I Flunked, but They Panic

When the SAT scores are out, I've scored 400 out of 1600.

That's because I never wrote anything on my exam papers.

My mom goes crazy, whereas my younger sister, Melinda Bolton, bursts into tears. But I just laugh at them instead.

In my previous life, Melinda had formed a pact with the score-swapping system. That was how she swapped our SAT scores.

She became the top scorer that all prestigious universities fought to recruit. I, the valedictorian of my year, not only got into a trade school, but I also got expelled from my previous high school.

Melinda had the gall to comfort me. "Didn't you call yourself a genius, Melissa? Trade schools are very popular right now. In the future, you'll secure a job at a factory out there!"

In this life, I spend my exam hours sleeping in my seat the whole time.

Melinda wants to swap her scores, right? Then, let's do it properly!

"Hello, Master. You are successfully bound to the score-swapping system. Whose grades would you like to swap yours with?"

"Melissa Bolton, my elder sister's!"

"Which grades would you like to swap your scores with?"

"The upcoming SATs!"

…

I wasn't surprised when I heard my sister, Melinda Bolton, asking to swap her scores with mine when I walked past her bedroom door that day. In fact, she seemed very smug and pleased after knowing that she could exchange her scores for mine instead.

It was understandable. After all, I had always been a top student in class, consistently ranking first in all my exams, making me a true academic prodigy.

I even consistently scored near-perfect marks on the mock SATs in high school and represented the school in the Rumpiad Math competitions multiple times, bagging first place every time.

Basically, I'd won many awards and received many certificates from a very young age.

I didn't really have any academic rivals in school anymore. My ultimate goal was to get accepted into the most prestigious university in the whole country, and I never really cared if there were other classmates who tried to surpass me.

Meanwhile, Melinda was completely different from me. She had always been more interested in the arts and liberals, but her academics were a complete mess.

During the mock exams, she even scored 207 out of 800 for Math once, always ranking at the bottom of her class. In fact, she probably couldn't even solve a Math problem from middle school if she tried.

Mom had always been worried about her studies and often told me to tutor her.

I used to spend a lot of time tutoring Melinda, but it was to no avail. No matter how I taught her, whichever way I used, she wouldn't be able to grasp anything, and it eventually ate into my own studying and revision time.

Even bribing her with her favorite cartoon character merchandise couldn't seem to work—she wouldn't even be able to raise her scores by half a grade.

It didn't matter that I tried using reward or punishment mechanisms on her either. She just couldn't withstand the hardship of studying and often begged me to have mercy on her.

She also asked me the same question over and over again.

"Lisa, what other study methods do you have? It's just too tiring for me to keep practising solving Math problems like these over and over again. I want something more relaxing and suitable for me.

"Or is there a way for me to get really good grades without having to study at all?"

Back then, I had laughed at her for her absurd thoughts. However, I never thought that a system that allowed her to do exactly that would suddenly appear in her life.

In my past life, Melinda bound herself to the life-swapping system and swapped out her SAT scores for mine.

Her SAT score of 1548 made her the top SAT scorer in the city. She didn't just receive school-level and city-level awards—she even made local news headlines and had admissions officers from the top universities vying to get her in through their doors.

Meanwhile, I was stuck with her original score of just 498. To her, this was actually an exceptional score for her. However, to me, it was the most devastating news I'd ever received.

I remember even doubting if it was nothing but a nightmare after all, that Melinda was the one truly good at academics instead of me.

The pressure from the SAT examination was just too much for me, and I began hallucinating. I felt as though I'd just fallen from grace straight into the pits of hell.

I searched high and low for tertiary education institutes that would take me in, and only a small vocational college in a very faraway city was willing to let me enroll in their courses.

My high school, which had always been very proud of me, had my name removed from the list of graduates because of my embarrassingly low score.

Even Mom was embarrassed to talk about me in front of her relatives, and she rarely ever spared me a second glance while we were at home.

It seemed as though I'd fallen from being the pride of the city to being the laughingstock of the entire town.

Someone even reported me to the principal, accusing me of falsifying my high school grades for all four years.

The day the school thoroughly investigated my high school grades, I went to the topmost floor of my school and jumped down to my death.

After I died, the school thought that I was bad luck and completely scrubbed my name from all their records, pretending like I never existed after all.

Mom also found me too embarrassing and kept telling outsiders that she only had one daughter, whose name was Melinda.

Now that I was reborn, I finally understood that everything had been orchestrated by Melinda, with help from that wretched system after all.

However, it seemed like the system had its conditions too. It asked Melinda, "What are you willing to give up for this swap?"

"I'm willing to give up ten years of my life!"

Melinda's voice was trembling with excitement.

I just chuckled very lightly outside the door.

Really? If Melinda was so eager to give up ten years of her life for my SAT scores, then I was going to make sure that I took the exam as "seriously" as possible this time.