The next day, after school, at the Service Club.
Looking at Yukinoshita Yukino, who—as always—had arrived earlier than him,
Tanaka Masao couldn't help but sigh inwardly.
[Is this some kind of game refresh mechanic? After school, Yukinoshita Yukino just instantly spawns in the Service Club.]
"Good afternoon, Yukinoshita-san."
"Good afternoon."
Yukinoshita Yukino nodded in response and took a sheet of paper out of her bag.
"This is a test I prepared for you. Three questions per subject. You'll have one hour to answer."
Tanaka Masao took the test paper. All the questions had clearly been written by Yukinoshita Yukino herself.
Looking at the neat, elegant handwriting, an image formed in Tanaka Masao's mind of Yukinoshita Yukino staying up late the night before, flipping through textbooks and carefully coming up with questions just for him.
Thinking about how he had played games with Jahy last night and accidentally gone overboard—almost not finishing his homework—
he couldn't help but feel a faint sense of guilt.
Yukinoshita Yukino's questions were very well designed. Three per subject.
The first question was the easiest—the kind teachers often call a "free points" question.
If you couldn't even get those points, there was no point in studying at all.
The second question was a bit harder, but as long as you had studied, you could usually answer it.
Getting these right was enough to secure a passing grade.
As for the final question, the difficulty was higher and required consistent effort—roughly the level of a 70–80-point "good" score.
As for the highest difficulty tier, Yukinoshita Yukino hadn't included any such questions. She wasn't expecting Tanaka Masao to be able to solve those.
...
One hour later.
Holding Tanaka Masao's test paper, Yukinoshita Yukino couldn't help but frown.
Tanaka Masao's answers couldn't really be called bad—just… strange.
In math, English, physics, chemistry, and biology, he answered all three questions perfectly. You could even call it excellent.
But when it came to Japanese, history, and civics (politics), it was a complete disaster.
Holding up a Japanese reading comprehension question, she complained,
"Tanaka-kun, can you explain to me why you interpreted the line ['The moonlight is beautiful'] as the author expressing homesickness?"
"Uh… isn't that wrong?"
Tanaka Masao was genuinely confused. Wasn't the moon always used to express longing?
"Then what, was it meant to express concern for the nation and the people, frustration over unrecognized talent? Or perhaps a reflection on contemporary society?"
He pulled out another all-purpose interpretation formula. This one had to be right, didn't it?
Looking at the overly confident Tanaka Masao, Yukinoshita Yukino let out a sigh.
"Tanaka-kun, what exactly is going on inside your head?"
"This passage describes a man and a woman taking a nighttime walk and admiring the moon. That line is spoken by the male lead."
"Why would you think he's missing his hometown? And what does worrying about the nation even have to do with this? Why would he be thinking about that in this situation?"
She genuinely couldn't understand why such words even appeared in his mind.
"When the male lead says ['The moonlight is beautiful'], he's confessing to the female lead."
Tanaka Masao blinked. "Why?"
In his previous life, he could always link reading comprehension answers to family, country, or social issues.
As for this kind of subtle romantic expression—he couldn't say it didn't exist, but it was extremely rare.
"This is a subtle way of expressing affection. Compared to directly saying 'I love you,' this kind of phrasing is more poetic and romantic."
Even after Yukinoshita Yukino's explanation, Tanaka Masao still didn't quite get why praising the moonlight counted as a confession.
"But what if the female lead doesn't get it? What if she just says, ['Yeah, it really is pretty']? What's the male lead supposed to say then?"
"That's not something you need to worry about, Tanaka-kun. The female lead's brain cells aren't as bizarre as yours—she'll understand what the male lead means."
Yukinoshita Yukino had already given up expecting anything from Tanaka Masao's reading comprehension skills.
"Still, one thing I didn't expect is that your classical Chinese is actually very good."
By "classical Chinese," she meant ancient Chinese literary texts—something they also studied here.
They also studied classical poetry, especially works by Bai Juyi.
Yukinoshita Yukino had categorized this section as the most difficult part, yet Tanaka Masao had answered everything correctly.
Hearing Yukinoshita Yukino's praise, Tanaka Masao looked a little smug.
"Just a little familiar with it, that's all."
In his previous life, he had studied classical texts for many years. This level of difficulty was nothing to him.
"Although your reading comprehension isn't great, with your classical texts and your other subjects, passing shouldn't be a problem. However…"
Yukinoshita Yukino pointed to the next question and said,
"Can you explain this one to me?"
The question read:
[Please write about a military commander you admire, including the reason and their achievements.]
As everyone knew, Japan held the Sengoku period in very high regard.
Figures like Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu—samurai and generals—were especially admired.
This was an extremely open-ended question. As long as you wrote something, it would usually be fine.
Logically speaking, it was no different from a free points question.
Yet it was precisely this free points question that gave Yukinoshita Yukino a headache.
Because Tanaka Masao's answer was:
[Yamagami Tetsuya.
Reason: Beheading the enemy commander amid ten thousand troops; widely acknowledged as the number one ADC on the Japanese server.
Achievements: Successfully assassinated the former Prime Minister.]
Tanaka Masao blinked, feeling his answer was pretty solid.
"What? Are his achievements not impressive enough?"
What the hell do you mean "not impressive enough"?
Did he need to go 8–0 and achieve godlike status for it to count?
Yukinoshita Yukino took a deep breath before she finally managed to maintain her cool, aloof persona.
"Tanaka-kun. If you dared to write something like this in an actual exam, failing would be the least of your problems. Being called in by a teacher would be minor."
"In serious cases, you could be expelled—or even sent to prison."
"Although I don't particularly like the current social system either, these are things we can only talk about in private. Don't ever put something like this out in the open."
"O-oh."
Tanaka Masao nodded, indicating that he understood.
"I didn't expect Yukinoshita-san's idol to be the same as mine—Yamagami Tetsuya."
Yukinoshita Yukino shot him a cold glare.
"I really shouldn't have trusted your reading comprehension abilities. How on earth did you reach that conclusion?"
Yukinoshita Yukino believed that even if Tanaka Masao had issues with emotional intelligence and couldn't grasp poetic romance, his intelligence itself certainly wasn't the problem.
With behavior like this, there was a very high chance he was just fooling around.
Her guess wasn't wrong.
Tanaka Masao choosing Yamagami Tetsuya did indeed contain an element of joking around.
Another reason was that he genuinely felt that Japan's historical generals and famous commanders weren't all that impressive.
So-called "warring states," when you got down to it, was just one village fighting another village.
After all, such a small area had been divided into more than sixty "countries."
If a single country could even muster a thousand soldiers, it was already considered militarily strong.
It wasn't until Toyotomi and Tokugawa carried out large-scale unification in the later period that battles involving tens of thousands appeared.
Even so, compared to Liu Bang of Pei attacking Xiang Yu at Xuzhou back in ancient China, that scale was like comparing a small trick to the real thing.