokoji agreed but added a term of his own. His term was for Kushida to reveal the secret she wanted to be hidden from everyone. Kushida then agrees, finally revealing the mysterious occurrence that happened in her middle school.
Apparently, Kushida has always been an attention-seeking individual, even back in middle school. Thriving on the attention and compliments of others, this desire soon went to the extreme, pushing her to be extra nice to everyone just so she could get their nice compliments. However, Kushida soon felt stressed out by the weight of being a slave to attention-seeking and started venting on the internet to seek a form of relief by revealing what she felt on the internet on her private blog. Unfortunately, one of Kushida's classmates stumbled upon this blog, and it led to an intense scolding from her classmates. Feeling betrayed by her classmates, whom she acted nice to all along, she revealed everyone's darkest secrets. This leads to pandemonium in the class, causing the group to fall apart after a violent clash. This dark backstory caused Kushida to change her stress-coping mechanism to a physical one – the truth behind her ranting scene in the first season. After revealing her past to Ayanokoji and Horikita, Kushida also confirmed that she already had enough secrets to take down Class 1-D, showing just how dangerous she is.
The reveal of Kushida's backstory cemented the three-way deal between Kushida, Horikita, and Ayanokoji. Everything is now riding on the exam scores of both girls as it will determine if Horikita and Ayanokoji permanently leaves the school or not.