Actually, I had already completed my homework. My motto was "no procrastination!" So I always completed my homework and a.s.signments almost immediately and ahead of time, as long as it was within my capabilities. The rationale was that if I had already finished them, then I could do whatever I wanted for the remainder of my time without having to worry about deadlines and submissions.

Of course, the tradeoff was sloppy, rushed work, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter much as long as I had the spare time to indulge in my hobbies. Worse still, I had to split my free time between training and hobbies, which severely reduced my periods of enjoyment. Oh, well. Still worth it, though.

So I was prepared for the test on Monday, when Teacher Einsberg arrived in the cla.s.sroom with a stack of papers. He plopped them down and began distributing them after the standard briefing. Eeach of us were isolated by our desks, and had to write down our answers the old-fas.h.i.+oned way. Why they didn't just do everything digitally, I had no idea, but Saint Teresa Academy preserved some of the old, traditional ways of learning. Writing and paper tests were one of those traditions that they were determined to preserve.

Well, it wasn't my business. I was just here on exchange. While I was still here, I would adhere to whatever rules they had established. As such, I furiously wrote down the answers with a pen, dredging the answers from my memroies and replying to the questions as best as I could. Even with my previous knowledge, a lot of things had changed in the education curriculum that exited a thousand years later, so I wasn't going to get full marks. Unfortunately, I wasn't that much of a genius.

"All right, time's up!"

I raised my head when Teacher Einsberg announced the end of the test. That was a lot faster than I thought, but that was the same with anything. When you rus.h.i.+ng through the test, time seemed to fly by a lot faster than usual. Theory of relativity and all that.

Thankfully, I had completed all of the questions, leaving nothing blank, and so I went along with the motions of submitting my test script to the front. As Teacher Einsberg gathered the piles of test scripts from the front student of each row, he called the cla.s.s representative to help him carry the bundle of scripts to the staff room.

"Ban Zhang, can you help me?"

"No."

"Oi!"

Ban Zhang, despite his name, was an irresponsible cla.s.s monitor who s.h.i.+rked all of his duties and behaved like a spoilt brat. As he was the son of a rich and hugely influential family, Teacher Einsberg was helpless to do anything but endure when he openly defied his instructions. Sighing, I raised my hand.

"Teacher Einsberg, I will help."

"Thank you, Richard." Teacher Einsberg looked immensely relieved when I offered my a.s.sistance. It never hurt to play the teacher's pet once in a while, because I often reaped the benefits of getting on the adults' good side. Not only that, it was the right thing to do, even if there weren't any real benefits. "I'll be counting on you."

As we proceeded down the corridor toward the staff room, I saw that the other cla.s.ses were still busily tallying up their papers and other miscellaneous stuff. It appeared that my cla.s.s was the fastest, even though we were supposed to be learning ice magic.

"I'm sorry to trouble you, Richard, but could you help me arrange the test papers?"

Teacher Einsberg looked apologetic. He was a nice guy who rarely raised his voice and was often looked down by the aristocrats in our cla.s.s because of his quiet nature, but he was polite and kind, often on hand to help out the more unfortunate students. It was a good thing that the overwhelming majority of students in Saint Teresa Academy, despite the prevalent arrogance, were well behaved and disciplined, having been brought up in the strict households of n.o.bles to adhere to a certain code of conduct. Otherwise, Teacher Einsberg would be helpless to control a wild, rampant cla.s.s…unless he decided to freeze all of them in one go, of course. In contast to his diminutive nature, his ice magic was nothing short of phenomenal.

"Sure, no problem."

"You should be the cla.s.s monitor instead…" Teacher Einsberg shook his head in disgust. "You do a lot more than Ban Zhang."

Unfortunately, I was only an exchange student, so that wasn't a practical solution. In any case, I would rather not. I only handled the menial tasks like ferrying test scripts up and down the cla.s.sroom and staff room, but the more important, formal occasions such as attending cla.s.s committees meetings, organizing the school festivals, and others, I was more than happy to leave to Ban Zhang. Despite his sn.o.bbish att.i.tude, he was actually more competent in handling such large, formal affairs. Unlike me who returned home immediately when cla.s.ses ended, Ban Zhang had no qualms staying behind after school to handle these huge events and attend long, boring meetings. As long as I handled the physical and menial ch.o.r.es, the cla.s.s would be able to maintain a perfect equilibrium.

I was more than contented with sticking to such an arrangement.

Teacher Einsberg and I arranged the papers together and left it on the desk in fairly short order. While we did so, a lot of the other teachers and cla.s.s presidents came in to do similar jobs. As we were the first to finish, Teacher Einbserg thanked me and dismissed me.

"Thanks for your hard work. You should go rest now."

"Yes, sir."

Bowing politely, I took my leave. As I weaved my way out of the staff room, I accidentally knocked over a box of paper clips that had been sitting in an empty cubicle and ended up scatter the tiny metal pieces all over the carpeted floor.

"Uwah! I'm sorry!"

Apologizing to n.o.body in particular, I sighed and dropped to my knees, clumsily searching for the paper clips that had scattered all over the floor. Making use of the hi-tech sensors on my gla.s.ses, I was able to easily locate each and every one of them and packed them back into the crumpled box that I now held in my hand.

That was when Nan Gong Ji Yan and her teacher, a nameless, bespectacled woman with wavy, long brown hair, walked in, carrying their own piles of test scripts. While I fumbled under the cubicle's table, scooping up paper clips, I could sense them walking into the cubicle directly opposite the one I was residing in.

"Could you help me arrange the test papers in order, according to student number, and then tie them all up?" The teacher asked in a sick, sweetly voice that sounded so fake that I wanted to puke. If Ji Yan had detected the artificiality of the insincere tone, she didn't show it and instead responded politely with an equally fake-happy "yes."

Like teacher, like student, huh? Well, the same went for me and Teacher Einsberg, so I wasn't in any position to criticize them. Now, if Ban Zhang could also follow Teacher Einbserg's example…

A buzzing almost caused me to slam my head against the desk above me. It took me a second to realize that someone's smartphone was ringing. It wasn't my ring tone, so I knew it wasn't mine. But when the teacher spoke up, I discovered who the owner was.

"Sorry, Ji Yan. I need to take this call. Can I leave things to you?"

"Yes, of course."

"Thank you!"

The teacher hurriedly stepped outside to take the phone call. Why, I had no idea. Maybe she had a secret lover so she didn't want Ji Yan to eavesdrop on their sinful, dirty conversation. Or maybe it was an obscure, unnaturally contrived plot device to force the teacher's absence so that Ji Yan could pull off a nefarious stunt. I say that because as a teaching a.s.sistant, normally we would just hang up on the phone and call back after our job was done, rather than leave our poor student waiting for us. It was just unprofessional. Whoever wrote this evidently had no idea how real teachers behaved.

"h.e.l.lo…"

As the teacher exited the staff room, leaving Ji Yan alone in the cubicle, the latter giggled to herself insidiously.

"What a good opportunity!" Ji Yan whispered. No, actually she was thinking that line, and I was somehow able to read her mind because…well, plot. It was to show just how horrible a character she was than any logical reason. "The last question was so difficult and I could only partially answer it. Let's see if Zhao Yan was able to do it…"

Using the x-ray vision on my gla.s.ses, I could see Ji Yan flipping open Zhao Yan's (I a.s.sume) script to the final page and reading it.

"How hateful!" From Ji Yan's frustration and tears, I could safely a.s.sume that Zhao Yan did indeed answer that final question perfectly. Ji Yan continued to lash out inwardly. "Why is she always better than me?"

Because you suck, you jealous, scheming, whiny b.i.t.c.h. Maybe if you decided to channel all that energy and effort spent on whining and envying into actually working hard instead, you might catch up to your sister. But no, you just had to…where were you going?

Ji Yan had stood up from the cubicle and was stealthily sneaking out of the staff room. She stopped at the door, inclining her body as if to peer outside. I could almost read her mind.

"I should use this chance!"

As she suspected, her teacher was far away, next to a window that was pretty distant from the staff room and happily chatting to her lover (or so I believe). How unprofessional. It seemed that she would be taking quite a while to engage in pillow talk (in school, no less…she should be fired), so Ji Yan was in the clear. For now.

"Looks like she will be on the phone for a while…"

That was what I just said…never mind.

Ji Yan snuck back to her teacher's cubicle and took a pen from the teacher's stationary stuff, uncapping it. Er…you do know the teacher will suspect something when she marks the paper and sees those changes that were edited in a different pen ink tone? Even if the color was the same, different pens still had different shades or tones – I was aware of this, particularly since I used pens a lot during my previous life. It was not as if Zhao Yan and the teacher used the same pen, you know?

I wondered if I should warn her, and then decided against it. I was going to snitch on her after she left and tell the teacher about her misdeeds, and then watch Ji Yan crash and burn. That would be fun.

"Zhao Yan, I'm going to change your answer so that no one can understand it!"

Good thing I was recording this with my gla.s.ses. I was going to give this to the teacher.

"Hmph, blame yourself for being better than me. You're going to taste bitter failure this time."

WHAT KIND OF REASONING IS THAT!? I had never heard of such a ridiculous reason in my entire life. Who the f.u.c.k would blame themselves for being better than others?! b.i.t.c.h, did you go crazy from that sheer amount of jealousy or something?!

"What's this?"

I almost banged my head against the table when I heard a new voice. A male voice, no less. What? Did someone else arrive? Turning my head, the x-ray vision on my gla.s.ses allowed me to catch sight of a guy standing right behind Ji Yan.

At first, I thought that he was a teacher, but then I recognized the school uniform that he wore. He was a student, just like Ji Yan and me. He looked familiar, but I couldn't remember where I had seen him before.

However, I could instinctively tell that he was some sort of expert, possessing a high level of skill. For some reason, he was emanating quite the potent amount of mana. My intuition told me that he was dangerous and I was suddenly on high alert.

Who was this guy…?

"Cla.s.s Vice-president is changing somebody's answer? I can't believe I walked in at such a perfect time."

"Who are you? I don't know you."

Ji Yan, despite being surprised, remained calm. Credit due where it was deserved, she wasn't the type to panic. Her voice was trembling a little, but she managed to clamp down on her panic and a.s.sess the situation coolly. Still, I almost shoved my face into my palm at her words.

Some guy just caught you redhanded in committing an offence, and your first question is "Who are you? I don't know you."?! Girl, don't you think your priorities are messed up? So what if you didn't know the ident.i.ty of the person who caught you? You just got caught, plain and simple! Don't you think you should be worrying about other things, such as explaining yourself or something?

Or maybe she knew that there was no excuse she could offer, and that she would be playing into the guy's hands…in that case, shouldn't the question be "what do you want?" or an apology?

To make matters worse, the guy responded with an extremely cheesy line right out of a shoujo manhua that made my teeth chatter from the sheer absurdity of it all. To top it off, he was flirtatiously playing with Ji Yan's long hair by stroking one of her twin tails.

"But I know you…"

WTF?! WHO THE h.e.l.l CARES?!

I swear, I was about to crawl out of the cubicle and start nuking the two of them if they continued this farce. Why the h.e.l.l were they behaving like one-dimensional characters from a shoujo manhua and behaving in such a contrived manner while spewing cheesy lines? Were we supposed to be in a play or something?

Fortunately, before I could, I received the answer to the question that had been burning in my mind this entire time.

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