Chapter 32 - The Test

"It is good to have you back, Sato." Professor Clarence said with a smile on his face.

"Thank you." Sato smiled.

"Could you come to me now for a talk?"

"Sure." Sato walked down to Clarence as they left the room together.

"How are you, Sato?" Clarence spoke with concern. He had heard of his best student's predicament and was deeply worried. When he heard that he is coming back for classes again, he was very excited.

"I'm good now, professor. There is no need to worry about me."

"Okay okay. That's good. That's good." Clarence sighed. "We are having a test today. Would you like to take yours another day?"

"Oh. I can take it today. There's no need to reschedule."

"Okay. I'll trust you on this. I do not want your GPA to drop for this reason."

"Yeah, there is no need to worry. I'll do my best for this test too." The pair went back into the theatre as Sato sat back down.

The test was 8 engineering questions that was to be completed in 2 hours. The number of questions may seem little for 2 hours, but in fact, it is normal to not finish the paper. If the students can complete 6 out of 8 correct, it would already give them an A for this test.

The students of the engineering class started the test out. There were many frowns on the student's faces. The test was harder than normal. It was probably because the course , Advanced Dynamics was one of the hardest course, yet.

Motori would give Sato small glances as he smirked in delight. This time I will beat you in your own game, Bumpkin! Motori isn't actually considered bad in studying. He was tied in second place with Ming.

For Advanced Dynamics, Motori was able to bribe a senior to give him last year's test papers. Half the questions were similar and so he only had to really do 4 questilns. There is no way you will beat me now! Hahahaha! Motori sniggered inwardly.

Back at Sato's table, the boy was steadily working on the paper. The first thirty minutes, Sato spent doing the first question. He was refreshing his memory on the course, thus it took longer than normal. However, after that, the next 3 questions only took around 45 minutes. He was speeding up exponentially.

"The matrix shown in this question can be formatted and solved through Lagrange's equations, followed by Canonical Transformations." As Sato thought about how to do the question, his hand was writing out the steps to the answer. He was like a methodical robot that was smoothly running. Within 20 minutes, he had completed another two questions, a feat that no one present could do.

As he reached the last two questions, the young man was finally slightly stumped. It was a unique question that required several formulas other than those that the student's learnt in Advanced Dynamics. Taking a minute to read the 7th question, Sato started to write again. He had found the method to solving it. Everyone else would have required a longer time to think of how to do it.

As the 2 hour mark finally came to fruition, Sato stopped writting as he started to feel the pain in his hand creep in. The adrenaline kept him going for the whole two hours. Sato handed in the paper as he went back to his seat to pack up his bag.

"How was the test, Sato?" Ming, who sat a seat away asked.

"It was alright. I finished the paper." Sato grinned proudly. "It was thanks to your notes that I got through this test."

"It's definitely due to your hardwork rather than my notes."

"Anyways, let me treat you to lunch at the cafeteria. If it were not for your notes, I wouldn't have been able to start the test at all."

"Free food? I won't say no to that." Ming smiled as they left together for lunch, shoulder by shoulder. Motori stood from afar as he watch Sato leave the room. He tightened his fist as he grinded his teeth. He still did not understand how he had gotten back to University.

The boys walked down 2 hallways before reaching the building's cafeteria. The food served here was inexpensive and tasted really delicious. The pair would normally eat here for lunch.

"How about you treat me to Korean food? I feel like eating Bibimbap today." Ming suggested.

"Sure. I'll eat that too then." Sato and Ming stood in the queue for order. He then took out his phone to kill time. It was then he noticed a new message on his phone.

"How was your first lesson?" The message came from Gray, 5 minutes after the test.

"It turned out to be a test lesson. I went in quite unprepared." Sato replied his boss. Surprisingly, Gray texted back almost instantly.

"I see. Did you manage to complete it?"

"Yeah! I finished it just before the time ended."

"How confident are you in this test?" Gray asked.

"Mmm, quite confident."

"Ok. We shall celebrate when we get home."

"Celebrate? Isn't this just a simple test? [laughing while crying emoji]" Sato found this quite amusing.

"We should celebrate any achievements that you achieve." Gray replied. His words made Sato feel warm inside.

"Alright :) thank you. I'm about to order. I'll text you at the end of the day!"

"Okay. Enjoy your lunch, Sato."

As they finished texting, it was the boy's turn to order. They had to order through an ordering machine. Placing in the order for two Bibimbaps, Sato paid for it using his school card.

The school card is a multifunctional card. It is able to pay for any food in the school campus, lets you enter the building gantries, acts as an identity card, allows you to buy items from the in-university stores.

As it charged his balance, Sato looked at his balance amount, to which his eyes almost popped out. 100000 dollars? What the ****? Was there some error?

When Ming look at the receipt that Sato was puzzled at, he too was shocked.

"Did you hack the school system?" Ming asked.

"Of course not! I'm not that good at hacking to hack our school's 10 layer security system."

"Then how did you get this amount of money?"

"I dont..." It was then Sato realised what had happened.