Jean forced a smile. "Thank you, dear."
But once Aurora left the kitchen, Jean’s smile dropped. Her eyes burned with frustration.
She threw the plastic bag on the counter and muttered, "What’s the point of waking up early if I’m going to get caught anyway?"
She gritted her teeth, fuming. "I need to find another way. I can’t keep getting watched like a criminal."
...................
Back in her room, Aurora didn’t look calm anymore.
Her face was serious. Ugly, even.
First, she tried to steal food, she thought. Tomorrow it’ll be jewelry. What if soday she tries to steal Adam?
The thought made her sick.
Aurora wasn’t imagining things. She had seen the greedy look in Jean’s eyes. That wasn’t the face of a kind aunt or a caring sister. That was soone who wanted everything, without doing anything to deserve it.
’She’ll cross the line if I let her.’
Her eyes were heavy, and her body felt tired. After dealing with Jean and all her drama, Aurora just wanted a little bit of sleep. Besides, today was going to be a long and important day.
For the past few days, Aurora had been working non-stop. She was balancing two things at once, her software projects and planning for the hocoming week.
It wasn’t easy, but Aurora was never the type to give up. And now, it was finally the last day of hocoming.
Today was the big football ga.
The school was buzzing with energy, and by the end of the match, the hocoming queen would be crowned.
Aurora had worked really hard this year, so she was excited to find out who would win.
After resting for a bit, Aurora got dressed and headed to school.
As soon as she entered the building, she could feel the excitent all around her.
The hallways were full of students talking and laughing. Everyone was talking about one thing, hocoming queen.
When Aurora walked by, people turned to look at her.
So smiled, others whispered to their friends. To them, she was like a school idol. Aurora could tell that all her hard work had paid off.
Even though she loved coding and spent most of her ti with tech, Aurora had made sure to help out with hocoming week too.
She and her best friend Mia had planned amazing events and fun performances. Aurora didn’t like cheerleading, so she didn’t join that, but she took part in everything else.
Today, before the football match, there was a special event called "The Coding Geek Challenge." It was a new event the school introduced because of the rise in technology, and it quickly beca popular.
The challenge was simple: the students would be given a topic for a mini coding project, and they had one hour to finish it. Whoever finished their project first—and correctly—would win.
Aurora, being a coding genius, was not worried at all. She had built her own software before. In her mind, it felt like she was just playing around.
"This is going to be way too easy," she thought as she walked into the coding room.
But then, she spotted Diana.
Aurora rolled her eyes. Diana was the daughter of soone in the school authority, and everyone knew she used her dad’s power to get ahead.
Aurora guessed Diana had already seen the project topic ahead of ti and maybe even practiced it at ho.
"She picked the wrong competition today," Aurora thought to herself and sat at a bench far away from Diana.
Soon, the competition started. Each student got their topic. Aurora looked down at hers... and her eyes narrowed.
The project she got was way harder than what anyone should be doing in just one hour. It would take at least two hours to finish, and even then, there was no guarantee it would work perfectly.
"This slls fishy," Aurora thought. She instantly knew that Diana had ssed with the topics. Probably switched hers out for this difficult one.
But Diana clearly underestimated her.
What Diana didn’t know was that Aurora had already built sothing very similar to this for a side project. While others might panic, Aurora just smiled to herself.
She cracked her fingers, opened her laptop, and started typing quickly.
While others were struggling to understand the task, Aurora was already writing clean lines of code.
Her fingers danced across the keyboard. Students kept glancing over, shocked at how fast she was moving.
Diana, anwhile, was frowning at her screen. She was stuck on the second step.
She kept trying to rember so line of code, but it just wouldn’t co to her mind. She didn’t know the logic—she had only morized things.
That was her biggest mistake.
Exactly 30 minutes later, Aurora stood up calmly, walked to the front, and handed in her finished project.
"I’m done," she said, loud enough for everyone to hear.
The whole room went silent.
So students blinked. Others whispered.
"Already?!"
"No way..."
"She must’ve ssed it up."
One teacher uploaded her code onto the projector. Everyone stared at the screen, waiting for the result. An AI system was checking her code for errors, speed, and efficiency.
Diana leaned back and smirked. "She probably handed in a blank notepad," she whispered to the girl next to her.
Soone from the crowd imdiately said,
"Maybe she was scared by her topic?"
"It could be! No one can hand in their project within 30 minutes!"
But then—
DING! A big green checkmark appeared on the projector.
The AI flashed a ssage:
Code complete. Efficient. Clean. Functional. Score: 100/100.
The smile on Diana’s face slowly faded. Her eyes widened in shock as the green checkmark appeared on the projector screen. The words "Score: 100/100" flashed brightly in front of everyone.
But then Diana’s face twisted with anger. She quickly pointed at Aurora and said loudly, "She cheated! Aurora probably saw the topic ahead of ti and prepared her answer before the competition! That’s why she finished so fast!"
So students who didn’t like Aurora much, or were jealous, nodded along.
"Yeah, that makes sense," one of them mumbled.
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