Chương 268: SIMULTANEOUS EQUATIONS

1 FEBRUARY, MONDAY, IMPROMPTU MATH Liam entered the class to let us know that our Ethics and Moral Class teacher was absent today. The class almost cheered before they saw Mrs Henderson step in behind Liam.

"Alright class, I just wanted you to know..." She stopped at the Class Rules on our board.

"What's this?" How should I say this? I gave up on the manga story happening in real life and tried to write my own story, but it got taken over by Henry and then the rest of the class. But at least things seemed to be resolved with Pearl. She was smiling at me again like nothing ever happened earlier. And I didn't have to explain anything because Abigail was happy to oblige.

"We thought about what you said, Mrs Hen." The class nodded. Someone snickered. Mrs Henderson read the rules aloud, "Be kind, no bullying... Sam is out of bounds."

"What's this?" She looked at the class.

"Too many guys are falling for Sam, so we decided to protect her and save us guys from the trouble," Henry answered with a practiced shrug-and-smirk combo. The effect was very "It's none of my business, but I'm just saying." The class nodded. More snickers.

"Don't worry, Mrs Hen. Sam already has a rich and handsome fiancé anyway." Krystal tried to strongly reassure Mrs Henderson again. Of course, this backfired. Mrs Henderson's face was priceless. She looked like she wanted to say something, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. The class snickered again.

"Sam, please see me after class." Mrs Henderson decided finally. Eh? Was I in trouble? Me? WTH.

"Now take out your notes. I'll be returning your homework. I see that none of you got question 7 or 15 right. Let me quickly go through it, and you do the corrections..." Mrs Henderson started rummaging in her bag for her own personal marker she always used. Liam had taken the stack of homework from her and was passing it back to the class. Someone raised a hand.

"Mrs Hen, mine isn't marked." Mrs Henderson didn't look even a little fazed.

"For those of you who haven't been marked, just do the corrections in green pen as usual. I'll mark both your work and the corrections together."

"I don't know why none of you could get it..." Mrs Henderson continued sighing as if the world could not have wronged her more.

"It's not difficult, just a bit longer than the usual questions." I flipped my homework to the right page. Ah yes, the long questions that I had purposely misunderstood on the train ride to school. Oh... And the girls who copied my answers would've gotten it wrong too. Opps.

"Mrs Hen, mine is right." Henry raised his hand. Mrs Henderson looked surprised.

"Have I marked it?"

"Not yet." Henry smiled.

"Oh, alright then. Can you come up and explain the answer to us, Henry?" Mrs Henderson asked. Henry stopped smiling. I heard Marcus hide a laugh into his cough. Henry smacked him hard from behind and got up.

"Ow," Marcus said to himself. Hahaha. Served him right. Henry started writing out the solution on the board. He didn't even look at his answer. He didn't do any of the explaining either. But as I copied it with my green pen, I noticed his working skipped all the little steps. Eventually, I ended up copying the solution blindly. I was just assuming his mental calculations were correct.

"Henry, you missed the five." Marcus raised his hand and pointed it out. Suddenly, I was reminded of Beta Lucas whenever he had to prompt Dad. Henry's marker stopped. He said a quiet "f***" and erased back two lines of the equation. Arughh... That meant I had to go back two steps too. I heard the class groan around me. I cancelled out the two lines and re-copied the correct ones in their place. I'll have to look at this question again later to figure it out. Henry did it pretty fast.

Mrs Henderson took his homework from him halfway, and then flipped to question 15. Once she confirmed that he had done it right, she said, "Thank you, Henry. Please do question 15 on the board for us too." Henry looked mildly annoyed, but he obliged. He went to the other side of the board and started. He didn't even have to look at the question, but halfway while forming the equation, he asked, "What are the values of Y and Z, Mrs Hen?"

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Mrs Henderson frowned at the question on Henry's paper and read them off for him. And Henry was off, scribbling the rest of it. His writing was kind of messy. Question 15 was even longer than question 7.

"This is nice." Mrs Henderson said, "It's nice that I don't have to be writing on the whiteboard all the time." She went over to her desk and sat down.

"Ah! Yes, this is nice. We should do this more often." Some of the girls giggled.

"Let's see..." Mrs Henderson looked at Henry's paper.

"Question 13 was a little tricky. Samantha, can you come up and do it?" I was copying Henry's question 15, but flipped back quickly. Yeah, I knew how to do 13. Mrs Henderson had marked my paper.

"You can start erasing question 7 on the board," Mrs Henderson told me. Okay. I went up to the board with my paper. Mrs Henderson got up from her desk and took my paper from me.

"I'll read you the question." Eh, was she testing me? I picked up the dry eraser and wiped my side of the board clean, then I picked up the marker and tested it. Okay. It was working. Mrs Henderson read me the question. I wrote the numbers on one side as quickly as I could before I forgot them. Then I worked out the question, being very careful not to make a careless mistake since I was doing it in front of the whole class and all. Plus, I couldn't skip steps like Henry. I had to write it all out.

That already made me slower. It's okay. Slow and steady wins the race. Henry finished his side and took a look at mine.

"Sam, you copied the left-hand side wrong." Mrs Henderson looked surprised that she hadn't caught it herself. She checked my paper, but it was right on my paper. I just made a careless mistake. The equation on the left-hand side! It morphed by itself... Hahaha. I had copied the 6 as 9. I always made mistakes like that. But at least it didn't matter yet, since I was working on the right-hand side. Henry went back to his seat.

I used my hand to rub off the 6 and change it to a 9, then I went back and solved the equation.

"Alright. Thank you, Sam." Mrs Henderson nodded when I was done. I went back to my seat.

"Next question, 17. Jasmine, can you come up and answer it?" Mrs Henderson wasn't done.

"Yes, but I'm still copying!" Jasmine doubled down at her desk and copied furiously. Then she went up with her paper. Mrs Henderson took it from her. Jasmine looked like she was struggling but managed to write the answer correctly. It was weird, though, because Jasmine simply wrote the solution from left to right and paused at the strangest moments. Like with this type of equation, I always had to fill in the right side first. And it looked like the equal sign stumped her good.

Oh well, she got the answer right anyway. Mrs Henderson made a strange face. And then she called up Krystal. Krystal couldn't write the answer.

"Then, how did you manage to do it in your homework?" Mrs Henderson asked.

"I had help. My cousin taught me yesterday... But I forgot," Krystal said. Zara was next up to the board. Zara said that Krystal's cousin taught her too, but she also forgot. By now, I figured that Mrs Henderson was calling everyone who had copied my homework. She had found us out. When it was Leia's turn, Leia actually managed to do the question. But Mrs Henderson was out of challenge questions by then, so it was an easier one.

After that, Mrs Henderson simply told us to return the homework to her for marking, and then she reminded me to see her outside the classroom. I followed her out. My heart was beating pretty quickly. I was definitely in trouble... but what was I in trouble for? Once we were away enough from the classroom, Mrs Henderson asked me, "I heard your grandfather passed away last Friday. Were you close?" I nodded.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Mrs Henderson told me.

"Thank you," I replied, because I knew that was the right answer to give now.

"Are you alright?" Mrs Henderson asked. Eh? I nodded.

"Yeah." Mrs Henderson said, "Sam, if you are having a hard time at home or with your classmates, you can talk to me about it." Eh? But you're a human... How could I tell you about Mate in a fight cage or Grandma Luna's ring or the Rogue King or the pack mergers?

"Maria won't be in school this week due to family matters, so you should try to make friends with the other kids too. I understand warlock customs must be rather different than human teens, but it's good to step out of your comfort zone now and then. If your classmates make things hard for you, you need to speak up. You don't have to let them copy your homework, or isolate you, or tease or play tricks on you because of your hair color or your looks, okay?" Mrs Henderson was speaking softly and earnestly.

Her eyes had become glassy. Was there something wrong with my looks? Omo I nodded and swallowed, but mostly I was confused by her words. It sounded like I had been relying on Maria for protection all this while, and now that she was gone, I was alone and being bullied by my classmates because I was a warlock? But by the time I figured this out, Mrs Henderson patted me on the shoulder.

"You better go back to class for now." I nodded and watched as Mrs Henderson walked away. Oh boy... Suddenly, I was the bully victim. When I got back to class, the confusion must have been clearly written on my face. Jasmine came over, concerned.

"Are you okay?" I nodded.

"Did you get in trouble for lending us your homework?" Jasmine asked. I shook my head, and then I caught sight of Jasmine's hand. She had scribbled down the answer before going up to the board! I found myself grinning at that.

"That was clever." Jasmine followed my line of sight and lifted up her hand. She laughed a little.

"I was so scared."

"Next time, just do your own homework," Marcus scolded mildly. Jasmine nodded.

"Yeah, sorry, Sam."

"Did Sam get in trouble?" Zara called from her seat.

"No, there was no trouble," I answered too quickly.

"I know!" Zara said.

"Next time, let's purposely make mistakes when we copy."

"But I always copy from Troy, who copies from you..." Terrence complained.

"By the time I copy, wouldn't everything be wrong?" Krystal looked extremely serious at the widespread implications.

"We have to be careful, or the whole class could get in trouble."

"Okay! New class rule!" Abigail announced.

"If you copy homework, you have to make mistakes and make your answer look different."

"Or copy from two different sources for variety," a random girl suggested.

"Liam could randomly mix the papers," Marcus volunteered, "so the similar answers wouldn't be next to each other." Liam nodded.

"Noted." Great. This way, Mrs Henderson would have a wide assortment of answers for X and Y for every question. Abigail went up to the board. I watched her write. I wanted to see how she was going to write the new copying rule on the board.

"No copying*" With the asterisk for "terms and conditions apply." Abigail should become a lawyer. Now our class had 4 rules. And I am left with one last question: If X is the number of misunderstandings I have to deal with, and Y is the number of half-baked solutions my friends come up with, what is the probability of ME = Sam? Let's see Henry come up to the board and solve that! Or no... That might just make things worse to the power of infinity.

I wondered if this was one of the hard times Mrs Henderson wanted me to talk to her about. But I had no idea how to talk about it. Everything was happening too fast—the way Henry solved simultaneous equations, skipping too many steps for me to follow. I'm sure I would figure it out eventually, though. Oh well, I guess it looked harmless enough to just go along with the flow for now. I mean, how bad could it get?