Chapter 95 - Mental Gymnastics

Ten minutes. That was all the time it took for Elfie to single-handedly launch everyone into a pit of self-deprecation. Even Tom, the smartest student from the latest results, wasn't spared. It was a massacre.

For some reason, the hacker looked proud of himself for the deed. "Told you it wasn't going to be easy," he laughed at Jasper who groaned.

There wasn't anyone in the class who didn't tease Jasper about his results. In fact, this cheered the slower students in the class. Dragon scored higher than Jasper and wouldn't stop rubbing it into the leader's face. Elfie was slightly surprised that Dragon scored rather high on the benchmark even if it wasn't anything great.

Alex didn't do very well but wasn't too disheartened when she knew about everybody else's results. Scarlet was impressed that she actually failed something for the first time in her life. Failing it together with everyone else made her feel as if it was alright to make mistakes at times and not always be perfect. She thought that failing something would leave a stain in her pristine records but he was wrong. If anything, she had a relieved look on her face as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Not many people realised it but Elfie who was standing in front of the class noticed the strange expression on Scarlet's face. That made him more curious about her. Maybe she wasn't the same as the girls he knew. Scarlet might be an exception and by extension Alex too because she was Scarlet's sister. He found himself wanting to get to know the trio more now after seeing them act so unguarded in this class.

"If only our class could be like this too," he thought sadly. Elfie knew that his time here would be brief. After the examinations, he would not have any excuses to stay or visit. Danny would most likely have him travel to another country to lose the traces of their pursuers. The Interpol would want him to start cracking down on a new case and the programmer would soon be back to his colourless life.

While the students were still busy exchanging answers and laughing at how badly they did, someone noticed the strange expression on Elfie's face.

"Hey, kid!" Rowan yelled. "What did you score? Don't lie, I saw you taking the test with us."

Elfie blinked and tried to hide his results but someone else was faster. The class hooted as Dragon snatched the result slip and passed it to Jeff to tally the score.

"Come on, what did he get?" Jinru urged and Jeff shook his head.

"Perfect score..."

At that, the class was once again thrown into chaos. Suddenly, Elfie became the star of the party and everyone wanted to talk to him from dishing praises to clapping him and the back and calling him a sly dog. The programmer was overwhelmed. He had never received this much attention or affection in his life and the feeling was unfamiliar with him. He didn't know how to cope and tried to escape but to no avail.

Elife blushed and stuttered in embarrassment.

"It's a matter about short-term memory retention and experience acc.u.mulation in the long term," he said.

Jasper was impressed by how Elfie was able to demonstrate how to apply this multi-level thinking strategy in studies. He didn't know where Elfie learnt this but he was willing to bet that it didn't come from books or the internet.

"Knowing when and what to pick out during an information dump to make intelligent guesses is the key to coping with stress. For example, I can't accurately pinpoint what the girl is saying because it is a foreign term so I archive that information and focus on what she says after it. In this reading passage, I skim through the pages for verbs, nouns and adjectives. Things like connectors are seldom important. If a sentence has ten words, picking out two or three key points is good enough. Your brain learns to pick up priorities over time with the exercises."

Jasper nodded. Now it started to make sense. Multitasking and parallel processing simply wasn't humanly possible. What Elfie did was simply increase the speed of switching tracks for the mental processing capabilities. If he had to compare it to something, it would be similar to stretching metal limits like how a gymnast tries to stretch past their physical limitations.

"Why are we learning how to count orders and calculate profits? This has nothing to do with the examinations, does it?" the DJ wannabe asked and Elfie grinned.

"If you can improve your mental stamina as well as the flexibility to think and switch tracks, you will be able to memorise things effortlessly despite not completely understanding them. This is a simple mental exercise to increase mental flexibility and capacity to retain information."

Alex blinked. She was overwhelmed by the level of complexity the simple exercise proved to be. On the other hand, Scarlet was having a hard time trying to do math under pressure. She could remember the orders in sequence perfectly fine and was the only one in the class, other than Elfie, who got all the order sequences correct. Many, including Jasper, missed out the changed order from gr.a.p.e juice to soursop juice.

"Now that everyone understands the purpose of this exercise, shall we try round two?" the programmer smiled.

Instead of being discouraged, the class got even more fired up. The better students like Tom were even more determined to master the skill of multi-level thinking now that the playing field was evened out.

"Let's make this a competition," Jinru suggested and the boys immediately jumped onto the idea, forming teams.

"The team who makes the least improvement will have to clean the classroom for the rest of the next school term. The team that makes the most improvement will be given priority to choose the desks and chairs that they want in the next seat swap."

Jasper had an evil smirk and added on to Jinru's suggestion. "Team members you choose should be balanced out. The team with the highest academic average scores will be given cash prizes by princess Alex over there. The team with the lowest academic average scores must run errands for the rest of the next semester. Anyone who chooses not to participate will be subjected to counselling sessions with Dany."

There were cries of outrage from some boys who called Jasper a devil. Elfie was nervous for a while until he realised that they were simply joking. The programmer smiled and found himself enjoying school for the first time.

"Should we inform the rest of the boys absent about the challenge?" Jeremy asked and Jasper thought it was a good idea.

"Hey, Elf!" Dragon yelled. "What's your number? We need to add you to the group chat!"

Not expecting that, Elfie froze. He had at least five different phones for business purposes and none of them were appropriate numbers to be given out because they were taped and highly secured lines. The troubled expression made the rest of the class shift their focus onto Elfie.

Once more, the hacker found himself on the receiving end of hostile judgement played up by his low self-esteem and mental trauma.

Alex caught onto it quickly and defended the programmer by chiding the boys.

"Don't pressure him! The poor boy is only ten and not many ten-year-olds have phones. We'll be sure to add him to the group when his father gets him one."

Tom laughed and was the first to apologise. That broke the tension and the rest of the class let the matter go, much to Elfie's relief. He glanced over thankfully to the Wilde princess who winked at him. Perhaps his initial assessment of Wilmer's children had been wrong. They were indeed nice and welcoming people even if they were a little odd.

He returned her wink with a small smile and nod before resuming the mental exercises that everyone became fired up about.

[Days till Mid-Year Examinations: 15 days.]