Iris [Naruto Fanfiction]

Testing

I stare blankly at my paper. I see the one line that says "Name". And that's it. I write my name on that one line, very sloppily by the way, and skim through the questions trying to find at least one word I recognize.

Skip... Don't know what that says... Skip again... Why are there so many questions on this test?!...And skip this one...again!

That continued until I reached the very end of the page, and now I have to go through this again to actually try to answer the questions. But that's impossible with the little knowledge that I have of the language. I'm gonna let my team down...

I don't want to, but there isn't much that I could do. Maybe I could cheat, but I might get caught. Then again, I've cheated on plenty of tests before and I passed them all without getting caught. Thank god my parents don't know.

The other chunin in the room have sharp eyes though, so not getting them to notice me looking over someone's shoulder will be quite difficult. Why did I say yes to this mess?

I close my eyes and rub the sides of my temples, trying to find a solution to my predicament. I think back to my book of spells and try to remember if I read about anything that could help me. Those pages  about the seven wonders cross my mind, and I recall that divination helps find information.

My eyes shoot open and I start getting serious. I'm not sure how I'm just gonna conjure up this ability that I may have, but I've done it multiple times before, so I might as well try.

I grip my paper in both of my hands and close my eyes, trying my best to focus on the answers to the questions. Few minutes have passed and nothing has happened yet.

I opened my eyes and released a small sigh. This is probably so difficult because I've never conjured up  my abilities on my own free will. It was always unintentional. No wonder it's such a struggle. Regardless of this realization, I squeeze my eyes shut and try to concentrate on finding these answers.

My patience in trying to find the answers was nearly gone, but an image of an answer key to the test was now in my head. Well, from what I could tell. The questions look very similar to the one on the test in front of me. Ok, now that I have the image in front of me, I have to copy the answers to my paper.

Oh boy. I close my eyes and try my hardest to remember the first few words written as the answer for the first question. I copy it to the best of my ability, but it looks a mess. Oh well. They better not be grading us on eligibility.

***

I basically spent the entire time struggling to copy the answers. But it was done. My hand writing looks like it was written by a two year old child, but it's done. I finished with just minutes left.

Throughout the test, over a dozen teams were caught cheating and were kicked out. I'm surprised I was that low key that I didn't get caught myself.

"Alright, listen up," Ibiki announced. "Here is the tenth and final question. But before I give you the question, there are more rules you need to be aware of. Listen carefully and try not to let them frighten you. Rule number one: each of you are free to choose not to be given the next question. It's your decision. But if you choose not to take the question, you will automatically get a zero, regardless of your other nine questions. So you fail, as well as your teammates."

The remaining people start chatting amongst themselves, saying that they would obviously take the question if that's the case. But what I wanna know is why they keep making us choose between decisions that would be selfish or selfless, you know? First the bells, and now taking this tenth question. Why?

"Wait," Ibiki continues. "You didn't let me finish. If you accept the question but answer incorrectly, you will not only fail, but you will be barred from taking the chunin exams ever again!"