Chapter 53.

Chapter 53. Final Exams. (1/3)

It was Monday, the day of the first final exam.

Honestly, I didn’t have anything to do. I went in, wrote the exam, and walked out when time was up. I could have left much earlier, but I continued my act of not finishing the exams on time. I considered changing things up a bit and not scoring exactly 75% on every exam, but I decided not to in the end. I wanted my overall grade to sit at 75% in each subject and that wouldn’t happen if I scored different grades on each subject. Simply making the average across all subjects 75% for the final exams alone wouldn’t cut it.

I don’t know why I was so particular about it being 75%, it’s not like it was important and it had to be that number. It was just a number I’d picked at random. I suppose it was a bit of OCD that made me want to continue with this same old pattern. That was the best explanation I had for it at least. Even though I knew it was probably a bad idea to do things this way since it would eventually be caught onto, it sort of felt like I was playing a game. A really stupid and pointless one, but a game nonetheless.

To me, getting 75% on everything was my little form of entertainment, perhaps a twisted guilty pleasure of some sort. It was kind of like I was doing it just to see if I could get away with it without teachers ever noticing it. And if they did notice it, would they even care? That was another question I was curious about.

Again, I had no particular reason to do any of this. Perhaps it was all just done purely out of boredom to pass the time while I was stuck reliving high school. Had I ever thought about doing something like making money using knowledge of the future to relieve this boredom? Of course I had, but there was the possibility that the butterfly effect throwing off all my predictions. My simple act of entering something that I hadn’t before would change the outcome itself.

It sounds absurd for something like a horse race for example, but you could never tell. Perhaps something very minor, such as an interaction with somebody else which inadvertently changed their interactions with another person, and it continued down the line until it reached someone related to the horse or the horse itself. Perhaps it would be injured or not be in top condition and it lost as a result of that.

How about the lottery then? Well, again, my simple act of entering, in this case, could directly influence the outcome in some unexpected way. 

Another concern I had was how acquiring a large sum of money could attract the wrong set of eyes to me. Perhaps even if I were to win, something bad would happen to balance things out and return my situation to a net-zero profit.

I’d considered all sorts of possibilities and decided to stick true to minimizing any changes.

Hell, for all I know I could have stepped on an ant on the ground that was supposed to be the great ancestor of the next form of intelligent life on this planet. It could also be the reverse though, stepping on that ant could have been the salvation of humanity from extinction. It was rather humorous to think that though.

Either way, carelessly changing too many events in the past was something that was best to avoid. I’d already done enough damage with everything I’d done. I didn’t even know what sort of impact they would have on the future either.

Perhaps a vile man who should have been assassinated is no longer assassinated and is allowed to commit crimes against humanity as a result. Haaaah. The worries were truly endless. That was why I chose to simply live a carefree life and not think about it too hard. I’d just focus my attention on the small little things like these pointless exams. If I didn’t I’d go crazy from overthinking every step I take that deviated from my original timeline. 

Imagine being paranoid to the point that every step you take could destroy the world. Each move you made was a ticking time bomb and you wouldn’t even know it until it happened.

No wonder time travel was supposed to be something impossible. Imagine if every Tom, Dick, or Harry could do it. Wouldn’t humanity be utterly doomed?

Time travel was scary. I didn’t even like traveling, so why was I unfortunate enough to have my consciousness travel back to the past? I never asked for such a thing. I would have been more than happy to simply die then and there.

Though… not everything was so awful. I peaked to my side at the person beside me on the couch I was seated on. I did at least have a girlfriend who was good at cooking I guess. 

“What is it?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to see your face I guess.”

“Jeez, it’s been so long since you came over. I had to wait outside the exam room for so long because of how slow you were and drag you here just for us to spend some alone time together. You know, if you really wanted to see my face, you would have come over on your own without me needing to try so hard.”

“Is this really okay though? Don’t you need to study?”

“I’ve been working hard since then, you don’t need to worry about my grades.”

“Working hard as in using me as your imaginary teacher in classes?”

“Yeah. It’s surprisingly a super effective strategy I developed. I might be a genius to think of it.”

I rolled my eyes when I heard the term genius and said, “The only thing you’re a genius at is staring people down until they’re so paranoid and anxious they’re on the verge of having a mental breakdown.”

“Haha, thank you, thank you for the compliment.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“It’s a compliment to me.”

Seeing the overly satisfied smile on her face, I couldn’t help but lean in and kiss her.

“Mmm?” She was a bit surprised, but it was a happy kind of surprise for her.

She immediately returned my kiss, pushing me down back onto the couch, never separating our lips for a second. She’d taken the offensive. Once the first shot was fired she wasn’t one to sit back and do nothing. She’d go full force once her battle instincts kicked in.

I’d picked a fight with her in her mind and she’d make me suffer the consequences.

After a few minutes, I had to tap out and raise the white flag. I’d seriously pass out from how passionate she was.

“You surrendered after you’re the one who picked the fight?”

“Yes, I concede. Please spare me. My girlfriend has become too strong at kissing. I recognize the overwhelming difference in strength now and know my place.”

She gave me a quick peck on the lips and didn’t go into a full-on assault. “It’s good that you understand that. As the loser, you have to listen to the victor. In the future, you have to keep making surprise attacks like that, or I won’t be satisfied with just ending things easily like this.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I get it.” I hooked my arm around the back of her neck and held her close to my chest. With the side of her cheek comfortably resting on my chest she was able to listen to the sound of my heartbeat through her ear.

Seeing her lovely red head of hair from above I couldn’t help but run my free hand through it. It was silky and soft, it smelt nice. It was a scent that gave me an odd sense of comfort and left my mind at peace.

Simply lying here on the couch in her living room with her in my arms put me at ease. Any worries I had floated away. It was peaceful. I didn’t need to wrack my brain so hard around her. I didn’t need to think hundreds of steps in advance. I didn’t need to have my guard up around her. She knew most things about me by now. The only one she didn’t know was that I wrote stories, that I was an author.

But even though she didn’t know, I didn’t feel like I had to remain overly vigilant. She no longer stared at me the same way in the past. Perhaps that was what had resulted in me being able to let my guard down so easily with her now.

“Hey, Ran.” She suddenly called out my name.

“What?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Rosa.”

“Heheh. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing you say that. It’d be nice if you just smiled when you said it though.”

“Making a genuine smile is difficult for me. When I’m putting on an act, I can wear a fake business smile, but outside of that, it’s hard, to near impossible. I don’t want to end up showing you a fake forced smile.”

“Well, I can at least see in your eyes you mean it when you say you love me, so I guess I’ll have to just take what I can get.”

“You can see it in my eyes?”

“Yeah. As they say, the eyes are a window to a person’s soul.”

She wasn’t the first to say that to me, and I was sure she wouldn’t be the last. Girls really seemed to like that saying though.

What even is a soul? It’s illogical and has no basis. I can’t be bothered to spend precious energy thinking about such things.

Now that I think about it, who even came up with such a stupid notion that the eyes were the window to a person’s soul.

No, no, no, stop. Stop right there, me. I said I wouldn’t think about it. It’s inconvenient having a mind that constantly wanders off on its own.