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Literary: The One that Got a Way

4/18/2018 08:33:00 PM Media Center 0 Comments





“Thank you for taking me out on a date today. This exam is really making me go crazy.” Jack grinned.

“No problem Jack! Anything for you.” Neena smiled back.

“I also appreciate this reviewer you gave me. This could really help me in the future, Neena.”

The reviewer had a green cover with black borders. It was made out of recycled paper and was hand sewn with a red yarn. On the cover is Neena’s favorite quote which says “Everything is Easy.” It also had a bookmark which had a picture of them under a mango tree last summer.

While the sun was setting, Jack looked at his watch. It was already 6:53 in the evening. The couple spent the whole afternoon in a 24-hour café, studying for the upcoming college entrance exams next month. Getting tired after a while, the two decided to give their minds a rest and called it a day.

Jack opened the café door and escorted Neena to his car. “I’ll drive you home,” he said.

Since it was already a bit late at night and people are on the way home from work and school, traffic was very congested. Because of boredom and the added pressure from the upcoming college entrance tests, the two started talking about the possibilities of their future.

“Neena, you know that I love you, right? I was just wondering, what if I don’t get in? You have that scholarship so you’re automatically in, but for me, I’m gonna have to compete with thousands of applicants. What if I went to a different college, what would happen to us?”

Neena reclined the passenger seat to reach for Jack’s backpack. As she opened the zipper she looked for the reviewer she gave Jack and showed it to him.

“Yeah I know everything is easy. It’s just a bummer that Brad will take the exam too.” Jack added.

“Brad the Football Player? My friend from Computer Science? What about him?”

“Ever since that class started, he has been clinging onto you. Doesn’t he know that you have a boyfriend? Besides, you already have me and I’m a beast at making codes and stuff. I can help you with your Computer Science class.”

Neena crossed her arms and let out a sigh. The jealousy in Jack’s voice annoyed her. She also tried to increase the volume of the radio.

“Are you even listening to me?!” Jack tried to grab Neena’s arm to get her attention.

“Yes! He knows! And I know that you’re an expert at this, it’s just that he offered to help with my project. You’re just jealous.”

“Well, I have the right to be! Especially when my girlfriend is spending time with another man!”

“Why are you suddenly so angry? And also I can talk to other men. It doesn’t mean that just because I’m your girlfriend, I’m some kind of your property. Don’t you trust me?”

“I’m starting to doubt it,” Jack murmured.

The car then halted in front of Neena’s house and the two went their separate ways without a single word. The night was quiet and they slept off the argument.

Jack slept and woke up the next morning without a single text. He checked his phone and he saw that it was 7:43 AM. It was a humid Saturday morning. The sun was shining directly on his face. With a heavy head, Jack decided to visit Neena to talk about what happened last night. On his way there he was thinking of what he would say to Neena. As he arrived, he rushed to the front door and knocked. He shouted her name for a few times yet Neena didn’t open it.

“Neena! I know you can hear me, can you please come out? I want to talk.”

“What!” Neena said as she finally opened the door.

“I’m so sorry for how I acted last night. That was very immature of me,” Jack said.

“I think you just overreacted. Jealousy doesn’t really suit you, Jack.” replied Neena.

“Hey! I wasn’t jealous!” Jack said, smiling.

“Suuurre you weren’t hahahaha, you know you should trust me more.”

Neena then invited Jack to her house and offered him eggs for breakfast. Neena cooked soft boiled eggs while Jack set the table. Neena then asked Jack about his last competition as a high school student but the conversation was cut by a call.

The two made amends and continued their day. From Neena’s house, Jack headed to Choi’s, his best friend, to pick him up. The two had a Math competition that afternoon with some classmates.

Unfortunately, Jack’s team lost. After the closing and awarding ceremony Jack and Choi went home together.

“So have you two made up? I’m just concerned about you. I don’t like to see my best friend having relationship problems,” Choi said teasingly.

“Yeah, we’re alright. It’s just a little misunderstanding.” Jack laughed it off. “So how are you doing with the review?”

“It’s been pretty difficult for me. But you know I will do anything to get into this school. And by anything, I mean anything.”

Nothing happened for the next few days. Then the day of the dreaded exams came. This school was their dream school and there were a lot of applicants this year. Thousands of people are lined up outside the school buildings. Almost every applicant had the same feeling – fear. Being the most prestigious school in the country, no doubt everyone was feeling nervous.

Jack and Choi’s exams were scheduled in the morning.

“Bro, are you ready?” Choi whispered to Jack before the exam.

“No, honestly, I’m not. But whatever, let’s just do this. Good luck!” Jack whispered back.

The tension grew stronger as the proctor entered the room and started to explain the mechanics of the exam. As the proctor said that the exam was right minus wrong, everyone’s heart beat faster.

Jack and Choi shared the same room during the entrance exam. Jack was seated at the second row beside the window while Choi was seated at the back, near the door. Jack also
saw Brad at the front row of the classroom. They took the test for around 5 hours. The room was quiet, only the ticking of the clock was heard for the whole duration of the test.

Surprisingly, Jack found the test easy. He was confident that he has a huge chance of getting in the school since a lot of problems and concepts that he reviewed with Neena were included in the test.

After the exams, Jack received a text from Choi.




After months of waiting, other colleges already released the results of qualified students while their dream school still has not. Applicants already came up with many speculations
about why there were still no results like no one passed or the answer sheets were burned down.

One day the official school website posted an announcement that shocked the applicants.

“RESULTS WILL BE DELAYED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. SERIOUS TECHNICAL PROBLEMS ARE BEING ENCOUNTERED. PLEASE BEAR WITH US AND WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.”

Jack stood up from his seat. He thoroughly searched his whole room for his phone. The only person he thought he could talk to was Neena. With shaking hands, he entered his passcode and called her.

“Hey, have you heard the news about the results?” Jack said.

“Yeah that sounds terrible! I wonder what happened,” Neena answered.

“I’ll try to contact them to really know what happened. My aunt works there.”

“You shouldn’t bother, Jack! You should let them deal with their problems.”

“Nah, and you know what since I still have a lot of time I think I might go there myself. You wanna come?”

“Sorry, but I already promised Brad that I will help him with some school stuff. Please don’t get jealous again, okay? Love you!” Neena answered.

“Okay. I’ll update you.”

Jack immediately went to the school and headed straight to his aunt at the admissions office to ask for any information he might get about the results.

“I’m sorry my dear but there is no other way to get into the official school files,” his aunt told him calmly, and showed him the computer, “Here, only the director knows the password. Even I can’t get in. I can only access it when he’s around, and he’s not here right now.”

Jack let out a sigh and sat down on the black couch near his aunt’s desk. He got his eyes glued on the white computer screen, thinking of possible ways to get the files. He whipped out his phone and tried to ask Neena for help, but a phone call suddenly rang from the office’s landline broke his concentration.

“Uhm, I think you need to get that?” Jack told his aunt who was not able to hear the ring.

“Ah yes. Thank you, I’ll be back, this will just be quick.”

Jack didn’t think twice and acted as fast as he can. He stood up immediately and sat in front of the computer. He began to type fast. While moving the mouse, it hovered at the bottom right corner and then a group of small texts appeared saying “Forgot Password?” Jack clicked it and it showed a security question that said “What is the name of your dog?”

Jack surely didn’t know the name of the director’s dog. He searched the entire office for pictures of dogs but he was unsuccessful. He was close to giving up until he remembered that he could stalk the director on Facebook. To his relief, the director’s profile is public, and he stalked away. With only little scrolling, he saw a picture of a Chihuahua puppy named Fluffy. He tried to enter this name and he quickly got in the locked files.

Jack used an algorithm to find out what happened to the files and to his surprise, he learned that they were deleted. After some digging, he discovered that the files were transferred into a flash drive before it was erased. With a couple more clicks, he found out that the flash drive left some digital footprint.



This digital footprint became essential to his investigation. After seconds of typing and clicking, he found coordinates that, he assumed, can lead him to some kind of lead. He took a picture and closed everything.

“Jack! What are you doing?” his aunt yelled at him, surprised.

“I was just checking the time. I promised a friend that I will stop by their place later at 4. I’m sorry but I need to go! Bye!” Jack said with a smile and walked out the office.

The clock read 4:21 PM. He followed the coordinates and it led him to a convenience store. The store was suspiciously empty and the ambiance is creepy.

“Ummm..Excuse me have you seen anything weird around lately?”

“Everything’s suspicious around here, kid.”

“Hmmm…Is there a CCTV surveillance around here?”

“Yeah. It contains six months’ worth of footage.”

“Can I watch all the footage? It could help me find a lead, I’m trying to solve a mystery, sir,” Jack asked.

“No boy, we can’t allow you to do that. Some confidential events of our store are in it.”

“But, my friends José Abad Santos, Vicente Lim, and Josefa Llanes Escoda say otherwise,” said Jack, offering a one thousand peso bill.

“That’s not enough kid,” the store clerk told him with a hint of interest in his voice.

“How does three thousand sounds like?”

“Six thousand and it’s a deal.”

Jack looked at his wallet, “Five thousand, that’s all I have,” Jack insisted.

“Okay fine. Meet me at the back, and please don’t tell anyone.”

Jack got the files and paid the store clerk five thousand pesos.

Jack immediately called Neena to inform her about the situation.

“So the answers were destroyed?” Neena curiously asked.

“No, it was just stolen!” Jack insisted.

“Ah! So do you have any idea who has the flash drive?”

“Yeah, but… Nevermind. I have a lead but I won’t tell you who it is yet till I have concrete proof. Do you want to watch the footage with me instead?”

“Yes! Where are we going to watch it and when?”

“I think we should split the tapes so we could go through them as fast as we can. You could
have the first three months and I’ll have the latter three.”

Jack went to Neena’s house to give her part of the tapes and immediately went home. He watched through his part of the tapes thoroughly making sure that he does not miss a single event. He spent most of his hours just watching the tapes. Most of the time, it’s just random people who was going in and out of the store. Jack thought to himself that maybe Neena could’ve seen something.

Jack called Neena and found out that she has something. He rushed over as fast as he could. He rang the doorbell and not long after, Neena answered the door.

“Let me see what you found, Neena”

“Here, as you can see, on March 19, you can see Brad repeatedly going in and out of the store. If you watch until the midnight recording on the same day, you can see from the CCTV outside that Brad came back to the store and from this angle, you can see that he was from the university.”

“How are you sure that he was from the university? And why was he doing this at midnight?”

“I’m just guessing though. But he did have a flash drive with him. Maybe he was the one who broke in Room 113”

“Let’s not make accusations yet maybe I’ll ask around the university staff if they saw Brad that day.”

Jack went back to the university and asked the staff but even after asking almost everybody he encountered, no one saw Brad that day. Until he asked a custodial worker who said that he saw that same face around that day lurking around the school and even asked him how big the air vents were and what time the main office closes. Jack is now really convinced that Brad might be the culprit.

As he was walking he saw a piece of cloth in a vent entrance. It appears to be a handkerchief with the initials BGZ sewn onto it. And with BGZ being Brad’s initials, Jack was convinced and confident that Brad was the one who stole the answer key.

So Jack reported to the authorities about what he got and Brad was immediately brought in. As Brad was being questioned about the alleged crime, he still denies that he did anything. As the authorities took a break Jack managed to slip in and talked to Brad.

“Why are you still denying it? Brad, we know you did it,” Jack said.

“It wasn’t me, I was just there to take a tour around the school,” Brad replied.

“Liar. Then why did you ask about the ventilation size, huh?”

“It’s because I am very allergic to dust and someone stole my handkerchief a week before.”

“Wait so this is not yours?” Jack handed him the handkerchief.

“Hey, where did you find this?”

“It was found stuck inside an air vent. While I was walking through the corridors I saw something brightly colored from the corner of my eye” Jack said

“But the objects that they found were not mine. Like this keychain with some writings I couldn’t understand.”

“What keychain? Let me see.” Jack reached for his keychain.

It had writing on it, “Omnia Facilis.” But what does that mean? Is it a code? Another language, what? I can’t understand, but maybe it could tell me who the culprit is,” Brad explained.

But the conversation was broken by the sound of a ringtone. Someone texted Jack.






Jack was shocked because of what’s in the video. He replayed it again and again until the face of the culprit registered into his head. He stood in the middle of the room, frozen, and he had a flashback of everything that has happened for the past few months.

Dumbfounded, he envisioned the reviewer that was given to him at the café, about how much it resembled the test. The problems from the test were too similar from that book. The time it took him to finish the test was almost the same as the time it took him to finish the reviewer.

He thought of the phone calls and conversations. About how easy people turned down his calls and about how busy they were when he tried to tell them something.

Brad’s handkerchief also reappeared into Jack’s mind. Brad said he lost it but someone close to him can easily steal it and place it at the scene of the crime to frame and blame him.

Jack remembered the Latin classes, and the key chain with “Omnia Facilis” written on it. It translates to “everything is easy” which was a phrase that wasn’t strange to him.

Then suddenly a single thought came to mind and then he realized…


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