Exams

The hectic days of review slipped by amid the faint rasp of pen against paper.

Even though the study group had moved to Hoshino Kanade's dorm room, the tension and desperation thick enough to almost touch still hung unmistakably in the air when Hoshino took a moment one afternoon to borrow a few psychology books from the library.

There were noticeably more students hurrying through the corridors with heavy books in their arms. The reading room was packed, and even the whispers of low-voiced discussions were steeped in a solemn, almost tragic seriousness.

Through the glass doors of the reading room, Hoshino's gaze happened to fall on the three famous "idiots" from Class D.

Ken Sudō was irritably tugging at his conspicuous red hair as he glared at the open English workbook, baring his teeth as if he could bore through the tadpole-like letters with his eyes. Beside him, Yamauchi Haruki and Kanji Ike looked like a pair of defeated roosters, slumped over the table with grim expressions as they stared at their math papers. Yet their hands kept moving, and the occasional strokes of their pens across their scratch paper silently testified that they were still struggling desperately.

Still, Hoshino knew that their efforts seemed to have been misguided from the very start.

Just a few days before the exams, a dispiriting piece of news finally emerged like a delayed verdict, passed along in an almost absurd fashion—it had slipped out unintentionally when a Class C student taunted a Class D student during an argument in the library.

The Class D students who caught wind of it finally stopped their homeroom teacher, Chabashira Sae, in the corridor as she was heading back to the staff room.

Their faces were a mixture of one last flicker of hope and deep unease. Their voices trembled almost imperceptibly. "Teacher... did the exam material... change?"

Chabashira stopped and folded her arms out of habit. Her weary eyes swept over the anxious, tense faces before her.

Her tone was as calm as if she were discussing the insignificant weather outside the window. "Huh? That...?" She tilted her head slightly, her expression giving no hint as to whether she had expected this or simply didn't care. "...Oh, right. The midterm exam material was changed last Friday. Sorry, I guess I forgot to tell you."

Her voice was utterly unruffled, as though she were answering the most ordinary question.

Her complete nonchalance left the students surrounding her frozen in place, their expressions shifting from confusion to ashen shock.

Clearly, she had known about this so-called "change" for some time, yet had never once thought to tell her class.

Hoshino Kanade and Kiyona were sitting side by side on a bench in the open-air corridor connecting the two school buildings.

Afternoon sunlight streamed through the glass canopy, casting dappled spots across the notebooks open on their laps.

Kiyona's shoulder rested lightly against Hoshino's arm, its warmth seeping through his thin shirt.

The Class D students passed in front of him, looking utterly dejected. Their murmurs were like eggplants withered by frost, full of confusion and anger at having been deceived.

"We only found out now... how are we supposed to catch up...?" "The material changed for all five subjects. What are we going to do?"... No one mentioned—or even thought to dig through past exams for "old questions" to use as a guide for their revision.

To Hoshino Kanade, this was practically basic exam-preparation strategy. After all, past exam questions often contained clues to a teacher's preferences and the topics they tended to emphasize.

Of course, he knew the school's routine: quizzes, midterms, and finals all reused the previous year's exam papers. (They always reused the previous year's papers. He wondered whether the exams at this school had gone unchanged for ten years.)

Hoshino Kanade's fingers unconsciously rubbed the rough edge of the book cover. He felt the faint friction against his fingertips, but in the end, he simply pushed the thought aside.

Selling this information? The risk was far too great. Whether it was the chance of being seen by a teacher while contacting upperclassmen or the choice of someone to pass the information along, either could expose him.

Worse still, no matter how well or poorly Class D did in the end, he would very likely be dragged into the center of the trouble.

Besides, the personal points he could earn from this information were pitifully few compared with the risks he would have to take.

On the invisible scales in his mind, the cost of getting involved and the potential rewards were badly out of balance.

It wasn't worth it. Not in the slightest.

And as his gaze passed over the bobbing heads in the crowd, it fell once more on the red-haired figure in the distance, scratching his head in confusion.

Watching Ken Sudō look ready to lose it over his English workbook, Hoshino felt a flicker of understanding that was almost pity.

He remembered a similar time in another world. Even when someone had practically laid the complete "original questions" and their answers in front of Sudō, his despairingly poor English had still been an insurmountable barrier, and he had failed anyway.

Hoshino could hardly understand it. Even if Sudō didn't recognize a single letter, surely he could have just memorized the answers to the multiple-choice questions. How could he still get a score that low...? That level of difficulty was almost inhuman.

Now even the "original questions" that might theoretically have helped him were gone. In Hoshino's cool assessment, Sudō's chance of passing had dwindled to a candle flickering in the wind, liable to go out at any moment.

He sighed to himself, a barely perceptible trace of regret passing through him. He hoped that after this inevitable setback, the boy who loved basketball more than life itself would keep pursuing that pure passion out in the wide world and eventually achieve his dream.

Amen. The silent sigh stirred only a faint ripple in the lake of his heart before settling back into stillness.

Everything that followed proceeded as if it were a precise program, running right on schedule.

The midterm exams arrived as expected.

A solemn silence filled the school building, broken only by the proctors' footsteps and the rustle of papers being handed out.

Countless exam papers, laden with anxiety and hope, passed under the fluorescent lights into the hands of students, some nervous, some composed.

The scratch of pen tips against paper gathered into the exam room's most prominent sound: a monotonous yet suspenseful melody.

Hoshino Kanade sat upright at his desk, calmly scanning the questions on his paper.

His mind worked like a finely tuned machine. Nothing posed any real difficulty; his extensive knowledge was more than enough to handle the questions with ease.

Slanting sunlight streamed through the window, casting a neat square of light on the polished desktop. It quietly bore witness as the paths of countless individual lives took shape in silence over those few short hours.

The bell announcing the end of the exam rang abruptly, breaking the stillness.

A brief commotion surged through the corridors like a wave, then gradually faded away.

With the dust settled, everything seemed to return to its former course: desks, books, erasers... Only the yet-to-be-announced report cards, bearing judgment and the future, hung overhead like weights suspended in the air, quietly awaiting the moment they would fall and deliver their verdict.