Midterm Exams (1)
A few mornings later, I headed for the lecture hall as usual.
For some reason, though, the students parted like the Red Sea and started avoiding me.
I looked around, baffled, when a cool, familiar presence settled at my back.
A short distance away, Ricotta was walking with a frigid expression, “escorting” me.
Anyone who so much as tried to speak to me felt her murderous gaze, screamed, and fled for their lives.
This wasn’t protection. It was surveillance.
I swallowed dryly at the sheer insanity of it. Ricotta’s idea of “repaying a debt” was beginning in a way that far exceeded anything I had imagined.
“Ha? Why’s that a problem? The noble young lady of a ducal house is volunteering to be your backer. Isn’t that the most solid deal imaginable? Other guys could throw money at it and still never get the chance.”
Kado stood in front of me with a mocking look, and every word hit the mark with surgical precision.
Objectively, it was an extraordinary move—an incredible stroke of luck.
In reality, though, it was overprotective to the point of absurdity, and once again Basil and Ricotta’s relationship hadn’t advanced an inch.
Something hot surged up from deep inside me.
“Haaah… What if I followed you around all day? How would that feel?”
“Aang? That… would be a nightmare.”
“Hmm. That reaction somehow pisses me off in its own way.”
Sensing the storm on my face, Kado cleared his throat, wrinkled his nose, and looked away.
“Tch. I don’t get why you’re making it so complicated… but sitting there looking like death isn’t going to change anything.”
He jerked his chin toward the bulletin board in the middle of the corridor.
I turned my head and saw a flashy notice that hadn’t been there yesterday.
Solaris Academy Midterm Examination Notice
“Instead of fretting over Her Highness the Young Lady, how about worrying about that? You do realize midterms are coming up soon, right?”
Ah… midterms.
I’d been so busy getting dragged into one incident after another that I’d completely forgotten the academy’s schedule.
Kado clicked his tongue as if I were hopeless.
“Our academy’s midterms aren’t just written tests. Especially the practical exam—that single thing can flip your entire evaluation. You haven’t forgotten how thoroughly you got wrecked in the swordsmanship spar, have you?”
His brutal facts made my head spin. At the same time, a single ray of light stabbed through the fog in my mind.
The exam…
That’s right. An academy exam was a stage.
The biggest, most reliable stage, watched by hundreds of students and the entire faculty.
A chance to advance Ricotta and Basil’s relationship!
Kado flinched and took a step back when he saw my eyes change in an instant. I grabbed his shoulders hard.
“Thanks. You’re the only one I can count on, Kado.”
At my sincere words, he startled like someone who’d been stabbed in the heart and flushed red.
“Aang? …I don’t really get it, but it’s way better than that world-ending gloomy face from a second ago.”
He muttered gruffly and avoided my gaze.
“Also, you know that if you fail three or more subjects on the written exams, you get held back, right?”
Exactly as he said—if I wanted to carry out my plan, I absolutely had to clear the first gate: the written tests.
“I know. Which is why…”
I grinned and gave his shoulder a light shove.
“Will you give me special tutoring?”
Between the softly glowing magical lamps of the library, the only sounds were pages turning and the occasional deep sigh.
In front of me, thick major textbooks like Introduction to Herbology and Southern Magical Beast Ecology were stacked into a mountain that made my head hurt just looking at them.
Kado stared at me as if I were pathetic, then flicked his fingers lightly.
“Saya, you really haven’t studied at all, have you.”
“When did I ever claim I was good at studying…?”
It wasn’t critical game lore. I couldn’t possibly have memorized every last theoretical detail…
“Come to think of it, why ask me instead of that amazing young lady? Scared she’d scold you for being useless?”
“Yeah, why did I ask you… Because you’re a friend I can trust?”
“Ha? …Just study.”
Before I knew it he had dragged a chair over beside me and was passionately explaining, finger tracing the passages in the book.
His explanations were blunt but cut straight to the core—several times more effective than reading the textbooks alone.
Without meaning to, I found myself staring at his face.
I’d always thought of him as loud and arrogant, yet when he talked about a field he knew, his eyes shone more earnestly than anyone’s.
“…What are you looking at. Focus, will you?”
He flinched when he felt my gaze and turned his head. The tips of his ears were faintly red.
“Nothing. Just thinking you know more than I expected.”
“A-are you looking down on me?! This much is basic literacy!”
Kado’s shout rang especially loud in the quiet of the darkened library.
He buried his face in the pile of books as if trying to hide his burning ears. Watching him, a mischievous smile tugged at my lips before I could stop it.
His clear explanations continued for a long while.
At this rate we really could finish the entire scope even if we stayed up all night. But I quietly caught his arm and stopped the lecture.
“Whew… Let’s call it here.”
“What? We only just covered the basics.”
Kado looked at me like he couldn’t understand. I shook my head firmly.
“My goal isn’t a perfect score. I just need to avoid failing.”
“……Haaah?”
The look on his face clearly said, Then what the hell was all that work I just did?
“Are you joking right now? You begged me so solemnly, and your goal is just scraping by?”
“The written exams are nothing more than an entry ticket. The real match is the practical. People should stick to what they’re good at.”
Kado stared at me for a moment, then let out a short laugh and a hollow sigh.
“Ah, seriously. You’re impossible to figure out.”
He scratched his head.
“If that’s the goal, studying this brutally is inefficient.”
“Then is there a better way?”
“Of course there is. Ever heard of a ‘cheat sheet’?”
A cheat sheet. An unofficial strategy guide that summarized only the core of the exam scope and collected past questions from the last several years.
“Ooh! Where do you get one of those?”
“There’s a place where every piece of academy information is traded. Students call it the ‘black market.’”
In the game I only ever heard people mention a place like that. This time I can go myself.
“But they don’t just sell. For ‘valuable information’ they demand ‘valuable information’ in return. No idea what you can put on the table.”
The moment I got the location from him, I shot to my feet.
No reason to hesitate. I had more information this world needed than anyone.
“Thanks, Kado! I’ll definitely pay this debt back later!”
“Hey, hey! You’re actually going?!”
Leaving Kado’s shout behind, I headed deep into the academy, toward a corner where old, dust-covered teaching tools were piled up.
The “black market” Kado had mentioned, despite its grand name, was nothing more than an abandoned old warehouse deep inside the academy grounds.
Inside, a single faintly flickering mana crystal was the only light source.
Beneath it sat a desk and the silhouette of a person in a chair.
A silhouette whose face, gender, and build were impossible to make out.
As I approached, the shadow spoke first.
[Do you seek a trade?]
It wasn’t a normal human voice—artificially modulated.
They’d altered their voice with magic and even cast recognition-hindering spells around them. They took security seriously.
Something felt off, though.
The distorted voice was completely unfamiliar, yet the way that silhouette sat without the slightest movement carried a strange sense of familiarity.
I don’t know anyone who’d be hanging around a place like this doing that…
I forced the unease down and got to the point.
“First-year written exam cheat sheets. I want the last five years’ worth.”
[You know the price?]
“I know. Information for information.”
I answered with a confident smile.
My unique weapon. Knowledge from a veteran player’s perspective that no one else in this world could possess.
I took a short breath and delivered the finishing blow.
“If there’s information you want, ask me anything.”
[…….]
The shadow was silent for a while. Weighing the value of my offer, no doubt.
Then the cold voice sliced my confidence clean in half.
[I value ‘facts’ more highly than stories full of bluster.]
“What do you mean…?”
[Then prove it.]
“Prove what?”
[The nameless red book on the innermost shelf of the eastern stacks on the first floor of the Central Library. Do you know it?]
Information an ordinary student wouldn’t even know existed—something you could only obtain by clearing a specific side quest.
I snorted inwardly and spoke with complete confidence.
“If you push it in twice, the alarm magic goes off.”
The moment my voice ended, the shadow answered shortly.
[…Confirmed. You don’t appear to be a mere bluffer.]
“Then now…”
[However, that information is something I already knew. It has no value.]
“What?”
[There is only one piece of information I want.]
The shadow seemed to rise slightly from the chair. The surrounding darkness writhed in time with the movement.
[Everything about the first-year currently the biggest topic at the academy. The person named ‘Saya.’]
Huh?
Saya…
Information about me?