The next study session started the same way the last one had, Nadia already seated with her laptop open before anyone else arrived, though the yoga mat had mercifully been retired in favor of an actual stack of printed practice exams.
"Full mock test today," she announced the second Jason walked in, sliding a packet across the table before he’d even sat down. "Timed conditions. No talking during the exam portion. We grade after."
"No warmup?" Vivian asked, dropping into her usual seat. "No breathing exercises to ease us in?"
"You survived the breathing exercises. You’ll survive this." Nadia didn’t look up from arranging her own packet, corners squared, pen already uncapped and positioned at a precise right angle beside it. "Eight days left. We don’t have time for warmups anymore."
Eight. Jason felt the number settle in beside its usual companion, the one only he could see, currently sitting at exactly the same count, both clocks ticking down in perfect, unwelcome synchrony.
Bree slid into her corner seat, tucking her legs up the same way she always did, and gave Jason a small nod as she accepted her own packet from Nadia. "She’s been like this since Tuesday. Full lockdown mode."
"I heard that," Nadia said. "And it’s working. You’re welcome in advance."
"We haven’t even started yet."
"I’m preemptively taking credit. Efficient use of time." Nadia clicked her pen, the sound sharp and final. "Everyone. Forty-five minutes. Phones away. Go."
The room went quiet in a way it hadn’t managed all week, actual focus settling over the table, four heads bent over four packets, pens scratching in an uneven, overlapping rhythm. Jason worked through the questions steadily, catching himself once or twice glancing up at the others, Nadia’s expression locked in fierce concentration, Vivian chewing the end of her pen between questions, Bree moving through hers with the same calm, unhurried pace she brought to everything, never once looking rushed even as the minutes ticked audibly down on Nadia’s phone timer propped against the center of the table.
When the timer finally buzzed, Nadia snapped her pen down like she’d been personally offended by the sound. "Time. Pencils down. Trade with the person to your left."
"There’s four of us in a circle, that instruction doesn’t actually specify a direction," Vivian said.
"Clockwise. Obviously."
"It wasn’t obvious, that’s why I asked."
"It’s always obvious. You just like arguing with me." Nadia was already sliding her packet toward Bree, entirely unbothered by the pushback, and the room shuffled through the exchange until everyone held someone else’s answers.
Jason ended up with Vivian’s packet, her handwriting looping and rushed in the later questions, clearly written faster as the timer wound down, a few answers crossed out and rewritten with visible frustration.
"You panicked on question fourteen," he said, grading through it.
"I did not panic."
"You wrote ’anchoring’ and then crossed it out and wrote ’anchoring’ again in slightly different handwriting. That’s a panic."
"That’s confidence, revisited and confirmed." Vivian leaned over to see what he’d marked, close enough that her shoulder brushed his, and Jason let it sit there without commenting, the contact familiar now after a week of exactly this same casual closeness.
"You got it right the first time. Should’ve trusted yourself."
"I trust myself constantly. It’s everyone else I have doubts about." She grinned, snatching her packet back to check his corrections herself. "How’d I do overall."
"Better than me on the framing section. Worse on heuristics."
"So, average."
"So, human." He handed the packet fully back, and she took it with a small, satisfied nod, apparently deciding that verdict was acceptable.
Across the table, Bree was working through Nadia’s answers with visible difficulty, her usual composed expression cracking slightly at whatever she’d found. "You wrote an entire paragraph for a question that only needed one sentence."
"Precision requires context."
"Precision requires you actually answering the question asked, which you did, eventually, on line six."
"The first five lines were foundational."
"They were not foundational, they were you thinking out loud on paper." Bree held up the sheet as evidence, and Nadia leaned over to inspect her own handwriting like she was seeing it for the first time, entirely unbothered by the criticism.
"Fair. I’ll be more concise next time."
"You’ve said that before."
"I meant it less that time." Nadia reclaimed her packet, and the room settled into an easy rhythm of trading corrections back and forth, genuine laughter breaking out more than once, the tension of the timed section dissolving into something looser and more collaborative now that the actual pressure had passed.
Jason found himself relaxing into it more than he expected, the four of them settling into roles that had become familiar over the past week, Nadia’s relentless structure, Vivian’s chaotic energy, Bree’s quiet precision, and whatever role he’d carved out for himself somewhere in the middle of all three, absorbing a little of each without fully belonging to any one register.
"Okay," Nadia said eventually, gathering the graded packets into a neat stack. "Overall, respectable. Not where I want us, but respectable. Same time tomorrow, and I’m bringing another mock exam."
"Another one?" Vivian groaned. "We just did one."
"That’s how studying works. Repetition builds retention." Nadia was already packing up, brisk and efficient as always. "Eight days. No time for complaining."
"There’s always time for complaining. I’ll make time."
"You will not, because I’ll assign you extra practice questions if you do." Nadia slung her bag over her shoulder, already halfway to the door. "See everyone tomorrow."
She left first, and Bree followed a minute later after a quick, quiet goodbye, leaving Jason and Vivian to gather their own things at a slower pace, the room emptying out around them.
"You survived the mock exam," Vivian said, zipping her bag. "Barely, but you survived."
"High praise."
"I’m generous today. Snacks were good." She grinned, and they left together, falling into the same familiar walking rhythm as every other evening that week, conversation drifting easily between the exam, Nadia’s increasingly militant study schedule, and some story Vivian was telling about her roommate’s ongoing complaint about a leaky faucet that apparently nobody had actually fixed yet.
They reached the split in the road eventually, and Vivian peeled off with her usual wave, and Jason continued on alone, the walk settling into quiet as his building came into view.
He was climbing the last flight of stairs when he heard a door open above him, and looked up to see Alex stepping out of her apartment, a small trash bag in one hand, keys in the other.
"Oh, hey," she said, catching sight of him. "Perfect timing again. I’m starting to think you have a sixth sense for my exact schedule."
"Coincidence."
"Sure it is." She grinned, tying off the trash bag properly before setting it down by her door. "How was the study group. Still failing on principle?"
"Slightly less on principle today, actually. We did a full mock exam."
"Look at you, improving." She leaned against her doorframe, unhurried, in no apparent rush to actually deal with the trash bag sitting at her feet. "Eight days left, right? I saw the flyer for it in the student center."
"Eight days."
"You’ll be fine. You’ve got the face of someone who overthinks everything, which usually means you know more than you think you do." She said it lightly, and something about the phrasing landed strangely familiar, close enough to Bree’s own line from the folded note days earlier that Jason almost commented on it before deciding the coincidence probably wasn’t worth chasing.
"We’ll see."
"We will." She glanced at the trash bag, sighing. "Anyway. I should deal with this before it becomes a bigger problem than it already is. But I’m still owed that coffee."
"Still on the table."
"Good. I’ll hold you to it properly this time." She picked up the bag, offering him a small wave as she headed toward the stairwell, and Jason continued on to his own door, letting himself inside, the apartment settling quiet around him as he dropped his bag by the entrance.
For a moment, he considered opening his notes and reviewing the questions he’d missed, but the thought dissolved almost immediately. The mock had exposed a few weak spots, yet none felt disastrous enough to justify another late night. He had learned something else over the past week, too: studying with the others made the workload feel smaller. Even Nadia’s relentless schedules and Vivian’s constant jokes helped keep the days from blurring together. There was comfort in knowing that tomorrow would probably look almost identical to today. Same room, same people, another set of questions, another reminder that the exam was getting closer. Jason wasn’t sure whether that routine was helping him prepare or simply making the countdown easier to tolerate.
Eight days. He sat down on the edge of his bed, the number sitting there in the corner of his vision same as always, patient and unmoved by anything the day had actually accomplished.
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