Chapter 2

The crowd broke into wave after wave of laughter, and Luna and the others were laughing so hard they had tears in their eyes.

"Look, the dean's face has gone dark. He's probably never seen a student this shameless in his whole life!"

Someone had already snapped a photo and posted it on the school forum.

【The awards ceremony delivered a real show. My terminal cringe has been cured.】

Seeing that I wasn't leaving the stage, the senior classmate frowned.

"Student, what's your name? If you keep disrupting this, I'll…"

Down below, people started jeering.

"Come on, don't be like that. I think she deserves an award too, the Supreme Thick-Skin Award!"

"If I had skin that thick, I'd succeed at anything I tried!"

I ignored their laughter and said flatly, "My name is Florence Fox, Section 3 of the electronics department."

The senior classmate froze for a second, then quickly flipped through the roster in her hands.

Her expression changed to a warm smile in an instant.

"Oh, it's you. You came up early, your award is the finale!"

She walked over to the dean and pointed at the roster.

The dean smiled too.

"Your award was moved to the end at the last minute. Didn't your advisor tell you?"

"Well, since you're already up here, we'll follow the original order and present yours first."

The senior classmate quickly signaled the other ten to stand off to one side.

The dean took the microphone, his voice rising.

"Florence Fox is Riverton's top SAT scorer, and she holds a chip patent. Five competing schools were after her, and we won her."

"She also gave our department's research team free use of her patent. The school is presenting Florence with a special award, the Talent Award, with a fifty-thousand-dollar prize."

Everyone below went still.

"My god, fifty thousand dollars? The school's never done that before, right?"

"We thought she was crashing the stage for a freebie, turns out she's a legend…"

I looked over at Luna and the others and gave the certificate a little wave at them.

Their mouths dropped into perfect Os, and it took a while before they managed to squeeze out a smile at me.

When I came back to my seat with the award, the students around us were already laughing at them.

"Playing everyone else, and it turns out the clown was you?"

"Couldn't even handle a country bumpkin, and you said you'd let us watch her make a fool of herself? Watch you make fools of yourselves, you mean? That's genuinely hilarious."

I'd barely sat down when Luna couldn't wait to speak.

"You knew all along you had an award to collect?"

"Then how come your name wasn't on the list they posted?"

"The school said my award was special, they wanted to keep it a surprise…"

I cut myself off abruptly. "Huh, so you saw the list ahead of time? Since you knew my name wasn't on it, why did you send me up on stage just now?"

"You weren't… you weren't trying to make me look like a fool, were you?"

Luna started stammering.

"No, I really did hear your name just now, I thought I'd remembered the list wrong…"

Back in the dorm, the cheerful laughter was gone, and they started cursing in the dialect.

"Damn it, she stole the whole show and we came off as clowns."

"Fifty thousand dollars. Four years of tuition isn't even fifty thousand! So this country bumpkin gets to go to school for free? Why should she?"

Luna's eyes rolled, and she tilted her head toward me.

"Florence, you got fifty thousand dollars. Aren't you going to show a little something?"

"We're all in the same dorm. Treat us to a meal, celebrate it properly!"

"I know a place that does local food, and it's really good."

I held her gaze for two seconds, then smiled and agreed.

"Sure."