บท 136: Examination Day

Sato's first exam was on Monday. Examination start time was at 9 am and so, being the good student that he was, Sato was already up at 7.30. As Gray slept in the same room, he too woke up and washed up. The pair had breakfast together with Gray's mother. Sato was not doing any last-minute revisions as it was ineffective and would only induce panic in him.

Grabbing his blue haversack containing his water bottle and pencil case, Sato went outside of the house, awaiting for Hank's car arrival. He wanted to say to Gray goodbye, yet, he was nowhere to be seen. To his surprise, instead of the typical Porsche car arriving, the Gale X had stopped in front of Sato.

"Gray? Aren't you going to work today?" Sato had seen a 'meeting' slot on Gray's calendar for the whole morning. Seeing that Gray was still able to bring him to school, he felt it was rather strange.

"Get in," Gray gave his signature smile to Sato, "The meeting for the whole morning is bringing you to school and bringing you home afterward."

"What?" Sato laughed as soon as he figured out what Gray was on about. "Did you seriously block off your morning just to send me around?"

"Yes, why not? Do you not like it?"

"Of course, I like it," Sato gave Gray a quick hug when he entered the vehicle. "If I could give you an award, it would most definitely be the Best Boyfriend Award."

"Oh? I am flattered."

Gray drove the usual route that he would take Sato. As time was still early, Gray drove at a leisurely pace. He took the least traffic route, eventually reaching the university smoothly. Sato got off the car, attracting many eyes again. After being sent by Gray to school so many times, he had become used to the stares.

"I'll come to fetch you at 12.30?" Gray looked out the window after checking his watch.

"Sure." Sato nodded.

"Good luck with your paper, even though you do not need it." Gray waved goodbye as he wished off Sato.

"Thank you." After dropping Sato off at school, Gray stepped on the accelerator, turning into the driving lane. He drove off faster than before when Sato was in the car. Heading into Central Street, Gray left back to his office to do some work first. When it was time to pick up Sato, he would then leave work.

At University Z, there were a bunch of students waiting outside the Engineering building. Today was Sato's Computer Science written paper. As expected, there were many students busy flipping through their notes one last time. Sato stood outside by himself, catching the eye of many students. Whispers of gossips circulated around.

"Hey, isn't that Sato?"

"What? Where? Oh, I see him now. Even though he does not dress up richly, I am willing to bet that the clothes on him are worth thousands."

"No way... Are you saying that plain white hoodie could possibly be worth thousands of dollars? Do you really think that the hoodie is made out of heavenly silk or something?"

Hearing all the whispers around him, Sato was clueless about what was going on. Sato did not know about this, but he had gotten famous overnight.

Why? It was a result of a few students that sat in the cafe on the day that Sato had a talk with Marion Lee and Pete Kouglas. Seeing this random nobody in the school talking to the two most famous alumni of University Z, the students had to post it inside their University's forum page. Of course, within a few days, the post exploded and those in the same class as Sato knew who he was.

One gossip leads to another. The story where Sato gets dropped off and fetched by some mysterious rich person was thrown around in the loop too. Even the story of how he was called out by the famous Motori Kabe for wearing fake branded goods was brought to light. Now, everyone, not just in the Computer Science and Engineering department, knew how he looked like.

Eventually, it was ten minutes before the examination began, the students streamlined their way into the lecture hall. They had to sit alternating to prevent cheating. Regardless, in this day and age, students were rarely able to cheat. The latest facial recognition cameras are able to detect any odd movements in a person's eye movement. There was a 1 percent chance of error, but that could be resolved using an invigilator checking on the suspected student.

Sato chose to sit at the back. Taking out his favorite pen, he sat patiently in his seat. The young man was not nervous one bit, but rather, he was excited to finish his first paper. After all, when this ended, Gray was coming to fetch him.

The paper was distributed out to the students and the timer started off. Sato opened the paper and started to read through the questions. The students were given 13 questions in total but were only needed to answer 6 of them. As Sato skims read through the first question, he immediately skipped onto the next one. The first question was on the topic of Computer Vision, a topic that he was not too confident in. The topic delved into how computers could gain a high-level understanding of external digital sources.

The second question, however, Sato did not bother reading into it and just started to work through the question properly. It was about Advanced Algorithms. This was something Sato studied a lot during his reading week as a large majority of this semester was on this topic. The answers came out of Sato's head like flowing water. Simple definition questions had never stumped him, even the 'prove' questions were nothing difficult.

As the hour went by, Sato had already completed 3 questions. A paper that was allocated 3 hours to complete, Sato was devilishly fast. He was not done just yet. Within the next forty-five minutes, he had completed the last three questions. Checking through his workings twice, Sato raised his hand to submit the finished paper. It only took him two hours to finish, which truly shocked one of his Computer Science professors.