Written Exam (1)
Additional stats invested in Thought Acceleration.
Congratulations! Thought Acceleration has reached (+1000%)!
Derived skill Parallel Thinking acquired!
Ten thousand Fron, right on the mark. Now it was finally easy on the eyes.
Today was the long-awaited day of the Stellarium written exam. I chewed on the calming pill Sonia had given me—an ordinary-looking stabilizer—and tried to steady my nerves.
“Little brother, if you don’t come out soon I’m leaving without you.”
I flung Seti’s door wide open. She had been busy packing and scowled the moment she saw me, then hurled a pillow my way.
“Get out of my room.”
“Little sister.”
“I said go away!”
Hmm.
It didn’t seem like she was angry simply because she disliked me. Everyone was on edge on exam day, after all.
“Even so, little sister. Aside from the android attendants, the only Rheinlands here are you and me. We should be supporting each other, not fighting like this. Mother and Father would be heartbroken.”
“Still better than blowing two thousand trillion credits.”
“You little—hitting where it hurts.”
Seti stuffed her wrong-answer notebook into her bag, pressing it down hard. Dark circles shadowed her eyes; she looked exhausted.
She grumbled, “I couldn’t sleep a wink because of you.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Honestly, I don’t really want to know.”
So we bickered our way onto the spaceship. No matter how much we snapped at each other, we were still siblings. Faced with the enormous hurdle of the entrance exam, we naturally clung to one another.
Especially when our parents—people who couldn’t even be bothered to show up or send a single encouraging message on such an important day—had left us no one else to rely on.
“Do you think Mom and Dad even remember today is our written exam?”
I didn’t answer.
Once aboard the ship, Seti remained motionless. She had only loosely fastened her seatbelt and was hugging her knees, her face filled with worry and anxiety.
This wouldn’t do.
“The Black Blossom art section is still tough when I review it.”
“……”
“How am I supposed to understand all of this?”
As I spoke, I rolled my eyes. Seti, who had been sitting like a statue with her head buried, finally lifted her gaze and responded.
“…Idiot. You just have to memorize everything.”
Of course—mentioning the exam finally got a reaction.
Seizing the moment, I continued. “Memorizing is the hard part.”
“The academy teaches mnemonic rules. Oh, right—you wouldn’t know.”
“I’m not great at memorizing. Look.”
I showed her my art-history workbook, already on its tenth read-through. The pages were tattered, torn in places. I had only bought it three months ago, yet it already looked like this.
“You really wrecked that book.”
“It means I studied hard.”
“You can’t even memorize a few simple things?”
Seti chuckled and unbuckled her seatbelt. She flipped through my book at random, found the heavily underlined sections, and began reading aloud.
“As constellation-manipulation technology advanced, some upper-class circles began creating pictures with the stars. They called it ‘Star Art,’ and notable artists include…”
She recited the artists we needed to memorize in rhythmic phrases. The mnemonic rules created by the academy’s top instructor stuck perfectly in my head.
“Thanks. That actually sticks.”
“I taught you one, so you help me with one.”
Seti frowned and held out her physics workbook. Her hands trembled as though she had a tremor; apparently the thought of learning something from the infamous wastrel Eidel was mortifying.
“…Th-this one. Number 157.”
“Difficult?”
“I tried everything with the solution key. Still don’t get it.”
“Rho pi squared over epsilon…”
“You bastard—don’t give the answer first!!”
After a long voyage we finally arrived.
“Whoa.”
Seti and I stared at the panorama of Stellarium and let out admiring sighs.
Round.
Tall and massive.
Its surface gleamed.
The true form of the Stellarium Academia campus was an artificial celestial body floating in the middle of space. Three rocky planets orbited nearby.
“So those are the college districts.”
If Academia was where high-school students studied, then the colleges were spaces for university students. Yet the campus was the size of three Earths.
After gazing at the colleges for a while, I turned my eyes back to the Academia campus. The novel had devoted three whole pages to describing it—refined ether titanium, one-third the Moon’s radius, rotation and revolution speeds, and so on.
Well, enough of that setting nonsense.
It was literally a Death Star.
“Insane.”
I was grateful for the first time since possessing this body; the view alone was worth it.
> Entering Stellarium orbit. All passengers, please fasten your seatbelts.
Drawn in by the artificial gravity, many thoughts crossed my mind.
Seti’s reason for wanting to enter Stellarium was to secure her position within the family. Put simply, she wanted her parents’ love. Only then could her status—born of a political marriage—improve. She would no longer be merely a link between two houses; she would wield real influence as a member of House Rheinland.
Compared to her grand dream, mine was trivial.
Damn it, I really don’t want to get pregnant.
The grueling landing finally ended. I pressed my fingers against my temples, still spinning from dizziness, and stepped out.
“Hey, you forgot your bag.”
“Ah. Thanks.”
We double-checked our exam tickets and other belongings, then started walking. Seti led; I followed about fifty centimeters behind. Androids filled the space between us, so it didn’t look too awkward.
“L-Look, it’s the Rheinlands.”
People whispered as they noticed our eye color.
The stares were familiar by now.
I ignored them and kept going.
Because the written exam was common to everyone, seats were assigned by registration number. Seti and I had registered almost simultaneously, so our numbers differed by exactly two. That gap was quite large.
“Our rows are different.”
Seti sat in the second-to-last seat of the third row, which placed me at the very front of the fourth row. When I glanced back, she shrugged and blinked.
The seat between us was taken by an unexpected person.
“Huh? Big sister?”
Seti, startled, threw her arms around the girl who had been about to sit behind her. The joy in her voice told me who it was even without turning around.
“Rustilla is sitting right behind me? Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Today’s my lucky day.”
“Hello, Seti. How have you been?”
“I’ve been… No, it was hard without you.”
Seti buried her face in Rustilla’s chest. Whether because of that or not, every examinee’s attention snapped toward them. At the same time, I finally understood what literature meant by the visualization of touch.
Rustilla looked even more exhausted than Seti. Her face was milk-white, her eyes cloudy like an unfinished latte.
Obviously her parents had kept her on a tight leash.
The fact that I had threatened the androids of House Kersil must have reached their ears. I had only meant to give Rustilla some breathing room, yet it had backfired in some ways.
Of course, I had expected that outcome. At the time, Rustilla’s face had looked as though she were on the verge of breaking. If I could have seen her mental stat, it would have been one out of a hundred.
This was exactly why I had to get into Stellarium.
Reward: SAN Parameter Unlocked
Passing Stellarium would grant a new parameter as a reward from the Outer Deities. Once the SAN parameter opened, I would be able to see other people’s mental stats in real time. Then I could determine who had been touched by an Outer Deity and who needed mental care first.
I couldn’t build the Graviton Bomb alone. I would need the help of future allies. Their mental care was something only I could do—unaffected by PN values.
Anyway.
“Big sister—no, Rustilla. Let’s both pass.”
“Yeah…”
To help these two worn-out girls, I first had to save myself. I kept repeating it, but failing here would ruin everything.
While I was steeling my resolve, a voice I had never heard yet somehow recognized slipped into my ear.
“Oh my, fancy meeting you here.”
I turned my head.
Silver hair, the opposite of Rustilla’s gold. Eyes the color of amethyst. The girl approached me along an odd trajectory, radiating the intimidating aura typical of highborn families.
“About a week, wasn’t it? What a coincidence.”
Yes, what a coincidence.
“You remember my name, don’t you?”
“Zernya.”
“I’m honored you remembered.”
She dropped her belongings in the seat right beside mine—the first seat of the third row—and plopped down. Even though the room was comfortably warm, she kept her scarf fully wrapped around her neck.
Zernya placed only her writing instruments on the desk, crossed her arms, and glanced sideways at me.
“Bullying Seti… I suppose that’s over now. It’s not like I held any real grudge anyway.”
“……”
“Instead, I’ve taken an interest in you.”
She finished with a chilling smile.
“This time I’ll crush you properly.”
Oh.
I liked the sound of that.