After Rebirth My Class Beauty Led Cheating and I Stayed Silent Chapter 04

After Rebirth My Class Beauty Led Cheating and I Stayed Silent Chapter 04

June 7th.

I woke before dawn.

It was 5:42. My alarm hadn’t gone off yet.

I stayed in bed for three minutes, letting my consciousness fully return. I confirmed the details: the date was right, the location was right, and I was still alive.

I got up, washed up, and ate breakfast. Mom had made oatmeal and boiled eggs, and like always, she ran through her usual checklist: ticket, water bottle, snacks.

I nodded to each question.

Before I left, she grabbed my hand. “Don’t be nervous. You’re always steady.”

I squeezed her hand back, a little too hard.

She blinked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I let go, swung my backpack onto one shoulder, and said, “I’m heading out.”

When I stepped through the apartment complex gate, I glanced back once. She was still standing in the window.

In my last life, I died in that rooftop stairwell three days after the SAT ended. She was the last person to make it to the scene.

That wouldn’t happen this time.

It was 7:03 when I got to the school entrance.

A crowd had already gathered.

Sienna stood beside the planter in a pale blue dress, her hair tied in a low ponytail. She looked fresh and confident, like a picture-perfect student right off a brochure.

The pink floral pouch hung from her hand, still half unzipped.

Classmates swarmed around her, taking their ziploc bags one by one as if she were handing out gifts.

I stayed at a distance and didn’t go near her.

Grant got his, shoved it into his pocket, then turned and waved at me. “Tessa! Come here!”

So I walked over.

“Sienna got you something too.” He took a little red braided charm from her hand and held it out to me.

“Said she picked one up for everyone from a little chapel near the school.”

Sienna smiled beside him. “You may not need the device, but you should still have the good luck.”

Her expression was gentle, thoughtful, generous.

The perfect class beauty.

The same girl who was about to lead thirty-six people straight off a cliff.

I took the charm.

“Thanks.”

When my fingers brushed her palm, her skin was cool.

I kept my face blank.

At 7:15, everyone split off and headed for their assigned testing buildings.

The students assigned to Building A went east. The students assigned to Building C went north.

Sienna and I parted at the turn in the path.

She waved. “Good luck, Tessa!”

“You too.”

I smiled when I said it.

Then I turned and walked toward Building C.

A long line had already formed outside the testing room.

Walk-through metal detectors, ID verification stations, biometric checks. Security was even tighter than last year.

I stood in line . Every now and then, the detector beeped from a zipper or a belt buckle, nothing serious.

When it was my turn, one of the proctors ran a handheld scanner from my head to my shoes, then nodded me through.

I stepped inside, found Seat 07, and sat down.

The desk was clean.

Only the answer sheet and a sealed test packet were waiting for me.

The air conditioning blew cold against the white walls, under the rules scribbled across the blackboard.

Two surveillance cameras were mounted above us, their red lights blinking steadily.

I looked up at the black domes.

In my last life, I didn’t know how much they mattered. In this life, I did. This year, the cameras weren’t just recording.

This was the first year of live remote monitoring.

Every testing room feed was being transmitted in real time to the state review center.

And bolted to its roof of that, radio surveillance vans were patrolling around the testing sites.

I learned all of that after the fact in my last life, through news reports, social media posts, and the endless flood of hindsight .

Sienna didn’t know.

Her “four years without a single problem” team had been operating under the old system.

This year, the rules had changed.

She didn’t know the rules had changed.

And I wasn’t going to tell her.

At 8:45, the bell rang.

The proctor opened the test packet.

I took a deep breath and flipped to the first page.

[Reading and Writing.]

My pen touched the paper.

I started answering.

Quietly.

Cleanly.

One question after another, from the first all the way to the last.

No earpiece. No signal. No coded prompts.

Just my own mind and twelve years of work.

This was the second time I had sat for this SAT.

In my last life, I ended up among the top students in the state , only to be buried under a mountain of collective hatred.

This time, my pen paused for a beat at the final period of my essay.

Then I set it down.

I looked up.

The red lights on the surveillance cameras were still blinking, steady and cold.

In Room 105 of Building A, Sienna was probably pressing that skin-toned earpiece deep into her ear canal right now, eyes closed as she listened to answers coming in from outside, her pen moving like it had a mind of its own.

She probably thought she was winning.

The bell rang for the end of the session.

I stood, straightened my answer sheet, and placed it neatly on the desk.

When I walked out of the testing room, the sunlight outside was blinding.