Chapter 025: Grades

After the first tutor session Tsugumi and Higura set up a tutor meeting time for the days of the week. They decided that Wednesday and Friday were the best days to do tutor sessions since it would still give them freedom to do the things they would rather do. However the deal was that if she continued to have bad grades they would increase the amount of days he would tutor her, obviously this was the last thing Higura wanted but he had to do it so Tsugumi would be motivated to actually try and work.

It was Wednesday meaning it was a tutor day for Higura. He walked to the library, took one of the available seats and waited for Tsugumi to arrive. She was normally 5 minutes late but she never told Higura why she's always late and he already thought it didn't matter much since it's just 5 minutes.

'So this is already the 5th tutor session…I wonder if her grades have improved since the last time we met…Please tell me they didn't get even lower…'

He heard the library door opened and Tsugumi speed walked over to the table that he was at. She sat down in front of him and pulled out the notebook he gave her in the first session. He's been using the same notebook to write her notes since so it's been getting pretty full.

"S-So what are we doing today?"

"…I'm going to ignore the fact that you stuttered and just go into the lesson. We're going to be doing some history work today."

"Okay."

He pulled out papers he had made up and gave them to her.

"First let me see how many you get right here."

She looked at the paper and slowly reached for it. She began working on it and after about 15 minutes she gave the paper back to Higura.

"H-How did I do?"

"…"

He was looking the paper over and finally let out a sigh.

"How long will it take until you get a passing grade?"

"Did I do that bad?"

"Unfortunately you got a 0 out of 15…Maybe you just need a change of pace…Come on, we're going somewhere."

"O-Oh okay!"

She quickly put all her stuff in her bag and followed Higura out of the library. They left the school grounds and walked down the street to someplace that seemed to be quite a ways away. After walking without talking Higura began to ask her some questions.

"What is the name of the earliest known culture existing in Japan?"

"Huh? Oh um…Yayoi!"

"Wrong. It's Jomon."

"Oh…I'll get the next one right!"

"Murasaki Shikibu wrote what may have been the world's first novel around 1000 A.D. What was its name?"

"Umm…M-Monkey?"

"No, it's The Tale of Genji."

"Haha…"

"The official introduction of what religion to Japan was dated at 552 AD?"

"I know this one at least! Buddhism!"

"Congrats, you got one right. That's at least an improvement from zero…Let's change the subject."

"To what?"

"Ummm…I guess this will work, should be simple. How far way is the sun?"

"Ummm…I think it's about 100 million?"

"Almost, it's about 93 million. Next question, what is the hardest natural substance on Earth?"

"Maybe quartz?"

"Once again your wrong, it's diamond. We just went over this in our last session. You need to try and retain the things you learn."

"I'll try my best from now on."

"What is the most abundant gas in the Earth's atmosphere?"

"Oxygen! No wait! Ummm…Maybe it really is oxygen…But it feels wrong so…"

"Times up. Nitrogen. If we had an abundance of oxygen insects would be much, much larger than they are. As an example, dragonflies would be the size of hawks and that's just with 30 percent oxygen being in the atmosphere."

"Hey you didn't say there was a time limit! And why did you have to bring up bugs! I'm terrified of bugs!"

"Ha, I just thought that you were answering with the first thing that came into your head so you wouldn't need to know about a timer if you were answering that fast."

"Mean. Can we just finish this up?"

"Well I did get the information I wanted. So let's call it a day here and I'll go use what I learned to try and help you with your studying."

"What could you have learned?"

"Quite a lot actually. More then you probably think."

"Seems a little suspicious…I still don't trust you fully so this is just making me more cautious."

"I don't care if you trust me or not, I'm just trying to get the tutoring over faster so I don't have to keep doing this."

"…"

After walking for a little longer they split up and went in the directions of their homes.

'Well I know that now…I wonder how I could incorporate it into her lessons…Guess I'll do a little more experimenting.'