Michael’s voice suddenly turned serious. “Bayside University’s students are specially selected from hundreds of thousands of candidates in Cethos yearly. Training camp will allow the instructors to see a person’s qualities. Bayside University wants to ensure that their graduates are true elites, so naturally, they have to eliminate a certain group of people.”
He then dove into his point. “The marks allocation for training camp is very strict. There are marks for teamwork, individual achievement, housekeeping, discipline, formation, and there are even marks to be given for normal days and during weekends. Your marks can be deducted from anywhere. Only a handful of people can obtain full marks.
If a person performs excellently in every aspect, the other students will naturally be jealous of him. The day before training camp ends, there will be another session whereby all the training mates will score each other anonymously. In this session, those who usually perform too excellently will lose some marks.
Thus, the handful of people who scored full marks are mostly the Fletchers, because everyone knows that the Fletchers have people inside the military. They could check who was the person who gave them low marks.”
If they did not perform well, they would not score full marks. If they performed too well, the other students would deduct their marks out of jealousy. Thus, only the Fletchers had the ability to get full marks.
Since someone had even placed a nail in Sophia’s shoes, that person would surely give her a bad score.
Hence, only a person with an astonishing family background and superb personal qualities could score full marks.
Sophia then suddenly asked, “Honey, then how much did you score in your military training back then?” Michael graduated from Bayside University too, so he surely had been through military training as well.
Michael let out a sigh. “95.5. I was too good-looking and I performed too well, so I ended up stealing the spotlight. My teammates were too incompetent, and in the final session, I was even given a bad score by a few losers.”
Sophia nearly asked Michael why he didn’t use the connections the Fletcher family had to find out who the culprits were. However, Michael seemed to be keeping his connection with the Fletcher Family a secret, so she decided against asking him that question. She would settle with her knowledge of him being a Fletcher.
She then continued pursuing the topic. “What about the teamwork marks and individual marks? What should I do to score in these sections?”
“Housekeeping includes the arrangement of your barracks, rinsing cup, shoes and personal belongings. It’ll also take into account the tidiness of your attire, coat, belt and hair. Three best students will be selected yearly and three groups with outstanding performances will receive special prizes.”
Michael seemed like he was very familiar with the rules of training camp. He could explain almost every point and even let her in on some of the tips which the instructors had kept from them. Sophia listened attentively, and even borrowed a small notebook to jot them down. With that, the couple talked for the entire afternoon.
They talked until five o’clock and it was about time for her to return to her company to compete for dinner. Sophia suddenly remembered that Michael was still overseas, so there was surely some time difference. She asked timidly, “What time is it at your place?”
Michael replied, “It’s already 2 o’clock in the morning.”
It’s already two o’clock in the morning!
He was giving up on his sleep to chat with her.
Sophia was shocked. “Honey, then you better go and rest first. I have to compete for dinner soon. If I’m late, I can only have steamed buns for dinner. I’ll hang up first.”
Michael answered, “Steamed buns are not bad. During my batch, the slow ones could only go through the rest of the night with an empty stomach.”
Sophia swiftly shut down the computer. She suddenly realized that her face was getting hot and a weird thought popped up in her head. Michael is actually not as cheeky as I had imagined.
She then rushed back to rejoin her group with Nathan. Commander Ford did not say anything about her absence. He said that he understood Sophia’s situation, but Sophia felt like he had noted her name down in his small notebook.
After coming back, Sophia rejoined the training. It was already 5:30 and all of the instructors had left; even Commander Ford had brought Nathan to the car. Then, the clock at the training ground began counting down for them to race for dinner.
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