The Score Report
December had arrived.
I hadn't bothered keeping track of the date since the CSAT ended, and somewhere in that blur it had become December anyway. I gamed through the night, slept once the sun was up, woke in the afternoon, and turned the computer back on. That was the whole of my life.
……I'd meant to sleep in today, too. Same as always.
But the second I opened my eyes, my phone read 8:40 a.m.
"I barely slept……."
For the way I'd been living lately, it was an absurdly early hour. I was weighing whether to just go back to sleep when I pulled down the notification shade, and Cheongram Gallery alerts were stacked in a heap.
"……Oh."
Today.
Sleep fled all at once.
I opened the gallery. Posts were going up nearly by the second.
The gallery was a little more unhinged than usual.
……Or maybe not a little.
Let me correct that.
It was a lot more unhinged than usual.
I'd already finished my self-score on the day of the exam. Language and Media, 98. Calculus, 92. English, Grade 1. Life Science, 50, and Earth Science, 50. Three questions wrong, all of them put together.
I'd done well. Just stupidly well.
Even so, once the day the official report actually came out arrived, I couldn't help caring. What if I'd shifted the OMR over by a column. What if I'd copied an answer wrong onto the self-score sheet.
"……There's no way. I know that."
I got out of bed, turned on the computer, and went straight to the score-check page. It wasn't even nine yet, and the page still wouldn't open properly. Refresh. More loading. In the meantime, a new post had gone up on the gallery.
I let out a short laugh and checked the page again.
"Oh."
The moment it connected, I entered my information and hit search. A moment later, the score report appeared on the screen.
"Let's see……."
I set the standard scores, percentiles, and grades beside my self-score and compared them one by one.
……All of it, exactly the same.
I'd marked the OMR correctly, and I hadn't copied a single answer wrong. I leaned back in the chair and let out a small breath.
"Math really is a shame."
I'd had the same thought on exam day. Just one more question. No—if I'd gotten all three of the ones I'd missed. I started trying to remember where I'd slipped, then stopped. The exam was already over. Working through them again now wasn't going to raise the score.
I was about to screenshot the report when the personal information printed at the top of the screen caught my eye.
Name: Sayuri
Sex: Female
"This is seriously weird…… How is this even possible?"
I looked at the mirror beside the desk. A face still half-asleep, and pure white hair spilling down past my waist.
The only thing I still hadn't confirmed was everyone else's memory. Did other people remember me as having been a girl from the very beginning?
Well. It wasn't what mattered right now.
I covered my personal information and the math section, then hit the write button on Cheongram Gallery.
Every refresh brought more comments. Before long, a post sniping mine had gone up as well.
"Heh……."
I was laughing my way through the comments when a familiar nickname showed up.
A Discord DM arrived almost immediately.
I hesitated a moment, then sent the report with only the personal information covered.
Even something said without a second thought could be something somebody didn't want to hear. That was the point.
……Not wrong, either.
A moment later, Limit's own score report came through. It wasn't far from the numbers I'd heard back during self-scoring.
Ah.
Since the CSAT ended we'd talked about nothing but games, and now that college and applications had come up for the first time in a while, this time last year came back in a rush. Which schools to list as reaches, which to play safe. Where I'd go if I got in. ……And whether, if I didn't, I was willing to do it one more time.
Nothing was decided yet, but the memory of last year left me restless and oddly adrift.
That was when my phone buzzed.
"That's my mom, all right."
On Cheongram Gallery, one line about math being a shame had earned me curses from dozens of people. Mom took one look and said the exact same thing.
The conversation ended there. No you did well. No you worked hard. It wasn't particularly strange. Mom had always been like this. If anything, a sudden essay of praise would have made me suspect the phone had been hacked before I suspected anything else.
"……Huh?"
Come to think of it, the report I'd just sent was the one that listed my sex as female. And Mom hadn't said a word about it. As I'd expected, it seemed the memories of the people around me had been rewritten too, so that I had been a girl from the very beginning.
If this is how it is, I just look like a lunatic who's convinced she used to be a man…….
While I was turning that over in earnest, a message had arrived in the group chat the three of us shared.
There wasn't really a reason. I just didn't want to show it.
My finger paused.
……Right. That was true. I'd sent it to Limit without a second thought, but the moment ☆ asked, I wasn't sure I actually had to.
☆ fired off crying emotes one after another. I ignored them at a reasonable volume and looked at the score report again.
The scores were out, so now I would file applications, and if I got in, I would go to college. Writing those applications was going to be complicated and grueling.
……Still a long way to go.
My phone buzzed again.
"I'll think about it after I get in."
Applications hadn't even opened yet. I opened Cheongram Gallery again, and the comments on my post had grown once more.
I closed the comment window, thoroughly satisfied.