A Beauty With Multiple Masks
When the students lifted their heads, their eyes became transfixed, and what they saw immediately got
them engaged in an enthusiastic discussion.
“It‘s the goddess of our school! Arielle came in first!”
“Oh my gosh, it‘s really her! So pretty and talented, she‘s almost too blessed!”
“Nothing to do with that. She must have also worked very hard! If I had her looks, I‘d forget about the
university admissions and join the entertainment industry for the big money instead.”
“Hang on!” Someone who had noticed the grades pointed up to the scoring on the bulletin board. “Did all
of you not see that? Full marks! She scored full marks for four of the papers!”
“What?”
The others who previously only had their sights on the names in the top five and neglected to check the
grades appended and turned their attention there immediately upon the mention by that one student.
Arielle had maximum points for all the other subjects under her name, save Chanaean, for which she
scored an astonishing zero.
“Frigging hell!” the observing student blurted out an expletive. “Managing to finish ahead despite scoring
zero for one subject is just ridiculous. But come to think of it, could her Chanaean be so bad as to score
zero?
That seems a little far–fetched, to say the least.”
“Oh, I have a friend from the preparatory class who told me that Arielle was absent the first morning of
the exams. As such, it wasn’t a question of her linguistic skills. She simply did not show up to sit for the
paper.”
“I see… She has to be a genius to come in thirty points ahead of the second–placed Wendy even while
skipping one of the papers.”
“Damn! That Wendy who’s been besmirching my goddess on live stream is in second place?”
“Hah, she must have thought that the first place must be hers for the taking in our goddess‘ absence for
the Chanaean paper. What a bummer.”
The front of the bulletin board became crowded with the students engaged in discussion before long, and
the names of Arielle and Wendy instantly became the talk of the town.
Students from the preparatory class were still in the midst of their lessons when the school bell rang for
the
end of the period.
The late start amounted to a near-total loss of an entire period. Donovan thus opted to cancel recess
outright over concerns of it delaying the overall progress of his lesson.
“We‘ll not be taking a break for the rest of this morning. Anyone who needs to use the restroom, just
raise your
hand and go on ahead, for we’ll be resuming the remainder of the class without pause.”
The students quietly groaned inside, though none of them dared to speak up as they understood
Donovan‘s temperament. Hence, they silently endured until noon‘s bell struck before they rushed over to
check the rankings over at the bulletin board.
It was a long wait for midday, and many students from the other disciplines all rushed down to the charity
flea market over at the field. Their parents, too, variously made their way into the school grounds one
after another.
Cecilia was ahead of the rest of the pack, dragging the reluctant Susanne along as soon as she was
done with her own bakes.
The timing of their arrival coincided with the sounding of the bell at noon.
“Wendy should be done with her lessons. I’ll text her, but let‘s go check on the results first,” Cecilia said,
brimming with confidence.
Susanne smiled stiffly as she was genuinely concerned that Arielle‘s scores would be abysmal. “You go
on ahead. I need to use the ladies as I think I might have had something bad for breakfast.”
Cecilia had a good guess as to what was up with Susanne. She was certain that Susanne‘s brat from the
countryside must have fared so badly that the mother
feared being thoroughly embarrassed by her own Wendy and hence wanted to avoid getting shown up!
It occurred to Cecilia that Susanne had not considered that even if her daughter was not from the
country, that little vixen who only knew how to seduce men would not be a match for her own daughter
Wendy‘s intrinsic smarts.
With that in mind, Cecilia replied genially, “Don‘t worry about it. I‘ll accompany you to the restroom first.
It‘s not like a few minutes here and there is going to make a difference anyway.”
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