Chapter 52. Guiding a lost little lamb. (3/3)

“What you’re going to do today is enter a certain zone. Remember this place. What it feels like to be here. What it looks like. How you feel when taking a test here. Ingrain that into both your body and mind. Then when you take a test, I want you to close your eyes, take in a deep breath, then slowly exhale out while you recall the time you spent here. Imagine that you are actually here and not there.”

“When you open your eyes, put your full focus on the test before you and maintain that image of yourself sitting here working on tests all alone with nobody else around you in the back of your mind. The only one in that room is you. Nobody else is there. The scribbling of pencils around you does not exist. Only your pencil exists. Only your desk exists. Only your chair.”

“You are the main character in your own story. Nobody else. Not your sister. Not your mother. And certainly not someone insignificant like me. Just as the Tyrannosaurus behind you stares down imposingly at your back from behind, you look down at your test in the exact same manner. The test before you is your prey, the prey you will devour. To you, the test can hardly be called a meal though. A single test isn’t anywhere near large enough to fill the gaps between your teeth.”

The boy's head sunk low as tears filled his eyes and flowed down his cheeks. He sniffled but remained quiet refusing to let out any sobs. I’d told him to not make any noise in here after all.

It was quite a scene, me standing before a kid who’d broken down into silent tears. With the sun shining down from behind upon my back casting a shadow across the ground. The sight of nature behind me and a Tyrannosaurus in front of me. I was sure it was a scene that would be permanently ingrained into the back of his mind.

Yes, I’d definitely have fun in the future reminding him about the time he cried like a baby here. I secretly recorded a video too with the phone in my breast pocket.

Well, you should always have cards up your sleeves after all. I wasn’t one to refuse such a convenient card to play in the event he chose to bite the hand that fed him in the future. You could never predict the future with 100% accuracy even when you came from it. I’d already learned that the hard way. This child was also a rather prideful boy, he definitely wouldn't want anyone to see this scene.

He cried by himself for a while as I stood there in silence and patiently waited for him to calm down. Once he finally stopped I handed him all the tests from each subject over to him.

“You can work on all these tests I’ve prepared for you for the rest of the day while we’re here. I’m going to sleep for now. Just wake me up if you finish them all before my alarm goes off.”

“Thanks. I’ll do my best.”

I immediately fell asleep on the couch after he said that. That speech I gave had tired me out. Talking drains so much energy. Even breathing is exhausting. Haaah. I wish I didn’t have to do either.

After sleeping for a few hours my body shook. More precisely, someone was shaking my shoulder.

When I opened my eyes Alicia’s blond-haired little brother was looking down at me.

“I finished them all.” He said, very to the point.

I sat up and checked the time on my phone. It was already 5 PM.

I retrieved all the tests he’d done and started marking them. After another hour I finished marking all of them. He’d done 20 tests in total which was quite impressive. In total, he scored 100% on 12 of the tests. The rest were 95% and above.

I handed them over to him lazily. The results had been exactly as I expected again.

“Alright, let’s go. This should be enough. You can practice more when you get home. But you shouldn’t overdo it and you should really get some proper sleep to rest yourself for your first test at school tomorrow. Getting enough sleep and ensuring your body is well-rested is a big part of being able to enter the zone you need to be in for a test. I’m sure you’ve exhausted yourself mentally by now. The evidence of that is in the tests you took. The ones you got 100% on were among the first 12 tests you did. The ones after that were where you dropped off and started making mistakes.”

“Still, it’s impressive to score that high even when you should be mentally fatigued. You’ve built up a lot of stamina as a result of how much you’ve been studying and it shows. You’ve really worked hard, haven’t you? Just don’t work yourself too hard and end up collapsing from exhaustion.”

I gave him some half-hearted words as I lazily stood up and proceeded toward the exit.

He quickly followed behind and asked, “Uh… but is this really okay?”

Unsure of what he meant I sought clarification, “What do you mean? Are you worried you haven’t done enough tests? If so, here, you can have more. I just wouldn’t recommend doing any more tests today. You can do a few after school tomorrow or something for the subject you have the following day. That will help you get in the groove for the specific subject as well.” I pulled out a thick stack of papers from my bag and handed it to him. They also contained the solutions to each test as well so he could check his answers. I really wasted a lot of energy during classes this last week preparing all this.

“Huh? Uh, I’m thankful for all of these, but that wasn’t what I meant.”

“Oh? What did you mean then?”

“Well, just looking at how many tests you put together for me across all subjects, it must have taken up a lot of time, right? Will you be okay? Like my sister, you also have final exams that are way harder than the tests I’ve got to do, don’t you? Won’t your grades be affected because of me?”

“So what? I’ve never cared for grades since high school started. Grades are just a useless number to me on a piece of paper. Grades don’t dictate my life and they have no impact on what I want to do in the future. I don’t plan on attending university, so you don’t need to concern yourself with pointless things like my grades. Just worry about yourself and your own grades since unlike me, you do actually want to do well.”

“Honestly, I personally couldn’t care to recommend going to university to anyone, but that’s a decision best left to an individual to decide for themself. Everyone should just live their life the way they want to rather than the way they’re expected to by society. That’s probably just a bad take from me though, so take it with a grain of salt. I’m not a good role model honor student after all.”

“Out of curiosity, what’s your average grade in high school right now?” The boy trailing behind me asked.

“75%, it’s not particularly good or bad.”

“But… isn’t that weird? You seem super smart.”

“Grades don’t actually tell you anything about a person aside from a vague estimate of how hard a worker someone is. Someone could be a genius, but if they don’t put in the work, their grades could still be shit. I’m no genius though, it just appears that way to you because it’s easy to deceive children. I am someone who relies heavily on lies and deception as you’ve already learned. It should be obvious enough by now, but I could easily deceive someone into believing I was a genius when in reality I’m just your average idiot.”

“Couldn’t you just be both? A genius and a big liar? So you’re lying about being an idiot when you’re actually a genius?”

“Enough with this genius nonsense. Geniuses don’t really exist, it’s just a stupid label society put onto people they have a poor understanding of. So what if someone has a high IQ or can do incredibly difficult problems that others cannot? There is much more to life than just that alone. There will always be something people labeled geniuses or prodigies are lacking in the end. It is impossible for someone to be good at every aspect of life. Everyone has something they’re good at no matter how useless they may seem. They will naturally also have things they are bad at.”

“In the end, it’s all just relativistic rubbish. Just remember, no matter how good you are at something, there will always be someone or something out there that is better than you at it in some shape or form.”

I opened my mouth wide and let out a long yawn before I voiced a complaint, “Haaaah. I only just woke up but I’m already tired again after all this talking.”

In the end, after we got on the bus, I fell asleep again. Thankfully Alicia’s little brother woke me up before he got off, otherwise, I would have ended up only god knows where.

Now that his first problem had been resolved, the second one would soon follow. Once he completed his tests, as long as he did well enough, he would be able to shut everyone up. They wouldn’t compare him to his sister academically anymore. He’d then gain the confidence boost he needed to be able to stand up straight in the face of anyone trying to bully him. 

That was also the side reason for that ridiculous rant I went on about him being the main character in his own story. So he would grow a backbone and not take shit from them. In a sense, they were words to empower him.

The rest would be up to him to resolve with his own strength. I can’t baby him, he needs to figure things out himself. If it really came to it, I’d considered teaching him underhanded tactics to deal with anyone bullying him.

For example, recording them performing such acts and using the footage to blackmail his bullies. If they don’t screw off, he’d provide the footage to the school which could lead to them being suspended for some time, or in the worst case, expelled depending on the severity of their bullying. He could also use such footage to destroy his bullies socially online if he wanted. 

If he got into a physical fight, there was also the option of fighting dirty to stand his ground. Throwing sand in their eyes. Scattering marbles on the ground when they’re running toward him so they fall on their own. A bunch of cheap tactics like that.

There were even other things I considered explaining to him. The mentality of bullies. They did it specifically because he didn’t bite back. If he did start biting back and showed he wasn’t as easy a target as they thought they would back off. Bullies were cowardly by nature, they only wanted to target the weakest, most vulnerable person they could find. If you showed them you were willing to drag them down to the grave with you, they’d back off. That was the crazy mad dog tactic used to deal with them. 

In the end, bullies bullied people because they were insecure about themselves. There was something they wanted to hide. Something they didn’t want others to see about them, so they took things out on others because they were dissatisfied about how pathetic and weak they truly were. They could only thrive if they felt there was someone beneath them that they could use to make themself feel better about their own ugliness.

I was confident this student of mine would be able to handle things with the confidence he developed. He would no longer shy away and hide in a shell. He’d surely spread his wings and fly.