A low murmur rippled through the classroom as the students struggled to process the situation.
Finally, one brave student raised a hand.
“Um, excuse me?”
With a face full of confusion, the student spoke cautiously.
“Are you sure you have the right classroom? This is Professor Tophus’s Criminal Psychology class.”
“And our exam was postponed!” another added.
“I haven’t entered the wrong room. I’ll explain everything now.”
Hayes’s voice took on a commanding tone, his usual lightheartedness nowhere to be found.
He wore a well-pressed shirt and a crisp tie. Perhaps it was because he had adopted a plausible appearance and tone following Lure’s advice, but the students looked at Hayes with expressions that leaned more toward curiosity than suspicion.
“Professor Tophus is exhausted after working through the night. I’ve come as his proxy at his request.”
Several students nodded at the mention of the professor’s request. These were the ones who knew the Detective had been hired by the professor in exchange for solving yesterday’s incident.
“And it’s a misunderstanding that the exam has been postponed.”
“A misunderstanding?”
“Yes. You all know what happened yesterday. There was an exam theft, and as a Detective, I caught the culprit at Professor Tophus’s request.”
It was technically true, though the nuance had shifted slightly.
However, the students who knew the circumstances chose to keep listening rather than disrupt the flow by pointing out minor details. Thanks to that, the students who didn’t know the situation began to view Hayes as an authoritative Detective.
“The culprit was caught, but all the leaked final exam questions had to be discarded. If the exam were to be rewritten, the entire academic schedule would be delayed. That’s not exactly welcome news, is it?”
Everyone seemed to agree.
In fact, only a minority of students cared about the gossip regarding whether Lure was the culprit or not. The majority were far more concerned with their grades and their summer vacation.
“Therefore! The professor has made a significant decision.”
Hayes slammed his hand onto the lectern, drawing everyone’s attention.
“Rather than delaying the academic schedule, he has decided to replace the final exam with a substitute test.”
“What?!”
“A substitute test?!”
The classroom was instantly thrown into an uproar. A substitute test!
“The professor stayed up all night to create this replacement. It was made in haste, but the quality is by no means lacking. You all know Professor Tophus’s nickname, don’t you?”
They certainly did. Professor Tophus was the “Octopus.”
He was a man whose hands were so fast it was said he could write eight papers in a single night. If it was Tophus, the story that he had stayed up all night to create a new exam to replace the finals wasn’t entirely unbelievable.
“Even though it’s a substitute test, the difficulty isn’t that high. Considering it’s a sudden situation without proper notice, we’ve decided to adopt a P/NP (Pass or Non-Pass) system for this replacement exam.”
Hayes added, as if driving in a final stake.
“That means as long as you pass the threshold, everyone receives full marks.”
“Whoa!”
Cheers erupted. They had expected their vacation to be delayed, but now they were being offered full marks. Those sweet words paralyzed the students’ reasoning.
However, a voice suddenly threw cold water on the excitement.
“Wait a minute.”
It was Ursula. She glared at Hayes with a chilly gaze.
“How can we believe that? You’re not Professor Tophus, and you’re not a member of this school’s faculty. You want us to blindly take an exam given to us by a suspicious person we just met yesterday?”
Looking at it calmly, it was a valid point. In reality, Hayes was hijacking Tophus’s class.
But sometimes, people believe what they want to believe rather than what is believable. Even the students of the Department of Investigation at a prestigious public university were no exception. In fact, because they were well-educated, they were even better at rationalizing their own beliefs with plausible logic.
“Hey! Quiet! You saw it yesterday, too. He helped the professor solve the case and was hired by him! So it’s not strange for him to do the professor’s work, is it?!”
“Exactly! Since the professor was up all night writing the exam, he could have asked for at least this much help!”
“If he were really suspicious, Professor Tophus would have come in long ago and kicked that Detective out! The fact that he’s here instead of the professor proves he’s acting as a proxy.”
“So, Ursula, are you saying a respectable Detective would sneak into someone else’s class just to mess with us using a fake test? Why? What would he even gain from that?”
“Yeah! There’s no motive! That famous ‘motive’ you were shouting about yesterday!”
The very logic Ursula had used the day before returned to her like an arrow. As Ursula bit her lip, her face turning bright red, Hayes casually distributed the stacks of exam papers.
“Now, there’s no need to worry. Once you receive the papers, you’ll soon see that there’s nothing suspicious about it. It’s a clever test that perfectly fits a Criminal Psychology class.”
The students nodded as they looked at the distributed exams. It seemed like an ordinary test, not much different from Professor Tophus’s usual exams.
Only one person, Shelman, looked shocked after seeing the paper.
“This is definitely from yesterday —”
Before Shelman could point out the anomaly, Hayes preempted him.
“The questions on this paper themselves are recycled from the final exam that was leaked and discarded yesterday. So, don’t just start solving them; listen to the explanation first. This isn’t a simple test where you just solve the given problems.”
The students murmured. It was an exam, but they weren’t supposed to just solve the problems?
“This test is designed to make you use everything you’ve learned in Criminal Psychology over the semester. It’s structured to be as close to a real-world situation as possible.”
Spouting plausible words, Hayes turned around and wrote in large letters on the chalkboard.
**[Psychology of the Victim]**
“In criminal psychology, the victim’s psychology is just as important as the culprit’s. Hidden within this exam are problems that can only be solved by deducing the victim’s state of mind. It might not make sense immediately, right? Let me give you an example.”
Hayes pointed out the dots and lines hidden along the divider lines of the exam paper. Soon, every student was able to discover the SOS Morse code hidden within.
“Do you understand? This exam paper is actually a rescue signal sent to you by a victim through the test. Your goal is to decode the ciphers in the exam and rescue the victim safely.”
At the unconventional concept of the test, the students began to stir again.
“Sending a distress signal through an exam paper?”
“Then isn’t the victim Professor Tophus? He’s the one who wrote this exam.”
“Hahaha! So Professor Tophus has been kidnapped and imprisoned somewhere, and he’s sending an SOS through the exam questions? That’s hilarious. I didn’t know the professor had this kind of sense of humor.”
“But what does this have to do with criminal psychology? Isn’t this just cryptography?”
“Stop complaining. If the professor says so, then it is. When have we ever understood what goes on in that Octopus’s head?”
While they exchanged jokes, the students’ eyes remained fixed on the exam papers. This unique concept had thoroughly piqued their interest.
“Interpret at least one cipher within the exam and submit it on the separate sheet of paper provided. That is all!”
And so, the exam began. The students didn’t realize it, but their first real-world mission had also begun.
***
*Scratch, scratch.*
Amidst the sound of pens, Hayes wandered among the students. On the surface, he was acting like he was preventing cheating, but in reality, he was wandering in search of an answer.
‘As expected of investigation students…’
Though their speeds varied, most of the students had found the sequences of numbers hidden within the answers. They all seemed to be researching what those number sequences meant in their own ways.
‘There are about forty students in this class, and there are roughly 30 minutes left…’
Someone among those students had to succeed in decoding the exam within 30 minutes. If they did, a path to saving an innocent life might open. But if none of them succeeded…
‘Lure and I are going to be in a lot of trouble.’
There was no telling how long they could keep Professor Tophus tied up. Eventually, it was only a matter of time before it was discovered that the professor was imprisoned in his own lab. If the police arrived, explaining this situation would be extremely difficult.
‘Please, let there be someone with the right answer…’
As he moved between the students with an anxious heart, Hayes’s eyes suddenly sparkled.
Ursula’s answer sheet. It contained content different from the other students.
[Confirmed that the titles of the cited reference papers in the questions have had one word changed. Taking the first letter of the changed words forms a sentence. The victim appears to have a significant level of knowledge in investigation and a meticulous personality. Assuming the culprit would check the exam personally…]
‘Yes, this is it! I knew someone would find a new clue!’
The titles of the papers had been slightly altered. It was a trick that would be impossible to find unless one was very familiar with the original titles. If it were Hayes himself, he wouldn’t have found it in a lifetime.
Hayes couldn’t take his eyes off Ursula’s answer sheet. He skimmed through the parts where she had listed the victim’s psychology—which was fitting for a criminal psychology class—and checked the most important part: the interpretation of the cipher.
Though she was still in the middle of decoding, the content Ursula had found so far was as follows:
[I am currently at…]
His heart pounded. Pinpointing the victim’s location was right before his eyes. His gamble had paid off once again.
Ignoring Ursula’s suspicious glances, Hayes’s eyes remained fixed solely on her answer sheet.
But right then.
*Thud!*
Shelman kicked back his chair and stood up. His hands were shaking uncontrollably.
“This… this isn’t a test, is it?! It’s real!”
Oh. It seemed there was progress over there as well.
“Did you discover something?”
“3, 5, 1, 2, 4… these repeating numbers. This is Jayden’s student ID!”
“Jayden?”
“My senior and my ex-boyfriend! That heartless guy who supposedly left for the East with nothing but a recommendation letter from Tophus! Why is his student ID showing up with an SOS signal?!”
Shelman continued, trembling.
“I thought it was strange from the beginning. Jayden isn’t the type of person to just ghost someone and break up, so the idea that he left for the East without a word to me made no sense. And even if the communication in the East is unstable, does it make sense that I haven’t heard from him in over a year? I knew that Octopus was suspicious from the start!”
The air in the classroom froze instantly. Most of the students couldn’t even begin to process what Shelman was saying.
“What is he talking about in the middle of an exam?”
“Jayden? Wasn’t Jayden working as an assistant under Janus in the East?”
“Shelman was dating Jayden?!”
In the middle of the classroom filled with shock and confusion…
“I’m finished.”
With a pale face, Ursula set down her pen. On the last line of her answer sheet, the place where the victim was imprisoned was clearly written.
[Hospital]
“But… is this really a test?”
“Yes, it’s a test.”
Hayes replied nonchalantly as he slid open the back door.
“I told you. It’s a test that’s as close to a real-world situation as possible.”
What could possibly be more real than the real world?
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