Ch.151Season of Pure Love (5)

As Ban Doyoung, I had no intention of studying hard.

It wasn’t that I particularly disliked learning new things.

After all, there were things I’d properly learned for the first time in this world, like cooking and kendo.

All skills that would prove useful after I returned to my original world.

School studies, however, were a different matter.

Those were things I’d already done to the point of tedium in my original world.

I’d already experienced through one school life that the content taught in school wasn’t particularly helpful to me.

Under these circumstances, being asked to return to high school and focus on academics again,

there was no way I could muster any enthusiasm.

Since the real Ban Doyoung herself wasn’t particularly fond of studying either,

I concluded it wasn’t something I needed to maintain while pretending to be the main heroine.

“I don’t want you using me as an excuse, Doyoung.”

But when those words came from Do Hamin, the actual protagonist of this world,

I had no choice but to reluctantly pick up the pen I’d tossed aside on my desk.

No matter how much I refused to study with him,

Hamin would never give up on me, making me sit beside him and solve problems until the end.

If he neglected his own studies to focus on me,

he’d only drift further from his promise to become the top student in school.

“Fine, bring it here. I’ll solve whatever you give me.”

Of all things, the evidence of the protagonist’s growth that I’d worked so hard to nurture

could only emerge if I studied alongside him.

This meant I had no choice but to sit at my desk and solve problems, even if it killed me.

“But make them harder. Difficult enough that even you have to think hard to solve them. That way it’ll be educational for you too.”

“The difficulty level I’ve been giving you is already plenty challenging.”

“Make it even harder. Aim not just for top of the school but for perfect scores, so that even if you fail, you’ll still be number one.”

*Tightens*

I tightly fastened the headband marked [下民高趨] (Surpass Hamin), which served as the driving force to ignite Ban Doyoung’s motivation.

“Do… do you always have to wear that when studying?”

Since Chinese classics was one of the first-year final exam subjects,

Hamin understood the meaning written on the headband and asked with a slightly flushed face.

“I need this to concentrate. It was my motivation during midterms too.”

“But… the connotation is a bit…”

“Didn’t you say you wouldn’t use me as an excuse?”

“Ah, alright… if it helps you be enthusiastic. I won’t use you as an excuse anymore either.”

“Then instead of an excuse, can I be your bitch?”

“C-can’t you just listen without making those kinds of jokes at times like this?”

“Heheh, so you don’t dislike that, I see.”

Hamin, bathed in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the window, looked fatally attractive through Ban Doyoung’s eyes, filtered with the heroine’s inevitable fondness for him.

Thankfully, I managed to see Hamin’s blushing reaction to my daily quota of teasing just in time.

Had I been even slightly delayed in calming my racing heart, I might not have been able to keep my promises—

the promise with Hamin, the promise with Mom and Dad,

and the promise with this all-ages world.

“C-come on! We don’t have time! Tomorrow’s math, which is your weakest subject! We need to solve as many problems as possible while I can help you!”

“Ah, I’m thirsty. Should we have some Zero Lime before we start studying in earnest?”

“Again…? You already had some while eating hamburgers earlier.”

“The drink bar there had Zero Cola, not Zero Lime. They’re completely different.”

“Aren’t all zero drinks basically the same?”

“WHAT?!”

“Eek…!”

He crossed a line that even I had been carefully avoiding.

“If all zeros are the same, then are all women with the surname Ban the same as Ban Doyoung? Should I go give my virginity to any random guy with the surname Do since he’s the same as Do Hamin? Stop talking nonsense and go buy me a drink already!”

“Alright, alright! I’ll be right back!”

Hamin hurriedly took his wallet from the front pocket of his bag and rushed out the door.

“…What was that? Did you two just fight?”

Having heard the commotion from the next room, Siyoung peeked through the crack in Ban Doyoung’s door.

“We didn’t fight. I just sent him to buy some Zero Lime.”

“You made a guest run errands for you? Mom won’t be happy about that.”

“That bastard isn’t a guest.”

“Then what is he?”

“…Family.”

“Huh…?”

“Family… he’s family.”

[Love your Family♥]

The inscription on the mango-scented bracelet on my left wrist gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight.

…

Hamin stayed at Ban Doyoung’s house until the end of the final exams, helping with her studies.

When I asked if he was worried about his mother being lonely at home without her son,

‘You can come over to our house during vacation for as long as I’ve stayed here.’

‘…You’re a genius?’

Hearing that, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything more.

Though we spent nearly four days under the same roof,

there was no special progress or event-like development in the relationship between Ban Doyoung and Hamin.

While part of the reason was that there were now many watching eyes, unlike before when we only had to evade one father,

the biggest issue was lack of energy.

In my case, I was exhausted from keeping up with Hamin’s intense study schedule,

and in Hamin’s case, he was drained from preparing problems for the desperately following Ban Doyoung.

The physical toll was incomparably greater than during midterms.

‘Doyoung, get up and eat breakfast. Hamin’s already washed up, changed clothes, and is waiting upstairs.’

‘Huh…? That bastard was studying with me until dawn… and he’s already up and ready?’

‘Normally Hamin would have already arrived at school by this time. Everyone’s waiting, so hurry up.’

‘J-just a minute! Let me fix my hair!’

‘You usually come out as is, so why bother now?’

‘Because the dining table isn’t “usual”!’

Unlike Hamin, who managed to greet the morning in a relatively intact state,

Ban Doyoung, who already struggled with mornings, found it especially difficult to open her eyes after cramming.

Every day, after burning the midnight oil and trudging home exhausted,

I had to stuff more knowledge into my head for the next day’s exam, leaving no energy to spare.

There was no possibility of giving in to momentary impulses and jumping into bed to greet the morning,

or spending the night engaged in any intimate activities.

Even if there had been any such signs,

our virginity guardian Ban Siyoung would have come tearing through the door from the next room.

Ban Doyoung’s virginity was destined to remain safe in this environment, one way or another.

…

The week after the final exams ended,

Bulsa High School officially did not disclose student rankings, as some parents argued that ranking students was discriminatory.

“Korean scores are out! Check and sign next to your name!”

“Oh, both Hamin and Hyun Myeongsu got 100 in English.”

However, while rankings weren’t disclosed,

the scores reflecting students’ efforts had to be made public.

“Are the math scores up? Yes, they’re here! Check and sign your name!”

“Hamin and the class president both got 100 in math. The next highest score drops all the way to 80…”

“This math exam was really fucking hard.”

As grading finished, the scores for each subject were posted one by one on the classroom bulletin board.

“Geography scores are out, please check and mark your names!”

“H-Hamin getting 100 is one thing, but Ban Doyoung got 96?”

“Heheh, it’s geography, right? Isn’t that what you’d expect in your homeroom teacher’s subject?”

“The results of sticking close to Hamin are really showing…”

There was one person who attracted attention despite not getting a perfect score.

“Hey, who signed in pencil instead of pen on the English score sheet? Who wrote ‘Virgin’ next to name #7?”

“That was Ban Doyoung.”

“Haha, sorry about that.”

Ahem, anyway.

Though it was a somewhat troublesome method, by looking at the subject score sheets,

students naturally came to know the average scores of their classmates.

“Do you think you did well this time?”

“No… this exam was pretty difficult. I used to get over 90 in science, but this time I dropped to almost 70.”

“True, only Hamin got 100 in science.”

Not only could they see their own scores,

but they could also roughly estimate their class ranking.

One might question the point of not officially disclosing rankings in this case.

But this was precisely the teachers’ clever strategy:

making it difficult to identify who was the top student overall.

“Still, quite a few people got 100 in ethics.”

“Yeah, Hamin, Ahn Seonggyeong, Hyun Myeongsu… though there’s one person whose perfect ethics score seems questionable.”

While posting scores by subject for each class allowed students to know their ranking within the class,

it was difficult to determine their standing across the entire school.

One would need to track the top scores from every class and then determine who was first among them.

This inconvenience naturally distanced students from obsessing over rankings.

“Home economics… W-what? Hamin got 100 again?”

“This is starting to get scary.”

“Hey, I just got the Chinese classics results from the teacher. That’s all the scores now.”

“Hey, what score did Hamin get on that one?”

“Why do you care?”

“Just tell me already!”

“Well, it says… 100 points?”

“…”

However, the teachers’ clever strategy failed to work for these final exams.