>>528798898
>Hajime never worked hard for anything he had.
>He took the easy way out whenever he could
By whose standards? He had one clear dream - to enroll HPA. The problem was that nobody knew what exactly needed to be done to achieve that. The students for the Main Course were being arbitrarily scouted by some man. You couldn't even really apply for it. It doesn't look like he's being scouted, soon he won't even be high school age and the ship will sail. What now? He took every opportunity presented to him, which to you is an easy way out. From my point of view it was the only way, the only way that he was aware of anyway.

Actually, let me ask you this: how did Chiaki work harder than him, in particular? We don't see her going through some training arcs where she grinds to learn the optimal way to speedrun something for example. What we see is her playing for fun and just happening to be good at it. She didn't even need to attend classes. I can't imagine sitting on a bench and playing on a console is harder work than sitting in a Reserve Course classroom and cramming material for tests or whatever.