The sense of urgency hit me during the second day's mock exam.
According to the schedule, these tests, designed to assess our understanding of recently covered material, were set every other day. Today's focus was mathematics.
When I got a look at the test paper as it was handed out, I got a real sense of how intense this summer camp was. Just skimming through the problems, I could tell they were challenging. Even using all the time allowed for the test, I wasn't sure if I could finish all the questions. In fact, there wasn't enough time.
Understanding a problem and being able to solve it under exam conditions are entirely different beasts.
This was made all to clear when I arrived at the third problem.
『Find the limit of the following sequence.』
I stared at the symbol n→∞ written in the equation. This means that any number can be substituted for n, but as it gets larger and larger, what value does it approach? I'd definitely learned this; it was even in the reference books I'd recently reviewed.
The math instructor from yesterday's lecture had a unique approach, and the first thing he said was "Entrance exam math is the easiest and therefore the most boring part of math." According to him, it was because, "The questions always have definite answers."
In response to the students' murmurs of "Isn't that obvious?", he listed some unsolved problems that exist in mathematics (the so-called "Millennium Prize Problems"), insisting that it's entirely possible to create endless unsolvable problems if one so wishes. In other words, exam questions are meticulously crafted to ensure that students can solve them. They're guaranteed to have an answer.
"You guys should take it easy for the exam," he had declared.
Well, I guess he meant not to stress.
Easier said than done, especially with the problem in front of me. Although I remembered the method for deriving the answer, involving transforming and simplifying the expression, I noticed something alarming—everyone else seemed to be working through the questions faster than me. I would write one line and then stop to think, but I could hear the constant sound of pencils gliding across the paper, as if they'd memorized the steps to the solution.
I couldn't see their faces, but I imagined them looking cool and composed, effortlessly jotting down answers.
This is bad. Are these guys my rivals?
This realization brought a wave of panic with it.
After the test, we were given the solutions and explanations for self-grading. After finishing the day's lessons, I returned to my room and went through the model answers. I could understand most of them and felt I could have solved all the questions given more time.
But time was the issue.
Understanding a problem and being able to solve it are two different beasts.
I barely managed to tackle the last three application questions, spending too much time just to figure out the approach. It was clear I hadn't practiced enough. I scored zero on those last three, surely placing my overall score far behind the others.
Dinner that evening was a blur. Even as I ate, my mind was preoccupied with how to catch up to everyone else.
When I got up to return to my room, I crossed paths with Fujinami-san.
"Oh, you're done eating already?"
"Ah, yeah. Um... good night."
Barely engaging, I hurried to the elevator.
When I got back to my room, it was already time for lights-out. Now in a dark room, I kept going over the next day's lecture topics under the dim light beside my bed. Sacrificing sleep was a small price to pay for catching up during this one-week camp.
I even set my alarm thirty minutes earlier than the hotel's wake-up call, ensuring it would go off multiple times to rouse me. I set it to ring several times every five minutes.
I thought I was motivated, but seeing the sheer volume of study material my peers were managing made me feel inadequate.
I also cut my LINE conversation with Ayase-san short, telling her I had to wake up early tomorrow.
She'd said, "Good luck with your studies," and I wanted to live up to that expectation.
Ayase-san—without going to cram school—managed to score as well as I did, or maybe even better, just by studying on her own. If I wanted to get grades good enough to make me worthy of being her boyfriend, especially seeing how hard she worked, I had no choice but to step up my game.
For the sake of her support and belief in me, I couldn't afford to fall behind the other students, no matter what.
The camp's bedtime was supposed to be 10 pm, but there was no shot that was happening, and it wasn't until past 3 am that I finally drifted off.