Gifted Academy: The Perfect Student

Kanako dragged me over to a claw machine and pointed at one of the toys.

"Get that for me."

"Huh, why me, though."

"Just do it!"

I scanned my card, and the machine lit up.

I wasn't exactly a professional at claw machines, so I doubted that I'd be able to get the toy she wanted. The machines were usually rigged anyways. It would likely take a few attempts before the machine would even properly grab the toy. However, she seemed to be eagerly watching the claw as I controlled it around.

Well, I guess I'll try.

I positioned the claw as well as I could and pressed the button to drop it. It made its descent down to the pile of goodies before seemingly closing its jaws and picking up one of the toys. However, as soon as it lifted the toy up, there was a bit of a jolt, and it dropped it back into the pile.

She appeared to be disappointed.

"I'm not good at these," I said.

Suddenly, she scanned her card, and the machine lit up once again.

"Watch and learn," she exclaimed.

I watched as she positioned the claw slightly off-centre from the toy.

"The secret is to hook the tag," she explained.

After moving it around for a little bit, she pressed the button, and the claw dived into the toy pile. A moment later, it closed its mouth and picked up one of the toys by the tag. Unexpectedly, it didn't fall off as the claw moved toward the hole. The claw opened and dropped the toy down the chute, giving it to us.

"That was impressive."

"I know, right? I'm pretty good, aren't I?"

She seemed to have gotten a toy that looked like a big plushy turtle. She hugged it into her chest and smiled.

"Alright, let's go to the basketball game next!"

The two of us made our way over to the row of basketball arcade machines.

"Are you good at basketball?" She asked.

"Not really."

"Oh, come on~ you look pretty athletic."

"Do I?"

I scanned my card, and then the machine fed several basketballs to me.

I've watched basketball a few times, although I never really got to play it properly. From memory, I tried to replicate the form as well as I could. I tossed the ball in a nice parabola, swishing it straight into the basket.

"That wasn't half bad," commented Kanako.

"Thanks."

She then grabbed a ball and tossed it. It hit the rim of the basket and bounced to the side.

"I'm not warmed up yet," she quickly stated.

Again, she grabbed another ball. This time, the ball swished into the basket. Following her shot, she continued her momentum, scoring several more baskets. There was a timer and a score on the game, so she played until the time ran out. In the end, she was just a few points off of the daily high score.

"Ah, I would've beaten the high score if we didn't waste the first few seconds."

She then scanned her card and started the game back up. Swiftly, she picked up the basketballs one by one and tossed them into the ring. Her movements were fluid, throwing one ball after another. They all swished into the basket, not even touching the edge of the ring. A minute later, the timer ran out, and she looked up at her score.

The machine suddenly began flashing and changing colours.

New Daily High Score!

"See?"

"Good job," I replied.

The machine beeped as it registered points onto Kanako's card.

As she looked around, something caught her eye.

"Mizuhara!"

"What is it?"

She pointed at an arcade machine.

"It's chess!"

"It sure is."

She grabbed onto my sleeve and began pulling me over. As the two of us made our way toward the chess machine, she looked back at me. She seemed to have gotten flustered and quickly let go of my sleeve.

The chess game was made for a single player. It had different settings for the difficulty of the computer and gave different amounts of points relative to the difficulty you selected.

Easy. (x1 points)

Intermediate. (x5 points)

Hard. (x20 points)

Impossible. (x100 points)

Apparently, the game gave you points for each piece you took, and if you managed to get a checkmate, you gained the number of points for every piece on the board.

As expected, she picked Impossible difficulty and began playing.

I watched as she played against the computer, she was playing black, and the computer was playing white.

The computer started with Pawn to E4.

She responded with Pawn to E5.

The two of them then brought out their knights, and the computer played Bishop to B5, starting the Ruy Lopez.

A few moves later, the computer was already in a losing position.

"It's not very good~" Kanako teased.

"I think you're just too good."

"Hehe," she giggled at my statement.

Less than five minutes later, Kanako already managed to checkmate the computer. The machine lit up as it celebrated Kanako's win. A few moments later, it started frantically adding points to her card.

"Ah, I think we should go home for the day," she suggested.

"How come? You've still got plenty of money on your card."

"Well, um..." she seemed to be stuttering for some reason, "I think we should come back another... day..."

"I guess that's fine as well."

"Um, do you want to come back to my place?" She asked.

"Sure, I guess. It's pretty close to my dorm anyways."

*

As we walked into the large reception area of the apartment again, she didn't seem to look back at me a single time. We took the elevator silently as it slowly travelled up to her floor.

The two of us walked over to her door as she scanned her keycard.

For some reason, she wasn't talking at all.

She led me over to her couch, and I took a seat. As soon as I sat down, she sat down right next to me and shuffled closer.

"What's the matter, Kanako?" I asked

She still didn't respond.

The room went silent.

All of a sudden, she started to speak.

"...Mizuhara, you're my tutor, right?"

"At the moment, I guess."

For some reason, the atmosphere felt melancholic.

"Is my father going to continue to make you my tutor now that I've passed my exams?"

"Probably not."

Her expression went cold.

"Mizuhara, I don't go to your school, we don't share any friends, and we never do anything together that isn't related to tutoring..."

"I suppose."

"We won't have any reason to see each other after you're relieved from your job. Once you stop being my tutor, we won't see each other again."

She got up from the couch.

"Mizuhara, once we're no longer tutor and student, what are we to each other?"

***

[The volume still has one more chapter, it'll be from the perspective of Kanako's father.]

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