Yukinoshita had initially written off Masao as a hopeless cause, an academic lost cause. So, the revelation that left her feeling… relieved.
The subjects he actually needed to cram for were just two: Japanese History and Social Studies. Frankly, his performance in these areas was so dismal it made her question his nationality.
The silver lining was that these were subjects of pure, if brutal and boring, memorization.
—
Ten minutes into their study session, that silver lining was tarnishing.
"Oh, come on! These ridiculous convoluted systems!" Masao burst out, slumping over the social studies textbook.
The labyrinth of bureaucratic rules and political mechanisms was actively fighting its way into his brain.
Watching him claw at his hair, visibly pained by the influx of knowledge, a faint smile touched Yukinoshita's lips.
'So this is the petty pleasure of the academically gifted,' she mused. Watching the struggle from a place of security.
There was little she could do to help him; this battle was one of willpower against the tide of dry facts.
Fortunately, the scheduled agony was brief. After another half-hour in the Service Club room, the clock ticked past five. They packed their belongings in a comfortable silence and prepared to leave.
At the school gate, Yukinoshita delivered her instructions.
"Masao-kun, make sure you review the assigned topics tonight. I will be testing you on it in the coming days."
With a week until the midterm exams, catching up on just two subjects was a feasible, if grueling, mission.
"Yeaah… I know," Masao replied, his voice a hollow echo of its usual self. The mere prospect of an evening spent with his textbooks was giving him a headache.
—
He arrived home to find a kindred spirit in despair. Jahy was splayed across the living room couch, her expression a perfect mirror of his own.
"You look like death," he commented, collapsing onto the opposite end of the sofa. "What happened? I thought you liked school."
Jahy shot him a glare.
"Don't. Ask. In Japanese class, the teacher had the audacity to call on me. She asked, 'What is Yūki thinking at this moment?'" Jahy sat up, indignation radiating from her small frame. "I corrected her, of course. I said, 'I am Jahy, not Yūki. If you wish to know what Yūki is thinking, direct your inquiry to Yūki.' It was a perfectly logical response. And yet," she seethed, "the other children laughed."
Masao couldn't suppress a snort. His own mood lifting. His afternoon had been a trial, but hers was a comedy of errors.
A thought struck him.
"Speaking of class… you've been attending for a few days now. Are you actually understanding any of the things their teaching ?"
"Hah? You dare underestimate me?" Jahy puffed out her chest with pride. "I haven't been listening at all!"
Masao sighed. 'I should have known.'
He, at least, had the foundation of a previous life's education and this body's latent knowledge.
Jahy, hailing directly from the Demon Realm, was starting from zero. Combined with her placement in the third grade based on her apparent age, her academic prospects were… dim.
A spark of schadenfreude ignited within him.
"You know, you'll have midterm exams soon, too."
"Midterm exams? What is this 'exam'?"
"It's a test. They evaluate everything you were supposed to have learned and rank you against your peers."
"An evaluation!" Understanding dawned on her face, followed immediately by horror. "A ranking? Where would I place?"
"Well, with your current 'study method,'" Masao said dryly, "you're a shoo-in for last place."
"LAST PLACE?!"
Jahy shot to her feet as if electrocuted.
"I, the great Jahy, cannot possibly be last! No one stands above me but the Dark Lord!" She pointed a dramatic finger at the ceiling. "Mark my words! I will dominate these human exams! First place shall be mine!"
With that fiery declaration, she stormed off to her room, presumably to launch a furious, if belated, assault on her textbooks.
Masao shook his head, a wry smile on his face.
"She's certainly got the spirit."
The image of Jahy as a gluttonous, impulsive, and endearingly foolish child was firmly cemented in his mind.
The notion of her clinching the top score was a fantasy. Yet, her ridiculous fervor was oddly contagious. Feeling a renewed sense of purpose, he dragged himself to his own room to continue studying.
—
The next day in the Service Club, the progress was tangible.
Under Yukinoshita's critical eye, Masao worked through another practice test. He could now, at least, correctly sequence the major eras of Japanese history.
The finer details—names, dates, the nuanced impacts of events—still swam in a murky soup, but it was a start.
Satisfied with the incremental progress, Yukinoshita slid her personal notebook across the table.
"My lecture notes. They are more concise than the textbook and contain the teacher's analysis. This is where the exam questions are often drawn from."
Masao accepted it as if receiving a sacred text. In his past life, such artifacts were legendary: The Notes of a Top Scorer.
He opened it. The content was impeccably organized, the handwriting so precise it was more art than script. He skimmed a section he had just struggled with, and the concepts immediately clicked into focus.
"This is incredible," he breathed, looking up at her. "Yukinoshita… did you make this just for me?"
"Of course not." Her reply was flat, devoid of any sentiment. She often wondered how he could be so persistently thick-skinned. "These are my personal notes. I use them for my own review. I am just lending them to you so you can create your own copy."
Masao blinked surprised.
"A top student like you also needs to review?"
"What a preposterous notion." Yukinoshita fixed him with a deadpan stare. "A high score is not a permanent state of being. It is a result. While I could achieve a more than acceptable score without study, for a truly satisfactory result, diligence is required."
And by "truly satisfactory," Yukinoshita Yukino meant, of course, a perfect one hundred points.
Anything less was, by definition, unsatisfactory.
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