episode_0020

There is a reason why mock exams are difficult.

Even though they are called mock exams, the style of questions and the difficulty level are quite different from the actual entrance exams. The balance of difficulty is not accurate, with some questions being too easy and others too difficult. Overall, the difficulty level is generally high.

This story is not limited to the academy entrance exams. In the world I lived in, most mock exams were slightly or excessively difficult compared to the actual exams.

The reason is simple. Hearing that students passed the entrance exams after solving mock exams is good for the companies that conduct the mock exams, even though they know that the mock exams are somewhat fake and lack credibility. People, being creatures with a reward psychology, tend to relax once they believe they have achieved a goal.

So, it is better to make mock exams extremely difficult to create excuses for when the actual exam questions are overly challenging, and at the same time, prevent students from relaxing while studying.

Alice and I have been through such exams many times.

Alice, with her exceptional brain, studied hard and always scored high—

—I, on the other hand, used the tricks my abilities had to offer, read textbooks repeatedly, memorized and understood the content thoroughly.

Honestly, it was incredibly boring. Even if my mind and body returned to their original state when time was rewound, my memory perceived the accumulation of experiences as a continuous process, not as a “rewind.”

No matter how many times time was rewound, everything seemed to repeat itself in my eyes.

…Is that what they call it?

Well, anyway.

So, I took the opportunity to rest and relax during those numerous chances.

Skipping classes to take a walk outside the academy, locking the door and just sleeping.

I didn’t care about others’ opinions. After all, the time spent behaving like that was just a waste of time. I minimized mental fatigue and returned to my original state by rewinding time.

Although there are limits to human memory, eventually, I had to remember those things. I don’t know if my brain capacity was large, or if I had that talent all along but never utilized it.

Thinking back to playing games, saving multiple save files, and loading them repeatedly… Well, imagining what talents I might have had in the past is meaningless now. Because the current me is Sylvia Pendragon, a character I have never seen in the original world.

“How was the exam?”

Even though I am the Imperial Princess, the entrance exam must be taken at a designated location.

The empire is vast. Even if you ride the latest train, it takes several hours or even half a day to travel from the provinces to Londrium. And if you exhaust yourself like that the day before, it affects your condition during the exam.

Even commoners living in the provinces, if they have to do that every time, it causes dissatisfaction among the nobles. Regardless of social status, education has always been a significant matter for children. Except for those who struggle to make ends meet.

Therefore, there are designated exam venues even in the provinces. But there may be people who cannot even reach there… In such a situation, they might not even know if they had such talent. Because they have no access to educational opportunities in the first place.

Anyway, that’s why we took the exam at the prestigious Royal Londrium Academy.

Honestly, if someone living in the system were to take the academy exam, that would be considered lucky. It’s a chance to see the academy firsthand. Whether you pass or fail the test, stepping into that well-constructed building is not a bad experience. Except during festival season, most ordinary people never get to see the school that is closed off to the public.

“The test was easier than the practice exams.”

“Isn’t that always the case?”

Of course, even if we took the test at the academy, we couldn’t expect to be treated the same as other students.

There are security issues, and most importantly, the students in the classroom we entered would be paying a lot of attention to us. Ultimately, this could also affect our grades.

Moreover, among the nobles, there are many parents who are extremely sensitive about their children’s grades. If they had scolded their children, the empire wouldn’t have paid much attention, but there are always people who try to blame everything on the test location.

The Emperor naturally ignores such trivial matters. After all, such insignificant stories don’t even reach the Emperor.

However, the academy staff cannot ignore such matters. The high-ranking government officials who oversee the country’s education system are the same. When the people of the marquis and duke’s families start to move, they can only worry and agonize over the situation.

So, to prevent such incidents from happening in the first place, we took the test in a different classroom this time.

As we walked out of the classroom, I glanced at Alice’s face, and it didn’t look too bad. It seems like the test was easy for Alice to solve.

And it was the same for me. I had seen the contents until I was sick of them, so my grades would probably be better than during the practice exams, but not bad.

Of course, there were a few deliberately wrong answers.

“Let’s go and check the answers quickly. You don’t need to get everything right. You probably remember a few ambiguous questions, right? Just try to answer those roughly, and we can estimate our grades.”

I nodded.

Alice was already convinced of her admission to the academy.

That was natural. After all, Alice appeared as an academy student in the original work.

Right now, this building is filled with unverified individuals, and we took the test separately with guards by our side, but by the time the semester starts, all the troublemakers among the successful candidates will be filtered out. Even if we don’t know what’s happening outside the academy, inside, we were equal beings, so we could just let things slide.

Famous and infamous rules eventually divide over time. Alice, well, she’s too famous for everyone to know her without anyone telling them.

As we walked, we heard a bustling sound ahead.

Students were pouring out of the classrooms. It wasn’t just us who had finished the test.

We paused for a moment.

There was a way to clear out all the students and leave, but there was no need to rush.

The knight guarding us went ahead and took his position.

Some students were looking in our direction. However, most of them couldn’t come over because of the knights in front of us. Since Alice had never made friends with anyone since childhood, she would have felt awkward to approach the children of famous noble families. She didn’t know them.

Alice wasn’t just content with being a princess; she wanted to become an emperor. If she had to attend a ball, she would read more books and practice swordsmanship, so it was likely that no one among the nobles knew her.

“How many of them do you think will pass the academy entrance exam?”

“Probably a very small number.”

In the original work, the admission quota was 30 nobles and 60 commoners per grade.

Characters with actual faces were much fewer than expected.

Compared to the many students passing by in front of us, there was hardly any difference.

We stood at a distance from the corridor where the children were passing by, waiting absentmindedly for them to pass.

“….”

Suddenly, I almost made a sound with my mouth.

In the distance, a child with blue hair passed by.

It wasn’t the appearance I knew. It wasn’t the appearance I saw in the game, and it certainly wasn’t the last shabby appearance I saw.

She had grown much more, with lush blue hair tied back in a neat ponytail. She wasn’t wearing flashy makeup like in the game, nor was she exposing her school uniform.

Just a very neat student. Honestly, she would have looked incredibly fitting as a class president. She wasn’t wearing glasses though.

It was Claire.

Claire was happily chatting with a handsome boy walking beside her.

Then that boy must be Grace’s son.

The protagonist of this game.

“….”

“Why? Are there even any people here?”

“Yes. It seems there are some children of nobles.”

“….Hmm.”

Instead of saying it’s nothing for no reason, it’s better to make an excuse with a similar word, so Alice muttered.

“Is there anyone we need to be cautious of?”

“There are, but it’s not something to discuss here.”

This is not about Claire either.

It’s better for Claire to be unaware of me.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no one to be cautious of.

…The daughter of the Marquis of Crowfield, whom I killed, is also going to attend this school. She’s one of the heroines in the original work.

“….Alright, then go back and inform me. I’ll be cautious, so nothing bad will happen.”

“Understood.”

To Alice, whose expression turned serious at my words, I replied like that.

In the original work, Alice and Claire had a very bad relationship, so Alice would never have received this information.

But now, well, I’m not that Claire. And Claire’s image seems to have changed quite a bit from the original work.

So I thought it wouldn’t matter much to share this level of information.

*

“….Huh?”

Claire, who was talking, suddenly stopped walking and turned around, Leo, who was walking with Claire, asked.

“Why? Did you see something?”

“Oh, that’s….”

Claire briefly looked back. There was a person standing at the turning point ahead, and Leo thought she might have seen that person. One person had shiny blonde hair, and the other had short black hair. The blonde one seemed familiar. Maybe it was the princess who was supposed to enroll this year, Leo thought, and if he thought that way, he could understand the presence of the two knights in front of them. He didn’t know who the other person was.

“Do you know that person? Should we go meet them?”

Leo said that and tried to go back up the path, but he hesitated and stopped awkwardly as he received disapproving glances from other students coming towards them.

“Oh, no, it’s not necessary.”

And only then did Claire regain her composure and speak.

“Maybe… maybe I saw it wrong. Maybe it was just someone who looked similar.”

“….Is that so?”

Claire’s behavior was strange, but Leo decided to let it go.

He knew that Claire was looking for her older sister. He had heard the story several times since childhood.

However, even if there was such a person as her older sister, she wouldn’t be here. In the first place, to take the exam here, one’s identity had to be guaranteed.

Unfortunately, if Claire’s story is to be believed – although Claire herself never thought of it that way – the chances of the older sister who was once a young girl abandoned by her family surviving and excelling to the point of taking the entrance exam for the country’s top academy are extremely slim. Moreover, there is even less chance of her taking the exam alongside the princess. She didn’t even seem like a maid at first glance. If she had truly been a maid, she would have blended in among the students like Leona and Claire and taken the exam.

Furthermore, Claire seemed to have given up on the upcoming election. The probability of encountering her here, while not completely nonexistent, is very low, she must know that.

“Yeah. It’ll be fine. It’s just… a feeling, right? Like always.”

Claire, who had been the type to approach anyone and check their face if they had long black hair even in her childhood, must have grown to know how to manage her expectations after confirming multiple times that it wasn’t her. There were plenty of students with black hair among the people passing by here in the first place.

“Let’s go.”

Watching Claire start walking with those words, Leo followed behind her, feeling a bit bitter.