The Written Exam (Part 2)
The supervisor, Kendra Hammington, was a stern woman. She taught mathematics at Stellarium Academia and had a notorious reputation among students for being eccentric.
She was also quite the busybody.
“I don’t know how many of you in this room will pass, but give it your absolute best. Once you’ve stepped into the finest educational institution in the galaxy, treating the test casually is nothing short of an insult to our school.”
Would you look at that. There she goes again with the unnecessary lecture.
Still, she’s not a bad person.
A few minutes passed like that.
We received thick test booklets and answer sheets.
The scrape of chairs. The tick of the second hand. A heavy silence settled over the exam hall.
The atmosphere was tense. Students cleared their throats one by one.
I steadied my breathing and picked up my pens. One in my left hand, one in my right.
It was time to test the new skill I had acquired that morning. I loosened my wrists lightly and ran my fingers along the edge of the test booklet.
And then—
With a resounding ding, the exam began.
The written exam at Stellarium lasted a total of five hours.
The first two hours focused deeply on Language Arts and Mathematics.
The remaining three hours skimmed across fourteen other subjects.
There was a saying that whether you passed the first round depended solely on your scores in Language Arts and Math. That was how heavily they were weighted.
However, to reach final acceptance, you couldn’t afford to neglect the other subjects either. There were no shortcuts in Stellarium’s entrance exam. In the end, the student who excelled evenly across the board would win.
Regardless, the first two hours were undeniably the most critical. Keeping that in mind, Kendra glanced over the lectern.
They all look pretty clueless.
She let out a small chuckle.
Spending two hours (in reality, more than five) staring at the faces of examinees in one classroom would drive anyone insane, but what could she do? It was the fate of an educator. Kendra decided to think of it that way.
It was boring, but there was a certain entertainment value in watching. The sight of students clutching their heads in frustration was quite the spectacle.
Some solved the problems with ease.
Others could only sigh in defeat.
Maybe I should memorize the examinees’ faces.
It was something she did every year. A sort of game she had created to endure the boredom.
Kendra picked up her board to check the admission tickets and began her rounds.
Starting from the first row.
She met each examinee’s eyes one by one. Kendra had no trouble with this. Her memory was exceptional. Once she saw a student’s name and face, she memorized them instantly.
But her steps halted in the third row.
White hair and purple eyes.
It was a girl with a rare appearance.
First of all, the white hair didn’t belong to an old woman. It wasn’t dyed, either. It glistened with a natural sheen, as if it had been that color from birth.
She has Adelbein blood.
It was such common knowledge that even someone like Kendra knew it without needing to be told. In fact, she could sense the other students shrinking back after seeing the girl’s hair color.
Moreover, her noble violet eyes—reminiscent of Tyros dye—were as sharp as a predator’s.
Not a collateral branch… but a direct descendant…
Though the class system had long since disappeared, noble bloodlines still carried weight. The Adelbeins were descendants of the imperial family that once ruled the empire, and even now their influence in the Federation remained undiminished.
Kendra checked the girl’s admission ticket.
Jernya von und zu Trisha Adelbain.
Her guess became certainty.
This one will definitely pass.
The Adelbain family was famous for producing excellent students. Kendra smiled quietly as she savored the girl’s name.
In any given class, there might be only one or two who passed the first round. But if it was a direct descendant of the Adelbain family, acceptance was guaranteed. Everyone knew how strict the Adelbain family’s educational standards were.
Kendra moved on.
Soon after, she encountered another girl with a similar aura.
She too had silver-white hair. However, her eyes were golden. Golden eyes were also proof of an outstanding bloodline.
Seti von Adelbain Rheinland.
After confirming the name on the ticket, Kendra barely managed to suppress the dry laugh that nearly escaped her.
What are the odds?
It was surprising enough that an examinee carried Adelbain blood, but she even bore the Rheinland surname.
What kind of family were the Rheinlands?
A prestigious house that had risen to the top ten of the business world through medicine alone.
Unlike other noble families that dabbled in business and politics, the Rheinlands had seized wealth and honor through study alone. Historically, every one of them had been a natural-born bookworm.
About half of the Rheinland children passed into Stellarium each year. They continued to excel in the Academia program and frequently advanced to the Medical College.
As a result, whenever this surname appeared during Stellarium’s entrance exams, the other examinees would grow nervous. It was a well-known story.
…Looks like this year’s lucky.
Kendra speculated that there might even be two successful candidates from this very exam room.
Next, Kendra’s eyes met those of a golden-haired girl with aquamarine eyes. Her name was Rustila Kersil. She was from the Kersil family, which held some renown in legal circles.
It was only a moderately prestigious house, so Kendra had intended to simply check the girl’s face and ticket before moving on.
But she couldn’t.
“……”
After seeing Rustila’s face, Kendra returned to the lectern. Carefully, so as not to disturb the other examinees, she pulled out a pack of tissues. She took out several sheets and returned to Rustila’s desk.
Kendra gently placed the tissues on the desk. Rustila nodded silently and wiped her eyes. The sight of her was indescribably haggard.
It didn’t seem like her expression came merely from the difficulty of the test. There had to be some personal circumstances behind it.
Kendra now moved to the fourth row. The boy seated at the front noticed her presence and looked up.
He had the same golden eyes as Seti.
His face… was slightly different, yet somehow resembled hers in a strange way.
Idel von Rheinland.
In that instant, a cold sweat ran down Kendra’s spine.
If it’s Idel… he’s that infamous good-for-nothing who was all over the news for a while.
Idel had already been a celebrity when Kendra first started working at Stellarium. It had begun with his appearance on a program called Our Child Won’t Change.
There, Idel had been the kind of person who grabbed his older and younger brothers by the hair and shook them violently. The galaxy’s viewers had exchanged all sorts of harsh words about the countless other misdeeds he had committed.
Kendra had enjoyed watching that show. She had once thought that if she were his parent, she would have thrown him out.
After that, Idel continued to appear sporadically in the news. The stories were mostly about crimes. Whenever Idel caused an incident, the Rheinland family would always step in to clean up the mess. She recalled that because he had been a juvenile offender, he had never faced criminal charges.
Kendra glanced briefly at Seti, who sat at the end of the third row.
Did they come together?
When she turned back, Idel was staring at her steadily. There wasn’t the slightest tremor in his yellowish pupils.
She sensed an inexplicable madness.
But Kendra dismissed it as her imagination.
Whatever the case, it wasn’t her concern. If he had come to his senses, that was good. If he caused trouble here, she could simply call security and have him removed.
After finishing her identity check, Kendra returned to the lectern. She pulled a chair over, sat down, and observed the students as if surveying a landscape.
Now began the long stretch of yawning time….
…Huh?
Idel had picked up his pens. One in his left hand, one in his right. He pinned the test booklet down with both elbows. He was solving two problems at once, the pens scratching away simultaneously.
Am I seeing this wrong…?
Kendra rubbed her eyes.
She wasn’t.
Flip!
Idel turned the page. Then he repeated the same process like a hamster on a wheel. Kendra leaned forward slightly.
His handwriting showed no sign of disorder. With remarkable speed and precision, he was solving two problems at the same time. One was a non-literary reading comprehension passage, the other a literary one.
While reading the non-literary text, he was marking answers for the literary questions. He flipped through several pages like this.
Kendra barely managed to keep her jaw from dropping.
It was the same with essay questions and math problems. Idel’s eyes were looking in two different directions. At a glance, he almost looked cross-eyed. In any case, it wasn’t something a human brain should be capable of doing.
What about the other students…
Kendra shifted her gaze to Jernya, whose passing was all but assured. The girl solved some problems effortlessly, while struggling with others.
This year’s Stellarium entrance exam was difficult. After hearing that many talented students had applied, the exam committee had drastically increased the difficulty.
There were only two students who were steadily grinding through every single one of those tough questions: Idel of the Rheinland family and Jernya of the Adelbain family.
It was neck and neck. Kendra’s breath caught in her throat. It felt like watching a horse race with her entire fortune on the line. Her eyes darted nonstop between left and right.
Who would be faster?
Who would finish first?
Who would get more correct?
Her curiosity was overwhelming. Kendra hoped the results would come quickly. Yet she didn’t feel bored at all.
That made sense. The frantic scratching of pens tickled her ears and heart. At the same time, that sound instilled despair in the rest of the students in the exam room.
Even though Idel was using both hands, his pace was similar to Jernya’s. At that point, one might wonder if it would be better to solve one problem at a time.
Well, it’s not my place to interfere.
She tapped her toes and waited for the clock’s hour hand to reach noon.
Meanwhile, Idel—who had been rapidly solving math problems with both hands—silently cursed at Kendra, who was staring at him intently.
Lady, would you please stop shaking your leg…!