"June, help me please," I requested in a whisper, poking him by the leg.

Jonas tilted his laptop screen a bit to let me steal a glance of the code secretly.

"No cheating!" Kelvin commanded, turning back June's laptop to its former position.

Realizing that I indeed had no option left to cheat now, I tried to wrap my head around my code for the next few minutes but eventually failed to come up with a solution to fix the build errors.

"Time's up," Kelvin announced, preparing to check June's work first.

"Why-" Kelvin spoke in full teacher mode, "-doesn't your code run, Jonas?"

"Impossible!" Jonas exclaimed. "It's a full-proof code, no chance of error."

Kelvin examined the code for a minute before expressing his disappointment with a sigh.

"You have initiated the Boolean as False, so basically your code doesn't even start," he explained.

"It's just...one tiiii-nyyy bit of blunder," Jonas said with his teeth on display.

"What about you, Amyra?" Kelvin asked, ignoring June's regular excuses.

"It's-" I began searching one for myself.

"Too hard for me," I blurted out at last, not finding any.

"I can explain it!" Jonas offered enthusiastically.

He explained the code to me proudly while Kelvin supervised his teaching.

"Now can I leave, Xav Bro?" Jonas entreated after I had finally comprehended the code.

"Go where?" Kelvin questioned.

"A new video game is waiting for me," Jonas grinned.

"Do a sum first, after that," Kelvin prescribed, handing both of us a blank sheet of paper.

Kelvin had become my private tutor now; I was glad that he had taken the initiative to prepare me for my university examinations since I was running out of time. Jonas gave me company in being a student, although he sometimes carried out the part of teaching too, like just a while back.

Kelvin jotted down the question on another piece of paper and placed it on the table between Jonas and me.

"You have two minutes," he stated, setting the timer on his phone.

As you would naturally expect, he was even stricter than my teachers when it came to teaching.

It was a combinatorics problem, involving a lot of mental math. Well, I won't deny that I had mastered mental maths by a great deal in the past few days, thanks to Kelvin's persistent pressure.

I scribbled the rough calculations on my paper in bullet speed as the timer ticked in the background, warning me about the last ten seconds left.

"Three, two, one," Kelvin made the countdown. "Back off from your scripts now."

He took the scripts and began checking June's one first.

"Perfect, right?" Jonas beamed.

"Yea," Kelvin replied.

"Because I made you do the same math last year," he added.

"Love you Xav Bro," Jonas quipped with a grin as he hopped out of the room.

"Can I go too?" I muttered.

Bruno produced a woof from a corner of the room.

"See, even your dog believes that you can't go," Kelvin ridiculed.

"Not fair," I huffed.

"First let's check what you've done."

Kelvin inspected my paper with a frown.

"The answer matches-" he began.

"See, I'm good at it!" I rejoiced.

"But-" he interrupted.

"There's no but here," I chipped in.

"Don't underestimate me okay, I was among the top ten in my high school," I boasted with a smirk.

"Let me finish," he heaved.

I flared my nostrils as he continued, "So you have messed up the math, and the answer matched coincidentally."

"What coincidentally? There's no coincidence. It must have been another method, check it," I claimed.

"See this."

He explained how I had made a mistake in one line, which I again repeated two lines later, so that's how the answer somehow matched.

"That means I can't go to play?" I asked with puppy eyes.

"Correct it first," he said after a short pause.

I corrected the math and held up the paper for him to have a look.

"Wait, why are you wearing a handcuff?" I asked in amazement when I noticed him latching a handcuff on his hand.

"You'll get to know."

He took the paper from my hand as I got up, preparing to leave.

"Wait, I didn't say that you can leave yet."

"What now?"

"How about," he articulated, "let's have a staring contest."

A staring contest?

"If you win, then you can leave."

A staring contest with him, hmm. I mean I would love to. Plus I was an expert in that, so I was quite confident that I would win.

"Ready?" he asked, plopping down on the bed directly opposite me so that our eyes were in contact.

"Ready," I answered.

"Start."

I looked into his green eyes; it was so easy to get lost in them. No chance of me losing this contest. I felt something brushing against my left hand in the meantime, but I continued staring.

"You lost!" I exclaimed as I caught his gaze shifting downwards.

There was a CLICK sound. Wait, what did just happen-?

I glanced at my left hand as a reflex. It was handcuffed.

"Did I?" Kelvin wiggled his eyebrows, followed by a chuckle.

"What the-" I murmured.

Basically now our hands were handcuffed together. So this was his plan-

I gawped at the handcuff with my mouth hanging open as he lifted his hand up, which eventually pulled up mine too.

"Time for Physics," he announced with an evil smile.

I pitied myself for being that dumb so as to fall for his trap. Now bear it Amy.

We studied for what seemed like hours; I had solved about a dozen problems while answering another dozen of his oral questions. He was so adamant that he wouldn't let me go before explaining a new chapter, even after all those hardwork of hours. He wouldn't even unlatch the handcuff, as if I was going to run away or something if he did.

Well, not that I didn't enjoy being handcuffed with him.

"Very good," Kelvin smiled after he was done checking my papers. "You've answered with ninety percent accuracy today, and the maths were all correct too."

"We gotta see who the teacher is after all," I complimented back with a smile.

He really deserved some praise after all the efforts he had been putting into my studies.

He chuckled before saying, "Proud of you."

"Don't you think I deserve some kind of reward?" I quipped.

"Do you?" he replied with the same witticism.

"You'll have it then."

"Really?" I asked curiously. "What what?"

"Hmmm," he pretended to think for a while. "Will take you somewhere tomorrow."

"Uh huh, no questions," he stopped me when I had opened my mouth to speak.

He unlatched the handcuff and departed, leaving me in suspense.

Where was he going to take me?

I couldn't wait for the next day.

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