8.2 Alter ego

With an uncertain look in his eyes, the Qmaster turned to Abed. Even Abed seemed to be taken in by surprise by her request. He didn't reply instantly and took a few seconds to answer for the first time. Abed understood the gravity of the situation he was in.

"Okay." He said in a low voice. Backing down wasn't an option anymore. He had accepted the challenge and now he has to see it through till the end.

"I… I have one more request. Can you ask the physics question from the advanced section?" said Reyana, adding to her proposal.

"From the advanced section?" Rahul exclaimed.

"What is an advanced section?" I asked him.

"Every question-solving book has an advanced section at the end of every chapter. It consists of a set of extremely difficult problems meant to be solved by students only when they have solved everything else in the chapter and have a strong grasp of the topic. If you can solve it, then it is not very different from saying that one has mastered the topic."

Mastered a topic? It has been only 2 weeks since college started. How can a student achieve that tier of mastery in such a short duration of time? Studying a chapter and solving all the questions itself takes dozens of hours. How much time does she study in a day?

The Qmaster once again looked at Abed for his confirmation. Abed hesitantly gave a slight nod in agreement.

The Qmaster flipped a few more pages to reach the last section of the book with only a couple of pages left.

"Question number four-

It is raining at 20 m/s in still air. Now a wind starts blowing with a speed 10 m/s in the north direction. If a cyclist starts moving at 10 m/s in the south direction, then the apparent velocity of rain with respect to the cyclist is…"

Abed immediately began solving using the values that came up, even before the Qmaster had finished reading out the question. This time he didn't raise his head to think or did his mumble calculation thing. He held his head straight down, focused on solving the question. Reyana began too once the Qmaster finished reading the question.

"Option one - 20 m/s

Option two - 20√2 m/s

Option three - 10√5 m/s

Option four - 30 m/s " the Qmaster read out the options.

A few seconds had passed, no one had tapped yet. Questions of advanced difficulty probably take a lot of time to solve. Rahul had his eyes closed and fingers crossed. Praying for Abed? I thought he didn't like him. Considering Rahul, he will pray even for his enemies. Everyone in the audience stood quietly, watching the quiz which had escalated to a completely different level.

Just a fun game, huh? Doesn't seem like that anymore.

Click. Reyana capped her pen and put it down on the table and patted her hand on the table making a light tap sound.

"She solved the question already? It hasn't been half a minute yet! There's no way she could have solved it that quick." Rahul had witnessed Reyana perform a feat that can be considered impossible for a student.

Is she bluffing? She never looked straight up or showed any reactions to the questions. Her timid nature made her unreadable.

She wouldn't take a risk in front of a student like Abed. That means that she actually did solve it that quickly.

Abed didn't even flinch or raise his head. He continued solving the question with full concentration as his pen ran quickly through the pages. He still had hope. If Reyana's answer is wrong, he will get a chance to make a comeback.

The Qmaster was startled because she had answered even before he had the time to flip to the answer section of the book.

"She… she is correct!" Qmaster announced hurriedly.

Abed's hand stopped and the pen fell out of his hand. This might have been the first time someone had defeated him in physics and overall in academics itself. But he doesn't seem to be the one to take pride over something like that. What he was feeling at the moment was pure bewilderment.

The audience would usually start cheering by now, but everyone in the canteen was startled by the unforeseen event. No one thought that Abed would lose against a girl no one heard of.

"Abed lost?" Rahul couldn't believe it. The guy whom he considered a genius had lost with a 0-3 score.

'....'

"Kukuku..." the sound of someone suppressing their laugh reverberated across the dreary canteen.

"Who is laughing? Who is shameless enough to laugh at this?" Rahul shouted.

"Kukukuku…." Everyone looked in the direction of the noise. Reyana's shoulder was shaking. She had covered her mouth with her hands, trying to control her laughter.

"HaHaHaHaHa…" Reyana couldn't hold it in anymore. She removed the hands covering her mouth and roared into laughter. She looked up properly for the first time, exposing an expression that might give a human child nightmares for a lifetime. The corners of her tiny lips had stretched wide apart. Her little mouth opened so wide open, that it seemed physically impossible. Her shy looking eyes which were always staring down were now wide open glaring straight towards Abed. She let out a wild belly laugh demolishing the timid feminine character she had before.

She suddenly stopped laughing, reminding us of the silence once again.

"I have always hated students like you. And you take the top spot among them." Her raucous voice was contradictory to her soft voice before. Was she faking her personality to put up an act? Maybe it was all a trap to make Abed lower his guard.

She got up from her chair and started walking towards Abed, "That chapter was so interesting. I was having so much fun that I couldn't stop." Reyana mimicked Abed, mocking him by repeating some of his lines.

She raised her hands and shouted, "Look at me, I am a genius, I am the physics prodigy who loves studying." Abed sat still in his chair without moving a muscle, looking blankly at the floor.

"Don't fuck with me!" She banged the table with her fist. Abed flinched in fear. "I pity students like you. Faking to enjoy studying. There's no such thing as enjoying or having fun learning!" She shouted on top of his head as droplets of saliva spurted out of her mouth.

"Do you know why almost all of the students in our own class don't recognise me? Because I never wasted even a single second during the breaks between the lectures or in the canteen talking to friends. I utilized all of my time solving questions while you were getting praised by your friends and teachers."

"You think you are better than the rest, huh!? Look how far your love for studying got you. NOWHERE!" She shouted at the top of her voice. What had Abed done to get so much hate from her? She despised him from every cell of her body.

There was a dreadful atmosphere hanging over the canteen that it felt like you could reach out and feel the tension in the air. Everyone was appalled to see her snarl, who a minute ago looked like she would break if someone simply raised their voice at her.

"Do you think I was able to solve the last question twice as fast than you because I love solving questions? NO! It's because I have spent 20 hours solving hundreds of questions every fucking day. The only way to get good grades is through discipline and perseverance. Solving every single question, it's every single variation from every single book you can find, until you can solve it without even having to use pen and paper." She grabbed his head by his hair and pulled his head up, forcing him to look straight at her. Abed had started to tremble. He averted his eyes away from her menacing face.

When Reyana grasped Abed by his hair, her arm beneath the end of her exceptionally long sleeves was partly exposed. I noticed something unusual on her skin. Are those...

"I win and you lose!" She spat at him as her voice cracked.

"I AM BETTER THAN YOU!"

Everyone silently watched Abed getting humiliated. She was taking it too far, but she was the winner and Abed had to keep his side of the deal. No one dared to stop her.

"Say it! Say that I am better than you. Not because I am gifted like you, but because I worked hard for it!"

"SAY IT!" She shook his head violently, gripping his hair.

"Y… you are… are bett…" Abed stammered as he struggled to speak.

"Stop it"

She didn't notice me.

"Stop it!" I raised my voice.

She shifted her fierce gaze from Abed towards me. I had seen this look before. This wasn't the result of pure hatred towards Abed, it was something else. She didn't scare me. I have seen expressions that will make even an adult piss their pants.

"What do you want? I won. He is just fulfilling his side of the deal." She retorted.

"Asura, even though this is disturbing me to my core. We can't do anything. Abed lost. It's too late."

"No, you're wrong. There's something we can still do."

"What are you talking about?" asked Rahul.

I stepped forward out of the crowd and looked straight into her eerie-looking eyes, "Reyana, I challenge you to a quiz."