Chapter 13 A Familiar Figure

• "Oh, you mean that?" Jamie patted his chest and said, "Don't worry, Boss. I didn't expose you even the slightest. Rest assured and please continue your disguise in peace."
• "Okay." Then, Elise gave him one final reminder. "Let's keep in touch on the phone from now on. The Griffiths will be suspicious if they see you."
• "Understood." With those words, Jamie left in a jiffy.
• Before Jamie could go far, Elise saw Danny going her way the moment she turned around. Her heart skipped a beat and she almost dropped the document in her hand.
• She stiffened up for a moment and calmly passed by Danny on the way back to their classroom.
• Huh? Is this it? She didn't expect the Math Olympiad competition to have such a low difficulty. It seems like I've overestimated this school.
• Elise flipped through the questions and stuffed them into the drawer under her table after a while. Needless to say, she didn't need to worry about the competition at all.
• …
• The school started a tutoring class especially for the students participating in the Math Olympiad, with those including Nicole and Danny.
• And so, Elise could see Nicole taking the opportunity to talk to Danny every day, with the excuse of asking him to help her study. However, he mercilessly turned down all of her requests.
• Soon, the one week of tutoring classes came to an end, and the Math Olympiad began.
• The students of the school were all confident that Nicole would take the win.
• "She came in first last year. She's definitely going to win this year as well. How uninteresting."
• "Yeah, it'd be great if someone can bring her down this time around, but probably no one can do that."
• Elise didn't know people would be so envious of the winner!
• She wanted nothing more than to lie low, so she intentionally left the final question blank during the competition. To her surprise, she still came in first at the end, which left her in dismay.
• Her classmates were astounded to hear about that—for a girl who grew up in the countryside, they didn't think that she'd have such good grades.
• Nicole had been the top student in school all along. In comparison to Elise, though, she didn't even come close.
• The results of the Math Olympiad came as a complete shock to the teacher. She'd never seen such a talented student in all her years of teaching. Thus, she immediately went to the principal to show off the fruits of her guidance as soon as she heard the news.
• The principal held the matter in high regard as well and decided to specially conduct an award ceremony for Elise.
• …
• At the award ceremony, the principal and the teacher spoke on and on for over an hour before inviting Elise onstage to give her speech. They firmly believed that Elise would be the top scorer of Athesea in the college entrance examination and wanted to pay close attention to her studies from now on.
• "Let us put our hands together and welcome our champion of the Math Olympiad—Elise Sinclair."
• Elise went up the stage under the eyes of the audience.
• The students gave her a huge round of applause, silently excited to see what the legendary top student of the school looked like. In the end, they watched an ugly girl with a dark and uneven complexion go onstage.
• That's a valedictorian for you. Studying is probably all they ever do. Appearances and presentations? Never a concern.
• The boys could only comfort themselves in disappointment.
• The teacher felt a little embarrassed as well and smiled awkwardly as she let Elise conclude her learning experience.
• Elise was about to recite the script that she'd prepared yesterday when she saw a familiar figure below the stage.
• The corner of her lips twitched. Why's Alexander here?
• She only heard that Jonah wanted to attend, but nobody told her that Alexander would be there as well.
• She spaced out for a moment. The next time her eyes came into focus, Alexander was no longer sitting there. Elise blinked a few times; perhaps she'd hallucinated his presence from spending the past two days doing math exercises, so she didn't give it much thought.
• Soon after, she regained her composure and carried on with her speech.
• She spoke fluently without a word of mistake. After all, she was used to receiving prizes of all kinds, and she'd attended ceremonies of all sizes before.
• Alexander zoned out as he stared at the eloquent woman who was speaking confidently on the stage.
• After her speech, he didn't stay for a second longer and quietly left.