[April 5, 2022.]
[Weather: Sunny.]
[Auspicious for: internment, coffin transfer, road repair; Inauspicious for: marriage, consecration, moving.]
[0 days until the entrance assessment.]
After a few days of uneventful school life, the specially added entrance exam arrived as scheduled.
The first subject to be assessed was mathematics.
As the test papers were nervously distributed, the 2-D Class classroom quickly became quiet.
As quiet as a crematorium.
Only the faint rustling sounds of pens and pencils writing on the test papers could be heard, like burning flames, slowly reducing the corpses behind the desks to white ash.
Occasionally, a few mournful and despairing sighs could be heard.
The classroom door was open, and a middle-aged man in a brown suit, with a somewhat sparse head, walked in with his hands behind his back.
His eyes were sharp as knives, cutting through the silent air with fierce swiftness. Seeing everyone prostrate on their desks in fear and unease, his heart swelled with pride.
This was the culmination of a month's effort by all the math teachers.
He had worked hard overtime until one or two in the morning every day, reviewing questions, all for this "devastating" effect today.
Ito Misui's pride was almost overflowing, but the authority of his position as head of student affairs still made him tightly clench his lips.
At this moment, he saw the second-to-last row by the window.
Sitting there was the boy named Amamiya Ren.
He had removed his glasses, revealing a pair of sharp, cold eyes like a leopard's. His slightly sickly pale face was handsome yet firm and resolute. Though dressed in a school uniform, he wore it with a clean, straight elegance, confidently and freely writing on the test paper. The way his hand, holding the pen, lifted and lowered, made Ito Misui momentarily feel as if a sickly genius swordsman was swinging his sword and cleaving a bamboo figure in front of him.
With a swift motion, the sword cut through the bamboo figure's structural obstacles with destructive force, severing its head with a single strike! An endless, chilling sharpness emanated, making Ito involuntarily shiver.
From the corner of his eye, he could see that Kurusu Akira had already finished the multiple-choice questions and was working on the fill-in-the-blanks...
Wait, his scratch paper was completely blank?!
How could this be?
A student who doesn't use scratch paper is like a samurai who has voluntarily removed his armor, with no room for error in battle!
Are you really planning to defeat our "Number Crunchers" head-on with just this cloth attire?!!
Ito Misui was furious.
He strode down from the podium, his leather shoes making crisp clacking sounds on the floor.
His eyes widened in anger, radiating killing intent as he walked towards Kurusu Akira.
His brown suit seemed to have been soaked in blood and then oxidized by time, making one feel an extremely fierce and evil killing intent just by looking at it, as if in a bloody aura.
Ito Misui held his pointer like a wild katana, like a devil walking through a smoke-filled battlefield.
Wherever he passed, everyone was afraid, lowering their heads even more humbly, fearing that they might provoke his anger and be killed without question.
Ito Misui is closer!
He was practically standing next to Kurusu Akira's desk!
Iseri Nina, who had originally intended to sneak a few glances at Kurusu Akira's test paper, was now cowering with her neck pulled in, trembling like a quail.
But even with a formidable foe before him, Kurusu Akira remained seated, unmoving, displaying the bearing of a great general.
Seeing this, Ito Misui's eyes nearly burst from their sockets.
You are just one person, yet you dare to underestimate us, the Number Crunchers? How bold of you!
He stood beside Kurusu Akira, staring intently at the test paper that was rapidly being filled in.
Today, I will ensure you meet your end—
Wait a minute, this is...
Ito Misui's pupils trembled violently.
He clearly remembered the answer to every question, and after reviewing Kurusu Akira's paper, he couldn't find a single mistake.
This... this is impossible!
Ceva's Theorem, Menelaus's Theorem, Diophantine equations, and Fermat's Little Theorem, hidden in the multiple-choice questions, couldn't stop him!
Formulas, scratch work, steps... Ito Misui looked at Kurusu Akira's clean test paper, which had no writing other than the answers, and felt a wave of dizziness.
He quickly looked up at the clock in the classroom; only six minutes had passed! This was a paper prepared by the teaching and research group according to the difficulty standards of entrance exams for top universities!
Looking back at Kurusu Akira, where was his appearance as a "genius, sickly shogunate swordsman" now?
He was clearly Uesugi Kenshin, the Dragon of Echigo, the living incarnation of Bishamonten!...No, this wasn't some solemn Sengoku war chronicle — this was pure Samurai Warriors chaos!
Every elegant stroke of Kurusu Akira's pen was like Uesugi Kenshin charging into Kawanakajima, blade flashing like lightning beneath storm-dark banners. Armor split, ranks shattered, soldiers scattered like leaves before a mountain gale. Blood sprayed, war cries broke apart, and entire formations collapsed in a single unstoppable surge.
This wasn't merely a general.
This was a war god descending upon the battlefield.
Woah! Such overwhelming dominance — who in this land of warriors could possibly stand against him?!
What kind of spectacle had the warriors of the realm ever witnessed?!
It was like taking the most refined, soft-spoken court retainer in the capital — the kind who debates poetry and incense — and suddenly ordering him to challenge Uesugi Kenshin head-on in open battle.
"Defeat… Uesugi Kenshin? Me…?"
The poor man's face would turn pale on the spot.
Anyone would think the order itself was pure madness.
Ito Misui, the leader of the Number Crunchers, had unconsciously retreated two steps, almost tripping over Iseri Nina's backpack on the floor!
In a daze, cold sweat had already soaked his collar.
It was as if a young man from the countryside woke up to find himself in the middle of a World War II battlefield, watching artillery fire obscure the sky and fall down, feeling a strange mix of shock and helplessness.
Kurusu Akira's speed in solving problems was still extremely fast; he could write the correct answer to a fill-in-the-blank question accurately and without any scratch work in just over ten seconds.
Faced with this situation, Ito Misui could only make empty threats in his mind, putting on a brave front while inwardly fearful.
Hmph, it's almost the last fill-in-the-blank question, just you wait and see...
Apollonius's Circle, the median theorem, the angle bisector theorem, come forth quickly to meet the enemy!
These challenging problems, integrated with this "Triforce" of difficulty, are only found as final questions in the exams of top universities like Tokyo University.
Unless one possesses extremely subtle problem-solving techniques, it is absolutely impossible to break through the barrier of this "Triforce"!
Ito Misui nervously watched Kurusu Akira's pen hover over the question, no longer moving.
He stopped!
Haha, he actually stopped!
Ito Misui waited for Kurusu Akira for thirty seconds, his heart overflowing with joy.
Finally, he was stopped.
It seems even the mighty Uesugi Kenshin is nothing special...
Hmm?
Under Ito Misui's confused gaze, Kurusu Akira wrote the correct answer in the last blank of the fill-in-the-blank section at the 36-second mark, then flipped the test paper over.
Such complex figures, and you can calculate the answer mentally without even drawing auxiliary lines or listing equations?
The bravest warrior on the battlefield had his head chopped off by Uesugi Kenshin in a single encounter.
...I apologize, I failed to make Lord Uesugi Kenshin enjoy himself.
In the dispirited classroom, stood a dispirited middle-aged man.
Being whipped on the butt by his own father with a belt in front of the whole family when he was a child didn't break his heart as much as this moment.
The pride and confidence he enjoyed from the excellent educational resources in Tokyo vanished in an instant.
----------------
Ding-a-ling.
The bell signifying the end of class and the time to hand in papers rang.
A chorus of wails immediately erupted in the classroom.
"Mishima, I'm going to kill you!" Sakamoto Ryuji, who had been tricked into playing Valorant for three consecutive days, charged at Mishima Yuki, who was sitting in the first row, like a vengeful ghost, baring his fangs and brandishing his claws.
Mishima Yuki also had a mournful expression, "I messed up too!"
"So, can you pass?" Sakamoto Ryuji immediately asked the question he cared about most.
"What kind of monster would be able to pass with this difficulty?!"
Mishima Yuki roared sadly and helplessly.
For this bizarre entrance exam, he had started dozing off with his chin propped on his arm from the fifth minute the clock began.
He looked through the entire test paper, flipping through all the pages, and found that there wasn't a single question he knew how to do.
He could only randomly fill in a few A, B, C, or D using mystic methods in the multiple-choice questions, guess a few trigonometric functions in the fill-in-the-blank questions in a seemingly proper manner, and finally, copy down a few inexplicable formulas in the free-response questions... Well, there was nothing left for Mishima Yuki to do on this paper.
"Oh, right, where's Amamiya?"
Mishima suddenly asked Sakamoto Ryuji.
In the past few days, Amamiya Ren, Mishima Yuki, and Sakamoto Ryuji had formed an unbreakable e-sports team, dominating matches in Valorant and having a blast.
"He seemed to have diarrhea. I saw him get up and leave ten minutes into the exam and he never came back. That Ito stood by his desk for so long! It really scared me to death!"
"How pitiful, he probably couldn't solve the problems like us, right? He must have written nonsense and been caught by that 'Devil Ito,' sigh, he'll probably have to write a two-thousand-word self-reflection."
"Devil Ito" was the nickname given to the overly strict head of student affairs by the Shujin students.
At this moment, Kurusu Akira was outside the classroom, leaning against the wall, sitting on a bench, and playing on his phone.
He had been playing Master Duel for an hour and a half, and following the guides on the forums, he had assembled a "Masked Hero" deck and was dominating the silver rank.
This game was quite a battery drain, but thanks to the kind Ito-sensei who lent him a power bank, his phone stayed charged until the end of the exam.
This head of student affairs was not as "cold and strict" as the students claimed.
Kurusu Akira mused, he was clearly a very tolerant and considerate person towards students.
"Oh, Amamiya, are you tired from playing? Would you like some water?"
Ito Misui had come up the stairs at some point, holding two bottles of mineral water.
"Thank you, Ito-sensei." Kurusu Akira took the plastic bottle.
"You're welcome." Ito Misui's amiable smile caused a proctor walking past to the restroom to stumble, almost falling flat on the ground.
"The next exam is Japanese Language, and it starts in twenty minutes. I'll head back to the classroom now."
"Mm, go ahead, go ahead." Ito's smile grew even brighter.
Although every subsequent exam would not be easier than the math test they just had.
But he sincerely believed and hoped that Lord Uesugi Kenshin would break through the encirclement.
As long as every teaching and research group lost face, then he, as the proposer and founder of this "entrance assessment," would not be unable to save face either.
----------------
This entrance exam didn't end until Friday afternoon.
Mishima Yuki went through the stages of making grand statements before the exam, babbling nonsense during the exam, and being speechless after the exam.
The last English exam ended.
Recalling the English test paper that involved various word forms and difficult sentence structures, he slumped onto the desk as if hungover, feeling a splitting headache.
It's all over.
The happy experiences of spring break, and the memories of playing at the internet cafe a few days ago, flashed before his eyes like colorful photographs.
His life was flashing before his eyes.
Mishima couldn't imagine the incredibly expressive faces his parents would make when they received his report card next week.
But thankfully, he had two good brothers who were "united in their hatred of the enemy"! They went to the internet cafe together, and they'd be at the bottom of the class together!
You agree, right?
Amamiya Ren, Sakamoto Ryuji?
He turned around and saw that Sakamoto Ryuji had already taken off his school uniform jacket, preparing to go to the sports field to expend his excess adolescent energy.
As for "Amamiya Ren"...
"Mishima, I'm a bit short on cash lately, so I might not be able to go to the internet cafe to play games with you." Kurusu Akira pushed up his non-prescription glasses on his nose.
"My treat!" Mishima Yuki slammed his hand on the table, making a deafening sound.
They were brothers who were at the bottom of the class together, how could he let him go home alone like that? How heartbreaking that would be!
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To Read Advanced Chapters, and support this novel, please join me on [email protected]/geats2000