The Narrow Gate (7)
Rain was falling across the paper. Now and then a snowflake would bloom among the marks, but overwhelmingly it was rain that poured down.
Even Yoon Seo-a, who had been grading, seemed not to have expected a result like this; she flicked a glance toward me and spoke.
“It seems we did well to open a study group. If we hadn’t, we never would have realized how serious the situation was.”
With that she handed me the finished test paper. I took it with trembling hands and fixed my eyes on the number written at the very top.
Forty points. Counting by the number of questions, I had gotten roughly twenty right.
Of course the first regular examinations still ahead would be given separately by subject, so measuring real ability with this kind of comprehensive past-exam set was difficult; yet it was equally hard to claim the paper had no discriminatory power at all.
Right away Hong Su-ryeon and Yeon Chae-rin of Class B had scored in the seventies, and even Shin So-hye—who shared my own class—had received a fifty-seven.
The first two were from a different class, so that much I could accept. But Shin So-hye scoring higher than me?
When I turned a look of pure betrayal on her, Shin So-hye flinched and hastily averted her eyes.
“Don’t glare at Miss Shin So-hye for no reason, Miss Ha-eun. The one who failed to solve the problems is you, isn’t it?”
“You don’t have to single it out like that; I already know….”
At Yoon Seo-a’s words I muttered while covering my face with the paper.
I knew perfectly well that what I had done was shameful.
But I had been certain that someone from the same class as me—Shin So-hye—would end up with a similar score…!
While I sat like that, Su-ryeon asked with open curiosity.
“By the way, if admission itself had been decided by this test paper, what score would have been the cutoff?”
“A precarious forty-five would probably just scrape the edge. We deliberately collected only the problems that were judged extremely difficult.”
“Then I wouldn’t even have been admitted….”
“If you had taken the entrance examination with this paper, yes. Exactly. Miss Ha-eun simply would not have possessed the qualifications to become a young lady.”
“Ugh….”
As I curled in on myself with a half-strangled cry, a slightly flustered Su-ryeon patted my back and tried to comfort me.
“I-It’s all right, Miss Ha-eun! It’s a test with no real discriminatory power anyway. Besides, you’re already a proper young lady of Private Acacia Academy, aren’t you?”
“Just for reference—what was the lowest passing score on the entrance exam we actually took?”
“Hmm… I believe it was fifty-two.”
Yoon Seo-a answered Chae-rin’s question. For the record, the score I myself had received on that entrance exam was fifty-eight, so it was no exaggeration to say I had barely scraped in.
The truth was, I might be far worse at studying than I had ever admitted. Of course I had never claimed to be brilliant, yet I had passed Private Acacia—and not into Class E but Class D—so I had believed I was not someone who needed to feel inferior anywhere.
After a result like this, that belief was being violently shaken.
I had studied myself half to death simply to get in, and kept studying just as hard after I arrived. But perhaps the only reason I had managed any of it was because luck had been riding with me?
No—that had to be it. Now the luck had run out. From here on, was there nothing left for me but a long downhill slope…?
I stayed slumped over the table for a long while in pure dejection, and through it I heard the others talking.
“More surprising than anything else is still Miss Shin So-hye’s score.”
“Ah, haha… I-Is that so…?”
“Frankly, anyone who can pull a fifty-seven on this paper would have cleared the sixties with room to spare on the actual entrance exam. The questions were that hard. It’s a mystery that someone of Miss Shin So-hye’s caliber is sitting in Class D.”
“If we’re talking mysteries, isn’t the bigger one that the oh-so-superior Miss Yoon Seo-a is also in Class D?”
“I simply took it while holding back.”
How full of herself. Su-ryeon muttered the words quietly enough that only I could hear.
At Yoon Seo-a’s remark Shin So-hye hemmed and hawed, then spoke carefully.
“Actually… on the day of the entrance exam I was so nervous… I just wanted to go home, so I finished as fast as I could and ran away….”
“…Ran away?”
“Th-Uh… Enrolling was something my father suddenly ordered me to do… Originally I didn’t even want to enter, I suppose….”
At that timid confession no one could find a reply.
This was not just any school; it was the examination that decided admission to Private Acacia Academy. How many people could simply solve the papers and vanish because they wanted to go home early?
And how many of those people would still manage to enroll cleanly afterward? The number would almost certainly fit on one hand.
Yoon Seo-a recovered first and opened her mouth.
“In the past I would not have let a statement like that pass, but for now I shall overlook it.”
“H-Hiiik….”
“In any case, Miss Shin So-hye’s score is not what matters right now.”
With the topic neatly redirected, three pairs of eyes—everyone except Shin So-hye—locked onto me.
Su-ryeon spoke first. She carefully slid the test paper out from under my face, scanned it thoroughly, and said,
“Fortunately it isn’t that Miss Ha-eun lacks basic ability. Even looking only at the wrong answers and ignoring the blanks, nearly every mistake was a hair’s-breadth error, and every problem you got right was solved in the proper, standard way.”
“Moreover, unlike the entrance exam, the regular examinations set questions separately by subject, so you’ll avoid a failing mark.”
“R-Really…?”
I straightened at those hopeful words and looked at her, but Su-ryeon only muttered with an ambiguous expression.
“You’ll avoid failing—that’s all. I can’t promise it won’t still be a minus. If you keep scraping by with scores that merely dodge failure, next year you’ll drop not to Class D but to Class E.”
“Class down….”
At that ominous phrase I hung my head once more.
“Ah—ah! Of course there are still three days left, and the whole reason we’re holding this study group is to make sure that doesn’t happen! I’ll definitely help you get a good score, Miss Ha-eun!”
“Thank you, Miss Su-ryeon….”
Su-ryeon tried again to comfort my dejected self, yet after the consecutive punches I could not recover so easily.
While she fretted and soothed me, Chae-rin picked up the scattered test paper and spoke.
“The weak section is politics and society, isn’t it. Certainly, unless one is already immersed in that world, scoring well in a short time is difficult.”
“For that claim, didn’t Miss Chae-rin herself receive quite a high score…?”
“I keep up with that sort of news even outside of studying.”
Chae-rin shrugged as she answered, and I thought carefully.
Come to think of it, the one who always tossed out the bait of major social issues whenever they broke was always Chae-rin.
She even read actual paper newspapers rather than the internet. I should have been reading those myself in the spare moments.
While I was thinking that, Yoon Seo-a continued.
“Still, the rest of the foundation isn’t bad. If we simply help a little, there is every possibility the score will rise sufficiently.”
“The problem remains politics and society. With only three days left, we will get through that section by pure, thorough memorization.”
“…Memorization?”
I was already memorizing until my head felt ready to fall off—and now more? As despair painted my face, Yoon Seo-a drifted closer and said,
“Don’t worry. Even if you have no desire to memorize, I will help until it is memorized.”
Was that supposed to be reassuring? I stared at her with pure incredulity, but she only laughed softly—“hoo hoo”—and drifted away again.
Not to be outdone, Su-ryeon immediately approached and asked,
“Miss Ha-eun, what exactly did Miss Yoon Seo-a just say to you?”
“Nothing of importance. Merely a little injection of motivation, I suppose.”
“Miss Ha-eun?”
“Ah, haha….”
At Yoon Seo-a’s deliberately teasing tone, Su-ryeon called my name again, more insistently.
I still had to study, and on top of that I had to keep the two of them from crossing any lines.
My head was already beginning to ache; all I could manage was a hollow laugh.
There had been various minor incidents, yet the study group began in earnest all the same.
Originally it had been a gathering where each of us studied independently and exchanged knowledge whenever something was unclear; after the test, however, it transformed into a session devoted to teaching me.
Even if they pretended otherwise, a score of forty had clearly come as a considerable shock. They had even gone somewhere and fetched a small table just to create a space for me.
The makeshift table was smaller than the round table we had been using, and it was set some distance away—because teaching me was not allowed to interfere with everyone else’s work.
Still, placing it too far would have looked awkward, so they separated it only by the width of a bed. Of course, considering the size of the bed Yoon Seo-a used, even that distance felt considerable.
In any case, once I was seated there I was required to receive lectures—under the polite fiction of “studying”—in rotation from the three people excluding Shin So-hye, who had abstained on the grounds that she lacked confidence in teaching.
First came Chae-rin. She covered the politics-and-society section that was my weakest area, though “teaching” was almost too gentle a word; it was more like hammering knowledge straight into my skull. She even wrote out the necessary points herself and walked me through them with painstaking care.
It would have been nicer if she hadn’t announced that she would spring a pop quiz the next time her turn came around.
After that storm of a lecture ended, it was Su-ryeon’s turn. She handled the foundational subjects—etiquette, culture, and the like—and because, as I had said earlier, I already possessed a base, the session itself flowed smoothly.
It felt like reinforcing neglected corners. The headache left by Chae-rin’s lecture eased a little.
When Su-ryeon’s lecture finished, Yoon Seo-a’s turn arrived.
“…Um, Miss Seo-a?”
“Yes, Miss Ha-eun?”
“Why are you sitting next to me?”
At my question Yoon Seo-a tilted her head with a look of genuine puzzlement.
“Miss Hong Su-ryeon also sat beside you while she taught, did she not?”
“That’s true, but….”
“Or are you about to claim that Miss Hong Su-ryeon is permitted while I am not…?”
“It’s not that…!”
Even if the thought had crossed my mind, it was a sentence that must never be spoken aloud.
It was as dangerous as leaving a gas valve open beside a bomb already on the verge of exploding.
Still—I had to say this much. I squeezed my eyes shut and whispered in a voice too soft for the others to catch.
“Why… are you wrapping your arm around my waist….”
Yoon Seo-a was not merely sitting beside me; her arm was coiled around my waist. Worse, her palm was subtly stroking my stomach in a way that radiated thoroughly impure intentions.
Even so, she only tilted her head as though the question itself were strange.
“That is simply my heart’s desire, is it not?”
I had known she would answer exactly like that. I let out a long sigh.