Magician of Cote

Volume 3- Prologue

Another fragment of memory to be dug up.

In the process of erasing unnecessary memories, there are things that come to mind.

“Take your seat and state your name.”

State your name—.The brain received the instruction, and the brain quickly transmitted the signal to the throat.

"Kiyotaka.”

It was a symbol. A sequence of letters. An important element to distinguish humans. All of us White Room students were taught names as one of the ways to identify individuals. However, when we were young, we weren’t told our surnames, and all the instructors called us by our first names.

Although I had no way of knowing it at the time, there would be an inconvenience created by teaching us our surnames. It seems that it was a rule based on the fear that it might lead to the children’s identification in the future. By the time the children were four years old, a new curriculum was beginning to be implemented one after another.

"Now then, let’s commence the test.”

The most important of these was a written test. All students straightened their posture and faced the test papers. The test consisted of ten writing systems: hiragana, katakana, English alphabets, Numbers, Latin alphabets, Devanagri, Greek alphabets, Chinese characters, Arabic alphabets and simple kanji.

Since we’d already spent a whole year being thoroughly taught reading and writing when we were three, there was no hesitation in their fingertips’ movements as they held the pen.

The students were penalized by corporal punishment, if they didn’t achieve a certain level of performance in a limited amount of time. In addition, the students were also required to have good handwriting.

Even if your handwriting was good, you won’t receive any points if you get the answer wrong, but if you write poorly in a hurry, points will be deducted from your score, so we had to be careful.

No one at this facility asked whether or not we can solve the problems we face. This is only true because the only children left were those that were capable of solving them. Those who couldn’t were dropped at the age of three.

Our group, called the fourth generation, had a total of 74 students in the early years. However, as mentioned above, children who were deemed to be unable to do so at the age of three had already dropped out of the White Room. Therefore, all 61 of us then shared almost all of our time together, excluding bedtime.

The written test was 60 minutes long, but there was enough time to complete it in about half to two-thirds of the time limit if we solved the questions without hesitation. This was true for all the previous written exams held in the White Room.

Solve the equation and move on to the next. Determine the answer and write it down. At the same time, you review the previous question to see if you’ve made any mistakes.

When I finished, I raised my right hand straight up. After signaling that I was done, I turned the paper over. Getting a perfect score on the written exam was the minimum requirement. At the same time, you were required to be a neat and speedy writer.

This was the 7th written exam since I turned four years old, and I’ve won first place four times in a row. The first time I took the written test, I was ranked 24th, the second time 15th, and the third time 7th. I didn’t have a good start.

It took me a while to figure out how the written exams worked, its logic, and its efficiency. Once I solved that, I haven’t been overtaken, and I myself have been improving my certainty even more. The gap between me and the second-place finisher was widening with each written exam, and now the time gap was about ten minutes.