Chapter 38

In the blink of an eye, it was September. Chen Annan had climbed into his third year of middle school. The mode of studying for the Zhongkao, the high school entrance exam, had begun.

Lu Qingyuan slung his bag over his shoulder and stepped onto the grand avenue lined with plane trees, officially becoming a university student.

Most of the buildings at Nanjing University were of an ancient simplicity, having been the Executive Yuan office building during the Republic of China period. After years of restoration and preservation, they remained standing to this day. Atop the North Tower, a large, bright red five-pointed star glittered. The building itself was perpetually wrapped in a layer of verdant ivy, the vines connecting year-round as if they would never wither.

Since it was an open campus and very close to home, Chen Annan visited many times. The School of Law was in the Southwest Building. To reach the vermillion main gate, one had to climb many flights of steps. He would often just sit on those old, grayish stone steps and wait for Brother to finish class.

The freshman course schedule was relatively light. Sometimes, when Lu Qingyuan emerged from the building, he would see Lu Wenyuan and Chen Annan together, waiting for him in a patch of shade below the steps.

The early autumn wind was stiflingly hot. Under the streetlights circled scattered little flying insects. Sometimes, riding a bike past them without paying attention, you’d carry a swarm of them on your body, which was quite irritating.

Chen Annan brushed a small flying bug off his shoulder and ran home. Auntie was in the kitchen preparing dinner. The aluminum basin for washing vegetables clanged sharply in the sink.

Chen Annan fished a bright red, fist-sized fruit tomato from the fridge, quickly rinsed it under cold water, and popped it into his mouth. He had reached the age for a growth spurt these past two years and simply couldn’t bear being hungry. The first thing he did upon arriving home from school was look for food.

However, fridge-stored things had absorbed tastes and weren’t actually very delicious, but he didn’t mind. He turned on the TV while eating, watching cartoons.

Lu Qingyuan turned off his TV and told him to go back to his room and study.

Because Chen Annan was planning to take the arts student track, Lu Wenyuan had screened several schools for him. But nowadays, schools all practiced selective admission. Although Chen Annan’s vocal music scores were excellent, his general academic scores were far from meeting the requirements.

At Chen Annan’s school, the teachers pushed hard. By the middle of the semester, they could finish all the third-year knowledge, and then review would begin. In fast-track classes, teachers had even long started introducing high-school-level material.

Chen Annan’s results on this month’s monthly exam were still very unsatisfactory.

Lu Qingyuan didn’t expect him to get into a prestigious school, but he at least needed to attend a normal high school, not one that was overly chaotic. Yet Chen Annan’s scores fell short of all those schools by a margin.

Lu Qingyuan knew Chen Annan’s personality well, so he came up with an exceptionally clever plan.

He didn’t pressure Chen Annan to study. Instead, he sought out Chen Annan’s deskmate, He Hanming, and asked him to supervise Chen Annan at school, and under no circumstances could this matter be revealed.

He Hanming, taking payment to help avert disaster, carried out this job quite responsibly.

When Chen Annan overheard the student behind him say he’d arranged a fight for the evening, he immediately turned his head and asked, “Where’s the fight? I’ll go cheer for you!”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than He Hanming smacked him on the back of the head. “Chen Annan, read your book.”

“Oh.” Chen Annan obediently turned back around and continued reading.

The head teacher constantly emphasized during class meetings that they were all in the nine-year compulsory education system, and the Zhongkao was society’s first round of filtering for them. If they didn’t want to end up as factory screw-turners, they had better buckle down and prepare for the Zhongkao.

And so, Chen Annan was once again forced into a brutal study regimen. He wasn’t actually stupid, but he just couldn’t get a grasp on academic learning. Fortunately, he roughly understood the importance of the Zhongkao and was good enough to persist for a while.

Chen Annan had to endure a daily gauntlet of torment. He Hanming was as relentless as Sister Xianglin, always upon seeing him saying:

“Chen Annan, what were the three suggestions Zhuge Liang made to the Later Ruler in ‘Chu Shi Biao’? What kind of thoughts and feelings does the author express?”

“Chen Annan, what’s the expression for an inverse proportion function? How do you solve this problem using the Pythagorean theorem?”

“Chen Annan, have you memorized today’s English oral practice book? What are the several uses of ‘where’?”

Chen Annan lay sprawled over his desk, his head splitting with pain, the tip of his pen scratching across the paper.

He Hanming snatched his history book away in one grab. “Chen Annan, you are not allowed to draw a machine gun on Emperor Wu of Han.”

“Fine.” Chen Annan sat up straight, turned around, and tossed the trash from his drawer into the garbage bin behind him.

The next second, He Hanming’s sinister voice sounded in his ear: “Calculate the parabola.”

Chen Annan: “…”

However, it had to be said, Lu Qingyuan’s move was quite smart. Because whenever it came to studying, Chen Annan would try to act cute with him, leaving Brother helpless. But He Hanming didn’t fall for that act at all.

No matter how much Chen Annan tried to endear himself or begged for mercy, all he got in return was He Hanming’s gloomy sentence: “Your point P is wrong.”

Chen Annan suffered unspeakably at school. When he went home at night to pour out his woes to Brother, for some reason, he always felt that Brother was exceptionally understanding lately. Not only did he not force him to study, he would even comfort him: “It’s okay. It won’t matter if you don’t test well.”

Chen Annan had just showered, his body still damp. He placed both hands on Brother’s knees and propped his chin on them, looking up at him pitifully. “You’re the best. He Hanming, every day all he does is make me find point P. I don’t want to be friends with him anymore.”

Lu Qingyuan asked, “Want me to talk to the teacher about switching your seats?”

Chen Annan sighed and shook his head. “Forget it, he’s doing it for my own good.” He could endure it a little longer anyway.

Under such torment, Chen Annan’s grades saw a leapfrog improvement after the midterms.

Xie Xi felt utterly betrayed. As soon as the dismissal bell rang, he found Chen Annan and demanded, “Didn’t you say you could only score forty?! What’s this about?”

Chen Annan stared at his own test paper, his face haggard, feeling like he no longer recognized numbers. After a while, it slowly dawned on him—he had scored 60! He was only 15 points away from a bare pass.

“Did you go burn incense at Rooster Crow Temple behind my back?” Xie Xi said indignantly. “You went to burn incense and didn’t call me?”

“…” Chen Annan thought this friend was so silly.

Thus, the days of 2008 gradually faded away amidst trivial bits and pieces. The countdown on the classroom wall for the Zhongkao was continuously covered over with new sheets of paper, dwindling day by day. In the blink of an eye, it was time for the Hundred-Day Oath Rally.

Chen Annan stood under the scorching sun, watching his good deskmate recite a pre-prepared speech endlessly on stage. Below, a row of students were half-asleep, slumping this way and that.

Finally, the day the second mock exam results came out, Chen Annan’s score finally broke through the cutoff line for that high school.

The second mock was the exam closest in difficulty to the actual Zhongkao. His efforts hadn’t been in vain, as long as he could ensure a normal performance on the real exam.

Beside himself with excitement, Chen Annan showed his test papers to Brother and hugged Brother, nearly jumping for joy.

Lu Qingyuan caught him in one motion, lifting him up. Never expecting it, Chen Annan planted a smacking kiss right on his face. Lu Qingyuan found it slobbery and turned his head away to dodge, which just so happened to make Chen Annan’s kiss miss its mark.

Or rather, it missed its intended mark—and planted a kiss smack-dab square on Lu Qingyuan’s mouth.