Chapter Text
Age ten comes with quite a few changes for Light, beyond her own internal realization that she would die for Sayu.
At the end of the school year, Sachiko declares that she’s old enough to not need a babysitter (as if she hadn’t been going without one for literally half of her new life), and that it’s about time for her to get an allowance, if she proves herself responsible.
“You’ll have to look after your sister, of course, and do your chores. But if you do all of that and continue to do well in school, I think a weekly allowance of ¥5000 would do nicely.” Sachiko smiled happily at Light, as if she hadn’t just gutted the girl’s income.
“Would I be able to take Sayu to the park, and the pool, and the ball courts?” Light asks instead, trying to think of some positive spins to this devastating financial hit.
“Only if you’re back before dark and you leave a note so your father and I know where you are,” Sachiko says.
Light nods in agreement, thankful that even if the crime rate of this world was through the roof, at least the ‘90s parenting style of letting kids do fuck-knows-what fuck-knows-where still prevailed. She wasn’t quite sure the larger amount of freedom was worth the financial setback, but at least there was some trade-off.
For that March break between school years, Light walks Sayu around their neighborhood, introduces the both of them to some of the other kids, and signs both Yagami girls up for swimming lessons at the local pool. Swimming was a vital life skill, and one that Light remembered loving once upon a past life. Playing diving games with a bunch of rowdy kids and splashing around with her sister is fun, and Light enjoys the tiny slivers of a denied childhood, despite herself.
She starts Grade 5 of elementary school that April, her goal for the year clear in her mind. She breezes through the little review quiz the teacher passed out, and while her peers make their way through the questions, Light brainstorms different sources of income.
‘Dog walking? Pet sitting? No, that wouldn’t work. Most normal people don’t want to leave a ten-year-old alone in a stranger’s house.’ Light crossed yet another job off her list and bit back a scream. ‘There has to be something I can do.’
Sachiko paid the “babysitter” an average of ¥12,000 per week. This money had made up a majority of Light’s supplemental income: a way to feed her growing stocks and a nest fund to fall back on in case of emergencies. While this new world had its differences from her old one, and would most likely only further diverge as time went on, it hadn’t gotten to the point that Light couldn’t trust the economic trends she had already studied a lifetime ago.
All that is to say, Light knew her Microsoft stocks were going to do just fine. She’d still make a good turnaround when she sold them in a few years. But Sachiko more than halved Light’s guaranteed passive income, and unless she could find another way to earn money, she’d have almost no safety net if something unexpected happened.
‘I wish I was taller,’ Light thought, groaning as her head thunked onto her desk, ‘If my looks matched my mind, I could pass myself off as a teenager and get an after-school job no problem. But noooo-oooo-oooo, the shitty dark echo of my old world still has child labor laws.’
Light alternated brainstorming and moping sessions until the teacher asked that all papers be passed forward. “If any of this content seemed difficult, I recommend connecting with one of the school’s tutoring services,” he told the room as he dismissed them for lunch, “I want each and every one of you to succeed, and the sooner I can help you get the resources you need, the better. You’ll be taking junior high entrance exams next year, and while that may seem far off now, I urge you all to think about what steps you want to take in the future.”
It was as Light was following the herd of students out of the room that the penny dropped, and her way forward became clear.
*****
“Takahashi-sensei?”
Takahashi Yuudai lifted his head up from his lunch to see Yagami Light standing in the doorway.
“May I speak with you for a moment?”
“Of course, come in.” The young girl shuffled forward, stopping right in front of his desk. “What can I help you with, Yagami-chan?”
“I was hoping to speak with you about the school’s tutoring services?”
Yuudai felt some tension bleed out of his shoulders. He may not have been teaching for very long, but it didn’t take a genius to know when one of his students was behind. He didn’t even think Yagami-chan had read some of the questions before she was circling an answer and moving on. She had spent less than five minutes on a test designed for a three-hour block, and then split the rest of her time between doodling in a notebook and napping at her desk. A second student didn’t finish their test until the two hour mark, and even then, Yuudai had returned it to them, pointing out that they had missed a back page of questions.
‘She clearly got spooked by the review test and wants to get ahead of things,’ Yuudai thought, ‘Thank God she’s self-aware. I was not looking forward to breaking the news.’
“At the welcoming ceremony, the head tutor mentioned peer tutors? And that the school pays peer tutors for their time?”
Takahashi Yuudai focused back in to the conversation at hand. “Every day after classes, adult tutors meet in the school library and assist any students who wish to come. These pro tutors are often paired with peer tutors, who are students who’ve taken the content and passed with high enough grades. These peer tutors are able to help the students in their grade and the years below them.”
Yagami Light nodded. “Okay. And where do I sign up to work as one of these peer tutors?”
“I can help you find a tutor beginning next week,” Yuudai said, assuming—hoping—that the girl misspoke.
“Wonderful, I’ll keep that in mind. And where do I sign up to tutor others?”
The teacher winced. It seemed she hadn’t minced her words, and now Yuudai would have to play the bad guy.
“While I think it’s admirable that you want to help your peers, I cannot sign off on you tutoring unless I am confident in your grades and understanding of your own content,” he tried to explain gently, "Furthermore—"
“But wasn’t I top of the class last year?”
“You were—you were?” Yuudai pulled out the student profiles the Grade 4 teachers had provided him. He hadn’t had the time to read all of them in-depth, but Yuudai had already made note of who would most likely need further help in their academics. Yagami Light had not been on that list, which was why he had paid so much attention when she guessed through her review test.
Takahashi flipped through the student profiles, found Yagami-chan’s, and then blinked stupidly at her grades and testing results.
‘She wasn’t just top of her class, she had the best grades in the school! And her national standard test results…’ Yuudai double-checked the table of scores. ‘She was in the 99th percentile of Grade 4 children across the nation!’
Yuudai cleared his throat. “Be that as it may, grades alone do not determine who serves as a tutor. The school also wants upstanding students who take academics seriously, and you clearly did not attempt to complete the review test to the best of your abilities. If you demonstrate better effort later in the year, I may allow you to sign on as a tutor next term.”
Yagami gazed thoughtfully at him. “I put forth exactly as much effort as the test deserved.”
“You spent less than five minutes on a three-hour test.”
“Five minutes was more than enough time to finish.” The girl held his gaze before making a thoughtful hum. “Have you started grading my exam yet?”
“No, I was planning to get to them tonight,” Takahashi said.
“Could you please grade mine?” Yagami asked, sitting down at her desk. “I’m confident in my answers, and I’m sure once you see my final grade, you’ll understand that I did not need the additional time.”
She then folded her hands on her desk and smiled at him. Yuudai slowly pushed his lunch to the side, pulled out Yagami-chan’s test, and then pulled out the answer key. He had meant to look at one page to humor her, but the first page, a review on the rock cycle and erosion, was perfectly correct. As was the second page about basic grammar rules. And the third page about long division.
Takahashi Yuudai spent the next ten minutes double and triple-checking the answer key, eyes widening as page after page came back correct. Of the one hundred multiple-choice questions, Yagami-chan had a perfect one hundred. Her responses to the short-answer questions were similarly insightful, from her basic Japanese literature analysis to the simple sentences she translated to English. What truly surprised Yuudai, however, was her response to the extra credit math question. The question was a word problem written in overly complicated English. Takahashi had only included it as an extra challenge, not expecting anyone to get it correct. But there it was on Yagami-chan’s paper: the correct answer written in a neat little box.
“This last question, you didn’t show your work,” Yuudai said, “May you please work it out on the board?”
“Of course.” Yagami rose from her chair and grabbed a piece of chalk.
“There are fifty more than twice as many red balls as green balls in a ball pit,” he began to read in English, only to immediately stop short when Yagami wrote ‘2g + 50 = r’ on the board.
Yagami looked at Yuudai. “What’s the next part, sensei?”
“....There are half as many yellow balls in the pit as red balls.” Yagami wrote ‘1/2r = y’. “There are one-hundred-and-five yellow balls in the pit.” She immediately added ‘y = 105’ below her two equations. “What is the total number of red, green, and yellow balls in the pit?”
Yagami-chan immediately plugged in her values to find that r = 210 and that g = 80, meaning that there were 395 balls total. Perfectly correct and not at all how Takahashi expected a Grade 5 student to find the answer.
He had intended for students to read through the problem in its entirety and then work backwards, finding that the number of yellow balls was given to them, that the number of red balls was twice as many yellow, and then to find the amount of green based off of the red. And again, that was if and only if the student could first decipher the poorly-phrased, intentionally winding English the word problem was written in.
Yagami had worked forward through the problem, confidently and immediately writing basic algebraic equations for how the number of balls related to each other. While the general idea was exactly how Takahashi wanted his students to find their answer, he didn’t expect them to utilize math skills many didn’t learn until high school, or their last year of junior high.
'The answer key hasn’t left my bag all morning, so I’m confident Yagami didn’t steal it. And she was done much faster than all the other students, so she couldn’t have copied from anyone. She truly knew everything on that test,' Yuudai thought to himself. He then immediately realized, 'I spent twice as long grading Yagami-chan’s paper than she did completing it.'
“Is that all, sensei?” the girl asked.
“Ah, yes, that’ll be all, Yagami-chan,” Takahashi Yuudai said, “Once you complete the application to become a peer tutor, I’ll be sure to sign my approval.”
Yagami beamed. “Thank you, sensei. I’ll be sure to get that to you first thing tomorrow. Have a good lunch!”
The girl left with a skip in her step. Takahashi waited until she had closed the door and surely rounded the corner of the hall before he picked up his desk phone and began punching in a number on its buttons.
“Hi, Miho, you mentioned that you got a new job at that high school, right? In administration? ….Yes, congrats again. Listen, how much would it be to order one set of high school textbooks and workbooks? ….Why do I need them? Well, you see, I have this student….”