Ch.78My Brother (5)

People often say it.

Schools these days are so much easier.

Kids these days have it so easy at school.

No corporal punishment?

How do you manage the kids then?

No evening self-study?

When are you supposed to study then?

There are schools without morning self-study?

Isn’t that just good for the habitually tardy students?

Some schools don’t even have exams in the first semester?

What exactly are you doing during that time then?

You don’t even go to school and take classes online?

Kids these days really have it made, going to school like that.

You don’t even need to separate parent and child generations.

Ten years? No, what’s ten years.

Even with just a five-year gap, or as little as three years’ difference in school experience,

the types of experiences become so different that it’s impossible to imagine having been in the same space.

Even in college, aren’t those who return after two years of military service treated like archaeopteryx?

Dinosaurs take 150 million years to become fossils, but humans can become fossils after just two years.

The real problem is that even in the military itself,

they make generational distinctions based on just a few months’ difference.

Without shared memories from the same time in the same space,

people always tend to devalue each other’s experiences.

Especially experiences that, barring special circumstances,

can only be had once in a lifetime.

I was like that until recently.

Until I unintentionally began living as the main heroine in this youthful romance webtoon world.

But experiencing my second school life as Ban Do-young,

I found that experiences I thought would never overlap actually did in some places.

Of course, my school days as a male couldn’t be the same as

the school days I’m spending now as the main heroine of a youthful romance webtoon,

but even within these seemingly different experiences, there was definitely an intersection of shared memories.

The morning commute feeling the breeze,

the walk home with arms around friends’ shoulders, laughing and chatting about nothing important,

Studying for exams with friends, fighting sleep through the night,

marking answers with trembling hands, praying they’re correct.

The emptiness after giving it your all,

the frustration, regret, and disappointment over mistakes.

Yet still, the satisfaction of having done your best until the end.

If even those can become cherished memories,

surely these experiences would remain as shared memories for most people across generations.

“Kim Sun-hee.”

“Yes.”

“Here you go, good job. Next, Kim Hae-jo.”

“Yes.”

“Let’s try a little harder next time. Next…”

And what I’m waiting for now

is also one of those intersections common to students of any generation.

Something that makes every student’s heart race

but also something they can’t give up on.

In truth, students don’t fear the exams themselves.

They fear what comes after the exams are over.

Even the great Ban Do-young couldn’t help but

shrink and tense up at the news that it was coming today.

I must have been so nervous that

I forgot to wear my bra, something I hadn’t forgotten even on my first day after possessing Ban Do-young.

Whether it led to good results or bad,

it definitely made people shrink into themselves.

“Next, Ban Do-young.”

“…Yes!”

After my name was called,

I carefully walked up to the teacher’s desk.

Teacher Miso stood there with both hands full of paper stacks.

“Here you go. You worked hard during the midterms, Do-young.”

“You should say that to Doha-min, not me.”

“Yes, you’re right. I’ll make sure to tell Hamin later too. Both of you really worked hard on this exam.”

A few days after the tumultuous midterms,

Ban Do-young’s “report card” was placed in my hands.

.

.

.

“D-Do-young! Is this real? Did you ask the class president for answers during the test?”

“Tsk, this is pure skill.”

“…This is amazing. Honestly, I think it’s the first time since elementary school. That Ban Do-young got this score.”

“Hehe, can you feel the difference in power?”

On Ban Do-young’s report card that surprised Choi Sa-hyang and impressed Yoo Hye-rang,

at the very bottom, the overall average score proudly displayed [72.08].

“No way, Do-young’s test score starts with a 7! And in the tens place!”

“Tsk, what a shame. If only you’d gotten 2 more points to make it 74.”

“What’s with that random number?”

“Heh, 72! It’s such an unfitting number for Ban Do-young! Hehehe!”

“Why are you smiling while saying that?”

An average of 72 points.

It was a score that exceeded both the condition to skip mandatory evening study—surpassing the mock exam class average of 50—and

the target score of 69 points from the deal with Doha-min.

I was a bit surprised myself at how much higher the score was than expected.

Doha-min’s practice problems deserved much of the credit.

The accuracy of the problems he created was quite high, allowing me to quickly move through simpler questions

and secure more time for the difficult ones.

For essay questions, even if the answer was wrong,

I could still get partial credit if the process was correct.

Thanks to that, I was able to pick up points in unexpected places.

Though math was still only in the 50s.

For the rest, I raised my average in memorization subjects that I had diligently studied day and night with the spirit of [下民高趨].

Subjects like ethics, Chinese characters, and Korean history were like that.

“I never thought the day would come when the score gap between me and Ban Do-young would be this small… I need to work harder.”

“I totally lost! Maybe I should ask Hamin to teach me next time too.”

“Hey, don’t touch him carelessly.”

“I’m joking, just joking. But Do-young, you might even rank in the top 10 of our class with this score.”

These days, schools report grades but rarely disclose rankings.

There was an opinion that evaluating students’ capabilities was fine, but ranking them based on that was discrimination.

But no matter how much people talk about discrimination, people ultimately can’t help but fixate on rankings more than scores.

That’s why we get more excited about FIFA rankings than World Cup results,

and why debates rage about whether Emperor Dong ranks in the top 10 strongest characters in the One Piece universe.

If they won’t tell us the rankings, we just need to find out everyone’s scores and calculate them ourselves.

“Let’s ask the class president first.”

We turned toward An Sung-kyung, who was sitting behind Ban Do-young.

Although the midterms were over,

our school maintained the exam seating arrangement.

This was because a national civil service exam was scheduled for the weekend, so they needed to keep the test formation.

Since the prevailing opinion was that it would be better to maintain our current seats for a week

rather than go through the trouble of rearranging twice, we kept the same seats until this week when we received our report cards.

The downside was that even after the exams ended,

I rarely had the opportunity to tease Doha-min in the mornings.

“Class president, how did you do on the exam?”

“Sigh… Don’t talk to me, fuck. I’m in a shitty mood right now.”

“Oh, wow… I just asked a simple question and this is the response…?”

An Sung-kyung frowned intensely at her report card from Teacher Miso and pulled at her hair.

We hadn’t even started teasing her yet, and she was already cursing like this.

What’s with her?

Is she on her period or something?

“Is it because your test scores weren’t good?”

“What other reason would there be? This exam was the worst ever, seriously. My condition was already bad, and they put two memorization subjects on the first day… sigh.”

An Sung-kyung finally threw her report card down and buried her face on the desk.

Hey, hey, acting like that just makes us more curious about what score you got.

We sneaked around behind An Sung-kyung

and picked up the report card she had thrown.

“Let’s see what we have here. What score could she have gotten to be making such a fuss?”

“Hehe, maybe she scored lower than Do-young?”

“No way. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Yoo Hye-rang. Didn’t you get an average of 83 or something?”

“Hmph, I put in some effort this time too. It might be possible.”

Ta-da! Ta-ra-ra-ra! Ta-ra-ra-ra! Ta-ra-ra-ra! Ta-da!

Humming a tune, we casually flipped over An Sung-kyung’s crumpled report card.

Name: An Sung-kyung

Korean / 91

Math / 87

Social Studies / 95

Science / 90

English / 94

Korean History / 91

Chinese Characters / 90

Ethics / 100

Home Economics / 88

Overall Average 91.78

“…”

“…”

“…You bitch.”

-Thud

We reflexively grabbed An Sung-kyung’s hair and lifted her head.

“Aaack! What are you doing, you jerks!”

“This bitch got an average of 91 points and has the nerve to say she bombed the test?”

“Aaack, it hurts! It hurts! Let go, you thick-headed bitches!”

“What’s even more infuriating is that she got 100 in Ethics, this girl who openly calls people bitches and thick-heads.”

“You don’t understand how badly I messed up this exam! I can’t even get first place in the class with this score!”

Unlike our suspicion that she might have been trying to embarrass us deliberately,

An Sung-kyung’s eyes were genuinely red with frustration at not achieving the score she wanted.

“But isn’t this score good enough to aim for first place? Do-young just happened to do unusually well this time, and everyone was saying how difficult this exam was.”

“Yeah, that might have been true if we were in a different class…”

“Huh? What do you mean by that? If we were in a different class?”

“…We have Doha-min in our class.”