216 Chapter one, 2016, rainy days: 8 (1/2)
With final exams looming closer Yukio firmly pushed the scandal aside. Besides, apart from their English teacher most of the school staff had been surprisingly quiet about Urufu's and Kuri's rumoured night-time activities.
Now he sat in the inner room of the Stockholm Haven café which had been fully converted into their new club-room just in time for the cessation of all club activities in preparation of their exams.
Noriko sat together with Kuri going through math problems with the famous model turned slut. By their side Sango-chan and Kyoko ran through the same problems but at a distinctly higher pace and without Noriko's help.
”And this one?” Ryu asked from Yukio's right.
”Same. Look, if you replace the numbers with letters it's a lot easier to detect the pattern,” Urufu said.
”Pattern?” That was Nori-kun, and Yukio noted how another two club-members congregated around them to follow Urufu's explanation.
'Now this is just hysterically funny,' Yukio thought. Urufu the flunky teaching math. 'But he's not really a flunky is he? Didn't he have a college exam from engineering?'
”Yes, by token substitution you'll be able to immediately identify equalities on both sides and remove them. Clears the real problem from excess data. See the pattern now?” Urufu said and crossed out almost a third of the information on the whiteboard.
Yukio watched him leave the white-board and walk over to the one where another group were struggling with English. Despite bombing that topic on his midterms virtually every club-member knew his English knowledge was superior to what any teacher at school could muster.
'And I think you have a better grasp of Japanese history than I do by now. What kind of study monster are you?'
Truth be told the only thing that kept Urufu from popping up on the wall was his written Japanese. By now Yukio recognised the difference when Urufu spoke about or listened to the material they had to study compared to when he was forced to rely on his reading skills.
'And you're closing that gap as well. It's scary how much better you are at reading and writing now.'
Kuri was the same. Even though she paled in comparison to Urufu, her Japanese had improved by huge strides since summer. That realisation made Yukio a bit uncomfortable. He hadn't known how important the preferred language was for grading other subjects.
'Would I look like an idiot if I had to go to school abroad? Or even Noriko?' Yukio pushed the last thought away. Noriko failing exams was ludicrous. She was one of the best freshmen at Himekaizen after all, with results that probably placed Todai within reach of her aspirations.
In the background he heard Urufu's strangely melodic explanation when he gave examples in Japanese for the English text they were analysing. Whenever he read a sentence aloud for the group to hear the correct pronunciation Kuri interrupted him with a laugh and read it twice. As far as Yukio understood she delivered one version in some kind of British English and then in American English.
Urufu grimaced but never protested. Instead he told his group they should listen to Kuri because her spoken English far surpassed his.
”How good is she?” Yukio shouted when he tired of Urufu belittling himself.
Everyone by the whiteboard turned, and Yukio saw Kuri glance at Urufu rather than the one to blame for the interruption.
”Depends,” Urufu said. ”As for pronunciation she bulldozes right over me. There's no comparison.”
”Depends?” Kuri said to test the waters.
”Well, I'd guess your vocabulary is between half to two thirds of mine. What's your take?”