The best way to deal with an awkward situation was to pretend you didn't know about it.
Act like it didn't exist.
An elephant in the room? You couldn't see it—and even if you could, you said you couldn't!
Once, Jia Xiu went to work with his short-sleeved shirt on inside out. But as long as he acted like he hadn't put it on backward, his coworkers might wonder if it was some new fashion trend.
Even wearing your pants without pulling them up could become a trend. Compared to that, wearing your shirt inside out was perfectly normal.
Margaret seemed to have mastered this trick, too.
After the room's miraculous little round of high-fives, she reappeared as if nothing had happened, save for a change of clothes.
She smoothly took her place as one of the lead teachers and directed the students through their rehearsal.
There wasn't much fun in the rehearsal.
The contestants from the five academies simply entered, then watched the Elven dance troupe run through their performance. There were supposedly going to be magical fireworks, but they weren't set off during rehearsal.
Afterward, though, Saint Dero's head team leader came to find Jia Xiu.
"I forgot one thing. Since this is the five-hundredth anniversary of the tournament, the organizing committee proposed adding a tradition where each school carries a flag. The flags will display their historical results: one star for every five championships and one trophy for every fifty. So we need a flag-bearer."
Jia Xiu really wanted to know: had this new rule honestly not been made specifically to target Saint Dero?
Everyone else had one or two trophies and a bunch of stars. Saint Dero's flag had just one star—and they'd barely managed to earn even that.
The head team leader continued, "We've decided