William Bennett was already implicated just because his surname was Jiang, and after being provoked by that tone, his impression got even worse. His young master temper flared up, and he pointed at the new textbooks on the desk with his chin and said, “I’m new here, so I’ll just sit here, how about that?”

Handsome guys bickering might be pretty entertaining, and several students at the front desks all turned their heads.

Samuel Wright sensed the atmosphere was off and was the first to jump in to smooth things over: “No, you were catching up on sleep just now so you didn’t know, the teacher assigned him to this seat.”

“Which teacher?” Edward Harris asked.

“Who else, Big Mouth of course,” Samuel Wright said. “He’s always liked randomly assigning seats. Last time, with just one sentence, he moved my desk next to the podium, and the next day he forgot all about it and asked me why I wasn’t sitting in the classroom like everyone else, insisting on squeezing in with the teacher at the podium. I was just speechless.”

William Bennett was still facing off with Edward Harris with a cold face, but when he heard this, he turned to glare at Samuel Wright, his face practically flashing a huge sign of condemnation: Why didn’t you say this when Big Mouth Monkey was here just now?

Suddenly, there was a loud scraping sound from the side. William Bennett looked over and saw that Edward Harris had already stood up, picked up his chair, and was dragging his single desk further back.

“What are you doing?” Samuel Wright asked in confusion.

“Changing seats.” Edward Harris didn’t even look up, just tilted his head slightly in William Bennett’s direction and said, “He’s a bit shorter, so he can sit here. I’ll sit behind.”

William Bennett: “Who’s shorter?”

Edward Harris was already seated in his new spot. He pulled out a thick stack of test papers from under the desk and tossed them on top, then leaned back in his chair and looked up at William Bennett: “Otherwise, are you taller than me?”

“……”

At this point, William Bennett’s impression of this person was beyond repair.

He shifted his single desk a bit to the left to line up with the rest of the row, then stuffed his backpack under the desk. As soon as he sat down, Samuel Wright tapped his desk with the tip of his pen, turned his head, and whispered, “Hey, bro.”

“Yeah?” When Young Master Bennett was in a bad mood, he was very targeted and wouldn’t take it out on unrelated people.

Samuel Wright covered his mouth with his hand and lowered his voice even more: “Don’t take it to heart, he’s not usually like this. Maybe something happened to him these past couple of days, so he’s in a bad mood.”

Out of politeness, William Bennett replied with an “oh,” but in his heart he thought, what’s that got to do with me.

Compared to the ice-cold plague god behind him, he was more concerned about the other people in the classroom.

Because looking around, he was the only one with textbooks on his desk; everyone else just had piles of test papers. And even though the class bell had rung for quite a while, no teacher had shown up.

What’s wrong with this school?

He scanned the room, but before he could voice his confusion, the ever-considerate Samuel Wright spoke up: “Today’s Saturday, and it’s during the make-up class period, so it’s self-study all day. You… didn’t bring any test papers?”

William Bennett reminded him irritably, “I just got here today.”

“Oh, then what are you going to use to review?” Samuel Wright poked at the brand-new textbooks. “The textbooks?”

“Review?” William Bennett repeated. “You said review?”

“That’s right.”

William Bennett suddenly had a bad feeling. He asked dryly, “Why do we need to review?”

Samuel Wright said, “Because there’s an exam tomorrow.”

William Bennett: “???”

“What’s happening tomorrow?”

“An exam.”

William Bennett looked at him as if he was speaking nonsense: “An exam on what? First-year material?”

“That was for the last final exam. Why would we be tested on first-year stuff now?” Samuel Wright pointed at the new textbooks William Bennett had just received today. “On this.”

William Bennett: “……”

Say that again?

Maybe his frozen expression was a bit cute, because Samuel Wright burst out laughing.

William Bennett pointed at the textbooks and said in a flat voice, “Director Carter told me this is your new textbook for the semester.”

“In theory, yes,” Samuel Wright said. “But we’ve already finished it. Today’s August 8th, right? We started summer break on July 10th, only had ten days off, and then came back for classes. We finished the material in the first couple of days.”

“Which subjects?”

“We’ve finished math, physics, and chemistry. Chinese is a bit behind, and we never really follow the textbook for English anyway.”

William Bennett felt suffocated: “So tomorrow I have to take exams in five subjects I’ve never studied before?”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask for leave?”

“Probably not.” Samuel Wright said in a deliberately world-weary tone, “My friend, the road ahead is long and arduous. Take care of yourself. When you graduate, just find someone to beat up Big Mouth Carter and you’ll be fine.”

This was all too much, so much so that for the rest of the day, William Bennett was in a slightly tipsy, dazed state—let’s just call it very drunk.

It wasn’t until Uncle Little Brooks the driver called his phone that he realized self-study was over and most people had already left the classroom. Samuel Wright seemed to have said goodbye before leaving, and the annoying guy at the back was nowhere to be seen.

On the way home, he got a call from his dad, Martin Bennett. A real father is a real father—just from a single “hmm,” he could tell something was wrong.

“What’s up? Something happen?” Martin Bennett asked.

William Bennett leaned his head against the car window, slumped lazily in the back seat, and said numbly, “I have a request I need you to fulfill.”

“Go ahead.”

“I want to drop out of school.”

“……”