Kenkyo, Kenjitsu o Motto ni Ikite Orimasu Chapter 80

After the excursion comes the mid-term exams.

Actually, I’ve been taking it easy these days so I haven’t enrolled in a new cram school for high school yet. Right now I’ve only got a home tutor.

Before the exams began I decided to increase my lessons with her.

“Reika-san, you just always seem to struggle with maths, don’t you. I think you can improve if you keep up the practice though, so keep trying.”

“Yes.”

But that’s the hard part. I hate doing these questions…

For the sake of this petty pride I continued to battle with these baffling equations.

For the upcoming exams, this time I got my hands on some energy drinks. After all, I normally sleep 7 hours a night. If I get any less I start wobbling with sleepiness.

Thanks to that I decided to just buy a three-pack of the popular stuff to start off with.

I’m not sure if it helped at all but I used them to study as hard as I could so I’ feeling pretty satisfied.
Although, when Okaasama saw my empty bottles in the bin she started worrying about me and said,

“You’re a girl so you really needn’t push yourself too far.”

She gave me a lot of scarily expensive beauty drinks so I drank those too.
Well whatever. Come at me whenever, mid-terms!

So, about those mid-terms that I drank a bunch of energy drinks to study for… Well, it was still me doing the tests after all…

Oh, and that random white hair seemed to be gone now. I never want to experience that tragedy again. That’s why from now on I’m going to make sure to get full workovers more often at salons.
A few days after those treatments left my skin and hair sparkling, the results of the mid-terms were posted.

At Suiran, only the top 30 are posted. Since we have roughly 300 students it’s absolutely impossible for me.

Even though I’m wearing this modest expression that says I can’t imagine being up there, I’m still going to check it out.

Still, there sure were a lot of new names up there. They had to be all the Externals. As expected of them.
And at the very top, shining brilliantly were two names:

1. Kaburagi Masaya
2. Enjou Shuusuke

Just how crazy are these guys. Their cumulative result was pretty much full-marks. Just what do they have there inside their heads. I’m so jealous. Since middle school they’ve always been unshaken in the top two places. Well, the two of them would swap positions though.

The girl herself was staring dumbly up at the board with unruly hair as always. I just can’t see her as smart… Wakaba-chan, your mouth is hanging open! You look ridiculous, so please close it already!

On another note, Stalking Horse managed to grab 5th place despite all these new Externals. That’s amazing, Stalking Horse! As a fellow stalking horse, I’m proud of you!
Anyway, when Wakaba-chan noticed her name up there, relief flooded her expression. I guess this is pretty much life or death for a scholarship student. Congratulations.

It was around that moment that Kaburagi and Enjou came along. They normally don’t care at all about these but I guess they’re here this time because of all the new students?

After confirming their own names at the top, Kaburagi muttered,

“Who’s this Takamichi Wakaba?”

Some of the students heard him and pointed her out to him.

The moment they left the crowd grew noisy. It felt a little dangerous, actually. One phrase I managed to catch was “…knowing her place” though…

Nobody was mad enough to publicly attack her, but it seemed like there were a lot of people quietly dissatisfied with her threatening the pair’s dominance on the rankings. The fact that she was poor and stuck out like a sore thumb certainly didn’t help.

When I asked out of curiosity they told me, “Mizusaki-kun is different.”

Not only that, but according to the others, Stalking Horse had a charm that both the boys and girls were drawn in by. Well, I guess that’s not really surprising since he made it to StuCo President.
That doesn’t mean that you can blame your own shortcomings on some innocent External girl though.

“The External Students entered only after passing some very rigorous tests after all. That they have good grades is a given. Instead we should be marvelling out how Kaburagi-sama and Enjou-sama defeated them all despite that,” I commented.

“Truly! As expected of those two!”

It’s almost never a mistake to use the names of those two when dealing with girls. The atmosphere was filled with their delighted squealing now.

When I got my report card handed to me, it listed my rank as 73. Hmmm… Should I be feeling happy about this rank?

Recently I’ve found a new method of stress relief. It’s called needle felting.

Also when I get too into it my eyes start to hurt so I have to pay attention to the time. MY EYES-! MY EYEEEES-!

I usually do this in my room, but occasionally I camp out in the living room too.
Today I’m making a Tarow the Taro. I’m using brown felt this time.

-poke poke poke…-

When Oniichan saw me after a late night at work he asked me,

“Who’s the target!?”

It’s not a voodoo doll…

Geez. I wish I had some friends in the arts and crafts to understand my feelings. I wanna join the Handicrafts Club…

But if I do that I’ll just end up isolated in the room again. Uuu, these tears are just because I’m straining my eyes, okay?

“MY EYES-! MY EYEEEES-!”

is a reference to the typical stereotypical chuunibyou phrase,

“My eye-! My eyeeee-!”

when their left eye goes red and they unleash their power or whatever.

Japanese has no plurals, so Reika’s line is exactly the same as the above.

Chapter end