About the Reckless Girl Who Kept Challenging a Reborn Man Like Me

Part 1

(DISCLAIMER!!!) I have split this story (originally an oneshot) into 2-3 parts.

By Kohigashi Nora

'A prodigy at ten, a genius at fifteen, a common man pa.s.sed twenty.'
Where I come from, there's a saying like that.
Or perhaps even if one won an award as a child, once they grow up and see how vast the world is, they learn their own abilities are insufficient, it could also be used in that sense.

Anyways, well, regardless of the praise you receive as a child, one mustn't be satisfied in it; you must continue to put in the effort, always aiming to improve yourself, it's that sort of life lesson sort of phrase.
... However,
To me, that saying held a slightly different meaning.
"Sieg! Now! It's time for us to compete in test scores once more!"
"Anja... this again..."
Regardless of whether cla.s.ses were over or not, a single young girl raced over to me with sparkling eyes.
Her age was eight, the same as mine. A young child in her second year of school.
... No, I mean, I'm also young, but...
"What's this again!? I've yet to win even a single compet.i.tion with you!"
"Of course I do! Now that that's settled, hurry up and pull out your test results."
Anja held up her own grades in one hand, as she prodded my shoulder to urge me on. Good grief, I thought, as I pulled out the test I'd tucked into my bag once more.
"Here we go... we'll show each other on go... I hope you're ready for this..."
Anja's face was flushed. She couldn't contain the rising of the corners of her mouth.
"... Anja, do you have that much confidence in this time's fundamental magic calculations test?"
"Hmph! That's something you should decide from seeing my points! I'll shock you into silence, you hear!"
And it seems she still couldn't contain her eagerness, rushing through the 'Ready, set, go,' as fast as her mouth would take her.
I hurriedly exposed the test results in my hand over the desk.
"..."
"..."
Hmm, that's amazing. Anja got a 97. This time's test was filled with practical application problems, and I doubt there were any other students who could achieve such a score.
An honor student among honor students. That was what she was.
Her face grew pale.
Feebly opening her mouth, astonishment was plastered onto her face.
"... 100 points!? Sieg, you... got 100!? On a test that hard, you got 100...!?"
"Y... yeah... looks like this test went well..."
But even so, I've never once lost to her.
That was simply because my grades were better than hers.
"———————–!"
Anja's eyes grew teary.
She must've had considerable confidence in this test. She must've studied a considerable amount. The test was difficult, and it wasn't difficult to imagine that scoring a 97 was a Herculean feat.
I'll even declare it. That score of 97, if you excluded me, would put her at the top of the grade.
But even so, she didn't reach me.
"......!"
"Ah! Wait! Anja......!"
And Anja ran off.
Was it out of chagrin, or did she not want to show her tears? Whatever the case, like the wind, she ran off from before my eyes.
"... Looks like... she really was confident this time..."
Her spirits were higher than usual, and even if she lost, it had never gone as far as to make her cry. She put considerable effort into this test, and had considerable confidence in it.
... I felt like apologizing to her.
But I was cheating. I cheated to hammer out my 100 points.
Normally, I was the sort of person who was never supposed to step onto the arena and the sort of person who shouldn't have any ties with someone who put in as much effort as Anja.
But that truth was one I could never say to anyone.
If I said it, they'd doubt my sanity, and even if I proclaim it, I can't think anyone will believe.
The truth is, I've...
... Been reborn.
I hold the memories of a life pa.s.sed.
It was a special winter day, a heavy snow intense enough to leave records was pouring down.
Cold... I think it was a cold day, but I don't really remember it too well. Rather than not remembering, I had never felt it.
My cause of death in my past life was natural causes.
From the window, I gazed at the large beads of ice falling in droves. I I forced my head up from the bed, holding envy at the pure white scene I could see from the pure white hospital room.
At the time I was twenty-eight. I was employed at the sort of magitech manufacturer you could find anywhere, and I'd worked just like the sort of person you could find anywhere.
It was the sort of job you could find anywhere, but I couldn't bear the hardships. It did seem I was the sort of person who boasted a nature one could call ordinary, and even if I did the same job as the others, I felt like I had to work more than anyone to produce the same results.
But I'm sure that was the same for everyone else. If we didn't work more than anyone, we wouldn't be able to achieve the workload demanded by society. That was just how society turned.
No particular excellence, no particular failings. In that sense, I was evidently ordinary.
Too busy with a job where I had to work harder than everyone else, I had broken up with my girlfriend. Well, I'm sure that's just a common tale.
And in that life filled with events you could find anywhere, I fell to illness. Ironic as it may be, that was my sole special quality that made me different from others.
My body could no longer move, I could only manage to turn my head to look out the window. What I could see from there was a scene of snow shrouding the world, and in my vague, hazy consciousness, I heard from someone it was a special blizzard the likes of which had never been recorded.
I held despair.
This blizzard was definitely special, it would surely leave memories and records for countless people.
I wanted to be special.
I wanted to be a special person.
Arbitrarily embracing envy towards the climate, a G.o.d humans mankind could do nothing about, I slowly shut my eyes.
My consciousness cut off as the curtain closed on my life.
... But a rebirth occurred.
All I knew was that I carried on the memories of another life.
"But even if I've gotten to walk a special life... I really can't wipe away this sense of guilt."
"What are you secretly whispering about, Sieg? Look, today's the day for another compet.i.tion."
From a seat in the corner of the cla.s.sroom, in contrast to the snow from that day, I watched the sun's incessant downpour of light onto the sweltering schoolyard as I whispered to myself... but by the time I noticed it, Anja was to my side.
c.r.a.p, I had intended it as the sort of mutter no one was supposed to be, but she always strays over to my side, so it seems she heard my voice.
"... Did you hear what I was saying?"
"... You're exactly right. Silence is golden, they say..."
Right now, we were eleven. It was the highest school year of elementary school.
Written tests, magic practical exams, all sorts of special extracurricular lessons... Tacking something on, she would bring the challenge to me, and they all ended with my victory.
You could only call it natural. For an elementary school test, once you've been through adulthood, they're an affair anyone could score 100 points on. We've yet to face anything with the slightest chance of me losing.
But even though I longed for specialness so much in my past life, I would continue winning her challenge, and every time she made such a defeated expression, I would feel a sense of guilt.
In the end, my results came from the pa.s.sage of a special experience called rebirth, and they weren't something brought about by my own abilities or effort. When she believed in her own abilities and gave it her utmost effort, was it only natural I felt guilty when I shot down her effort? Or does it mean that my mentality is still that of an ordinary?
"G.o.d! Seriously! Why do you have another 100!? There's no way for me to win like that! It's unfair! You're unfair, Sieg!"
Anja was about to cry again.
If things continued at this rate, she'd graduate a good high school, graduate a good university, and find employment in a splendid company. She possessed splendid talent that made it painfully clear even now.
But as with the warning, 'a common man pa.s.sed twenty,' that's only a story of if she continues her hard work.
In order to comfort that sulking girl, I handed over the sweet I'd bought in advance.
I had to take into account her tastes alongside the special feeling that came with seasonal and limited goods, and understanding a complex woman's heart to buy the right candy to soothe her was exceedingly difficult. If I picked the wrong sweet, I'd have to spend the rest of the day gazing at the side of her sullen face.
Though the usual Anja was exceedingly cool, when I was involved, she flared up, always vexed at her losses, yet constantly charging at me and having her emotions swayed left and right with an a.s.sortment of candy.
Grasping the inner working of a woman's heart was harder than any test.
"Kuh... I see you properly got 100 points this time..."
Holding her test sheet as per usual, there was the form of Anja with a reddened vexed face and grit teeth.
Her short hair that just might touch her neck or not had grown to hair just long enough to hand over her shoulders.
Her girliness had increased ever so slightly.
On top of that, her attire had changed. What was once free selection had changed to the school-designated uniform... meaning to say we had become middle schoolers.
Anja and I enrolled in the same middle school as a matter of course.
More so, having lived 28 years and having received an ordinary salary, by being accepted into a private inst.i.tution, I probably felt sorry for my parents. Thinking over the school's yearly tuition, and my past life's annual net income, it made my eyes spin a bit.
When I said I was fine with a normal public school, 'I child shouldn't worry about something like that,' my parents told me, and Anja also casually threw out, 'Then I'll go to a public school too,' so I had lost the margin of choice.
I felt sorry for my parents, but I couldn't let a genius of Anja's level rot away in a local public school for my sake.
I considered taking up a part time job, but when I was wondering over what place would hire a middle schooler, I ended up getting a 97 on the middle school's first exam.
Even with 28 years of experience, I couldn't get 100 with practically no study. It made me think over how different middle and elementary school were.
'Fufufu! The 100 point stronghold has finally crumbled! The day I seize victory from you cannot be far off!'
Anja loudly proclaimed with tears in her eyes.
She had gotten an 89. From her point of view, most definitely a disgrace. Because it was a prep school, the tests were purposely difficult, and I thought it was a satisfactory score, but it just goes to show both she and I were making light of middle school. Though I must note, she still got the second place score in the grade.
After that, I somehow found a place to work and got around to properly studying.
"Kuh... so you managed to lock in 100 points again..."
And her lines would be the first thing to inform me it was working.
If I properly studied, it seems my twenty-eight years of experience were still largely applicable.
"Sieg, just what sort of studying are you doing? You work part time, bring money into your house, and you still get 100 points... are you sure you're not cheating...?"
"..."
I'm cheating. I have the greatest cheating method called reincarnation, but there's no way I could say it.
In this test, she had scored a 93. Of course, her grades were second in the grade, but the fact her desperate studies had only raised her grade four points made her a little depressed.
If you'll let me have my say, that's plenty, and this was a prep school. I felt the tests were much harder than in the normal middle school I attended in my past life. Within that, she got 93 points, so I think she should be prouder of herself, but perhaps it's because I ended up getting 100.
Anja grew a little faint of heart.
I took out a newly-released candy as I spoke.
"... The trick to studying, the first thing you have to do is grasp the root of the unit. Everything lies in the unit's basis, and everything else they teach you is grown from..."
"Aaaah! Wait! Wait! On second thought, no! That's no good! Don't tell me anything!"
Anja twisted her body as she frantically separated from me.
"I can't let myself receive salt from the enemy!"
She said as she took off in a straight line from the cla.s.sroom and returned home.
Taken aback, I stared into blank s.p.a.ce before making for my part time job.
"... On second thought, teach me how to study..."
Anja drudged over to my desk and muttered feebly. Her face a bright red, she endured the disgrace, turning her face a little away so she wouldn't look me in the eye as she said she wanted me to teach her.
There was a large end of term exam.
It goes without saying Anja ranked second in the grade and she hammered out 750 points across eight subjects.
That was a splendid score but to Anja, it was no means for celebration, apparently.
It seems a 50-point gap with me was difficult for her to accept, and when I asked later, it seems that regardless of her rivalry with me, she personally felt the test was a failure. It was an exceptionally difficult test so I don't think there's any helping her score, but even so, she said it was the first time she was this vexed in somethign without any relation to me.
She bent her own pride and came to learn from me.
It was the first time it had happened in the seven years I'd known her.
Her body lightly shaking, her face bright red, when I was just watching from the side, I could practically feel her high heat and the accelerating beat of her heart.
"... Got it. I'll help you out."
I answered in short.
Leaving her hanging would be pitiful so we started studying at once. Given her personality, I thought she would slip right into it.
Of course, to the side of the desk, I readied the candy I'd bought.
"I said it before, but what's important is to grasp the root of the unit. Everything lies in the unit's basis, and everything else they teach you is grown from the root."
"Right. Don't do something as momentous as memorizing everything in the textbook from end to end, first you seize the root of its contents. From there, you study on as if growing out the branches.
If you think of the influence of the era front to back, think of what binds them side to side, and study as you link events, it makes it easier to get your thoughts in order, and deepens your understanding from simply reading the text..."
"Right, binding."
When she was shaking so much, Anja was quite something, and with just a little lecture, her head had entered study mode. With a dignified countenance, she concentrated and listened in to my words.
"You could say the same thing about the other subjects.
The goal exists within the basis, and in order to reach it, what sort of progress do you have to make, and what sort of numbers do you need? It comes down to thinking about that."
"Right, basis. What did you get wrong in this test? Could you show me?"
We studied intently in the corner of the cla.s.sroom, and while the sun set, until a teacher came to caution us, we didn't even think of leaving.
By the time I noticed, the sun had almost vanished behind the horizon, dying the cla.s.sroom a deep red in its final light.
"Sieg... you're good at teaching."
Her pale blue hair was colored in a warm hue.
"Hey! Sieg, is it true you're helping people study!?"
One day, a girl from cla.s.s asked with good momentum.
A number of girls rushed over to the side of my desk, closing in their faces as they asked such a thing.
"Hmm? Well... if you ask me to, I have no reason to decline, but... where did you hear about that...?"
"A... rumor like that..?"
Surrounded by girls, I hesitated as I took a sidelong glance at Anja, but... Ah, it seems Anja's in prim and proper mode. As if to say this had nothing to do with her, she was briskly preparing for the next cla.s.s.
When a compet.i.tion with me wasn't involved, she was fundamentally nonchalant.