Cerita Pendek Familial Bond Imagination & Novel Campus

When I was three and a half, the system sent me back to my dad's high school days. The good news—the brooding villain destined to destroy the world was still just a blond guy. The bad news—there were way too many blond guys at that school, and I could not tell them apart. Hence, every time I saw one, I called him 'Dad'. By the time I got to the 101st, I was robbed. He grabbed me by the collar with a fierce look on his face, like he was about to hit me at any second. The long-dormant system suddenly spoke up, "Kiddo, the one walking out of the school right now is your dad!" I sniffled and shouted, "Hey, you'd better be careful! I'm telling you, my dad's almost an adult! Right, Dad? Elliot!" Elliot Smith froze for a second and pointed at himself. "Who, me?"

My answers were a 100% match with my younger brother, Jacob Scott's, answers for 20 consecutive major exams. No matter how fast I completed my exam papers, he would always manage to complete his one second ahead of me. My class teacher had talked about this to me three times, and I was given a warning for cheating. When my classmates saw me, they said, "Hey, copycat, did you get caught again?" How could our answers be the same when I had never touched his papers at all? This continued until our SATs, when I suddenly saw a live chat overlay floating in the air. [Jacob is the chosen one. It must feel great for him to suddenly have the power to read minds! [He's been getting all the right answers by reading Jonah's mind. It doesn't matter that Jonah is a genius when he's relegated to a stepping stone for Jacob's road to success!] When I read through the exam papers, I started humming the alphabet song, "A, B, C, D, E, F, G…"

I'm infamous for being the stupidest student in the entire school. Even though I've been doing additional revisions till late night every day, I keep getting the lowest rank consistently in exams. On the other hand, my younger sister, Mia Lawson, doesn't study at all. Yet, she always comes up as the top of her grade every time. Our parents soon call her as the Math Prodigy. Because of that, I'm forced to live in the attic, which leaks all the time during rainy days. My table lamp gets smashed into pieces as well since I shouldn't be wasting power if I can't cram any knowledge into my brain. My parents also force me to drop out of school and start working at a young age. They claim that losers should stick to their paths and do what they do best. But at the same time, they don't hesitate to drop a grand sum of money just to enroll Mia into a class based on the Arithmetiad. There's a time when I contract a high fever that makes me all woozy and my consciousness all blurry. Because of my illness, I randomly draw an incorrect construction line on a draft paper. The next day, the line actually appears on Mia's exam paper, pixel by pixel. That's when realization dawns on me immediately. Before the day the National Arithmetiad is set to be streamed live in front of the entire nation, I opt to not solve any difficult questions. Instead, I lock my room door and keep telling myself in front of the mirror that the greatest mathematical equation in this world is 1+1=3.

My SAT scores are out. It turns out that I'm the top scorer of my state. But I insist on applying to an obscure, third-rate private college in front of my friends and family. Everyone thinks that I've gone nuts. Mom even gets down on her knees and begs me not to destroy my future. "You can go to any top college you want! Why must you attend that trashy college instead?" I remain unmoved despite the fact that everyone keeps convincing me to change my mind. What they don't know is that if I don't go there, everyone will die in three days.