The reason for failing the exam
“Mark, please teach this ignorant me. Everyone boarding this ship is…”
“Oh, they passed that harsh selection and now have the honor of entering the Royal Military Academy on the capital planet Diamond. I had heard cadets got treated as NCOs, but I never imagined we’d get taken to the capital on such a luxurious ship. You must have been surprised too.”
Everyone including me, all ten people, are officer candidates.
For the first time I closely reviewed the documents in my hand.
It says a charter will carry the candidates tomorrow from the spaceport so as not to be late.
It says [candidates].
That’s when I spotted the source of the discomfort I had vaguely felt until now.
For some unknown reason, I seem to have been sent to the capital planet Diamond as an officer candidate.
Lucky…? No, was it luck?
More than that, Mark mentioned luck too but what does he mean?
Unable to understand so many things, I frankly told Mark everything that had happened until now and got him to answer my many questions.
Well, I glossed over thinking of suicide after being rejected by her,
giving a vague explanation that I failed to get into Myeongjin University, and as an orphan had no choice but to enlist to earn money for college.
I did tell him about being nominated by recommendation as a scholarship student for that department at the prestigious First Royal University.
“Ooh, Nao’s amazing. I can’t even imagine it. But that may have been the right decision.”
“So failing the Myeongjin exam leaves me high and dry, huh.”
“Yeah, you were just unlucky.”
“Luck again…”
“Luck? Well listen up. It’s probably talk that doesn’t reach your circumstances. Regarding that luck I mentioned before, I heard an unusually high number of conglomerate family scions took the Myeongjin University exam this year. So I heard not a single general scholarship student like you passed.”
“General students like me? What do non-general applicants mean?”
Mark properly explained after that.
In the first place, why private schools can accept scholarship students despite the financial burden of tuition waivers lies in the motive to secure as many excellent students as possible.
However, they can’t operate on just that.
So they also accept donations from the so-called wealthy class.
While accepting donations sounds good, they apparently hold something like auctions.
Of course a certain standard is required, but I heard it’s about two ranks lower than general applicants.
In exchange, regarding the benefits of entering as a scholarship student – tuition and dorm fee exemption, well it probably costs around 20 million gold in total over four years, but they’re made to pay fifty to a hundred times that amount in donations.
But Mark said even that amount wasn’t enough this year.
“Because so many children of conglomerates took the exam, I heard double that amount was needed.”
While Mark’s family is probably quite wealthy too, that amount was impossible for them it seems.
Well, without it explicitly reaching his family, he apparently caught wind from various sources, so Mark took exams at a good number of universities as advance preparation.
“Our business has some dealings with quite a few military types, and I also heard that in years like this, fewer children of military families apply, so my old man told me to take the military academy exam just in case. The status is far higher of course, but more than anything it’s way better than being ordered around by my cousin in the future.”
“I-Is that so? But I never even took the exam.”
“Eh, really? Oh, it was probably because this country has an excellent data management system.”
“Data management?”
“Right. Nao was nominated for a scholarship to that prestigious First Royal University. Of course your excellent grades are on file, so when you enlisted in the military, they probably made a rushed decision based on the data brought up from your ID. I heard qualified officers are desperately needed.”
Hearing his explanation, something came to mind for me.
I recalled the surprised face of the receptionist when I enlisted in the military.
She must have received some instructions after seeing my data then.
But still, this country’s data management is amazing.
I was also again surprised, albeit belatedly, by the disparity from differences in lineage.
Hearing Mark’s story, I understood Gian’s talk of luck, and why those around me knew the college results before me.
Information properly flows in advance to the upper class it seems.
Probably…I bet it leaked to the orphanage teachers via Tet-chan.
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Maybe they knew even before the acceptance announcements, possibly while I was still taking the entrance exam.
From Mark’s words, it seems they were informed upon application that general admissions had no chance.
But I still can’t accept that if my failure was already decided before taking the exam, they should have informed me beforehand.
No matter how much a facade there is, my life was on the line, I want to say, but in the end I’m just an orphan.
I guess this is how I’m treated.
As expected, I don’t want to live long in a world like this.
Well, my treatment after graduating probably won’t change much from now.
As someone like me, I’ll doubtless be assigned to the most dangerous post soon.
It’ll take time until graduating from the academy, but well, that’s not so long a wait. I’ll endure it.
Mark is a really nice guy.
Our seats were next to each other on the spaceship, and we got quite friendly, chatting a lot.
I feel a little guilty about not having hope for the future, but still we found common ground in our talk, and I was able to spend the most enjoyable time I’ve had recently.
As expected of a high-speed spacecraft the kingdom boasts of.
My home planet Nehonium, though in the capital star sector, was in the Yttrium system neighboring the Dain system where Diamond, the capital planet was, in a different star system.
We were able to arrive after only some ten hours even with movement between neighboring systems.
We arrived safely at the Farren Spaceport in Diamond, the second planet of the star Dain at the center of the capital star sector, where the First Fleet – the space military fleet of the capital region – is based.
Since this spaceport is only used by the military, it’s surrounded entirely by bases.
The Royal Military Academy I’ll be attending is located in one area of those bases.
Officer training isn’t only done here for the military.
There are military academies on the main planets of every fleet region without fail, but this place is special.
It’s a special school made to train what might be called career officers in the space military, and its graduates are candidates to become admirals in the future.
It’s an elite academy where about half of graduates who remain in the military until reaching admiral age rise to become admirals.
In short, it trains people who can become admirals with fifty percent probability if they survive and stay in the military.
Therefore, the number of people granted admission here each year is strictly selected from around the entire kingdom to be just around one hundred.
Calling it the whole kingdom, this Kingdom of Diamond consists of five star systems, with only the capital star sector and Borazon star sector being multiple star binary systems.
We came from Nehonium, the main planet of the Yttrium system, one of the binary pairs in the capital star sector.
One high-speed ship after another gathered at this spaceport from each star system, and it seems ours was the last arrival.
After arriving, we were lined up in the area used by the academy and held our first assembly.
The entrance ceremony is officially tomorrow, but this seemed to be for confirming solidarity among us cadets who would live together from now on.
A Colonel referred to as the Student Director got up on the platform and began lecturing us..
This novel has slow pacing and includes so much details. The story’s momentum doesn’t really pick up until after the third of the book, and the volume is actually much thicker (almost double) than a regular LN. Join the membership to start reading further right now!
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Why is there a notice stating “YOU ARE READING STOLEN TRANSLATION. READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT GADETIZEDPANDA.COM”? But I am reading at Gadetizedpanda.com though.
Fixed, thanks
Wow, only ten hours to reach the neighboring star system. That transport shuttle is considerably fast.