Shall We Begin?

I nodded my head, still trying to find my tongue after all the attention Bai Long Qiang showed me. "Ah, Bai Long Qiang, it's a pleasure to meet you. I knew your father well," said Mom, reaching out to shake the boy's hand.

He stood up and turned around to face my mom. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I just saw your daughter sitting here by herself and decided to keep her company. I hope that is okay?"

The respectful tone of his voice gave me goosebumps and I was trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic or not. I had found that in Canada, a person was respectful for two reasons: they were being sarcastic, or they hated the other person.

I didn't get the sense that he hated Mom, so maybe he was trying to be polite?

"Of course, thank you so much for looking after her," nodded Mom, apparently impressed. Crap. Did that mean that I had to be formal now, too? That was going to take more getting used to than the fact I was in a parallel universe.

"It was my pleasure, I can assure you," nodded Bain Long Qiang. He turned around and smiled at me before he started to walk away.

"Did it go well?" asked Mom as she took the boy's place and crouched down beside me. Now that he was gone, I was able to speak.

"I don't know," I said honestly. "It was not a lot of time to be able to go through all those subjects for four grades." I would fully admit that I was pissed off.

From experience, a student would have been allowed three hours to complete all of those exams, but I was only given four hours to complete just under 40. That would have given me all of 6 minutes to complete an exam before having to move on to the next.

I might know all the answers, but not even I was that fast.

Mom nodded her head sympathetically. "Hopefully, it will have given them the ability to at least place you here instead of sending you back to elementary school."

We both sighed at the same time and then looked at each other, giggling.

Yeah. We both knew I wasn't going back to elementary school. We could set something up at home, maybe homeschooling, so that I could still get into university later without being bored out of my skull.

"Come on," said Mom, standing up and holding out her hand. "We need to get back to Qian Xiu Rong."

I smiled and put my phone away. Taking Mom's hand, I let her lead me back to the headmaster's office.

Along the way, I saw Bai Long Qiang leaning against a set of lockers, surrounded by his friends. It almost looked like he was holding court, but the expression on his face told me he wanted to be anywhere else but there.

As if he could feel my gaze, he turned to look at me and nodded his head. I nodded back. If I was going to be going to this school, I couldn't afford to piss off the popular crowd. He grinned at my response.

"You okay, Sweetie?" asked Mom, looking down at me.

"I'm good," I answered. I turned my attention back to the hallway and away from the guy behind me. I would have enough time to figure out my reaction to him later. First, I needed to get into this school.

----

"Welcome back," said the headmaster as Mom and I entered her office. "We are just going through the exams now."

I nodded my head and went back to the couch I was originally sitting on. I was pretty sure I only made it up to grade 10, but miracles could happen.

"Now, I wanted to let you know that it is okay if you don't test to this level. We have very high standards for all of our students. Your mother was a student here, so I know that, eventually, you will be too. You just have to have patience." The headmaster spoke softly to me as if to give me the bad news in such a way that Mom wouldn't leap over the desk and strangle her.

For a woman who was submissive to the doctors, she was definitely making up for it now.

"I'll be fine," I said with a shrug. I wanted to tell her that it was asinine to think that anyone could have completed all of those exams in the time frame given, but I was not going to provide her with an excuse.

No. They set me up to fail, and I was going to make them eat crow as a result.

There was silence at my response, and I could see Mom's faint smirk, like she was thinking the same thing that I was.

She had tested me back home while my body was still recovering from whatever had killed the previous owner and had a good idea of where I stood when it came to most things.

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if this was all an elaborate scheme of hers to get me in here in the first place.

Mom was… a fox. And I wasn't talking about her beauty. If I was mean, I would have called her manipulative… but as far as I was concerned, she was just looking out for my best interests.

"Here are the results for the first batch of tests," said PP as she entered the office without bothering to knock first. She had such a smug look on her face that I could only assume she hadn't looked at the results first. "Unfortunately, not all of the tests were done."

No shit Sherlock. No one could have done them.

Instead of reprimanding PP for not knocking and for her unwarranted comments, the headmaster simply nodded and held out her hand for the papers. "Thank you, Su Ling," she said with a warm smile on her face.

Su Ling, a.k.a PP, nodded her head and spun around, leaving the room.

"Shall we begin?" asked the headmaster, opening the first booklet on her desk. Taking out a red pen, she scanned the first page. Then, the second one. By the time she had gotten to the third page, I could see the faintest bit of a tremor in her hand holding the pen.