After Rebirth My Class Beauty Led Cheating and I Stayed Silent Chapter 05

After Rebirth My Class Beauty Led Cheating and I Stayed Silent Chapter 05

The morning Reading and Writing section wrapped up, and after a brief lunch break, the afternoon Math section loomed ahead.

There were three hours between sessions.

The school had opened a supervised classroom for lunch break, and when I walked in, I saw Grant huddled in the corner with a few boys back from Building A, talking in low voices.

They were all wearing the same barely contained grin, the kind kids had after getting away with stealing candy.

“That went way too smoothly. Nothing happened,” Ethan said, slapping Grant on the back.

“The multiple-choice answers started coming in within five minutes. I finished early and checked everything twice.”

Grant nodded, then caught sight of me out of the corner of his eye and waved me over with a smile. “Tessa, how’d you do?”

“Fine.” I sat down several seats away from the three of them and took a sip from my water bottle.

“Fine?” Brielle leaned across from the other side, eyes bright.

“You probably aced it again, right? And listen, the people on the math side already said they’ll have the free-response questions fully worked out and sent over within two hours, so all we have to do is copy…”

“Brielle.”

Sienna’s voice came from the doorway, soft but clear.

Brielle stopped mid-sentence and turned around.

Sienna stood there smiling, but there was a sharpness in her eyes. “Don’t talk about that here.”

Brielle stuck out her tongue and shrank back into her seat.

Sienna walked in, and when she passed me, she paused for a second.

“Tessa, how did Reading and Writing feel?”

“Normal.”

“That’s good.” She patted my shoulder with the light touch of someone offering sisterly encouragement. “Good luck with Math this afternoon.”

I nodded.

She moved away. I watched her walk back to Grant and the others, sit down, and pull a compact mirror from her bag to touch up her lipstick.

Her movements were calm. Graceful.

Like everything was still under control.

The Math section began in the afternoon.

I walked back into Room 201 of Building C and took Seat 07 again.

I finished the whole test forty minutes early.

Then I checked it twice, set down my pen, and waited for the bell.

While I waited, I closed my eyes for a little while.

Room 105 in Building A.

Right now, in that testing room, thirty-six students, no, more than that.

Add in the six from Sections Three and Five, and it made forty-two.

Forty-two people deploying identical devices simultaneously, all connected to the same outside team, copying answers onto their answer sheets one word at a time.

Forty-two signals. Forty-two devices. Active in the same area, during the same stretch of time.

All it took was one sweep from a radio surveillance van.

It didn’t even need exact positions.

It only had to catch the neat cluster of abnormal spikes lighting up on a spectrum graph.

Like forty-two beacons suddenly flashing to life in a pitch-black field.

How were they supposed to hide that?

I opened my eyes.

The vent overhead hummed cold air into the room.

Then the bell rang.

I handed in my test and walked out.

In the hallway, I passed students from the other testing rooms in Building C.

Their expressions were all different.

Some looked crushed.

Some were quietly comparing answers.

Some were practically dancing because they’d guessed the last free-response question right.

Everything looked normal. Everything was normal.

When I stepped out of the building, I saw a white van parked on the access road between Building C and Building A.

A round gray antenna sat on top.

The radio surveillance van.

It had been there in my last life too.

Back then, Sienna’s plan never went through, so the van did nothing but routine patrol and found nothing unusual at this testing site.

This time, it would.

Forty-two beacons had been burning for two full days.

Missing that would take effort.

I walked right past the van.

The windows were tinted black, so I couldn’t see inside, but I knew there were technicians in there staring at spectrum analyzers.

Maybe they had already flagged the abnormal signals coming from Building A.

Maybe they were verifying the data.

Maybe they would file the report tonight.

My pace never changed.

One step. Two. Three.

Then I was past the van.

In the distance, the first wave of students started spilling out of Building A.

I saw Sienna.

Brielle and a few other girls crowded around her, and their laughter carried all the way across the field.

Satisfaction seemed to radiate off her in waves, and she moved with the effortless stride of someone walking on air.

“That was so easy, seriously so easy!” Brielle clung to Sienna’s arm, bouncing on her toes.

“When the answer for number twenty-three came through, I almost laughed out loud!”

I stood on the steps outside Building C and watched them from across the field.

The evening sun stretched the shadow of Building A long and dark, like a hand slowly closing.

Grant lifted his head from the crowd and spotted me.

Then he gave me a thumbs-up.

I smiled back at him.

I feel an unprecedented sense of ease and comfort.