Taking the College Entrance Exam?

"Are you heading this way too?"
"Don't tell me you're keeping tabs on me?"
"Kirishima isn't coming."
……
"I can't get in touch with him at all."
"You knew all about this, didn't you?"
"Didn't he mention anything to you?"
"Aren't you best friends?"
Iida Risa's aggressive barrage of three questions left Kikuchi Hiroki instantly speechless. As Kirishima's openly acknowledged best friend, even Kirishima's actual girlfriend took it for granted that the two of them shared a bond that surpassed her own status as his true girlfriend.

Yet, faced with these three accusations, Kikuchi Hiroki found that he had no other option than to answer that he knew nothing. Perhaps at this very moment, deep within his own heart, he was relentlessly questioning himself, and questioning the utterly untraceable Kirishima: Aren't we best friends? When something this serious happened, when such an important decision was made, why didn't you tell me?

In the end, the only thing Kikuchi Hiroki could manage to say was, "I really don't know anything." It was a pale, unconvincing-sounding sentence, yet it was the absolute truth.
"You've got to be kidding me, Kirishima." Iida Risa let out a feeble murmur of reproach, burying her face in her hands. A moment later, Kikuchi Hiroki heard muffled sobs escaping from between her fingers.

Instinctively, he wanted to look at her and wondered if he should say something. After a brief moment of helplessness, another cold voice in his head chimed in: This tearful act really looks like she's putting on a show. She probably doesn't believe a word he said and is intentionally pulling a sympathy scam, right? With this thought, he pulled back his gaze and stared silently out the window.
……

"Alright, cut!"
With the assistant director's command, the bus driver slowly pulled over to the side of the road, and the tense film crew finally relaxed. Choruses of "Good work today~" echoed through the cramped space of the bus compartment.

Everyone sitting on this bus was a member of the production crew, including the extras who appeared in the scene where Aozora's character, Kikuchi Hiroki, waited at the bus stop.
However, the students walking out of the cram school alongside him in that particular scene were genuine. The production team had secured permission to film from the cram school and recruited extras who consented to appear directly from among the students currently attending classes.

Fortunately, his exit from the cram school was shot in a wide angle, where the students only appeared as a blurred, indistinct crowd leaving the building, their faces completely unidentifiable. This dispelled the concerns of students who were reluctant to appear on camera, and with almost no effort at all, their consent was obtained.

Both Aozora and Yukie Nakama stood up together and bowed to the crew members, saying, "Thank you all for your hard work." After the polite greetings, the two of them turned toward each other with a tacit understanding, conveying the joy of a successful shoot through their eyes and smiles.
"You two did a phenomenal job."
"Thank you. It's such a relief that everything went smoothly." Aozora exchanged pleasantries with the assistant director. Yukie Nakama sat quietly beside Aozora, maintaining the exact distance they had kept during filming, playing the role of the attentive listener with a docile expression.
"The bus is about to move, please take your seats everyone," the driver's voice echoed from the front.
……

By the time they wrapped up, it was already close to eleven o'clock at night. Yukie Nakama was picked up by her manager, Mr. Takamiya. After exchanging farewells with the crew, Yukie Nakama got into the back seat of the silver Toyota, and the car quickly drove away from the street.

Aozora stretched lazily. "Let's pack up quickly and head back, Tsutsumi-san." As a versatile utility player for the production, Aozora very consciously stayed behind to handle the final duties.
"Speaking of which," Aozora muttered, looking at the blue sign of the cram school reading 'Shinyo Cram School', "students really have it tough."

Yukihiko Tsutsumi casually lit a cigarette, took a drag, blew out a few rings of smoke, and pointed at the cram school with the hand holding the cigarette between his fingers. "This cram school is quite famous. The kids who come here are all aiming for top-tier universities. You can't underestimate them."
……

"Yeah... at the end of the day, the future belongs to them." Aozora intentionally spoke in a tone reminiscent of a television drama script, while naturally recalling the circumstances surrounding his own withdrawal from the cram school.

In truth, Aozora's previous incarnation was by no means a poor student. He had attended a high school with an average deviation value of 65. His first-choice university was Waseda University, his second choice was Yokohama National University, and his safety school was Kindai University, whose entrance exams he had already successfully passed.

Yet, he still harbored the stubborn pride typical of a youth. After failing to get into his dream universities, and harboring a lingering desire to give it one more shot for another year, he proposed moving to Tokyo for cram school. His family had supported this decision and covered the hefty tuition fees.

While ordinary Japanese high school students might seem to enjoy leisurely schedules, abundant club activities, carefree romances, delinquent phases, youth-fueled passion, or saving the world, there was one major prerequisite: none of these people intended to get into a good university.

Compared to high schools in China, Japanese high school curricula could be considered vastly more relaxed. The scenario of being buried under literal mountains of test papers was simply impossible. Even a high school with a high deviation value didn't necessarily mean its teaching quality was exceptionally high; it merely indicated that the school's overall academic atmosphere and student caliber were top-notch.

Where Japanese high school students truly did their studying was at the private cram schools, known as juku, situated right outside their regular schools. Unless a student was the kind of genius who could effortlessly master all knowledge as if it were a game, or didn't mind attending a junior college, sports college, or vocational school after graduation, attending a cram school was an absolute necessity.

There, cram school teachers would conduct individual diagnostic tests for them, set concrete goals, and from then on, the students' very first task after school every day was to attend cram school classes and work through practice exams. Even after returning home at night, they had to stay up late reviewing. Despite such grueling efforts, getting into those prestigious universities with high deviation values remained exceptionally difficult.

Therefore, if Japanese students wanted to enter a decent university, they truly had to survive a brutal and cutthroat battle. Furthermore, aside from specialized tutoring, the most prominent feature of these cram schools was that the tuition was exorbitantly expensive—something families with less-than-ideal financial situations struggled immensely to afford.

"Listening to your tone," Tsutsumi teased, "you sound somewhat resentful."
"Naturally, because I never got to go to university myself," Aozora admitted cleanly and decisively. Although his past self had crawled out of mountains of test papers, braved the single-plank bridge of the national college entrance examination amidst fierce competition, and ultimately entered a fairly decent university in his home province, in this lifetime, he was strictly and undeniably nothing more than a high school graduate.

At this thought, Aozora couldn't help blurting out, "If possible, it would be nice to go back and attend university now."