The day had come, mathematics and history, those were on the schedule for today. I breezed through the maths exam, banging a solid 70 more likely than not. At 11am, our history exam began.
"Alright students, remember to answer the questions in detail and double check all of your answers, no sloppy mistakes"
Yeah, yeah, I get it.
After 2 hours I put my pen down, I'm way too far out of practice for this shit, but I felt like this exam would yield good results for me,
probably a 100 to be honest.
The next day I had my Science, Geography and English, they went without major issues. The day after the school conducted the practical exams, my art examination was fine in the morning, but my class was scheduled for our physical exam around noon. This exam would include timed
running, pushups, pull-ups, endurance testing and all sorts of other
things, grip strength and strength tests were included.
"Right, this one's easy, so just put all your force into the grip, then your result will be recorded" Mr Kite, the P.E teacher was one hell of a fit guy, with a pencil mustache on his lip. I was 7th to do the test, putting all my force into this one, my result was recorded as 71kg. The results were collated and shown to the class, I hadn't topped it by a decent margin, 4 kilograms to be exact, but my result wasn't too bad.
In the timed 100 metre, I was recorded at 10.87 seconds, Macsen came second with 11.2 seconds. In the strength test I ended as one of the weakest boys in the class, my max bench being 32 kilograms, I wasn't
very high in those rankings, matter of fact I was weaker than some of the girls. When the last test of the day came, I was ready for that at least, it was a 2 kilometre run. I completed it first, setting a time of 8:23. Randan and Macsen finished within seconds of each other but I never checked who won that.
I had ended the P.E exam in a favourable position, I had done very well in it.
Next up was our final practical, the music exam. It was to perform any kind of music in front of the class. Randan had chosen to sing, I didn't know how good he was though, the other guys decided on instruments they either played or kinda liked.
I, on the contrare, left it up to chance, deciding that the person who went before me would decide, whatever they played, I'd play.
My friends all went through the exam with varying degrees of skill, Holly completely fumbled hers and was certain to fail, Santhush went okay, Macsen and Randan went well, whilst Oliver decided to play near
perfectly and one-up them.
I somehow managed to go last, but before me, Sakurako Egawa of all people stepped up, performing a piece on the violin. It was perfect, an absolutely beautiful performance, the only problem with it was that I have no damn clue how to play the violin. I quickly reassessed my options when Egawa came up close to me, pointed at me.
"Play the piano"
"Huh?"
"I know you haven't decided what to play, play the piano"
"Fine"
Guess I was playing the piano, an instrument I did know. Off the top of my head I chose to play "Winter Wind", Chopin's Op. 25, No. 11.
/Daniel stepped up to the piano, it was a steinway. Taking his seat, he had no prepared sheet music, it was like he had decided on the spot that he was going to play this, he hadn't even told me about it.
While the competition right now was between me and Egawa, Randan and Macsen put in solid tries, so did Chris Lawson and Quentin Timble. In all honesty I didn't know what to expect, after becoming privy to his true talents, I had no clue what to think about the guy now. Either way he
seemed to have prepared himself, placed his hands onto the keys, and he
began to play. The performance, without sheet music or preparation time, was
incredible. His timing and skill was impeccable, there wasn't a miss in the piece, and it was played as if Chopin himself had performed. How the hell was he this good? Was this what he meant by family stuff? Why is he like a piano prodigy on the side?
The entire class was stunned, not a single person anticipated him doing something that impressive, even Egawa seemed a little surprised, less so than she probably should've been though. Was this a sneak peak into the true skills of Daniel Barrington?/
I had finished my performance, seemingly even the teacher was shocked, but I just went back to my seat in the group and was dismissed with the class not long after.
"Dude, what the hell was that?" Oliver immediately asked me.
"I used to play piano as a kid, I haven't tickled the ivories properly in a while though, probably two or three years"
"Are you for real!?"
"Yeah pretty much"
"So are you seriously a genius, this is insane"
"Yeah I am"
"No hesitation there"
"You know you definitely are too, we're one and the same in that regard at least"
"Hmm"