Unlike last time, Sophia approached the lab with a straight face. She was beginning to believe that when you are happy before you hear the news, you will surely be disappointed. These words have never been so real to her.
Earlier, she knocked on the door to inform him of her presence, but this time, she walked in and sat on the chair without his permission.
It was the creaking of the chair that betrayed her presence. Mark turned around and adjusted his glasses before focusing on the girl on his visitor's seat. For a second, Sophia felt guilty for behaving rashly.
"Oh Sophia, that's you. Thanks for coming", the biological teacher said as he brought his rolling chair towards the desktop computer on the table. Ten seconds after, he then looked at Sophia's innocent face.
Sophia could sense that he was uneasy, but she didn't know why. He was rubbing his palms for a long time. "Sophia, before I inform you of the reason you came, I would need to apologize for being too hard on you. Your research was amazing and innovative. I recently looked into it, and I was awed."
That was supposed to be flattering, but Sophia sensed something was amiss. This was not the teacher she knew. This dude used to be hard and direct to his students. Just a month ago, he deducted five marks from our test just because we couldn't mention the four letters that makeup DNA, well, except her, but it was still horrible though.
"Thank you, sir, but sir, I don't understand. You said my work was not good enough, why am I hearing something different now?"
For the third time, mark readjusted his glasses in his face and stared at Sophia firmly. "I did badly the last time we met. I simply scanned your research but didn't dig deeper into it. Right now, I would say your findings are phenomenal."
The biology teacher sighed and said: "I would love to see more of your research regarding the human brain if you don't mind. It would be just me looking at it alright?"
Normally, Sophia was cool sharing her documents with her friends and classmates, but something was telling her that Mark was hiding something. Apart from his strange behaviour, he said that it was just only him looking at it.
Could it be that Mark had sent her research to someone, without her knowledge?
Her instincts were sending her warning signals in her head. Mark must have sent her research to the board, but he didn't let her know. And from his behaviour, she could roughly understand that he was desperate for her to send the rest of them to him.
When she came to this realization, she felt angry and betrayed. She could not believe the person she always look up to would do such a thing to her. She bawled her eyes and was depressed for the whole Monday for nothing.
Sophia was on the right track all this time. It turned out her research wasn't wrong after all. If her speculations towards Mark was true, then it meant her findings are gold.
"So what do you say? If you don't mind, you can send the rest of your research on my email, let me understand them more", Mark said, almost curling his lips.
But in the next second, his smile froze when he heard the next thing Sophia said.
"I'm sorry, but I deleted all of theem after you told me that my works were "not good enough". I can't say, but I realized that you were right: They were not what I wanted to do in my life, so I began pursuing a career of a chef."
Mark almost spat out blood. When did he say that Sophia was not good enough? He only told her that unless it was proven, it cannot be accepted. Jesus, what has he gotten himself to?
"What? No, no, no SophiWithout Her Consenta you cannot tell me that! Uhmm.... what I mean to say is that you were not supposed to delete them. Surely you have a backup somewhere right? You probably have backed them to the cloud?" Mark seriously prayed she backed them up.
"Sir I don't back up my files to the cloud. Besides, those research are obsolete anyway, so it's useless. Can I go back to go eat?" Sophia said.
Mark wanted to cry, but he forced his smile on his face and dismissed Sophia. Before Sophia left, she turned around and faced Mark. "Sir, if you don't mind, please remove the ones I sent you. I don't want them to exist again".
She then exited the lab, leaving Mark with a complicated expression.
Unknown to Mark, she hasn't deleted any of her findings. it was even backed up to multiple cloud services, so she was comforted that her files were in safe hands. Even if all these fail, she usually prints them and put them in her blue envelope.
Although she was glad she shunned Mark, she was worried. There was a twelve-page PDF she regretfully sent to his email, containing a lot of information. She spent her time on that document than on the ones she previously did, so the thought of it sitting on his laptop was making her worried.
Sophia knew he wasn't going to delete it, so she thought of a way to delete it herself. One thing was to unsend the documents she sent to him, but that will not still do. He must have probably copied it to his computer.
Even if she infiltrated his computer and deletes it herself, how can she be sure that he hasn't uploaded it on the cloud, or worse copied it to his flash drive? She felt a headache coming in.
She has to do something, otherwise, this man would take the credit she rightfully deserves. Unfortunately, the only time she had to herself was on Saturday and Sunday, but she does not want to wait that long.
She went to Jessica and Katie and asked her about this problem "So he finally confessed how great your research was. So shameless!" Katie said furiously. "I know, but how do I delete my document from his computer?" Sophia probed.
"Simple, you just hack it".