It's been nearly two weeks since our enrolment.

Toujou-sensei wrapped up her English lesson, and left the room. English was always an easy subject for me, since I could speak it fluently from a young age. Tadokoro was always asking me questions since she didn't know even the fundamental basics.

The bell rang. One more lesson before the start of lunch. It was going to be history with our homeroom teacher, Chabashira-sensei. She entered the room and began roll-call immediately. After finishing ticking names on her tablet, she placed it down on her desk and picked up a pile of papers.

It was getting more and more apparent everyday how carefree this class was. Out of twenty five students, only about eight of us took class seriously. The other seventeen didn't care whatsoever. One girl, her name was Kita Hana, didn't come to school altogether after the first few days. Gyaru like Fujimura Shouko and Suzuki Mayuri came late very often, and people like Yukimura didn't even wear the proper uniform.

"Ahem."

The class fell into relative silence, though there were still whispers, and Chabashira-sensei began handing out the papers facedown to everyone in the class. While doing so, she spoke.

"This lesson will be different. We will be measuring your academic abilities through this short exam. Don't worry, though. The scores you get here won't be reflected in your grade. We just want to see where everyone is at right now in terms of the five core subjects. You'll have the entire lesson to do this test, and we are to do it in exam condition. Is everything clear?"

Matsushita raised his hand straight away.

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry, Chabashira-sensei, but this test is so sudden. We aren't prepared at all. Can we get fifteen minutes beforehand to revise?"

With his charming ikemen smile, Matsushita suggested something everyone in the class would like. Sakigamiya raised her hand.

"I'd like that too, sensei!"

"Yeah, please, Shizuka-chan-sensei! Without this revision I'll fail!" Mitsuba exclaimed.

"I'm sorry, but I cannot allow that. This test is to measure you abilities. Revising just beforehand would defeat that purpose. Just try your best and answer as many questions as you can. I don't expect anyone to score 100% on this test anyways, because it has content that we haven't covered yet. Relax. It's not a midterm."

Why does it have content we haven't covered yet? It seems a bit pointless to put it on a test if we haven't even learnt it.

The class began complaining and had a sour attitude towards it. Chabashira-sensei announced that we could begin, and sat down at her desk. She moderated us as we did our tests.

Flipping the test over, I started checking what the contents were inside. The structure was simple. It was twenty questions for Japanese, English, maths, science, and history for a total of 100 questions. The test was also out of 100, so each question was worth one mark.

I started answering the questions, starting with English section first, as it was my best subject. Being fluent meant any content we've yet to cover wasn't an obstacle for me. I understood all of it, and was sure I'd secure a full 20 marks in that section at least.

Still, these questions were harsh. It asked about the complex grammar of the English language and used mostly exceptions to try and catch people out. The passive and active voice questions were probably the hardest.

The atmosphere of the class had gone really sour. No one was prepared, and many students were agitated. Yukimura looked like he was having a horrible time, while my neighbour Tadokoro was working earnestly despite her sweaty face.

Yukina was calmly solving questions. I wonder if she's starting with Japanese, since that's her best subject.

Nora, who was in front of me, was doing questions at a steady pace. Since he always revising, he must've found this test easy.

I decided to stop observing my classmates and begin the maths section. I wrote down some formulae and begin to solve the algebra questions. Graphs I had a bit more trouble with, but nothing too harsh. The last few questions required the quadratic formula, which I was unfamiliar with. I had to skip those questions.

Science was after maths. I was only ever good at biology, but a lot of these questions were about reproduction, something I didn't understand at all... it was extremely unpleasant. Chemistry and physics are painful, but I applied my maths knowledge on physics to get through it.

History was next. I wasn't too confident in this section, but I had learnt a lot from Chabashira-sensei's lessons. While she was quite a cold, distant teacher, she was very good at making her students understand the material. I managed to get through half of them just by the knowledge she gave me. I began guessing the rest.

Finally, Japanese. This should theoretically be the easiest one, yet somehow it was the hardest. I guess I'm not good at my own mother tongue, huh?

"Time's up." Chabashira-sensei said. The bell rang exactly after she said that. "Please hand your test to the front. I will post your results at the end of the day."

I handed my test to Nora, who passed it along to the front with his test.

The students began pouring outside the classroom quickly afterwards. A lot of words of disdain were thrown around and complaints about the difficulty of the test were talked about.

Nora turned around to look at me. "How was that?"

"Not too bad."

"I think I did well on the maths section."

"You're the only one here who puts in effort. I think you'll get the highest scores out of everyone."

"Really? I don't think so."

Nora laughed, but paused. I glanced up, and I saw Yukimura stand at our desks. Nora's eyes widened, and he shrunk.

Yukimura's face was red and veins were popping on his forehead. He was really angry, probably because of the surprise exam. Was he going to hit Nora?

I stood up, ready to stop Yukimura, but instead, he bowed his head.

"I'm sorry."

Nora closed his eyes, bracing for impact. Instead, he looked at Yukimura confused.

"U-um... e-eh?"

"On the cruise ship. Do you remember?" Yukimura said.

Oh, so his face was just red with embarrassment. For a moment, I thought he was going to vent it out by slinging a fist at Nora.

"Um... Yukimura-san, was it?" Nora said.

"Yeah. You're Nora, right? I shoved you to the floor back then. I wanted to apologise."

Nora nodded. "I... it's fine, but... why are you apologising now?"

His voice was extremely timid. It was like a whisper. Yukimura looked away and scratched the back of his head.

"I've been meaning to do it for awhile now. You aren't a bad guy, so I felt bad. I just remembered to do it today while doing that dumb test. It just reminded me of you since you're smart and all that."

Yukimura spun round and begun to walk away.

"W-Wait!" Nora called out. Yukimura looked behind him.

"What?"

"Why... were you so... angry?"

Yukimura turned around and looked at his feet. "I wasn't accepted to the football academy I wanted to go to. King's Cross, have you ever heard of them?"

"Isn't that the really famous one in England?" Nora said.

"Yeah. They rejected me for some reason. Something about my beha..." Yukimura chortled, stopping mid-sentence. "Whatever. They're dumb anyways, since they missed out on a star player like me."

It seems that Yukimura was mad that he got accepted into GEN rather than his ideal school. However, during the past few days, his personality had really mellowed out.

"Ah... no wonder you were mad. I'm sorry for bumping into you... during that time."

"Heh. It's water under the bridge to me. This school is pretty awesome anyways. I can do whatever the hell I want and I won't get in trouble for it, plus I'm the best football player here. I'm better than the 2nd and 3rd Years too, ha ha! The football club loves me."

Clubs... right, there was that club fair on the second day of school. I didn't go since I'm captain of the well-established Go Home Club.

"Nora, Takanori. Wanna come play football?"

"No thanks... I'm no good at sports." Nora said.

"I'll pass too. I need to get lunch." I said.

"Alright, if you want to join, just let me know. I'll be on the pitch!"

Yukimura left. Nora breathed a sigh of relief.

"How troublesome..." He muttered. "Takanori-kun, have you joined a club?"

"Nope. Not planning to."

"Me too. Too much hassle. Yukimura-san's a real character, isn't he?"

"Yeah. His personality is all over the place. Who knew he could be so nice."

"I can't help but feel like there's another motive behind it..."

"I don't think such a bone-headed guy is capable of that."

"Ha ha... that's true."

"Well, shall we get lunch?"

"Umm... I'm sorry, but I have plans to go to the library today. Sorry."

"It's fine. I'll go by myself."

"Okay. See you in class."

Nora left to go to the library. I went to the cafeteria.