“Jacqueline Carroll Teacher?”
“Ah, it’s you, Na-me! Just call me Jackie. What brings you here?”
“Teacher Jackie, I seem to be missing an EMR (Etheric Mark Recognition) pen. Can I borrow one?”
“Good thing I have an extra. Just return it after the exam.”
I had no idea there’d be a test on the first day of school.
Thankfully, I could easily borrow an EMR pen from Teacher Jackie, who was in charge of our 2nd Grade A Class.
When I asked out of sheer curiosity why it’s an ‘E’ instead of an ‘M’, she explained that the English-speaking world refers to mana as ether, hence the term ‘etheric’.
I wished they could standardize the terms a bit more, but they always decide these things on a whim, including the units.
“Go, Na-me…!”
Seori was whispering from far away.
Even though her voice didn’t reach me, just looking at her lips told me everything.
I smiled back, answering her encouragement.
Even if it was an important test, there was no need to separate myself from my desk partner.
The exam papers had a special coating that made it impossible to see the contents unless viewed directly from the front.
The notes written with the EMR pen were the same.
Even Seori, who chirped away during break time, was now praying with her eyes closed, showing that the aptitude test was weighing heavily on the kids.
Si-hoo, Hyejeong in front, and even Yuna behind us…
Not a single one of them raised their voices; only the quiet sound of breathing filled the room.
Having 25 questions in 30 minutes certainly didn’t feel ample.
Especially since children who care about how others see them would be sensitive to rankings.
“The test time is from 1:10 PM to 1:40 PM. You must not flip your exam papers until instructed over the broadcast. At 1:40 PM, there will be another announcement, so keep your hands raised until then. Got it?”
Teacher Jackie delivered several cautions.
“EMR cards can’t be corrected, so if you mark something incorrectly, just raise your hand quietly and I’ll come over to fix it.”
Only five minutes left before the test began.
“Since this is just an aptitude test, I hope you don’t get too nervous. Some of the questions might be on material you haven’t learned yet, and even if you encounter many unknown problems, it’s not because you’re lacking, so have confidence.”
A few kids quietly nodded.
Of course, it was natural for a homeroom teacher to say comforting words, but I thought from the kids’ perspective, it was a hard test to ignore.
This academy system is quite ruthless.
Not only does it rank all students based on curricula they haven’t learned, but students who don’t meet expectations get transferred to different classes.
This aspect seems to be one the Kaizen Academy should have reconsidered in its operations.
The kids, who have been accustomed to this pressure for a year, gazed resolutely at the ticking clock.
Would the first graders I saw today also change like the kids in our class?
[Huff huff. Aah. We will now begin the first aptitude assessment of Sephiron Academy in 2051.]
Whoosh
Excluding the cover page, the exam had a total of 3 pages from pages 2 to 4.
Suddenly, a very old memory surfaced; I think the College Scholastic Ability Test science exam looked just like this.
Even though this world replaced the CSAT with the KGSAT decades ago for standardized graduation purposes… Anyway, there it was.
I picked up my pen and slowly scanned question 1.
[1. Find the rule and write the appropriate rune in the blank.]
A very simple multiplication problem.
All I had to do was find the corresponding rune and write it down.
17 times 7 is 119, so the answer is 4, ‘Zignitresenka’.
Well, what was I expecting from a 2nd-grade question?
I quickly moved on to the other questions.
[6. [Picture 1] and [Picture 2] show the joint casting form of the 1st circle ‘Light’ spell. If the mana required for casting the ‘Light’ spell is set to 10, which correctly pairs the required mana for each casting?]
The answer is 1, 20-35.
[15. The following is a magic circle with runes incorrectly placed from ‘Nul’ to ‘Exailon’. How many minimum modifications are necessary to cast any spell from this?]
That would be 4, so the answer is 5.
[Essay 1. Write the appropriate angles in the blanks.]
45 degrees, 15 degrees, 225 degrees.
Haa… Haa…
Before I knew it, I reached the last question.
The time was 1:23 PM.
In fact, I had much more time left than I expected and could have solved it slowly, but there was a reason I was rushing.
Bathroom…
I ended up drinking too many potions during lunch…
Thinking back, I had only gone to the bathroom once in the morning.
Thanks to that, my weight was likely nearing the 19kg range instead of staying in the 18kg range.
Since about 70% of our bodies are liquid, I can estimate that I’ve increased by about 1.88%.
Why is my metabolism so fast… I resent my young body as I looked at the final question.
[Essay 5. Record all magic circles below the 2nd circle that meet the following conditions.]
Thank goodness.
Really, truly.
The last question was about drawing magic circles.
Even though there were three conditions given, I only had to draw two magic circles.
There are many ways to draw a magic circle quickly, but the method I favored the most was using symmetry.
By grouping the common areas and setting up a line of symmetry and appropriately mixing the symmetry matrix with the rotation transformation matrix, a beautiful magic circle extending in all eight directions can be completed.
Then, if I recorded the modifications based on Conditions 2 and 3, I could draw the magic circle in the shortest time possible.
Completed!
“Teacher!”
“Just raise your hand quietly, and it’ll be done soon.”
“No, it’s… I need to go to the bathroom…!”
As I raised my right hand confidently, my other hand gripped my skirt tightly.
The kids who had focused solely on the exam shifted their eyes towards me.
How could the signal come so suddenly in just ten minutes?
It’s embarrassing to face the kids.
Teacher Jackie knelt beside me and whispered softly.
“If you need to go to the bathroom, you need to go with another teacher for cheating prevention. Are you okay? Can you hold it a little longer?”
“I’ll just submit it as it is, so can I go right away?”
“Uh? Ah, that’s okay… You can go…”
“Excuse me…”
Damn potions.
I really need to find another form of this dreadful liquid when I get home.
Clunk clunk
Why won’t the classroom door open!
*
“Are you okay, Na-me…?”
“Why?”
“You didn’t finish the test…”
“Na-me didn’t finish the test? What do you mean, Seori?”
Since it was the first day of school, there was no 6th period, and as soon as the test finished, we headed straight home.
All the kids in the class looked at me with pity, making me embarrassed, so I sprinted out of the school with Seori.
Ji-hye, who was looking like a corpse because the test was too hard, widened her eyes upon hearing the news.
“So you just went to the bathroom? You could have waited and come back to finish.”
Yeah, right.
I usually don’t do this, did I unknowingly get nervous?
But at that moment, I genuinely couldn’t hold it anymore.
“Still, you wrote down all the answers and submitted it, so it should be okay.”
“Thank goodness! Just like you said, since the exam was challenging, if you fill in a line, you can make up for it in the next test.”
“Uh? No, I solved everything.”
Even considering it was an elementary school test.
“You solved it all in 15 minutes? But you had a serious lack of time?”
“Are you serious?”
“Then what’s the answer to question 15? The modification problem?”
“I think the answer was 5, 4 modifications.”
“What about the answer to multiple-choice question 20?”
“It’s 2.”
“Seori, is that right?”
“I can’t say for sure since I couldn’t solve it either. Oh, then what about essay question 5; did you draw that magic circle?”
“That was a simple wave synthesis problem, so I’ll just show you directly.”
Honestly, it was way easier to do it in the air in 3D than writing it down on the exam paper.
“The wavelength is 2m, so roughly assuming a 1:10 scale, we’ll say it’s 20cm here for condition 1.”
I complete the outline of the magic circle based on the three axes of symmetry.
“Condition 2 intersects at 135 degrees, so you can either use the 180 minus 45 degrees rotation transformation matrix or, at an elementary level, decompose each term with a 1:1 ratio.”
However, the reason the essay question 5 was tricky was due to the third condition.
“Condition 3 unusually states the mana loss condition during the synthesis process, so in that case, you assume the loss rate from each source and record the modifications to obtain the correct value.”
I completed the drawing so the magic circle would be more visible and only finished the step of infusing mana.
The low hum characteristic of wave magic resonated in my ears.
Since I didn’t cast it, it would likely disappear in 10 seconds.
“Wow, that’s amazing…”
Seori breathed out in admiration.
Clap clap clap clap.
Ji-hye clapped her hands in a daze, showing a dry reaction.
Now that I think about it, it seemed like a question that would be quite tricky for an elementary school curriculum.
While it wouldn’t be impossible, it would surely be a challenge to cut down the recording time this drastically.
Relying too heavily on such technical skills had me wondering how I could explain it more easily.
“By the way, what’s the answer to question 1…?”
“4, Zignitresenka.”
“Phew, what a relief… I almost completely forgot since we learned it in the first semester…”
“Ah, yeah.”
“Crap, am I going to get at least 30 points on this test…?”
Tears welled up in Ji-hye’s eyes.
In her mind, multiple-choice question 20 and essay question 5 didn’t matter as much.
Since the hardships began from question 1.
“It’ll be fine.”
Seori tried to comfort her, but she didn’t seem reassured.
“Na-me, was this test easy…? Please answer honestly…”
