The two girls exchanged a look, beaming with pride.
Leaving the professor's office after receiving such elite personalized mentoring, their moods were sky-high.
Meanwhile, the hater trio was eagerly waiting for their downfall.
What was going on? Weren't they called to the office to get ripped apart?
Why did they look so obnoxiously happy?
"Priscilla, is everything okay?" Tabitha Prince asked bluntly.
Despite the rising tension, Priscilla still lived in the same dorm as them. Even though she primarily hung out with Claire, things hadn't devolved into open warfare with the rest of the room.
"Everything's fine. Professor Vance is just looking out for us."
It was a perfectly vague response.
Lily and Macy immediately assumed the girls were just trying to save face after a brutal scolding.
They both felt a surge of vicious satisfaction.
There were only five female students in their entire class. In theory, they should
have formed a tight-knit group, but the room had already fractured into two warring factions.
Claire and Priscilla were on one side, while the other three practically refused to eat or socialize with them.
This toxic division bred constant resentment.
Lily, Macy, and Tabitha had completely designated Claire and Priscilla as their ultimate rivals.
They were the ones actively spreading rumors behind their backs.
The fact that they could even fake a polite conversation right now was a miracle. "Professor Vance is pretty laid back. I'm sure he didn't punish you too harshly."
Tabitha honestly lacked the brain cells for deep scheming. She genuinely believed that anyone caught slacking in a university lecture deserved to be made a public example.
Seeing that the professor had spared them the public humiliation and only dragged them into his office, she assumed they had gotten off easy.
But why did Claire and Priscilla look so happy about it?
Had they completely dodged the bullet? Tabitha felt a flash of annoyance.
"Oh, he punished us alright. He gave us this massive reading list and ordered us to memorize every single book on it."
"He's going to ruthlessly quiz us on them later."
Claire decided to humor Tabitha and break her usual silence.
Tabitha's eyes widened. Really?
That sounded like a nightmare of a punishment.
Macy, however, was thrilled to hear they were going to suffer.
But maintaining her fake sweetness, she turned to Claire. "Claire, Professor Vance is just trying to help you."
"Once you memorize all that knowledge, it's yours forever, right?"
Claire knew exactly what kind of snake Macy was. She simply smirked. "I know. I never said he wasn't looking out for us."
"To make sure we truly understood the weight of our mistake, he even 'punished' us
by giving us his exclusive Surgical Insights."
Macy's internal smugness shattered instantly.
Professor Vance might not be the head of the department, but he was a legendary active surgeon with decades of grueling OR experience.
For clinical surgery students, his personal journals were infinitely more valuable than any textbook in the library.
Why did he only give them to Claire and Priscilla?!
Was this seriously supposed to be a punishment?
"Do you think... do you think the rest of us could take a look at his Surgical
Insights?" Macy asked, unable to swallow her jealousy.
Claire shut her down without a second of hesitation. "Absolutely not. This is our punishment."
"If you want to see them, Macy, feel free to cause a massive disruption in his next lecture and see what happens."
Macy opened her mouth to argue, but no words came out.
She desperately wanted those notes, but she wasn't about to risk academic suicide
by defying a professor just to get them.
Claire clearly just wanted to hoard
Eng
the knowledge for herself, yet she had wrapped her refusal in this untouchably self-righteous excuse."
What a total b*tch!
Blissfully unaware of Macy's internal meltdown, Claire didn't feel the slightest bit of guilt.
She had the reading list, and she could easily track down the textbooks in the library.
Without wasting another second, she and Priscilla headed straight for the campus library.
Once there, Claire realized she had already devoured more than half the books on the list. She only needed to hunt down the few gaps in her knowledge.
"You're insane. I haven't read almost any of these. I really need to step up my game," Priscilla muttered, pulling a massive stack of books from the shelves and diving in.