Determined to discover what Saiga told Hikari in the previous episode, Kei employs his brilliant mind to entrap Hikari with the perfect plan: He challenges her to a contest. If he wins, she has to tell him what Saiga told her. The other Special A students are also part of the contest, which involves a lap around the school grounds, starting and ending at the Special A greenhouse. Each of the Special A students apparently has a reason to compete, although we'll quickly find out that this isn't the case.

Wow Kei, you're such a genius!!11

Akira's responsible for the match rules, so she's obviously engineered it in favor of Hikari. Megumi, Akira, and Jun start normally, though Megumi has a mountain bike and Akira has skates. Tadashi and Ryuu are carrying some sort of miniature statue on their backs, and start 30 seconds in. Hikari is wearing wrist-weights, starting a minute in. Lastly, Kei is bound up as an insane asylum inmate, starting two minutes after the rest. Shortly after the race begins, it appears the other Special A characters have abandoned their reasons to aid Akira in sabotaging Kei.

Kei naturally overcomes all inhuman odds: breaking free from his confinement, escaping three traps, defeating a giant robot, crossing a river filled with alligators, running up a vertical cliff wall, and taming a savage lion. Ho hum. Oh, and he survives an explosion meant to send him falling to his death.

Why is there a canyon on the school grounds, anyway?

With the last of Akira's plans foiled, Kei easily overtakes the putt-putting Hikari, making it to the greenhouse first. Honoring her defeat (as always), Hikari tells Kei what happened, but is drowned out by the sound of Tadashi crashing in through the window on a motorbike. Despite obviously not hearing Hikari's words, Kei suddenly decides to play the gentleman and say that as long as Saiga's words haven't inconvenienced Hikari too much, then there's no problem and he's sorry for forcing the contest on her. Okay well, this guilts Hikari into finally telling him that Saiga said he might love her. She is quick to obliterate any of his hopes though, by saying that it's impossible since they're rivals.

Finally having gotten it off her chest, Hikari feels much better, and Kei much worse. So yay, back to square one.

Thoughts:
So, and for a moment there I thought that they might develop on some of the supporting Special A charcters…yeah, right. Kind of a letdown, however minimal.
Kei beating all of Akira's sabotaging efforts is like zzz can I go to bed now? Seriously, if they really wanted to beat Kei in a contest, it'd be a good idea to do something NOT physically related. I don't know, maybe something like who can be the most cheerful, friendliest, social person. He'd lose in two seconds, I swear.
I suppose one improvement is that the comedic scenes weren't so terribly timed as before. There were still way too many, though. Sigh.
Oh, and have I mentioned Akira's crossed the line from obsessive to batshit insane?

Note: I'll re-add the 'romance' tag when there's some romance to talk about. =.=