Blue Archive - Story of Joshua Sensei

Chapter 76 - Boot Camp Begins

"Make Up Work Club boot camp officially begins today." Hifumi begins. "We have a very long road ahead of us, and it will be easy for us to get discouraged... but think about it! We know what we must do! The only solution is for each of us to pass next week's exam!"

As she says this, Hanako's smile strains. "Right."

Azusa hums in agreement.

"O-Okay." Koharu adds.

"That's why we're going to take a mock exam starting right now!" Hifumi declares.

"Mock exam?" Azusa deflates.

"Well, this is sudden." Hanako says.

"I'll say! Why should we have to do that?!" Koharu asks.

"Because our futures are on the line." The blonde says. "We need to know where we all stand before we begin studying for the second exam!"

"It's a solid idea." I add. "By figuring out what y'all are having trouble with, you can focus on bettering yourselves in that regard."

"Yes! To that end, I spent last night preparing this." The blonde says, pulling some papers out of her bag. "I made my own exams based on the questions and answer keys from last year's exams! Sensei was able to get these for us and helped me last night. It should give each of us an idea on how we'd score on the real exam if we were to take it right now."

She says I helped her, but it was mostly Arona behind the scenes.

"We'll each have one hour. Max score is one-hundred points with the minimum passing grade being a sixty." Hifumi explains. "It's the same as a real exam. And I'm going to take it with all of you, of course."

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A few minutes later, the girls sit themselves down in desks.

"You four ready?" I ask. "You can leave the room when you're done, if you want."

Soon, they got to work.

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"All right, Sensei, we're ready. Let us know our scores." Hifumi says, roughly an hour and a half after starting their exam.

"All right." I say, looking over the papers. "Hifumi got sixty-eight, Azusa thirty-three, Koharu fifteen, and Hanako four. All in all, an improvement for all of you, even if it's not by much."

"Hmm." Azusa hums.

Koharu blushes.

"Well..." Hanako says.

Hifumi remains silent, looking worried, before sighing. "I was afraid of this. It's not looking good if we don't turn things around... We're going to have to study nonstop if we have any hope of us each scoring sixty points by next week!" She declares. "Koharu and Azusa have to take the first-year exam, so I'm pairing you two up." She says, causing the two aforementioned girls to blink in surprise. "It will be up to me and Hanako to assist you. Didn't you have high grades your first year, Hanako?"

"Well, I did, but..." Hanako says, awkwardly.

"Don't worry. Sensei and I will track your scores and figure out why you've been struggling. We can do this together!" The blonde says, determined, while Hanako remains silent with a strained look on her face. "I want us to take mock exams like this from time to time moving forward." The blonde continues. "I'm not going to allow us to fail We're going to pass. We have our goal, so let's keep working hard to achieve it!"

'Goddamn...' I think to myself. For a supposedly average girl, she's good at these kinds of things.

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