Priya exhaled. “Thank God. I nearly used the approximation.”

The past papers had done their job. They weren’t just relics of exams gone by. They were the ghost of the examiner, whispering warnings from every previous mistake. And finally—finally—he had learned to listen.

His phone buzzed. His friend Priya: “u done 2022 P5? the planning q is brutal.”

He finished with twenty minutes to spare. He went back through every question, checking each against his mental list of past traps. He changed two answers. He added a missing unit to a final value. He crossed out a sine wave and drew a straight line.