"A surprise quiz? Again? We just had one last Friday!"
"I haven't even opened the textbook, Ms. Zhao! Give us a break!"
The classroom erupted into a chorus of groans and frantic page-turning. Because Ms. Zhao—their math teacher—was young, fresh out of the university, and strikingly beautiful, the students felt comfortable enough to push her buttons.
"Alright, settle down," Ms. Zhao said, a playful yet firm smile gracing her lips. She had a way of commanding the room despite being only a few years older than her students. "You've already wasted three minutes of your forty-minute limit complaining. Every second you spend talking is a second you don't spend solving equations. Should I start the timer now, or do you want to keep going?"
The room went silent instantly. Books were shoved into desks, and the frantic rustle of scratch paper replaced the whining.
Austin sat at his solitary desk in the far corner, near the back door. He was a "designated loner," placed there by the administration so he wouldn't "contaminate" the more promising students with his slacker attitude. He slowly tucked away his algebra book, his mind already spinning with a single thought: How the hell am I going to cheat my way through this?
He knew that cheating on a pop quiz wouldn't get him into college, but he didn't care about the long term right now. He just wanted a decent score to show his father—something to make the old man's tired eyes spark with a bit of pride for once.
As the ink-scented papers were passed back, Austin stared at the first problem. Trigonometry. Cosine? He recognized the word, mostly because it sounded like 'Cousin,' but as for what it actually did to a triangle? He had no clue.
Habitually, he reached into his pocket for his glasses case—his primary tool for "long-distance surveillance" during exams. Then, he remembered. The hard case was crushed, and the lenses inside were dust, thanks to Leon's brick.
Dammit, Austin cursed silently. If I ever see that blond punk again, I'm going to hang him from the school's flagpole by his toes.
Usually, he relied on Leo (张滨), who sat two rows ahead. Leo wasn't a genius, but he was a solid B-student who always made sure his paper was angled just enough for Austin to see. But today, without his glasses, even Austin's sharp vision couldn't make out the tiny scrawl from that distance.
Then, he felt the small black box in his pocket. The old man's gift.
"Austin! What are you doing?"
Ms. Zhao was suddenly standing over him, her sharp eyes narrowing as she watched him fumble with something under his desk. "Are you trying to hide a cheat sheet?"
In St. Jude High, most teachers would have just ignored Austin, letting him rot in the back. But Ms. Zhao was different. She had seen Austin's middle school records—the prestigious Math Olympiad awards, the perfect scores. She was convinced that he was a brilliant mind that had simply lost its way, and she refused to give up on him.
"Oh, uh... No, Ms. Zhao," Austin stammered, nearly dropping the crystalline discs. He looked up at her. She was wearing a professional blazer that couldn't quite hide her curves, and the scent of her perfume—something like lilies—hit him all at once.
"What's in your hand?" she asked, pointing at the obsidian box.
"Just my glasses, Ma'am. New ones. Lenses," he said, handing her the box.
She opened it, saw the shimmering discs, and handed it back with a sigh. "Don't be so secretive about it. Put them in and get to work. You've already lost twenty minutes."
"Yes, Ma'am." Austin nodded. Among all his teachers, he liked Ms. Zhao the most. She didn't look at him with disdain; she looked at him with hope. Sometimes, in his more vivid daydreams, she was even the star of his late-night fantasies—a sophisticated, mature contrast to the innocent beauty of Chloe.
He shook those thoughts away and picked up the lens marked 'L'. He'd never worn contacts before, but he'd seen Chloe do it. He carefully slid the cold, shimmering disc onto his left eye, then the right.
At first, nothing happened. He blinked, expecting a sting, but they felt like silk. He looked up at Leo's desk. Still blurry, he thought. Great. The old man scammed me.
He stared harder, frustrated, trying to focus on Leo's paper. Then, it happened.
His vision flickered, like a high-end camera lens searching for a target. Suddenly, the world zoomed.
Austin gasped as the image of Leo's paper rushed toward him. It wasn't just clear; it was hyper-defined. He could see the texture of the paper, the slight smudge of ink from Leo's pen, even a tiny coffee stain in the corner. It was like he was standing right over Leo's shoulder, yet he hadn't moved an inch.
Is this real? Austin gripped his pen so hard it nearly snapped.
He looked down at his own paper, and the vision reset. The letters on his quiz looked massive, like they were projected on a movie screen. He blinked, and his focus shifted back to normal. Then he looked at a crack in the far wall, fifty feet away. Zoom. He could see the microscopic dust motes dancing inside the crevice.
Holy hell, Austin's heart hammered against his ribs. I'm a freaking telescope!
He realized it wasn't just a physical lens; it was connected to his mind. His brain was the motor, and the lenses were the glass. He spent the next ten minutes mastering the "zoom" function. He could look through the window at a bird on a distant tree, then snap back to the quiz in a millisecond.
"Austin, stop daydreaming! You have ten minutes left!" Ms. Zhao called out from the front.
Austin didn't panic. He locked his focus onto Leo's paper, memorized the answers to the multiple-choice section in three seconds, and then shifted his gaze to the "short answer" section.
As he wrote, he noticed something even more insane. As he glanced at a formula in his peripheral vision, the God-Eye System didn't just show it to him—it explained it. It was like his brain had been upgraded with a super-processor.
He scribbled down the answers at lightning speed. By the time the bell rang, he had completed the entire quiz. He leaned back, his eyes feeling slightly tingly but exhilarated.
He didn't take them out. He realized they were invisible to everyone else. As he walked out of the classroom, he looked through the brick wall of the hallway. He saw the silhouettes of students in the next room, the pipes running through the ceiling, and the hidden structural beams of the school.
The "loser" who couldn't see the blackboard was gone. Austin was now the only man in the world with a high-definition, x-ray view of reality. And he knew exactly whose secrets he wanted to look into first.