After the Exams
I know it sounds like I'm just rationalizing when I say this, but my first-year grades were, quite literally, a burnt-out crater.
On top of that, I'd banished a good chunk of what I learned back then to the far side of my memory.
Which is why I never had any intention of applying through early admissions in the first place. Or maybe it's more accurate to say I had no reason to bother.
Instead, I was working through everything from first year, step by careful step — but as quickly as I could manage — to prepare for the regular admissions exams.
"And that's how I bombed my grades."
I'd basically thrown the midterms away.
Kim Haneul, watching me like this, just sighed as if he pitied me.
"Isn't that just an excuse, though?"
Well, if someone called it an excuse, I couldn't exactly argue — but that didn't mean it was purely an excuse.
"Look, I actually did okay in history. And English."
"What'd you get?"
"A 91 in history."
"Oh…?"
"And a 92 in English."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa…? Yeah right, buddy. Not buying it."
Buying it? I had spoken nothing but pure, uncut truth.
Carrying the weight of this injustice, I showed Kim Haneul my graded exam papers, and he pulled a face like there's no way this is real!
"Who the hell are you? There's no way my friend pulls grades like this."
"You little punk, it's the truth."
"No way. There's just no way…."
English went well because it was something I'd kept up with all along, and history — well, whether you're a middle schooler, high schooler, college student, or working adult, the studying is basically the same, so it was the subject with the most memories still intact.
Thanks to that, I could still hold my own in those two.
"Korean, though? Genuinely brutal."
"What'd you get in Korean?"
"Low sixties. Don't ask for details."
Yes, genuinely low sixties.
It wasn't like I hadn't studied at all — I'd studied plenty — and this was my reward.
The biggest reason Korean fell apart, I figured, came down to its structure: you simply can't crack the problems until you've built up a habit of working through them.
Put another way, this was an area I could actually fix if I just invested a little more time.
"What about math, world geography, and Korean geography?"
"You may not ask about those, human."
World geography and Korean geography… in other words, I planned to tackle those two separately next year.
My goal was just to get a feel for what the elective subjects were like, then study the two where I had the best shot at a strong score. Worst case, I could always switch to the science track.
Not that "worst case" was anything more than a figure of speech — I had zero real intention of going science. Someone at my level heading into that track would get steamrolled.
Then again, thinking about my future job prospects, science wouldn't be the worst path… but that wasn't the point right now.
The point, no matter what, was grades.
"Hmm… I won't ask about math, then."
"You dog."
For the record, math went badly enough that I earned the right to curse like that.
How badly? About the same as if I hadn't studied at all.
But what was I supposed to do? My first-year foundations were completely shot, and the exam mixed first-year material in on top of it, so it was brutal.
If they'd only tested probability and statistics, my score might have actually been decent… Talk about unfair.
As a side note, I pulled a pretty respectable score in Japanese, my second-language elective. Then again, it's hard not to do well there.
"Anyway, your grades seem to be climbing steadily. Keep studying hard."
"Ooh… look at you, living so diligently?"
"Someone's gotta. I need to prep for college either way."
"Is all this thanks to your junior Soye?"
Maybe?
Honestly, even without Soye, I probably would have hit the books hard anyway.
Compared to those days — no parents, not a single soul to lean on — I now had an environment so perfectly suited to studying it almost felt unfair.
But Soye's influence wasn't nothing.
I wanted to become someone even a little cooler in her eyes, to raise my grades even a little higher, because of her.
"I suppose you could see it that way…?"
"Not even denying it anymore, huh."
"What would denying it get me?"
"Fair point. Man, you are one cool bastard."
Tap, tap.
Kim Haneul clapped me on the shoulder, and I felt oddly grateful — while, little by little, a weight settled on me too.
The kind of weight that came from a nagging doubt: was it really okay for me to get even closer to Soye?
Compared to Sun Woobin, the protagonist of this world, I was infinitely pathetic.
Sun Woobin had a great personality, great looks, great height, great grades, great athleticism… a mother-loving friend who was truly bad at nothing.
And unlike your typical rom-com leading man, he wasn't hopelessly oblivious either, which only made him more likable.
The fact that Soye fell for a guy like that and confessed to him meant, put another way, that her standards were astronomically high.
And even so, I had wanted Soye and Sun Woobin to end up together. She deserved it — she was that remarkable, that kind, that good a person.
So did someone like me really belong beside someone like her?
If you asked me that, the only answer I could give was, "Not yet."
I was working hard in my own way, sure, but next to Sun Woobin — the man Soye had actually fallen for — I was, quite literally, inadequacy incarnate.
If I could become a better person, a cooler person, even by a little… and if I could genuinely believe that of myself…
Then maybe, just maybe, I could approach Soye with my head held a little higher.
"…I should head home soon."
"Wanna hit a game together today?"
"Maybe."
"Okay, I'll text you."
"Yeah."
I parted ways with Kim Haneul and started toward the school gate.
A perfectly ordinary walk to the gate, and from there, I was planning to head straight home when—
I spotted a back view that radiated the kind of cuteness anyone could recognize at a glance.
Step, step, step, step.
I walked up to her and called out as naturally as I could manage.
"Hey, Soye. Hi."
"Oh… Senpai! Hello!"
With Soye giving a polite little bow, I slipped naturally into place beside her, and the conversation simply started flowing.
"Good work with all that exam studying."
"Good work to you too, Senpai!"
Hearing her bright, energetic greeting put me in a great mood.
Soye's voice, truly. Just hearing it was healing.
Come to think of it, it had honestly been a while since I'd last heard it.
About a week, I'd say.
Exam week meant no evening study sessions, and since those sessions were where Soye and I naturally crossed paths, I hadn't seen her at all.
That our routes home happened to overlap even a little, letting us talk like this — I counted myself lucky.
"How were your grades? Decent?"
"Hmm… I think so?"
"Oh, really?"
"Mmhm. What about you, Senpai?"
"Good on the subjects I studied, bad on the ones I didn't?"
At that, Soye looked at me with a faint smile.
"Then you must have done pretty well, Senpai. You study so hard, after all."
"You think I study hard?"
"Of course! Every evening study session, I watch you working, and your focus is incredible."
"That's all thanks to you."
"Thanks to… me?"
The truth was, I studied better during evening sessions than usual.
Because the moment I wanted to slack off and do anything else, my eyes would find Soye sitting right beside me.
Because right there next to me, she'd be studying with everything she had.
How could studying not go well like that?
Watching someone pour themselves into their work that completely made it impossible to coast through mine.
"With such a handsome tutor sitting right next to me, I have to keep up, don't I?"
"What's that supposed to be~"
Giggling, Soye didn't really deny it, though.
Instead, she flashed me a soft smile and paid me even more compliments.
"Still, you're the one who did all that hard studying, Senpai."
"Trust me, without you I never would've pushed that hard."
"Aww~ I bet you'd have done great even without me."
With that, Soye's gaze drifted naturally down to my finger.
"How's the finger?"
My finger no longer had to be strapped to its neighbor like before.
It was just lightly taped now, enough to keep the joint from moving.
"I'll probably get it unwrapped tomorrow."
"That's a relief…."
Looking at my finger, Soye wore an expression of deep, genuine apology.
I thought it over and over, but there was no reason for her to make that face.
None of it was her fault.
"Aw, come on. Why are you apologizing again?"
"I can't help it if I feel bad every time I look at it."
The way she huffed and puffed in that playfully petulant way — she really was cuteness itself.
"…So, Soye. What are you up to now?"
"I'm meeting friends at a dessert café today."
"So you do go to places like dessert cafés."
"Honestly, I just wanted to sit somewhere comfortable and read, but Greenie kind of…"
Ah, so her friend was dragging her along.
"I should thank Greenie sometime."
"Huh? Why?"
"She takes such good care of you, dragging you out places. A friend like that is worth her weight in gold."
"That's true enough. Without Greenie, I'd probably have spent almost all my time at school completely alone."
No — absolutely not. There was no way.
Soye was gorgeous, kind, and brilliant. There was no universe where she'd have no friends around her.
It was just that right now, everyone was still busy feeling each other out, sticking to the little groups that had formed first — that was the only reason no one clustered around Soye yet.
"Well then, Senpai, see you later~"
"Yeah, see you~"
And that, I assumed, was how Soye and I would part — same as always.
Except…
Thanks to those messages from Kim Haneul, I had no idea I was about to run into Soye all over again.