As Maia's birthday party progressed, Maia was making headway in setting up her seduction of Harri Kutsaar and Arnold Viisimaa. They visibly relaxed after she informed them of her mother's achievement in establishing the business enterprise of Estonia's most popular beer. From that she encouraged them to divulge something more of themselves.
In the case of Harri Kutsaar, he turned out not to be as dimwitted as his ostensible failure of two years of high school would suggest. It turns out that in reality he had not really failed his two final years. At the conclusion of his initial year of high school, (Grade 10) his father had died leaving the family of his mother and her younger sister hurting for money. Harri's mother had worked as a nurse's aide at one of the hospitals in Tallinn, but without her husband's income, her salary was not enough to adequately support the family. So, Harri needed to go to work to help support the family.
Consequently, his mother and he had a meeting with the school principal to seek a concession in Harri's education in light of the family income situation. Harri's mother had a plan to take courses at the Tallinn Health Care College to obtain a bachelor's degree in nursing and thereby become a registered nurse. As a registered nurse, her mother's salary would be more than double her current salary and would be more than adequate to maintain the living expenses of her family. In order to achieve this goal, her mother needed Harri to work to supplement her income as a nurse's aide un⁷⁰til she finished the requirements to become a registered nurse.
The principal turned out to be very compassionate and sympathetic. From the outcome of this meeting, it was agreed that Harri would be allowed to attend only half a school day, mostly morning hours. That way he would acquire credits for a half year and be able to continue attending school until he achieved enough credits to be granted his high school diploma. This year, his fifth year attending high school, would have completed the necessary requirements for his diploma and he would graduate by June of the current year.
Only Harri's teachers were aware of this special arrangement, and they were instructed by the principal not to divulge it to the rest of the faculty and especially not to the rest of the students. The premise was to spare possible bullying by fellow students, if it was generally known that his family's circumstances were so dire so as to require such special treatment. Mind you every student, who was aware of his existence, assumed Harri was repeating his Grade 11 year, when they had noticed he was still taking Grade 11 subjects when he should have been in Grade 12. However, he was not bullied since there were other students who were repeating a school year. Instead, they simply ignored him.
Maia was mortified in being apprised of Harri's actual situation. She was most alarmed by the realization that this information showed that she was no better than her peers, whom she had the arrogance to belittle for their shortcomings. Instead, just like all the other students at the school, she had taken at face value the general consensus that Harri Kutsaar was a loser because he had seemingly failed two years of high school.
As it was, Harri found employment first as an apprentice mechanic with a service station. He proved to be a diligent worker and had a great affinity for diagnosing motor vehicle problems and repairing them accordingly. He quickly had built up a great reputation amongst the local industry that in the past year he obtained employment in the service department for the Lamborghini dealership in Tallinn. He had impressed his employer to the extent that his terrific personality was recognized as being very suitable for sales.
Accordingly, he was advised that once he had finished high school, he would be employed in two capacities. Half the time he would work in the service department gaining valuable insight in the features of the various models for sale. The other half of the time he would work on the sales floor actually engaged in selling the luxury models as well as developing a network of potential customers. If his sales experience and talent would prove to be as good as expected, he would be promoted full time to the sales department within a year. So instead of being a loser as his reputation in high school would suggest, he actually had a viable future all mapped out for him. This was in contrast to most of his classmates who were going to go on to university without a clue of what their future might entail.
Maia was definitely ashamed of herself for not even considering that there might have been some mitigation towards Harri's failures in not passing two successive grades on his apparent first try. She now realized in the mutual classes she had with him; he had always come up with the correct answer whenever called upon by the teacher. It didn't register in her mind that his answers were not congruent with his reputation of being a dimwit. That other students also had not noticed this discrepancy provided no solace to Maia since she believed herself to be better than this. At least she could take comfort in the expectation that sex with Harri Kutsaar would not be joyless.
Meanwhile, Arnold Viisimaa also turned out to be a surprisingly interesting casual conversationalist. He was a strong fan of women's tennis especially considering the accomplishments of Kaia Kanepi and Anett Kontaveit. The former was ten years older than Anett and was the first Estonian player to put Estonia on the map in women's tennis. Kaia actually reached the Quarter Finals in the various four grand slam tournaments on more occasions than Anett, but her career high ranking reached only No. 15 in the world compared to Anett's No. 2 highest ranking.
This led Arnold to quip, "You know there were occasions, where the two of them were both ranked in the Top 50 at same time. Thus, given that ratio, it would mean that if Estonia had the population equal to that of the United States there would be 440 Estonian players in the Top 50."
Maia laughed as she said, "Now that is absurd, but it does point out the quality of our tennis program, from which I had benefited to become a decent player."
Arnold responded, "You're overly modest, I have seen you play live where you got to the finals at last fall's WTA tournament here in Tallinn. I also watched you on television win the Junior Girls Singles title at Wimbledon when you were seventeen. Because you were participating in the finals, your match was available to be seen on Estonian television. Naturally there is strong talk about the possibility of you following in Anett's footsteps especially since you won the Junior Girls Singles whereas Anett was the runner-up in her final junior year."
Maia responded, "Yes, but she was also the runner-up at the Junior Girls US Open and reached the semi finals in the Junior Girls French Open and reached the round of 16 in the Junior Girls Australian Open in that year. I only played at Wimbledon and not at all in the other three majors."
Arnold then said, "It is noteworthy that Anett has had a better professional career than those players who had beaten her in junior tournaments. The fact still remains you did win the Wimbledon title so you could at least possibly match her success."
Harri contributed, "I understand that most professional tennis players at your age, who are playing full time, employ tutors and study on their own to get their high school education completed. It seems like you are going to finish school in the regular way. Are you then going to play tennis professionally full time once you've graduated?"
