The auditorium-like classroom fell silent as Jack slowly rose from his seat.
Everyone knew Professor Dillingham's rules and personality. He hated absences, excuses, and students who went to his class unprepared. Telling him he was going to be dropped was expected. But Jack didn't think it would actually happen.
But at the same time… why should he leave?
Jack's gaze narrowed, as he looked down from his elevated row at the professor.
Jack was sure that almost everything that the company told the university was a lie.
Hospitalized? He wasn't actually hospitalized. He woke up in a room in some underground facility under the city.
Yet the university had been notified of his hospitalization. He had already paid his tuition fee for this semester. And most importantly, he did have reasons for missing class.
'I almost died so may times. Compared to that, this is nothing.'
Thus, he stayed standing and did not move, making the professor raise his eyebrows at his unexpected rebellion.
Under everyone's watchful eyes, Jack gathered his resolve and did not move from where his seat as he continued standing.
The memory of a classmate in their first year played in everyone's mind. That student went out for club-hopping and also sat in the back rows once he returned to class, and when told to leave, he didn't go out and when told to get put by the professor,remained standing at the back only to be ignored the whole time.
'You will never become a lawyer.' Dillingham flatly and coldly just said to the student as he continued with the class ignoring the student.
Many students across year levels had suffered the same fate.
People always said Dillingham was unreasonable. Jack wasn't sure he agreed.
He liked to believe that he understood where the man was coming from.
Maybe it was a test.
This was his way of determining and separating those who merely attended… from those who truly wanted to stay. After all, while that student later dropped out his class, he was still attending the other classes.
Jack remembered talking about this with himself and with his friends.
What mattered was whether a student truly deserve to get dropped.
And Jack knew his academic record: barely passing grades, failures, declining rank.
From the professor's perspective, Jack really did look like a lost cause.
But that wasn't true anymore.
"Sorry for being absent, Attorney," Jack began, rolling up his sleeve. A patch-covered shoulder came into view, and several students gasped. "I was assaulted last night—stabbed, actually. Before that, I was very sick and had to be hospitalized."
He lifted his phone to show the digital medical certificate the company provided. "I actually already send this to your account for your review."
His grey eyes locked onto Dillingham's.
"But that isn't what matters. What matters is whether I came here just to sit… or to actually study. Whether I came prepared."
Cold sweat ran down Jack's back despite the classroom's freezing air.
No one had ever heard him talk like this.
This was the same guy who avoided recitation like a plague.
He himself could not believe he was actually running his mouth right now.
The professor's eyes showed surprise a little, before returning to their usual expression, now studying him instead of looking disgusted.
"You've gone through a lot, I see," Dillingham said, and then added, "But by saying you're prepared… do you know what that means?"
Prepared – what that meant was basically him telling him straight to the professor that he was confident of his knowledge as a student and that he was daring to get asked and grilled. It was almost a challenge.
Dozens of eyes widened.
'He's gone insane.'
'What is he doing?'
'He's going to get killed.'
The class stared at him in shock, some students clearly worried about how this might affect the professor's mood, while others looked intrigued, even amazed.
"Yes, Attorney," Jack replied. His heart thundered, but his tone stayed steady.
Dillingham didn't waste time.
"What is privacy?"
"Privacy refers to the individual's right to be let alone," Jack answered instantly, "and to control personal decisions, communications, and information, free from unwarranted intrusion by the government or anyone else. It is protected through recognized zones of privacy and evaluated through the reasonable expectation of privacy test."
"What is your basis?" the professor shot back.
"There is no fixed, universal definition in case law," Jack replied, "but several Supreme Court rulings have built its framework."
"What cases?!" Dillingham barked.
Jack tensed but just slightly as the 'Ding' sound faintly chimed in his mind, calming him.
In front of him, transparent panels flickered into existence around him, invisible to everyone but him. Like pages torn from law books, they hovered quietly, organized by topic, case name, and keywords.
[Recalling memory.]
[Displaying memory.]
Jack almost laughed.
He hid the smirk, but almost forgot to hide it for a moment, making the professor tilt his head. Then he began talking, reading the texts in front of him,
"Ople v. Torres, 1998, considered the foundation of the Data Privacy Act, recognizing informational privacy as a constitutional right. Morfe v. Mutuc, 1968 which is the earliest recognition of privacy under due process. Chavez v. Public Estates Authority, 2002, also discusses… People v. Dizon, 2014… People v. Cogaed, 2013…"
"And what is so important about Ople v. Torres today?" the professor eventually cut him off, his tone sharp almost as if he was interrogating a criminal.
"It recognized informational privacy as a constitutional right. But more importantly, it held that any government system collecting personal data must not violate that right. If the state overrides privacy, it must establish strict, clear standards limiting that intrusion only to a necessary and known purpose, with safeguards preventing breaches. The more sensitive the data, the stricter the requirements. We have a lot of political rallies outside for example, one of the issues is because the government is currently being accused of violating the people's right to privacy by collecting everyone's personal information in the form of regulation."
"What do you mean by regulation?"
"Last year, the government passed…"
The room had gone dead quiet as they watched a student and Dillingham back and forth with almost no pause.
'!!!'
Jack faltered occasionally, stumbling on a word or pausing too long, as he read the texts on the air, but he answered everything, shocking everyone as he wasn't just answering them. It was actually full of substance and recorded events. Even those looking up at their phones couldn't keep up.
In their eyes, it was like a student was reading straight from a textbook. It was a complete surprise.
But unbeknownst to everyone, he indeed was reading something, though no one could see it.
They watched him with wide eyes, murmurs rising in their heads in the ever quiet room.
'Is this really Jack?'
'Who is he really?'
'I never thought someone like him was in this class.'
When the conversation was over, almost thirty minutes had passed. Yet Jack never faltered, and had actual answers in everything.
'This is cheating for sure!' he thought with a grin.