Chapter 263.
<strong>Chapter 263. Am I in trouble? (1/4)</strong>
<span style="font-weight:400">The winter semester midterms came and went in a sh. Alicia somehow maintained her position at the top among second years despite working part-time.
<span style="font-weight:400">Rosa did quite well herself. She’d made some careless mistakes, but those didn’t seem to bother her. She got full marks in one of the elective courses she’d taken with me and above ny in all her other subjects.
<span style="font-weight:400">Meanwhile, I received 75% on everything as usual.
<span style="font-weight:400">It was Monday, a week after the incident in the washroom at the university with Izora.
<span style="font-weight:400">I’d filled Alicia in on the details of my n to y pretend boyfriend and reveal to Zale I was two-timing. She freaked out at first, but when I told her I’d be going in a new disguise Izora would prepare using the theatre club stuff she had ess to, she calmed down. I also exined Izora would be in disguise with apletely different image and asked her to not panic when she saw her.
<span style="font-weight:400">The contrasting image between what she looked like at school and in her gothic punk state was quite shocking after all. She asked me about it, but I didn’t try to exin because it was too hard to swallow. It was impossible to believe if simply told about it. Seeing was believing.
<span style="font-weight:400">I just said she’d understand when she saw her with me that day. The less Alicia knew about the n, the better. She was too easy to read. It was to keep her reactions authentic and natural.
<span style="font-weight:400">Now, the entire field trip ordeal was a matter reserved for this Friday.
<span style="font-weight:400">As for Rosa… I didn’t hide what happened with Izora from her. As for what happened… well… she took full advantage of the situation to get another ‘anything goes’ request out of me. She didn’t even look upset, rather, she seemed more than happy to get another one of those requests out of me. Honestly, I felt stupid for even revealing it to her. Hell, she was just taking advantage of my guilty conscience at this point.
<span style="font-weight:400">Haaaaah. Anyway… today, I had another matter to attend to now that the midterms were over. I’d... been called to the staff lounge at lunch for a talk with Mr. Oz, my home room teacher.
<span style="font-weight:400">What could it be for?
<span style="font-weight:400">Was it about my fake chronic illness?
<span style="font-weight:400">Had they discovered the w? They’d already contacted me on the temporary number I provided them with and I impersonated a real doctor from one of the city’s hospitals at that time.
<span style="font-weight:400">Did they possibly contact the hospital directly after that and talk to the real doctor? Though that doctor’s phone number wasn’t publically avable, it was entirely possible they could have contacted the hospital which patched them through to him.
<span style="font-weight:400">I’d be in a bit of hot water if the lie had been seen through. I probably wouldn’t be expelled, but a suspension was definitely possible. They might also want to try to speak to my nonexistent guardian in person. I could just say they were unavable and force them to have that conversation over the phone. Alternatively… I could have Irene y the role.
<span style="font-weight:400">Haaaah. Forget it. Maybe I’m wrong and this isn’t about my fake chronic illness. Maybe it’s something else entirely.
<span style="font-weight:400">Could it be about the incident at the school dance where I locked the doors?
<span style="font-weight:400">Or maybe they’ve realized I’m in a rtionship with two girls and they’re trying to do some counseling to correct my behavior.
<span style="font-weight:400">Oh no, what if they figured out I’m working part-time while still underage?
<span style="font-weight:400">That would be disastrous.
<span style="font-weight:400">I’ve really done a lot recently that could get me in trouble.
<span style="font-weight:400">Now that I think about it, I could have also been caught sneaking into school on security camera footage that they may have just recently reviewed after the school dance. Why would they go back months though? Isn’t that unreasonable? Well, they could have stumbled across it by chance.
<span style="font-weight:400">Haaaaaah.
<span style="font-weight:400">I sat inside the staff lounge nervously tapping my feet awaiting Mr. Oz’s arrival. Seriously, just what the hell was it that I got caught on? Why did I get called here during lunch?
<span style="font-weight:400">After five minutes the door opened up. When I looked up, Mr. Oz was the one who’d entered the lounge.
<span style="font-weight:400">When he scanned the lounge his eyes stopped on me seated a short distance away at one of the round tables. Mr. Oz approached me with a sandwich and papers in hand and pulled out one of the chairs tucked in at the table I was seated.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Have you eaten your lunch already?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.” A natural lie. I just wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. Being in the staff lounge was always an ufortable experience for me. It was rare that I paid a visit to this ce.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Good.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Why did you ask me to meet you here at lunch this morning before ss started?
<span style="font-weight:400">“I’m sorry, but it seems your math midterm was misced.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Huh?” I’d taken second-year math this term and this never happened my first time through life. I was nning to knock out all the courses at the same pace I’d done my first time through high school. I could then ck off on the roof watching clouds drifting by and dedicate myself fully to writing every day without any distractions for myst year without any courses to take. As for the AP courses, screw them, they weren’t required to graduate.
<span style="font-weight:400">“It’s a bit embarrassing, but the teacher responsible for it put in 75% as a ceholder score for the time being. He asked me to oversee you taking it since I’m your homeroom teacher and I don’t have a ss to teach next period. Can you do me a favor and take the time over lunch to do the math midterm one more time? You’ll have the full fifty minutes, I arranged it with your next period teacher.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Was he… really telling the truth? Or was this some sort of trap? Had he noticed the oddity in my scores and decided to do this?
<span style="font-weight:400">“I highly doubt he’d put a ceholder score in.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I’m not lying, he really did.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I don’t see how it’s my problem if he misced my midterm.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Are you saying you’re refusing to retake the midterm?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yes, I refuse.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“That’s a bit problematic, Ran.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Problematic, why?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaaaaah. Well, the part about miscing your midterm was a lie. He still has it.”
<span style="font-weight:400">As expected.
<span style="font-weight:400">“If he has it, then great. I don’t need to retake it then.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“No. You need to retake it or you may face expulsion for academic dishonesty.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Academic dishonesty? You mean he thinks I’m cheating?” I was dumbfounded. When I actually cheated I didn’t get caught, when I didn’t cheat I was used of cheating? What the hell is with this crap?
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yes.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“What evidence is there to suggest I’m cheating?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I cannot say. You will need to take this math midterm again or you could really face expulsion.”
<span style="font-weight:400">It had to be rted to getting 75% on everything. But it couldn’t just be that though, there had to be another factor that led to this usation.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Fine, I get it. I just need to take the midterm again and prove I’m not cheating, right?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yes.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Alright, I’ll do it then.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Good. I personally don’t think you’re cheating, but this teacher is convinced you are. That’s why I agreed to oversee you taking it.”
<span style="font-weight:400">He actually believed in me? What a great teacher.
<span style="font-weight:400">While thinking that, Mr. Oz slid the nk math midterm over to me.
<span style="font-weight:400">I looked down, flipped through the pages, and scanned through all the questions. I verified the questions were all essentially identical. The only difference was that both sides of the equations had been multiplied or divided by a factor or rearranged to look like they were different than they really were. The questions were also scrambled.
<span style="font-weight:400">It seemed pretty low effort. Why give me the same midterm with such cheap changes to it?
<span style="font-weight:400">I decided to change my approach this time. Rather than onlyplete 75% of the test, I opted toplete all of it in the allotted time instead. However, every few questions I answered, I randomly selected one to get wrong.
<span style="font-weight:400">I worked it out to ensure I’d still get the same 75%.
<span style="font-weight:400">However, I came across one question that I noticed was different. It wasn’t simply multiplied or divided by a factor on both sides of the equation. It was the exact same question, but one number was increased by one. I frowned when I noticed it. When I solved for the solution in my head, the answer was a really nasty-looking fraction that couldn’t be simplified rather than the simplistic one it came out to be the first time around.
<span style="font-weight:400">Teachers in high school math often made the answere out to be something simple in the end. It was a way for the student to feel more confident they’d arrived at the correct answer during the test. Some university professors did that too, but there were times where the answer looked absolutely disgusting and you’d begin to doubt you really got the correct answer.