Chapter 20 – “Exam Day Explosion”

The day of reckoning had come.

Desks lined the gym like a military formation, each student armed with trembling pencils and half-broken erasers. The tension was thick enough to slice with a protractor. Yuuto Kanda, commander of the “Study Squad,” stood in the middle of the hallway staring at the exam hall doors as if he were about to enter a battlefield.

Behind him were his troops—Rika, Mizuki, and Akari—each showing different stages of emotional collapse.

Rika was mumbling formulas under her breath, scribbling chemical structures on her palm like some mad scientist preparing for alchemy. Mizuki looked pale, clutching her pen like it was a relic of faith. And Akari… was happily munching on a chocolate bar.

“Akari,” Yuuto sighed, “you can’t eat in the exam hall.”

“I’m carb-loading for mental energy,” she declared confidently. “Like an athlete before the big game.”

“This isn’t the Olympics,” Yuuto groaned.

“It is to me,” she shot back, flexing her pencil like a sword.

The bell rang. Students began filing into the exam hall.

“Okay, team,” Yuuto whispered, turning to them like a field captain. “Remember: deep breaths, clear minds, and no panic.”

Akari saluted. Rika adjusted her glasses with steely focus. Mizuki nodded faintly, whispering, “If I die, tell my diary I loved it.”

---

Ten minutes into the exam…

Disaster struck.

Akari realized she’d forgotten her pencil case. She looked around helplessly before nudging Yuuto with a whisper. “Psst! Kanda! Do you have an extra pencil?”

Yuuto wordlessly handed her one.

Seconds later, it snapped in half under Akari’s “athletic” grip.

“...You’re kidding me,” he muttered.

Rika hissed from the next desk over, “Silence, please! Some of us are trying to calculate molecular bonds, not emotional ones.”

Akari pouted, whispering back, “You sound jealous.”

Rika’s pen froze mid-scribble. “Wh–what are you implying?”

Yuuto massaged his temples. I should’ve just studied alone.

---

Meanwhile, Mizuki…

Her hand trembled as she stared at the literature essay question: “Analyze the emotion of longing in classical poetry.”

Her heart sank. The word “longing” hit too close to home. Images of Yuuto leaning over her notebook last night — his warm voice, his soft praise — came flooding back. Her cheeks burned.

She shook her head violently and began to write.

> “Longing is when you want to tell someone how much they mean to you,

but all that comes out is a poem about the rain.”

Her pen didn’t stop until the bell rang.

When she finally looked up, Yuuto was watching her with a small, proud smile from across the room. Mizuki quickly hid her face behind her paper.

---

Rika’s turn to crack.

Rika had prepared for everything — or so she thought. She’d encoded chemical formulas in her notes, and cleverly written some key data into the molecular diagrams she’d drawn in her margin.

It was genius. A perfect method.

Until Sensei Amamiya, the invigilator, walked past.

“Hm,” she hummed, squinting. “Fascinating structures, Hanabira  . Are these… cheat notes disguised as chemical equations?”

Rika froze like a malfunctioning robot. “O-of course not, Sensei! Just… a casual hobby in organic chemistry!”

Amamiya leaned down and smirked. “Good. Because if they were, you’d have to tutor me later as punishment.”

She winked and walked away.

Rika’s face turned the color of her red pen. She wanted to evaporate on the spot.

---

By the final hour, chaos had peaked.

Akari’s desk was a battlefield of snack crumbs and pencil shards. Mizuki was muttering poetry prayers under her breath. Rika was red-faced and overcaffeinated. Yuuto sat in the middle, quietly suffering.

The moment the bell rang, the four of them collectively exhaled as if they’d escaped death.

Outside the exam hall, they collapsed on a bench in the courtyard, under the mild glow of the afternoon sun.

“Is it… over?” Akari asked weakly.

“For now,” Yuuto said. “Until the next war.”

“Never again,” Mizuki whispered, clutching her notes like a wounded soldier.

Rika took a deep breath. “Statistically speaking, I’m 78% sure we all failed.”

Akari nudged her. “Don’t jinx it, Brainiac.”

Sensei Amamiya appeared suddenly, sipping coffee like a villain in an anime. “Grades will be out tomorrow. May the gods of academia favor your youthful chaos.”

They groaned in unison.

---

Next Day — Results Announcement

The hallway buzzed with chatter as scores were posted. Yuuto stood in front of the board, his heart pounding.

“Come on, come on…”

Rika scanned the sheet first — her name gleamed at the top of the passing line. “I… I passed?!”

Akari blinked at her own score. “Whoa. I didn’t fail math? I’m basically a genius!”

Mizuki found her name near the bottom but still above the red mark. Her eyes sparkled. “I… did it?”

They turned to Yuuto.

He smiled tiredly. “Barely, but yeah. We all passed.”

For a second, they just stood there — exhausted, relieved, proud.

Then Akari popped open a juice box triumphantly. “Cheers to Team Study Disaster!”

They clinked juice boxes together, laughing.

In the middle of their celebration, Rika suddenly jumped in excitement, throwing her arms up — and accidentally wrapped them around Yuuto.

The world froze.

Rika blinked, realizing what she’d done. Her body stiffened against his. Yuuto’s mind short-circuited. Mizuki’s eyes widened. Akari choked on her juice.

Rika’s voice came out as a squeak. “S-sorry! R-reflex! Purely reflex!”

Yuuto’s face was red enough to rival the school’s emergency lights. “I-It’s okay! You were just… happy!”

Amamiya, watching from a distance, chuckled to himself. “Ah… young love. Better than any experiment.”

---

Later that day, as the sun dipped behind the school building, Yuuto walked home with all three girls.

They were laughing again, teasing one another, exhausted but smiling. The chaos, the mistakes, the late-night studying — somehow, it all felt worth it.

Because for the first time, Yuuto realized something simple but terrifying:

He wasn’t just tutoring them anymore.

He was falling — slowly, awkwardly — right into their world.