Could Have Been Worse (Kaylee's Exam)

Kaylee was dreading this exam. She had been in Japan for only a few months, her grasp of kanji reflecting this. She had managed to get hold of the basics, but it was obvious she had the fluency of a child. In order to get into this school, and out of her awful situation, she had “slightly” overstated her fluency. A prestigious school such as Shiketsu wasn’t going to waste time teaching Japanese after all! She had an English-to-Japanese dictionary, and had watched countless videos on how to read kanji, but even with her desperate preparations, she was still a nervous wreck by the time Miss Aimi walked in.

"Today is the first exam of the year, pretty basic stuff. Morality, Law, and order of operations in regard to crisis situations. You should already know your priorities when arriving on a scene and this should all be simple. You'll have about an hour so take your time with the written portions. Remember, you are striving to become HEROES! I believe in you all, so prove me right."

Kaylee could just about understand spoken Japanese, but the precise punctuation the teacher used made it much easier to comprehend.

"And remember, if I catch you peeking at someone else’s paper, it'll be a lot harder for you to write your answers within the time limit. So, behave. You may begin."

She turned her paper over, and in her panicked state of mind, all the kanji just looked like random scribbles! Her eyes darted over the paper, frantically trying to make sense of any of it, but it felt like all her studying had flown out of her head! The scribbles of the other students’ pens were a cacophony in her head: why were they writing so damn loud?! She looked up at the clock: how had it already been three minutes?!
“Calm Down!” She mentally shouted to herself. She forced herself to take a deep breath, hold it, then slowly exhale. She repeated the breaths three more times before looking down at the exam once more. If she couldn’t keep her head about her in a simple written paper, what chance did she have of doing so in a real situation?
She realized her mistake, she had been trying to read the questions left to right, rather than the columns top to bottom! Slowly, using her pen as a guide, she mouthed out the kanji, and began to make sense of the questions.

By the time that time ran out, she had just barely finished the final question, with no time to review her answers. It could have gone worse, she reassured herself. It could have been a LOT worse.