Capítulo 44: Bubbles
Ranko sat alone on the train, her leg bouncing on the floor with nervous energy. The rhythmic clattering of the train on the tracks was like a ticking clock counting down to some dark fate. Everyone had told her not to stress about today, but she couldn't help it. So much was riding on this. A shrill tone pierced her thoughts, followed by a robotic monotone voice. "Arriving, Hiro-o Station."
The commuter train hissed to a stop, and the redhead stood, picking up her purse and strapping it across the blue T-shirt she wore. She'd paired it with her black jeans and black boots. Part of her had wanted to dress up, to make as good an impression as possible to balance out the disdain she expected to receive. Ultimately, she'd decided that if she was going to go into battle, she needed a little bit of armor. Donning her white peacoat, she strode to the door and stepped down onto the platform. The platform heels of her boots made a metallic rattling sound as she strode across the steel grating of the station floor, the noise giving way to a clacking when she stepped outside the station and onto the sidewalk.
Her foot tapped the asphalt as she waited for the signal to enter the crosswalk, making her way to the white five-story building across the street. She passed between two white columns, taking a moment to steel her nerves before pushing open the glass door and entering. She cringed at the echoing sound her heels made on the white tile floor in the cavernous, and largely quiet, room.
Several people turned to look at her, and she blushed awkwardly. One such person was the young man at the circular oak desk before her. "Hello, welcome to the Tokyo Metropolitan Library. How can we help you?"
Ranko swallowed hard. "Uh, hello. My name is Ranko Tendo, and I'm here for the high school equivalency placement exam?" She fumbled around in her little black purse, producing her new identification card and a slip of paper indicating that she was registered for the test.
"Ah, of course. You want the second floor. The exam is being administered in a study room just to the right of the elevator. Good luck!"
Ranko thanked the receptionist and walked to the left side of the lobby. She pressed the button to summon the elevator, and by her estimation, it must have taken a week and a half for it to descend from the third floor and open its doors with a little ding. She stepped in, pressing the button for the second floor and leaning against the back wall of the metal cube as it ferried her to her destination.
When the doors opened, she immediately spied the open door of the study room. Several other people were milling into the room, all of them wearing similarly nervous expressions. Ranko was the youngest of them by at least fifteen years. She sighed, a sense of shame welling within her that she was in this position, but as she thought about it, she allowed herself a smile. Because Hana pushed her to do this, painful and scary though it was, she wouldn't be in this situation when she was their age. What she would be doing, she hadn't the foggiest clue, but that was a worry for another day.
She slid into one of the empty desks, on which rested a thick packet of paper and a green strip of cardstock lined with hundreds of little printed circles. Two sharpened pencils rested to the right of it. The severe-looking woman at the desk at the front of the room stood, adjusting her thick-rimmed glasses. "Okay, I think that's everyone. Welcome. You will have two hours to complete the test. Remember to fill in the bubbles on your form completely and carefully with your answers. When you're finished, put your form in the slot here, and you can leave. Good luck." She pressed a button on the black box on the desk, and a two-hour countdown clock lit up in red digits on its face.
Ranko picked up a pencil, looking over the form. She found the blank for her name, writing out the characters to spell out Ranko Tendo. She took her time with this; she was still quite proud that the name was truly hers, and she wanted it to look nice. She cursed her terrible penmanship under her breath. Every girl she knew had really pretty handwriting; she wondered if it was something she should work on, as if her penmanship was a dead giveaway that she used to be a boy. She glanced up at the clock, seeing two minutes gone and only her name was filled in. She chuckled to herself grimly. At least she'd gotten one question correct – and until last week, that would have been wrong, too.
She used her pencil to break the sticker sealing the test packet and opened it, tucking a stray strand of flame-red hair behind her ear. Okay, Ranko, let's do this, she thought to herself with a heavy sigh of determination.
The first section of the test focused on basic arithmetic, and Ranko flew through it with ease, filling in the little circles on her Scantron form quickly. If the whole test was this easy, all her worries were for nothing. She turned to the fourth page, and suddenly, most of the numbers in the math problems began to be replaced with letters and Greek symbols. She closed her eyes, straining to remember the few times Akane had tried to help with her algebra homework. She worked the problems and bubbled in answers on her sheet, but she was far less confident in her responses.
She turned the page, hoping to move on to history or language arts. Instead, there were pictures of curves and triangles and parabolas on graphs, and something about limits and derivatives. The problems might as well have been written in cuneiform. She stared at the graphs in horror, stealing a glance up at the clock. Almost 30 minutes had elapsed, and there were still dozens of pages to go. She had no idea where to even begin with these problems, so she bubbled in the "C" answer for all fifteen questions. Maybe I'll get lucky on a few of them, she hoped.
Turning the page, she was relieved to find questions that were written in words she actually understood. The history section began much as the math section did, with questions she considered fairly easy. What cities the Americans bombed in World War II, the Meiji period and the fall of the daimyos, what year Emperor Hirohito took power, no problem! Then the questions began to delve into the details of the Manchurian incident, the Battle of Nomdaemun, and the Yoshida Doctrine, and again she found herself lost and filling in random bubbles on her sheet.
The Japanese language section wasn't too challenging for her; there were a few kanji she didn't recognize but otherwise she felt confident in her answers. She checked the clock. One hour to go. She turned the page, and found herself staring at the start of the English section. This is what landed her here in the first place. She remembered those Americans that had been so rude to her in the bar that night and glowered at the page. No way you jerks are gonna beat me, she thought to herself, and dove into the questions. She actually felt comfortable with some of the vocabulary, but the sentence structure and more advanced words eluded her. In fairness, they tend not to teach words like tequila in high school English class anyway, she thought with a smirk.
With twenty minutes to go, she delved into the final section of the test - science. The first few questions dealt with biology subjects, some of which she knew primarily from her martial arts studies. She cringed when a question asked her the number of bones in the human body, remembering that she quoted the figure to Mikado before beating him half to death behind the dumpster last month. On the next page, she was prompted for the chemical symbols for several elements on the periodic table, the formula for water, and so forth.
She turned to the last page and groaned. More math?! This hardly seemed fair. One of the questions asked about moles of hydrogen. Huh. She thought all animals were carbon-based, even moles. Whatever. Science was weird. The next problem described a ball being thrown out of a fifth-story window, and asked how long it would fall. Ranko was grateful the question was multiple-choice, because she likely would have written "until it hits the ground" otherwise.
She checked the clock. Four minutes. She sighed, looking over the little graphite dots all over her paper. She could go back over her answers, but it wasn't going to get any better. With resignation, she stood, dropping the slip into the box at the front of the room. She offered a slight bow to the exam proctor and exited the room, the clacking of her heels momentarily drawing the attention of the few people still taking the test.
She quickly exited the library, taking a few deep breaths to try and calm herself. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen; there was no changing it now. She'd deal with what came next, and she'd have help if she needed it. She wondered if Hana really would make her go back to school. It was the dread of going to school as a girl that finally made her leave the Tendo household in the first place. She wondered what Akane would think, seeing her in a girl's school uniform, especially if she was held back even further from Akane's grade. Would she laugh? Would she find it cute? Would Hana send her to an all-girls school, or would she have to deal with… boys? She had enough wandering eyes and hands to deal with at work as it was.
She shook the thoughts out of her head. No use worrying about it now. She had something else to focus on. She re-entered the train station, boarding the commuter line bound for the shopping district. She needed something special for tonight.
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