Hyouka (Light Novel)

Chapter 5: The Hidden Seal of the Pedigree Classics Club

5 - The Hidden Seal of the Pedigree Classics Club

While Kamiyama High School does provide curriculum for university entrance exams, it does not particularly do much to improve its university entrance rankings. It only holds mock exams for prospective university students once or twice annually, and they do not hold extra lessons during holidays. All in all, it was a pretty laid back school.

Even so, Kamiyama High still has regular exams. If a high-school student's life is rose-coloured, then the exam halls would be his natural enemy. And so the Classics Club activities had come to a halt as club activities are prohibited during the End of Semester Exams for the First Semester. Though it's not like we have much to do anyway, we still had to hand the club room key over to the school.

Today is the final day of the exams. I laid down on my bed in my own room and stared at the ceiling. And as usual, there was nothing particularly different about this white ceiling.

In terms of exam results, the members of the Classics Club yielded some interesting revelations.

First, Fukube Satoshi. Though he's well-versed in all sorts of useless trivial knowledge, he doesn't have much interest in regular studies. As the exams have just ended today, I can't exactly tell how he performed, but I do know that he was terrible in the Mid-Term Tests. At any rate, back then Satoshi explained to me, "That's because I was busy studying why Japanese people nowadays no longer write their kanji in the cursive style[1]." If Satoshi thinks something is important, then it must be important enough for him. No disrespect to him, but in the long-term, I think it probably sounds foolish. Though I don't think Satoshi would care one bit. If I call him a free soul because of it, he'd probably take it as a compliment. To put it simply, he's just a generic fool.

Though she's normally with the Manga Studies Club, in order to continue pursuing Satoshi, Ibara Mayaka too has joined the Classics Club. She's probably the hard-working type. As she would usually make sure to check up on any mistakes made, her grades are in the upper half of the class. However, devoting so much time to studying does not seem to improve her grades at all. To put it simply, Ibara's a bit neurotic — you could say she's a perfectionist. Though her tongue may be sharp, her downside is probably that she is too obsessed with perfection, and would end up struggling to find the perfect answers to her exam questions. I think she applies the same standards to herself as well.

Then there's Chitanda Eru, who stands out among the rest with her high scores. A look at the score ranking board reveals she's ranked 6th in the entire grade. Though she doesn't seem satisfied with that, or even the high school curriculum for that matter. She once told me she wasn't content with just learning the parts, she wanted to learn the entire system. I had absolutely no idea what she meant by that. Though her words were vague, I could tell why this lady was so intent on getting her curiosity resolved. For example, the case involving her uncle — she probably wanted to find out the entire "system" regarding the information concerning what her uncle said to her back then. She's the sort that wants to find out the cause by all means.

As for me, my grades were normal.

Out of 350 people, I ranked 175th. As though it was some sort of prank, I was ranked right in the middle. I was not concerned about Chitanda's curiosity getting her good grades or Satoshi's eccentricity getting him bad grades, nor did I think much about Ibara being unhappy with the mistakes she's made. While I wasn't that laid back as to not study for the exams, my studying was lukewarm at best. Occasionally, I would get people telling me how much I've changed, but to me, it simply means they aren't really that observant. I am positioned below the cream of the crop and above the bottom of the heap. I have no desire to go either up or down. I see, so that's why Satoshi said that he can't think of anything apart from grey for the colour of my high-school life.