Kenox sighed, laying back down again on his mattress and staring at the wall he’d crashed into a few minutes ago, eyes distant.

“To be honest, I don’t know.” Kenox admitted, frowning at the wall. “He’s got such a head for numbers that I genuinely can’t tell if he thinks of anything else. But he’s also been really merciful and kind in all the past simulation replays I’ve seen from him. I don’t think he’s ever been involved in a violent conflict, which is pretty incredible.”

“Yeah, he like turned the military strategy exam last semester into a peace negotiation.” Gen remembered watching the replay with a similar face to the Fish of Torment, baffled by how the angelic boy had managed to sweet-talk the army leaders into sitting down and talking out their differences. “He hasn’t once gotten his hands dirty in a fight or a human rights issue.”

“I don’t know if that’s admirable or weak.” Kenox muttered, still staring at the wall. “It’s like he’s avoiding conflict, but he should know that he can’t avoid it forever. If he’s going to be a king, he’ll need to step into some dark, violent situations.”

“Technically, he has Migi for all the violent stuff.” Gen sighed, rubbing the back of his head as he thought about the aggressive blonde. “She’s more than willing to swim in violence if it means Hidari stays clean.”

Gen stretched his arms high over his head, sighing as the long events and testing of the day finally started to catch up with him.

He was a slow tester, so most simulations took him a lot longer than the average student. That macro exam had taken him the longest today, at four months sim-time and nearly the full three hours allotted real-time, but he’d had several other long tests right after that. The public policy exam had taken him two months sim-time and almost two hours, and the combat exam had taken him just under that. Even the agricultural technique quiz he’d had in the last period of the day had pushed the hour-long envelope, real-time.

His brain was utterly fried.

“I think I need to head to bed.” Gen sighed, standing up from Kenox’s mattress and wandering back over to his. “I’m gonna change and call it a night.”

Kenox merely hummed in response – a hum Gen recognized as agreement – and slid off his own bed, walking to the dresser at the foot of it to pull out some clean pajamas.

Gen merely bent down and peered under his bed, grabbing the pile of pajamas he’d kicked under it this morning and deeming them clean enough for the night with a quick sniff.

Stumbling to the bathroom, Gen closed the door behind himself and quickly changed into the plain-gray clothes, the long-sleeve shirt and baggy pants that the school had provided for him slipping easily over his muscular frame. He turned to the mirror in the small tiled room next, pulling it open to reveal the cupboard behind it and grabbing his toothbrush and toothpaste.

Readying the toothbrush with a stifled yawn, Gen decided to relive a few of his own simulations from the day, trying to think about how he could speed up or improve in the later tests. As he scrubbed his teeth clean with one hand, he lifted his other up to glance at his replay wristband, examining the saved files from his exams that day.

He felt the most confident about the combat exam, even though it had been on the longer end. Those exams usually came easier to him than anything else. The macro exam had been an utter failure by the test’s standards, but Gen was okay with how it had turned out. He was proud that he’d gotten people out of a country that had abandoned them. Nothing wrong there.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Now, the public policy one and the agriculture quiz…those he needed to double-check.

Gen spat out some of the minty foam in his mouth and selected the public policy replay with a finger, lifting his toothbrush back to his mouth and continuing his efforts at hygiene as he eyed the wristband.

It played back a few highlights from the exam, the major turning points that the simulation had noted throughout his performance where things either went well or went wrong. A lot of his “wrong” points were at moments where he’d been completely baffled as to what the people in the room were even talking about, and kept asking for clarification.

Gen sighed as he watched more and more of those moments, spitting out some more foam and gargling a bit of water to finish up.

What was he supposed to do in cases like that? Study more? He didn’t remember most of it, even when he did study.

He didn’t have a brain like Kenox, where literally everything just stuck the first time he saw it, and was free for him to recall at any later date. Sometimes, the material didn’t click with him at all. And he’d tried to ask Kenox for help with studying in the past, but unfortunately, the school prodigy was definitely not meant to be a teacher.

He tried his best, but there were only so many times Gen could hear the words “you just remember it” before he realized it wasn’t working.

Gen sighed again, setting his toothbrush to the side and squinting at the replays dancing across his arm. Studying more was really all he could do.

Even if it felt like he was just hitting his head with books and tablets in a fervent effort to get the material into his brain.

“Well, you know what, I’m still doing great!” Gen decided, lowering his arm and grinning brightly at his reflection. “I nailed the combat test and the macro exam wasn’t all that bad, either! Besides, the policies turned out fine in the end because I had some competent people in the room who knew what they were talking about.”

Gen nodded as he met his own reddish-brown eyes, spreading his grin even wider. “As long as I can recognize talent and listen to it, I’ll be able to sort out situations where I’m in over my head.” He said confidently, watching himself closely.

He held a big thumbs-up to his reflection, eyes sparkling as he added, “Even if I keep burning down major crop fields in every agriculture sim I take!”

“You burnt it down?!” He heard Kenox call in shock from the bedroom, the horror evident in his voice.

“Just a tiny bit!” Gen called back cheerfully, closing his replays and wandering out of the bathroom. “It was just a teeny singe.”

“Unbelievable.” Kenox muttered as he walked past Gen into the bathroom, pulling his pajama shirt on over his head as he went. “Teeny singe, my foot. Probably scarred the land for life!”

Gen’s eyes flicked inadvertently down to Kenox’s stomach at the mention of a scar.

The shriveled, pinkish skin looked so surreal in the middle of the lean, healthy muscle all around it, coating the broad expanse of Kenox’s entire stomach. It wrapped around his hips, too, disappeared beneath the hem of the pajama pants the golden-eyed boy wore. Gen knew that the sickly-pink skin continued down his legs, too, almost all the way to his foot on his left side. The right side was a bit better, only dipping down to the thigh.

Whenever Gen looked at it, he could feel a twisting sensation in his stomach. One that reminded him why he was even in this school in the first place.

“Don’t choke on your toothbrush!” Gen called cheerfully as he looked away from the scar, dropping his new set of dirty clothes at the foot of his bed and crawling onto his mattress. “You’ve gotta wow all the crowds tomorrow with your big macro victory speech.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Gen heard Kenox call from the bathroom, voice echoey inside the tiled room. “Shut up and go to sleep. Maybe if you sleep more, the stuff you’d study would stick better in your brain!”

Gen laughed at the suggestion as he burrowed under his blankets, turning toward his wall with a smile.

Yep. Gen had a good reason for being at this school as well. Nothing as glamorous as Kenox or Hidari’s, he was sure. Nothing that was worth shouting out to the media or raising a cry over the rooftops for.

Just a simple reason that drove him through all those study sessions, all those multi-hour tests, all those failed simulations, all that nonstop schooling stress.

And no matter how much he kept on failing, he was going to see it through.