Chapter 168 Exams Students must take exams!
Looking at the test paper in your hand, you almost thought the teacher had given it to the wrong person.
This entire A4 sheet, printed with the school emblem, looks no different from any other student's; the questions are neatly arranged, the font is clear, and there are many of them. However, you can only understand a few words—of course.
Even if you've been studying the language with all your might these past few days, and have new friends helping you with your Spoken English lessons, and you do recognize some basic vocabulary, this so-called "test paper" in front of you is like a whole page of gibberish. Apart from the format, punctuation, and bold headings that give you the impression that this is a "well-structured" Chinese exam, the rest is completely incomprehensible.
You glanced at the contents blankly—
The first question was a multiple-choice question. The question number was a character that looked like the "@" symbol, which is also the Chinese way of writing the number 1. After that was a long Chinese paragraph, and at the end, the four options were densely packed together: A, B, C, and D. There seemed to be a few phrases in front of it that looked like lines of poetry.
The second question might be a fill-in-the-blank question, but you can't even be sure where the blank is.
The next few questions appeared to be reading comprehension passages. The passages were quite long, interspersed with dialogue markers and proper nouns. You vaguely recognized a few words, likely "Buddha," but you couldn't determine the focus of the questions.
Not to mention the last few questions, which were all open-ended subjective questions, with many sentences that you could barely pronounce. It seemed like you were asked to write a short essay or comment on an article—but you couldn't even understand the questions themselves!
Even if you spend 30 days learning a language quickly, it's still far from enough to pass a proper Chinese language exam!
You were so speechless that you burst out laughing, and you couldn't help but look up to find the teacher.
She even gave you the beginner's textbook before, so she should know your level well. Did they give you the wrong test paper? Even if you were to take a test, shouldn't they have given you a special test paper?
You raised your hand, ready to ask a question. But just then, you saw the Chinese teacher on the podium, who had just finished tidying up the remaining draft paper and attendance sheet, slowly raise her head and scan the entire classroom with a cold, even icy gaze.
Most female teachers at school give you the impression of being extremely gentle, always speaking softly and with a patient smile on their face. But at this moment, her expression was colder than the air conditioning blowing from the classroom.
Upon closer inspection, you'll notice the problem. Her face has actually changed. Her eye sockets are sunken, her nose bridge seems to have collapsed, her lips are dry and pressed against her teeth, her entire face is supported by bone, and the presence of flesh has almost disappeared.
Those big, round eyes seemed like two unfocused blobs of black ink. When her gaze was drawn to your rising hands, you instinctively shivered, and your hands naturally went from grabbing your hair and adjusting your glasses to quietly placing them back on the table.
A faint, sweet scent wafted in the air.
You can't raise your hand. You've just come to this conclusion purely on your gut feeling when you see a girl a few rows in front of you raise her hand.
She was completely oblivious to the teacher's strange behavior, and just kept smiling and talking. The language arts teacher clearly had a close relationship with her students, so her attitude wasn't surprising.
You can't quite understand what she said, but based on the keywords "honnam" (restroom) and "koanuya" (please allow), you can guess that she's asking to use the restroom.
This is just as reasonable as your request to change the exam paper.
The flag-raising ceremony had just ended, and many students hadn't even had a chance to use the restroom. Starting the exam immediately afterward was neither appropriate nor reasonable. Besides, the exam hadn't officially started yet, so it was quite appropriate and polite for the girls to make their request at this point.
Besides, judging from your interactions with the teachers these past few days and the few posts you've seen on Little Green Book, Thai teachers are generally very tolerant, so they wouldn't hold a grudge over something like this.
—You are hoping for a positive outcome so that you can naturally make your request.
The teacher didn't speak, but perhaps nodded? Well... you could say she didn't give any clear response. The girl interpreted this as agreement.
She had just stood up, and had only completed half of the movement, when her back suddenly caved in!
It was as if an invisible giant hand grabbed the center of her spine and pulled her backward. She was thrown back into the chair with a "thud," her forehead hitting the edge of the desk. She bounced up and was now leaning back in the chair with her face tilted back, her body stiff and motionless.
A hoarse sound came from her throat, her lips moved, and a thick plume of black smoke slowly rose from her mouth, shooting straight up to the ceiling like a thread.
The smell, like that of burnt wood or rotting corpses, instantly swept through the surroundings.
You suppress your nausea and press the table firmly against your stomach.
"The exam has begun. No one may leave their seat."
The teacher said.
Looking at the others, everyone except you, Meiling, and Huimin—including the classmates around the girl lying on the table—did not react at all.
No one screamed, no one panicked, and not a single person stood up out of curiosity or fear to investigate. It was as if none of this had happened. They only made some faint, almost complaining sounds at the teacher's words, quickly falling silent at her command, "Don't make a sound."
This is a serious and rigorous exam. To avoid being noticed by the teacher, you restrain yourself from turning your head to look at Meiling and Huimin.
You don't even need to look; you can easily imagine how pale their faces must be, almost transparent.
This test shouldn't be difficult for them, but I don't know if they can handle the pressure. Hang in there! You've become friends with them and don't want to see them suffer because of something like this.
But then again... you think you should be the one most worried.
You look down at the exam paper, your mind a jumbled mess, but your hands dare not stop moving—even if it's just filling in any circled character with a pen.
Rule 11: Play your role well. Shouldn't a candidate act like a candidate?
About five minutes into the exam, a low laugh came from the back row.
You know where that voice is coming from. You're not very familiar with that boy, and he seems to be somewhat ostracized by everyone in the class.
The main reason is... he's a conspicuous bag.
You've probably had classmates like that in school too. Whether their grades were actually good or bad isn't necessarily true, but they especially liked to snap their fingers during class and then say in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, "Yes! Easy!" Or, while explaining a problem, they'd ask a question that didn't need to be asked, analyzing whether their solution was correct, and after receiving an affirmative answer, they'd say, "Yes! I got it right!"
People like this are somewhat disliked. Just like this guy.
His voice wasn't loud at the moment, but it sounded unusually jarring in the classroom where the teacher had just emphasized "no noise": "Ah—it's so easy."
His tone was as if he were talking to himself, but it was clear he was deliberately trying to get more people to hear.
As he spoke, he flipped through the test paper with great force, making a lot of noise, and wrote with his pen at an extremely fast speed.
This person is going to be in trouble.
The teacher moved her feet.
She had been standing motionless on the podium, like a stone statue, scanning the class with her eyes. But as the boy's noise became increasingly undisguised, the teacher walked towards him with a stern face.
The boy noticed and sat up straight: "Teacher, I—"
She ignored him, walked straight up to him, snatched his test paper, picked up a red pen, and was about to grade it on the spot.
—Since you can't do the problems anyway, you might as well listen to the teacher's notes.
A crisp click means it's correct; two quick clicks mean it's wrong.
It sounds like this guy is being quite cocky, but his accuracy rate isn't actually that high...
The Chinese teacher glared at him with her dark, hollow eyes.
The boy panicked immediately: "No, I didn't just say—"
The teacher didn't speak; her lips twitched slightly, followed by a wet, tearing sound as skin and tendons were ripped apart.
Her face began to contort, and the corners of her mouth slowly tore open from both sides, revealing bluish-gray gums and a wriggling black tongue.
The next second, she suddenly reached out and pinched her tongue—the tongue was ripped out like an oiled paper, swung in the air in an arc, and then slammed onto the podium with a snap.
Black blood dripped down the tip of his tongue.
The boy's voice choked in his throat. He opened his mouth, trying to speak, but no sound came out.
Because his tongue also fell out.
His mouth remained open, as if he were uttering a terrified "ah," but no sound came out. The intense pain caused his eyes to glaze over, his body went limp, and his forehead slammed heavily onto the desk, where he remained motionless in an overly folded "bowed" posture.
The teacher didn't look at the boy again and returned to the podium. The tongue disappeared in the blink of an eye. So it must have gone back into the teacher's own mouth.
This caused a stir among most of the students in the class.
They didn't grasp the horror and absurdity of the situation; rather, they guessed the importance of the exam from the teacher's reaction.
The boy couldn't have been punished solely for making noise; it must have been related to his less-than-ideal test performance. Of course, one could argue that the former was a necessary condition for the latter, together constituting a sufficient condition for the teacher's punishment. But perhaps, in the first place, he simply couldn't afford to make too many mistakes on that test.
If you feel cold sweat pouring down your forehead, then you're in trouble.
But if that's really the case, it means the answers to the exam must be on the exam paper—although the copy is malicious, it never sets a dead end for anyone.
Furthermore, you attended a language class in Japan, where your teacher taught you test-taking skills for language exams. This overlaps with your childhood school experience, so it should have cross-cultural applicability.
For multiple-choice questions on basic grammar, it goes without saying. For example, in reading comprehension multiple-choice questions, you can first find the keywords in the question, and then directly locate the corresponding content in the article. After finding the original sentence, first eliminate the answers that are almost identical to the original sentence, and then carefully consider the remaining ones (usually only two). Even if you know nothing and just guess, your accuracy rate will still be about 50/50.
If it's a short answer question, you should still find the keywords first and try to describe it in your own words. That way, you can at least get half the points.
You take a deep breath and refocus your attention on your exam paper.
That's what we'll do!
For some multiple-choice questions, you can still grit your teeth and find similar grammar in some example sentences you've memorized, and then select the correct answer.
But for many more questions, you don't even know what you're supposed to do.
You can only try to reason using your limited basic knowledge of Thai and the logic of the format: Since "Buddha" appears repeatedly in the paragraph, does that mean the main idea is related to Buddha? Then why does the word "demon" appear in a certain option? Is it testing your ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood?
However, even if you do this, after more than ten minutes, you will still only be able to answer a very small portion of the questions.
No, it's not just that. There must be some other way to answer the question...
As you rack your brains trying to understand these exam papers, you suddenly hear a familiar yet jarring sound.
It was a mixture of paper rubbing and whispers.
It's right behind you, so you can barely hear anything.
You still don't dare to turn your head to look, but since you can't figure out the question right now, you just glance at him out of the corner of your eye.
A boy wearing a pink bow tie, but not a student, was quietly passing a note to the student in front of him. The note, covered in writing, was handed back to him, and he quickly tucked it into the blank space on his exam paper, while cautiously glancing at the row in front of him through his bangs.
He really was cheating.
He actually dared to cheat!
Is it because the teacher acted as if "you're doomed if you don't do well on the test"?
The thought flashed through your mind, and at the same time, a strong sense of helplessness welled up inside you. Even for a test like this... cheating wouldn't be allowed, would it?
But the teacher did not react.
She simply stood on the podium, her hands folded and hanging down in front of her abdomen, her eyelids lowered, as if she were lost in her own thoughts.
She actually started daydreaming at this time?
The boy with the pink bow wrote even faster. He felt his luck had worked, and he became bolder in his actions, not only writing but also smiling to himself.
Just as he turned his wrist to continue copying—
Snap!
A hand, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, accurately gripped his wrist.
He screamed, but no sound came out.
Like the two people before him, his mouth was wide open, but as if he were under a spell of silence, he could only utter suffocating mumbles.
That hand belongs to the teacher.
The teacher was still standing on the podium, her body motionless, but a pale, withered hand emerged from her shadow, spanning more than ten steps, and tightly gripped the cheating boy's right hand, pulling his entire body off the chair and causing him to fall to the ground.
No one made a sound in the classroom.
The teacher slowly opened her eyes and stepped down from the podium. Without anger, she coldly said, "No auxiliary tools are allowed during the exam."
She crouched down, picked up the note, and unfolded it.
What's written above isn't the answer.
Instead, it was a talisman with black inscriptions, resembling some kind of exorcism spell.
The boy's eyes widened, his face turning deathly pale: "I didn't cheat! I just wanted to be safe—we like to do these things in private—"
But before he could finish speaking, the teacher stood up and put the note into his mouth.
"Since you need it so much, just eat it."
The note seemed to come alive, wriggling and struggling in his mouth. The boy tried to spit it out, but instead, his entire face began to turn black as if some kind of ink had been poured into it, from his mouth to his throat, from his eyes to his fingernails.
Finally, the note sealed his mouth shut, sticking whitely to his lips.
He let out a very short sob, his body convulsed, and he collapsed to the ground.
A nauseating mixture of caramel and incense wafted out, as if his soul were being burned, not stabbed.
Now, without the teacher saying anything, everyone held their breath and dared not make any sudden movements.
You are still immersed in the shock and confusion from just now, and the scene of the boy who slipped in the note being punished keeps replaying in your mind.
He made mistakes, but ultimately he wasn't cheating. However, the teacher's punishment was swift and decisive, as if she didn't care whether the student had actually violated exam rules, but only whether he had challenged them.
Yes, you think so. That note might just be a symbol, a kind of audacity, a casualness in not treating the word "exam" as a sacred ritual.
For this teacher who has already turned into a demon, this recklessness may be the original sin.
Your mind was still racing, and you even forgot that your eyes were still fixed on your exam paper. It wasn't until the morning light shone in and fell on the exam paper spread out on the table that you raised your brow and noticed something strange—under the sunlight, a few of the printed Chinese characters were shimmering with a golden light like fine sand.
ah.
Rule 9 came to mind: "Gold is a sacred color... Never say no to gold."
In an instant, you realized that this was neither a simple printing defect nor a coincidence. When you leaned over the desk and slowly moved the exam paper, shining the classroom light on it, you could see a golden light that was slightly weaker than when the sunlight shone at an angle.
This is "it" giving you a hint! Even with this seemingly hopeless exam paper, even if you can't understand it at all, it's not a dead end. The hint is hidden within.
You lower your head slightly again, carefully observing the words that gleam with gold from the angle of the sunlight.
The exam paper had to be laid completely flat, otherwise the words wouldn't be fully visible due to the unevenness or angle of the paper. The golden light pointed gently but firmly at the answers.
Following their guidance, you quickly answer the multiple-choice questions. Although you can't understand the questions and options, you still diligently circle the options that are highlighted in gold.
Soon, all the multiple-choice questions were finished.
Your gaze sweeps across the lower half of the exam paper, which contains short-answer questions. A few words in the questions gleam in your eyes. Without further hesitation, you transcribe these glittering words directly into the blank spaces for your answers.
It may seem like you're just scribbling randomly, but a sense of peace rises within you: at least you're trying—trying to complete the exam, to respond to it.
However, this kind of cleverness has its limits. You know very well that even answers composed of these golden words cannot get high scores on short answer questions.
They lack sentence structure, logical connections, and any semblance of language expression. They probably only deserve a sympathy point for pointing out keywords...
You drift into a daze again, your gaze passing over the exam paper and around the classroom: one classmate is writing furiously with his head down; another classmate still looks indifferent, with a slight grin on his lips, as if he's gently rubbing his sleeve with his fingers—don't do it again, because as expected, you'll have to go through the process of these corpses coming back to normal and laughing and talking to you again.
You subconsciously looked away, not wanting to witness the beginning of another disaster.
The clock ticked away, and only a few minutes remained until the exam was due.
You reconsider your thoughts before discovering the golden characters:
"Is it really just because they didn't perform well on the exam that they were punished?"
The first girl said she needed to use the restroom and was then pulled back. However, the teacher didn't give a clear answer; in fact, it could be said that she misunderstood the teacher's eye contact.
The second boy only said a few more eye-catching things, which disrupted the order, but he didn't hurt anyone.
The third boy who slipped in a note could at most be considered to have engaged in misconduct, but it was far from being considered cheating.
What they had in common? That's right, essentially none of them showed respect for the exam. They failed to perceive the teacher's seriousness, treating the exam casually as just another routine event.
In other words, their problem may not be "just" their behavior, but rather their "attitude".
Your mind suddenly felt much clearer. Perhaps this test wasn't assessing your ability to speak English, but rather whether you put your heart into completing it and whether you treated it as a form of "training."
That makes sense.
If you assume you can't understand the test and don't bother to try, leaving the test blank, you'll fail. If you try to avoid the test by changing your paper from the start, the teacher will likely think you have a bad attitude.
As a student, I found this ridiculous, but this is a dungeon after all... and thinking about it, many teachers during my school days really liked to talk about having the right attitude.
There's one last question. The essay.
This is a problem that truly cannot be solved using any tricks.
It's best not to leave it blank; write something to show that you tried.
You wrote it down carefully in Thai: "Dear teacher, thank you. That workbook was a great help to me!"
Flattery will never get you anywhere!
I had just finished writing when the bell rang to signal the end of get out of class.
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Author's Note: ^^
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