I Was Sick Of Second Place So I Took Everything Chapter 03

I Was Sick Of Second Place So I Took Everything Chapter 03

“Bring me your most recent test papers tomorrow. I’ll take a look,” Silas said. “No guarantees, though.”

Which meant he could.

People like us always left ourselves some wiggle room.

The next day, I brought him my papers. Not just from the latest monthly exam, but the two before that as well.

He flipped through all my mistakes. His first comment was, “Nice handwriting.”

Of course it was.

I had known since I was a kid how important good handwriting could be.

I had practiced stacks of copybooks at home, all so that when someone complimented my writing, I could shrug and say, “It’s nothing.”

And secretly enjoy it.

“You barely lose points as it is, and you’re careful. You can say that for anything you’ve mastered, you almost always get full credit,” Silas said.

“Your biggest issue is the final problems. Some of them go beyond the syllabus. It’s normal that you can’t solve those.”

What he didn’t say, I got it.

The ones I couldn’t solve? Caleb could. That was where he had the edge.

“And you can’t just focus on your STEM scores,” Silas continued.

“You should try to pull other subjects up another five to eight points. Every subject counts.”

I shot him a death glare. Did he think I didn’t know that?

Literature was one thing, but raising my English score by five to eight points would put me dangerously close to a perfect score.

He made it sound so easy.

Silas watched my tense expression and smiled. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You hired me to boost your scores, didn’t you? Or are you doubting my skills?”

God, he was so full of himself.

When would I ever be able to pull off that kind of effortless smugness?

When his parents found out I had hired him as a private tutor, they were thrilled.

Apparently, it meant less time for him to be addicted to video games.

Addicted to gaming, yet still a top student without even trying? I could’ve cried from jealousy.

He was on summer break, but I wasn’t.

As a high school student, I could only go to the Sheffield House on weekends.

During weekdays, I took photos of my mistakes and sent them to him, and he would go over everything with me on the weekend.

The truth was, by the time I sent them, I’d usually already worked out the solutions on my own.

One weekend, Silas asked, “Can you solve those problems now?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He pulled out a sheet of scratch paper with a few problems he’d handwritten. “Try these.”

His handwriting was sharp and elegant, perfectly balanced—the kind that lived up to the saying “the handwriting reflects the writer.”

It reminded me of something from years ago. The handwriting workshop my mom had signed me up for had been recommended by his parents.

The problems on the page were unfamiliar, but they were clearly the same type as the final questions I had struggled with.

I worked through the first two by applying what I knew.

The third one slowed me down. I filled the page with scribbles, but eventually managed to get an answer.

The last one ate up two whole pages of scratch paper. Every angle I tried hit a dead end.

Finally, I put my pen down and looked at him. “I’m stuck.”

Silas smiled. “Don’t worry about it. That one’s basically competition level. It’s normal you couldn’t get it.”

So that was his game. Straight-up provocation.