Laia & The Transferee - Chapter 38

OUT OF EVERYONE who could’ve been Laia’s groupmate, she just had to end up in the same group with that one guy who hated her guts for no reason except for the fact that she’s smarter and more capable than he is.

Not that Laia was bragging.

“Should we decide on a leader?” Andrei grins confidently.

Nobody shared his enthusiasm.

Nobody bothered to answer him either.

Gritting his teeth in irritation, the boy clasped his hands together. “What should be the topic of our reporting?”

Laia sighs upon remembering how they’re supposed to do another reporting. It’s almost as if their teachers couldn’t think of another performance task for them.

Andrei didn’t give up talking. “How about we come up with a leader? Hmm?”

His words only seemed to irritate his groupmates further. He’s not even hiding how he’s only interested to be the so-called “leader”.

“Hello? Anyone? Are we all supposed to just stare at each other until the end of this period–”

“Shut the fuck up, man,”

Everyone turned to the asshat who had a scowl on his face. He had his head rested on his right hand while he stared holes into Andrei’s skull.

“Can’t you see that we’re all thinking unlike you who’s done nothing but sputter useless shit?”

“Oh shit,” Laia heard Thalia whisper under her breath beside her.

Laia shared the same thoughts as Thalia but knew better than to say them out loud.

She subtly steals a glance at Andrei whose face was red in probably both anger and embarrassment at being called out.

At least the asshat’s doing something beneficial to everyone for once, Laia thinks.

The two exchanged glances and Laia nods subtly at him as a form of gratitude. The asshat grins wolfishly.

“We still don’t have a topic, though,” Andrei starts again making Laia roll her eyes. Unfortunately, it seems that Andrei caught her. “What do you think, miss rank one?”

Laia raised an eyebrow. It was obvious that the boy was mocking her.

She won’t let him, obviously.

“We can tackle Egyptian history,” Laia says. “We can connect the building of ancient pyramids to the slavery that still exists until now, albeit hidden to the public eye.”

Andrei was about to say something (probably contradictory) when the asshat raised his hand. Laia nods at him.

“Yeah, I agree. Or how about Greece?”

Laia doesn’t object. “I’m okay with Greek history as well. We can focus on the issue of sexism between the genders if you want.”

“Or how about Greek mythology? Sir Mathias said we could report on anything as long as it’s somehow related to still ongoing issues, right?” Thalia adds.

The asshat nods. “That’s fine with me. We can report also Greek mythology through a dramatic skit,”

“Are we going to tackle Greek mythology as a whole or just the gods?” Jake asks.

“Maybe we can focus on just three gods? Or five? Or maybe the twelve Olympians, if you guys are up to it, we could just divide our parts–”

“Hey, not everybody’s on board with your idea yet!” Andrei, out of nowhere, exclaims in obvious anger.

Laia didn’t bother hiding her irritation. It’s not even a surprise that Andrei would object to their proposed report topic, especially with how he wants to be the center of everyone’s attention.

Or more like Sir Mathias’s attention.

The asshat, however, didn’t only bother not hiding his irritation but also voiced it out loud. “If you’re not in agreement with our proposed topic, what do you suggest?”

His words silenced Andrei. Unfortunately, the boy’s much-needed silence didn’t last long as he somehow came up with an idea on the spot.

“Let’s go with problems in correlation to nature,”

“And how are you going to correlate that with the issues our world is facing now?” The asshat asks in a deadpanned tone.

“Continuous lost of biodiversity, global warming, and ozone layer depletion?”

“Are you asking me?”

Jake stifles his laugh behind his hand. Their other groupmates were hiding their amusement as well.

Laia continued watching the argument between the asshat and Andrei with interest.

Andrei narrows his eyes at the boy in front of him. “I’m not. I’m stating the facts.”

“If you’re already stating the facts then why are you proposing to make it our topic for the report? We’re supposed to collect probable truths that our topic is correlated to the current happenings globally, we’re not supposed to state facts that are already set in stone,”

The asshat even had the gall to yawn as if the current conversation exhausted him. “And don’t get me started with how common the topic you’re proposing is. Haven’t you heard how Sir Mathias reminded us earlier to deliberately choose difficult or unusual topics to peak his interest?”

“But–”

“You do want high grades, right?”

Andrei reluctantly nods.

“Good boy,” The asshat smirks and turned back his attention to Laia who immediately pretended that she was not looking at him. “With that being done, are we all in agreement with greek mythology being the topic for our report?”

Nobody else voiced out any more irrelevant arguments which made the asshat nod in satisfaction. “At least we’re done with the pointless arguments,”

Andrei looks away and if it was possible, Laia was sure that he would’ve had already hid his face in shame of being humiliated by the asshat.

“I’ll go tell Sir Mathias regarding what we planned. Laia, write the main points?”

The asshat turns to Laia who blinks twice before nodding. She didn’t expect him to address her instead of Jake or Thalia who she’s certain he’s closer to.

However, Laia didn’t say no to what the asshat told her to do. It’s the least she can do after he solved the situation of Andrei speaking out of bounds again just because of his inferiority complex.

Speaking of Andrei, the moment the asshat left their table, he was quick to excuse himself in an almost inaudible way. Nobody took notice of his disappearance very much.

Laia likes to think that it was a good thing and Andrei should just ask Sir Mathias to do the reporting individually to spare all of his groupmates from the stress and his pointless arguments.

After Andrei disappeared, Thalia sighs as if she was daydreaming. “That was really hot.”

The girl beside Thalia, whose name was Cecilia, nods. “True. Samuel should get angry more often.”

“I’ll tell him that.” Jake teases with a grin.

“Jake, don’t you dare!”

“Jake!”

Laia rolls her eyes but couldn’t help but agree with the girls.

Well, at least on the get-angry part. She honestly finds it funny how the asshat’s jaw clenches every time Andrei speaks.

The asshat returns with a smile. “He told me to tell my group that we have the most interesting topic so far.”

Everyone cheered. Even Laia smiled in triumph.

Looks like there’s more than just one good thing about her assigned group.

Andrei didn’t return even when Sir Mathias finally left. The group was quick to disperse when their teacher disappeared out of their sight, Laia herself immediately making her way to Brie who looked like she was exhausted.

“Hey, you good?” Laia asks her friend the moment she arrived at where Brie was seated.

Brie shows her a thumbs up. “Yeah,” She drinks from her water bottle. “Just exhausted from all the arguing we did to decide on a topic,”

Apparently, their group wasn’t the only one with the arguing situation. “Who started the argument?”

“Winston,” Brie lowers her voice. “His idea wasn’t really that bad but it was kind of overused already, especially in this subject so we told him our concerns about it, and then he got mad all of a sudden,”

Laia grimaces. Winston was basically Andrei 2.0, but with more reluctance when it comes to just giving up when it came to voicing out and forcing his opinion on people.

He also hates Laia for almost the same reason as Andrei, except for the fact that the girl rejected him back when they were sophomores.

It honestly made Laia cringe to this day how Winston confessed to his feelings when the two happened to go home at the same time and waited for the same bus coincidentally.

He even said that it was fate, but Laia was quick to call it bullshit.

Laia chased those thoughts away and crouches down to hear better. “Did anyone come to his defense?”

Brie shakes her head. “No, and that’s the reason why we spent half of our group discussion arguing against him. My head honestly hurts from all the pointless arguing we did, god,”

“I have medicine in my bag–”

“Brie, are you okay?” Vivi appears behind the two girls with worry evident on her face. She was followed by Shane who shared the same expression.

Laia internally celebrates with how Vivi and Brie are friends now. The two had it rough especially with how the vultures basically twisted the whole story but everything’s fine now.

Regardless of Laia still not understanding why the two would fight over a guy (or more like it was caused indirectly by a guy), she’s relieved at least that the two have reconciled and no longer would send each other withering glares every time they passed each other in the hallways or even just in class.

It was awkward as hell for Laia, who would always happen to see their silent wars.

Brie turns to Vivi with a smile. “Yeah, my head just hurts a little bit.”

Shane sits down on the chair beside Brie’s and placed her hand on the other girl’s forehead. “You’re not running a fever, though,”

“She’s just exhausted from the arguing that happened earlier,” Laia decides to speak for her friend who was already massaging her pressure points like how Laia taught her. “Was it really exhausting?”

Vivi nods. “Exhausting would be an understatement,” She rolls her eyes. “He was so insistent in vocalizing his opinions that every time his mouth opened it spout nothing but bullshit,”

Shane nudges her with her hand. “Hey, he might hear you!”

“Let him,” Vivi bites into the sandwich she was suddenly holding. Laia definitely didn’t see that earlier. “Good for you Laia that you ended up being groupmates with Sammy,”

Laia raises an eyebrow. She didn’t know that everyone apparently calls the asshat by what Brie calls him. Was it the asshat’s universal pet name, or was it reserved for pretty girls or the girls that he liked?

She doesn’t bother saying it out loud though and answers Vivi’s comment instead. “Yeah, he was good at shutting Andrei up.”

Shane’s mouth went agape. “Did he go off?!”

Brie elbows her. “Don’t shout, Shane. My head still hurts.”

Shane mutters a quick apology and turns to Laia again with undisguised excitement. “How’d he tell Andrei to shut up? God, I’ve been waiting for someone to shut his ass up for days now!”

“Apparently all Andrei does is talk shit about the most random of things to Shane,” Vivi whispers to Laia. “She’s been wanting to shut him up but she can’t since she’s afraid of making him mad,”

“I’m not!” Shane pouts. “I just don’t want a fight, especially with my seatmate for the rest of the third quarter of all people, like imagine how awkward that would be!”

“So you would rather him rant to you all day and all week for the rest of the quarter?”

Shane shrugs. “Enough of me! Laia, what happened?”

And so, Laia decided to tell them all.