Division Time

Division Time is the 143rd chapter of Assassination Classroom, opening the seventeenth volume across twenty-two pages. Learning what Korosensei once was leaves part of Class 3-E unable to keep treating him as a mark. Nagisa Shiota gives voice to that change of heart, arguing that their teacher should be rescued, and a good many classmates rally behind the idea. Rather than settling the matter, his suggestion splits the room.

Rio Nakamura and Ryoma Terasaka lead the pushback, reasoning that the class lacks the knowledge to pull off a rescue and that abandoning the kill would waste everything they have trained for. Karma Akabane sides with them, charging that Nagisa, the sharpest assassin among them, is rendering the others' effort pointless, and that a room drained of killing intent stops being an assassination classroom at all. The jab lands, Nagisa answers with a cold stare, and the two come to blows, ending with Nagisa locking Karma in a flying triangle choke before Yuma Isogai, Hiroto Maehara, and Tomohito Sugino pull them apart.

Unwilling to watch his class fracture any further, Korosensei sets a paintball contest to decide the quarrel, with the winning side choosing whether he lives or dies and the whole group urged to reach one verdict together. The pupils divide into a Blue Team bent on saving him and a Red Team set on carrying out the assassination, and the internal war of Class 3-E begins. The chapter follows Hesitation Time and precedes Killers' Time.