Chapter 1296

Leland leaned back in his chair, a picture of relaxed arrogance, a smug smirk firmly planted on his lips.

Was there even a need to guess?

The zero obviously belonged to Juniper!

"Leland Landon!"

The exact moment the thought crossed his mind, he heard his own name called.

His head snapped up, meeting Professor Dawson's furious glare. His heart dropped into his stomach.

What?

Did the professor just call his name?

The rest of the class whipped their heads away from Juniper, snapping their attention entirely onto him.

Didn't the professor just say he was handing out the zero first?

Why would he call Leland?

Did he grab the wrong paper?

"Leland Landon!" When Leland just sat there like a statue, Dawson's irritated bark rang out again. "Did you not hear me call you?"

Leland stood up in a daze, his smirk instantly evaporating as he stammered, "Professor, is this... is this the exam with the zero?"

"Yes!" Dawson gave a curt, definitive nod, repeating himself loudly, "On this exam, you scored a zero!"

"What?!"

The classroom erupted into shocked whispers.

What?

The zero didn't belong to the computer science interloper, but to their star medical student?

There had to be some kind of mistake!

Juniper remained exactly as she was, arms crossed over her chest, watching the drama unfold with mild amusement.

"Professor, there's no way I got a zero," Leland's voice trembled as he desperately tried to explain. "I knew the answers to so many of those questions!"

"Your actual answers didn't score a zero," Dawson replied, his expression grave and voice rigid. "But you didn't do very well either. You only scored a seventy."

This was his top student. He had spent countless hours tutoring him privately. He had even taken him along to assist in actual surgeries at the hospital.

Logically speaking, Leland should have easily scored an eighty or above on this material.

"Then why..." Leland couldn't comprehend why he was given a zero.

"Come up here and look for yourself!" Dawson slammed the test down on the podium, so furious that what little hair he had left seemed to stand on end.

Leland dragged his feet to the front like a man marching to the gallows. The moment his eyes fell on the paper, his already pale face drained of all color.

He hadn't written his name!

In absolutely any academic setting, writing your name was the most fundamental step.

In the medical field, meticulous attention to detail was life or death.

If he forgot to write his name on a test today, he might leave a scalpel inside a

patient tomorrow.

Because of this, the medical

department had an ironclad rule:

exam submitted

without aule: any

automatically received a zero...

So, even with a raw score of seventy, it was officially recorded as a zero.

Leland stood rooted to the spot, utterly humiliated, unable to formulate a single word of defense.

If the perfect score wasn't Leland, then didn't that mean...

The students blinked, their necks practically snapping as they turned stiffly to look at the very last row.

No way.

"The perfect score," Professor Dawson's voice boomed. "Juniper Payne."

Leland: "???"

The class: "???"

Juniper: Was she actually the only one who aced it?

A computer science major who had been dabbling in medicine for less than a month... got a perfect score?

And this wasn't some basic freshman quiz. These were graduate-level questions!

It was completely absurd!

They refused to believe it!

Juniper strolled up to the podium, grabbed her paper, and returned to her seat without a single change in her expression.

It was just a perfect score, right? It wasn't like she hadn't gotten one before!

With every step she took, the other students' stares grew more frantic, and the whispers intensified:

"A perfect score? That's impossible."

"Leland only managed a seventy! How does she get a hundred? I call bullshit."

"Do you think she got the answer key beforehand and copied it?"

"She definitely cheated!"

Hearing the swirling accusations, Leland, desperate to salvage his shattered pride abruptly stood up and shouted his objection:

"Professor, I don't believe she earned that score!"