How We Met Again

Chapter 12: Wait, You Don't Want To Talk About Midterms?!

The next day, after school, Yotsuba came to me with her finished test. I had explicitly instructed her to leave any questions blank if she'd tried them for at least five minutes without having even a clue where to start. That way, I could properly assess exactly where the line was between things she got wrong, and things she had never even learned to begin with.

As my ribboned friend handed the sheets of paper back to me, I noticed with some amusement that she'd written her name in the top-right corner, despite there being no blank line there for her to fill in. I glanced up at her, an eyebrow raised.

"I'm glad to know this is your custom-made test, and not somebody else's custom made test."

Yotsuba grinned. "Gotta make sure you don't think I'm someone else!"

I rolled my eyes, and pulled out a thick red felt pen. I grinned demoniacally, and uncapped it with a loud pop.

"Good. You, and no others, can feel the pain of Uesugi Fuutarou's red pen of death!"

Yotsuba recoiled in mock horror. "Oh no! Uesugi-san's got a red pen! That's twice as powerful as the blue pen!"

"...and half as powerful as a fountain pen," I smirked. "Alright, shush. I'm gonna mark. Get your butt to studying."

"Sir, yes, sir!"

As Yotsuba dutifully studied, I in turn worked through her test. I went question by question, making sure to carefully think about possible ways in which my questions could have been misinterpreted, rather than not understood, and also being sure to give credit for partial work. I'd decided to mark fairly harshly, but not completely unforgivingly.

I lowered my pen, and stared down at the test.

It was... bad.

I put the cap back on my pen.

...but better than Second Place-san was making it out to be.

Yotsuba wasn't ready for the midterms -- she would almost certainly fail every subject except maybe Japanese language arts.

However... based on where her answers to the questions started becoming incorrect, and then dying out entirely, she would almost certainly have been able to pass the entrance exam.

I frowned down at the paper, deep in thought. The bar for passing exams at this school was absurdly low compared to many others -- a measly thirty-percent constituted a passing grade. Unfortunately, this low bar was a result of the fact that our tests were notoriously difficult. I, of course, had no issues, but getting Yotsuba up to speed in time would be difficult.

But... maybe...

I flipped the pages, and stared at each one individually. The gap between what she knew, and the amount she needed to theoretically stand a chance of passing that low bar...

She could theoretically close that gap in two weeks. It would be brutal, but it's possible.

"That bad, huh?"

I looked up to see Yotsuba glumly looking down at the test. I sighed, and closed it back up again.

"I'm not going to lie, Yotsuba, it's pretty bad."

I could see her shoulders slump, and her ribbon droop.

"...but it's better than it could have been."

She looked up in shock.

"Wait, really?!"

"Yeah. I specifically put markers in here for the level of the entrance exam. The difficulty of the test starts at that level, and goes up to the level for the midterms. Here, let me show you -- see how you got up until question fifteen on at least every single page? I put a little cross on each one to mark the spot that was the end of the entrance exam section, usually around question ten. You would probably do quite well on the entrance exam."