"Is that so?" Night Dragon scratched his head. He had started out as a street thug and hadn't had much schooling. "I still think it's weird. She came out here to compete in a fighting tournament, and she brought this along?"
He casually flipped through a couple of pages of Five Years of College Entrance Exams, Three Years of Practice Tests. The physics problems inside made his head hurt.
"What's weird about that? Working through a couple of problems in your downtime after a match is perfectly normal," Roland said.
"I think so too." Cassandra nodded. "Let's hurry up and give it back."
"Right. What if she wants to do some practice problems later?" Roland handed Five Years of College Entrance Exams, Three Years of Practice Tests to Barbara.
"...I think I'm doing her a favor."
"Oh, knock it off. You've spent too much time with these little brats. Studying hard is important," Roland told Barbara.
"Did you study hard back in school?" Night Dragon asked Roland.
"Of course. Back then, my grades never fell out of the top ten in my year," Roland said firmly. "And times were tough. I had to get up at three in the morning, cut grass to feed the pigs, then cook for everyone in the family before going to school. We were so poor I didn't even have proper shoes. I went to school in patched-up ones. I didn't have a schoolbag either, so every day I carried a sack over the mountains to school. Several mountains, all uphill—and the trip home was all uphill too. Once I got home, I had to help the adults with the farmwork before I could do my homework—"
"Why does that sound so familiar?" Cassandra thought for a moment. "I think my aunt told me that