Chương 31: Testing Troubles - Page 1

Kir suffered through the speech that followed in silence, feeling a wave of memories return to him, year after year of sitting through speeches. He couldn't remember the words, but the feeling of familiar boredom was enough to make his eyes drift until suddenly Rain was poking him and handing him a pair of sheets.

"Hey, uh, mind getting one to her?" he pointed across the way to Ann and Kir stood up to walk the short distance to her, handing her the form and one of the two pencils that he'd been given. Even before he turned his back, the girls one row ahead of her were tittering excitedly, and acting like Kir was scary.

He ignored them and returned to his test.

"Arithmetic..." he muttered, looking at each of the problems in turn. Nothing on the test was any more complicated than the Pythagorean theorem, and he made sure to show all his work before waving down Rain, who jogged enthusiastically up to Kir.

"I'm done," Kir said as soon as Rain arrived.

"Woah, that fast? I should get you to teach me a thing or two," he looked over Kir's test to make sure all the answers had been filled in, then jogged back down the aisle ramp to the center, handing off the test to a man with a pinched face and glasses, who took one look at the test before reaching for a stamp and pressing it into the top of the page.

As soon as he returned to the ground, Kir waved Rain over. "So, um, do I get to take the next test?" Kir asked.

"Well, we're supposed to give you the full hour, but if you really want to I could ask..." He beamed at Kir, and Kir couldn't help but return his smile.

He jogged back down, the wind of his passage ruffling a few tests, and after a bit of conversation with the proctor, who stared in Kir's direction for a long moment, returned with another test.

"Hey, so I can only get you one at a time, and you'll have to wait until that row's done with their test to take the one they've got," Rain said apologetically.

"That's not a problem," Kir smiled. "I just don't want to waste too much time..."

"I hear that. I fall asleep during tests all the time if I can't do'em quickly... which is, like, all the time... hehe." Rain scratched the back of his head.

After that exchange, Kir turned to his next test, which was Reading and Writing. The questions were simple logic tests, more about reading comprehension than demonstrating any particular style of argument.

In double the time it took him to answer the arithmetic test, he waved Rain over and handed in the test, receiving in exchange the Elemental Theory test.

This one was much tougher, except for the beginning. There was a chart with the four classical elements, and he had to list the interactions between earth, air, fire, and water as the people of this era understood them.

After that, however, came the slog. Kir had very little memory for the names of people associated with magical theories, so he had to puzzle through which theories were being talked about from the ways that the questions were written. The other students finished and turned in their arithmetic tests by the time he was almost done. When he came upon the last question, it broke his mind of any respect he thought he should have for the writer of the test.

Describe the elemental interactions of the planets and how they produce recessions in the observed positions of each body in their rotation around the sun.

It brought back a memory of the term "epicycles," but at least they had a heliocentric model of the solar system. Instead of doing any of what the question asked, he wrote down Kepler's equation and a full explanation of each symbol, before handing his test over to Rain to trade for the next.

He almost swore Rain was having fun jogging back and forth, an appreciation of activity that might have accounted for the boy's clearly well-muscled form.

He returned with the history exam, and Kir took one pass at the questions, sighing as he got to work writing out what little he knew. The test's one truly interesting question to him was when the final question asked for a short paragraph explaining the purpose of history, in his point of view. It meant he'd at least get one question right.

He wrote down a sincere answer, one that acknowledged history as a living subject in perpetual application to the present, and even threw in a postulation about how people could even be haunted by histories that failed to manifest.

It was, in Kir's opinion, a sincere answer couched in romantic drivel, but he waved Rain down and turned it in nonetheless.

And then he was done with the written tests, and he saw his moms on the stage watching him proudly.

Rain, after a moment where he gave Kir a sincere thumbs up, was summoned on stage. A brief talk later, he came jogging up to Kir.

"So, uh, they want you to, like, start the line for the practical exam... It's like way early, so you'll probably be there for a while..." Rainier chuckled and scratched his head.

Kir hadn't expected anything like this. He'd intended to just spend the next few hours thinking of how he wanted to pass the practical exam. Whether or not he'd just demonstrate the basics or produce an original spell.

He was about to ask Rain if he could just ask them to let Kir go last when he glanced over at the stage and saw his moms gesturing.

Resigning himself to his fate, Kir stood and followed Rain to the stage, hopping lightly and flaring his wings a little instead of taking the stairs.

He arrived to find the four professors grading the tests looking over the latest batch of sheets they'd just received, while the proctor for the test came down from her lectern, sizing up Kir.

"So... you're the new 'special case'," she frowned.

Kir instantly disliked her.