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Hinata Hajime came in third place in his very first schoolwide Quiz Bee when he was six years old. He knew all five of the great roads to Edo, and could recite his times tables, but misremembered what color you get when you put blue and red together. His parents were proud but not ecstatic, and took him out for ice cream, the same way they would have if he’d come in second, or fourth or fifth, or maybe even first, because no matter how well he did, he was theirs and they were proud.
His team won the relay in the field day games, even if Hinata was only the second-fastest. He got a solo in the assembly chorus at the end of the year: not the longest, or the highest, but only the best five singers in his year were chosen to sing at all. His report card was studded with little sticker stars and solid marks and comments from the teachers that he was well-mannered and got along with nearly everybody and never acted out.
He took his very first entrance exam the following year, to move up into a more prestigious elementary school. His score was acceptable--not the top, but acceptable--and so he got in. With more competition, the second- and third place trophies became third- and fourth- and fifth-, but by the time he hit fourth grade it was second- and third- again. He followed, but did not lead, his elementary school soccer team to victory. His test scores were always in the top ten percent. His report cards glowed with praise: hard worker, well-behaved, all-around good student. His parents pinned them to the bulletin board right next to the take-out menus, one on top of the other, until the stack grew so think his mother had to put them in a photo album instead.
But first place was always someone special. It was Mitsuoka Sachiko, the most extraordinary child actress that his school had ever seen, who left in fourth grade to star in a TV drama. It was Kato Akihiko, who broke the bell curve and skipped fifth grade completely. It was Fujimura Taro, who set speed records and was already in training for the Junior Olympics at the age of ten. It was Asahi Kaede, who was always picked first for basketball and dodgeball, wheelchair and all.
Hinata sat six exams for six different middle schools and was accepted to four of them. If you asked him which his top choice was, he wouldn’t have an answer: they were all prestigious schools in their own ways, and whatever accepted him, he’d take. In the end, his parents chose for him, based on each school’s rate of acceptance into top-level high schools.
At the assembly on Hinata’s first day of middle school, an alum came to speak to the entering seventh-graders: Sakaguchi Gen, hairstylist to the stars, wig-designer for all four of that year’s biggest films and two major Idol labels, trend-maker and fashion icon and activist. The boys in Hinata’s class snickered and called him names until the teacher shushed them, and Hinata was too startled and skeptical to call them out. Sakaguchi stood at the podium with his hair held high and talked for twenty minutes about opportunities he’d had since middle school, places he’d been and art he’d made and how hard he’d worked toward his dream, and Hinata realized that Sakaguchi was still in high school.
Hinata raised his hand and asked, “What high school?”
Everyone laughed at him of course, including Sakaguchi. “Where else but Hope’s Peak?”
That night, once Hinata’s homework was done, he found Hope’s Peak on the Internet. He flooded his mind with stories of amazing teenagers and their accomplishments: kids who already started strong and went on to become diplomats, world-renowned artists, public personalities, saviors. Inspirations. Well, they were certainly doing their job. Hinata overslept on his second day of seventh grade, scrambled to school on his skateboard with crumbs on his tie and made it barely in time, and set his nose to the grindstone.
His classmates recruited him into the soccer team, the festival committee, the student government. He lost out on class representative, but that was no obstacle, that left him more time to study. At mid-year exams, he raised his grades to second in his class--fifth in his grade--solid across the board. By finals, his average was the second-highest in the grade: but Michiko outscored him in chemistry and math, and Fujioka in English and civics, and Hiroyuki in literature and grammar and history. And the soccer team was doing well until its star forward and captain got hit by a car, and Hinata rallied the team to finish out the season as third in the prefecture. And the school festival was one of the best the prefecture had ever seen, and perfectly on budget, but Hinata couldn’t take the credit for booking the concert or solving the vendor disputes or designing the fliers.
At the end of the year, two ninth-graders from Hinata’s school were invited to Hope’s Peak: up-and-coming Kabuki actor Amane Setsuna, and the perfectly ordinary but heinously rich Kawabe Keiko. Well, more precisely, Amane had been invited, but Kawabe had been accepted, and taken an exam like for any other school.
“The test wasn’t even all that hard,” Kawabe said, surrounded by almost as many admirers as Amane.
If she can do it, Hinata thought, then so can I.
On the bulletin board over his desk, Hinata pinned the Hope’s Peak brochure, the list of entering students, their grades, their ranks, their futures. Right alongside that, he pinned his report cards, one after another as they came in, and turned the old ones over to his mom in turn. He was never at the top of the list, but he wasn’t at the bottom either, and that was enough. He took a practice test once a day, six days a week, even after school and cram school and clubs. The questions reappeared, the formulae reasserted themselves, the essays developed stock phrases and perfectly-worded answers. He even practiced filling out the entrance forms, enough that he could draw the kanji and check the boxes in his sleep. And his teachers had nothing but glowing words to say, and his parents bragged to their colleagues, and even if Hinata’s classmates found it a little weird they had their own tests to study for, and should have been working harder anyway.
All those second- and third places lost their worth: it didn’t matter that there was always someone better if that someone better didn’t want what Hinata wanted. Hiroyuki was gunning for a school in Kobe, Fujioka wanted to study abroad, Michiko thought Hope’s Peak was too expensive. The only person in Hinata’s year that could have been Super High School Level Anything was an aspiring Takarazienne and already recruited into the Takarazuka high school to learn more about her trade, and wasn’t sitting entrance exams at all. Hinata took her picture off his bulletin board when he found out she’d turned down recruitment. It only meant that the scouting committee was already looking, that then Talented kids were already drafted for the 77th class.
But the Reserve Department would take him, just like it had taken Kawabe. And any spot at Hope’s Peak, any chance to wear talent like a badge of honor, would be better than first place anywhere else.
He sat the exam in January of ninth grade, between two other exams for two other high schools, just in case. The questions were the same as the ones he’d practiced, shuffled like a deck of cards, and the essays came easily, almost as if someone else’s hand was guiding the pen. All that hard work had led to no struggle at all, had made the test and the forms and the pacing as autonomic as breathing. The only difficult thing at all was the wait.
He passed, of course. He tried not to get his hopes up, but he passed, toward the top of the middle of the pack: three hundred and forty-sixth out of the nine hundred or so admitted to the Reserve Department.
(His parents took him out for ice cream, just like when he was six. They cancelled the Golden Week vacation, since his tuition would be high, but there was still cause to celebrate.)
It was enough. No, it was more than enough: it was everything. Everything he worked for, everything he hoped for. He nearly floated through the front gate of Hope’s Peak, wandered through the magnificence until a researcher told him that no, he was in the wrong building, the Reserve Department is that way. “But you’ll be able to see it from the window,” the researcher said, “so look all you like.”
All the seats by the window in his classroom were already taken, by ambitious and envious sixteen-year-olds just like him.
It was like middle school, except he never placed higher than fifth in his class. It was like elementary school, except the report cards didn’t come with stickers. His teachers double-checked his name on their rosters when they called on him for answers and recitations. His classmates had their clubs, and their competitions, their hobbies, their dreams: some were already enrolled in cram school to prepare for exams for University, because the Hope’s Peak name wouldn’t be enough. Hinata followed suit, not to be outdone, never to be outdone.
On his first round of midterms, he placed forty-eighth out of nine hundred and two: three places shy of the top five percent.
***
Hope came in the form of an e-mail, requesting his presence before the Scouting Committee and the Headmaster.
Hinata was on a short list, they said. A very short list. So short that the honor of sitting here alone was exclusive. So short that he’d been invited, not just accepted. So short, there was only one copy of the non-disclosure agreement for him to sign.
He read it carefully. He read all of the forms carefully, every single one, more thoroughly than any test he’d ever taken. And he understood that this might be the last time he signed his name as Hinata Hajime.
But whoever he’d be after this would never place anywhere but first.
***