Along with the arrival of deep winter during the off-season came the school’s final exams.

After the October monthly test, the students experienced two exams in November and December.

Overall, their rankings had improved by about one to two hundred places. Although everyone’s progress varied, it was still quite noticeable.

This was why parents were comfortable letting their children continue playing football.

But when it came to Wen Chengye, exam results were different.

Wen Chengye’s final exam scores had dropped by more than one hundred and seventy places.

This was a very subtle score.

He seemed not to have cheated, completing the test paper himself, so his scores dropped to a normal level. But there was another possibility…

The evening after Lin Wanxing distributed the final exam papers, she sat with Wang Fa on the rooftop terrace, analyzing the situation.

Wang Fa asked, “Are you worried Wen Chengye’s parents will come looking for you to settle accounts?”

Lin Wanxing replied, “I am a bit worried about that, but his parents haven’t shown up yet! I just think his score is very strange.”

“Teacher Lin can be more direct. You think Wen Chengye deliberately got some questions wrong to make his results look less dramatic, so you wouldn’t cause him trouble?”

“Ah, I don’t want to cause him trouble, and even if I think that there’s no evidence,” Lin Wanxing took a sip of today’s tea, cupping the mug with both hands to stay warm. “Besides, even if there was evidence, what then?”

She spoke somewhat slowly.

Since Wen Chengye had joined, they had all lived together for many days.

He had gone from initially not fitting in at all to gradually integrating.

He had started doing homework instead of perfunctorily turning in blank paper.

On the field, he could also complete tactical combinations with everyone, rather than doing whatever he wanted without regard for others.

The students still bickered, but everyone had a common goal—they wanted to win the match against Yuzhou Silver Elephant after the New Year.

It seemed that the change from adolescence to adulthood was learning to tolerate each other.

But some things never change.

Hearing this, Wang Fa suddenly asked, “What do you want to change? Make Wen Chengye stop cheating voluntarily, or confess?”

Lin Wanxing slapped the table, “Good question, Coach has hit the nail on the head!”

The glass cup full of tea on the table jumped slightly, and Wang Fa was momentarily surprised.

Lin Wanxing said, “The answer is still, I don’t know.”

The warm yellow light of the winter night fell on Wang Fa’s face.

Just as you don’t know what to find about football, I also don’t know what kind of person I want Wen Chengye or these students to become.

But I think we can be more patient and see what happens.

Lin Wanxing stood at the podium, assigning the final assessment topic to the football team students.

Football is for victory.

She wrote this line on the blackboard.

“Football is for victory?”

“Who told you football is just for victory?”

“What does this mean? Is our final exam just one line?”

The classroom erupted, students’ voices rising one after another. They had many opinions, louder than the sound of the grandmother upstairs frying pancakes.

Lin Wanxing methodically wiped the chalk dust from her hands. Once they finished shouting and the classroom quieted down, she said, “Yes, our final exam for this semester is just this question.”

“You call what’s on the blackboard a question?”

The students began to protest.

Lin Wanxing smiled, “Is that not allowed?”

“Then what do you want us to do?”

“Write an essay?”

Students bit their pen caps, very confused, and started guessing wildly.

“I know! Win the match to prove this statement?” Lin Lu had a sudden insight.

Lin Wanxing smiled, “That’s not impossible.”

“Huh?”

The boys exclaimed in unison, the loud question echoing in the small classroom.

“What’s the matter?” Lin Wanxing rubbed her ears and asked.

“No, teacher, what exactly do you mean?”

Lin Wanxing stood at the podium while the students looked bewildered.

“This is just a theme. You can complete it in whatever way you want.”

The students were very puzzled.

Regarding this final exam topic, they initially didn’t feel they had much to say.

Their instinct was to agree, thinking “Isn’t this obvious?” But thinking further, they also believed “it can’t be completely stated like that.”

So everyone looked at each other, in a state where they had taken a breath but couldn’t exhale.

It was indeed a very nitpicky question.

Why do people study, why do they play football, or even more ultimately, why do people live?

Everyone had their answer and had thought about these topics to varying degrees.

But most of the time, for these boys, their answers were similar to:

“Why does playing football need so many whys?” Qin Ao countered.

“Teacher, I think you just tend to overthink,” Lin Lu also mumbled.

Lin Wanxing did not deny that what they said made sense.

“But occasionally, at the end of the semester, discussing this question is quite interesting.” Lin Wanxing looked toward the corner of the classroom, where Wang Fa had sat down at some point.

“There’s no way,” Qin Ao said. “Back then when our coach came to select players during elementary school PE class, I was very small. The coach said I had football potential, and asked me to try it, so I did.”

Zheng Ren raised his hand, “My father is an old football fan. He sent me to the coach to play football.”

“Coach?”

Lin Wanxing was curious about this person the students all mentioned independently.

“Yeah, back in elementary school, we all followed the coach playing football at the small football field in the Workers’ Cultural Palace,” Lin Lu said.

“My parents got off work late, so they enrolled me in a random class. Our coach ran a football training program.” This was Yu Ming’s answer.

“So you’ve all been together since elementary school,” Lin Wanxing remarked with some emotion.

“Teacher, that’s a bit gross. What do you mean ‘been together since elementary school’?”

“How should I say it then? Childhood sweethearts?” Lin Wanxing laughed.

The boys’ expressions grew even more disgusted.

“Not me. I only joined them in middle school,” Feng Suo said.

“Right, this guy came later. Before that in elementary school, we were fierce, really fierce. We just played football after school, without training matches, but we always won against others,” Qin Ao spoke enthusiastically about past glories. “Later, when we went to middle school, some people weren’t in the same school anymore, so the goalkeeper and defenders changed.”

At the mention of defenders, Wen Chengye cast a cold glance.

He was also a later addition.

“What about your middle school coach? Was it still the same person?” she asked.

“Yes, Coach Jiang was our middle school PE teacher. The football training class he ran was an extracurricular program, but later when fewer people took football lessons, he closed the training class and focused on coaching us,” Fu Xinshu continued.

“Coach Jiang,” Lin Wanxing savored the surname, and asked with a smile, “Were you fierce in middle school competitions?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Of course, we were fierce. We even won the runner-up in the Governor’s Cup! We were damn strong,” Lin Lu shouted.

“That was because I was strong, not you,” Qin Ao said proudly.

“Were you the top scorer on the Governor’s Cup scoring chart?”

Qi Liang’s languid voice came.

Qin Ao immediately turned to warn him.

Lin Wanxing stood at the podium as the wind carrying the scent of noodles with shredded pork and pickled vegetables drifted in through the window. She listened to the students noisily talking about things from the past, not feeling hungry at all.

“Then you all entered high school together?” she suddenly asked, remembering some things that Teacher Qian from the PE department had mentioned before.

“Yes, the coach helped negotiate high school special recruitment conditions for us. Our football results were good, so we were all specially recruited into Hongjing Eighth School and started high school,” someone answered.

“The coach led you to high school?” Lin Wanxing was somewhat surprised.

“Yeah, don’t know what the old man was thinking, but he just said our best path was to attend high school,” Qin Ao replied.

“He didn’t send you to some youth training team?” Lin Wanxing couldn’t help asking her confusion. “When I first met Chen Jianghe, he was being sweet-talked by a scout. Since you all did well in middle school, didn’t your coach take you to try out for professional youth teams?”

Hearing this question, the students looked at each other, and finally, all shook their heads.

At this point, Lin Wanxing had formed a general concept of the coach in her mind.

Coach Jiang was passionate about football and wanted to create his team, so he selected and trained these students from a young age. But gradually, as the students grew up, the coach began to waver about how to develop them.

From Lin Wanxing’s perspective, he had personally chosen football for them and led them for a long time.

If he truly believed in this path, he should have tried to guide the students toward a real professional football career, but that coach didn’t do so.

He sent them all to high school, believing they must attend high school, not one less, and he succeeded in this.

“Then what happened?” Lin Wanxing asked the students. “After you started high school, did the coach continue teaching football at the middle school?”

“After entering high school, Coach Jiang initially came to watch our matches and guide us, but later we lost contact,” Fu Xinshu said very calmly.

The classroom quieted down again.

It seemed like the story’s ending was as it should be.

Teachers or coaches are all transient figures in students’ lives. Even if they grew together for a long time, after separation, relationships often fade.

“You’ve never mentioned Coach Jiang before. Next time we have a chance, we should invite him to watch us play,” Lin Wanxing said with a smile.

“Coach Jiang, he…” Lin Lu suddenly turned to look at Wang Fa, then said, “He also suddenly told us one day that he was going to Yongchuan to work on youth training, and then he left.”

Fu Xinshu spoke matter-of-factly, and only now did Lin Wanxing finally understand where the students’ calmness came from when they learned Wang Fa would be leaving.

They had indeed experienced this before.

Lin Wanxing was silent for a while.

“We’re already mature men, we’ve experienced more than you think,” Zheng Feiyang said proactively, trying to lighten the atmosphere as he saw it turn somber.

Despite feeling emotional, Lin Wanxing couldn’t help but be amused by the phrase “mature men.”

“Did anyone cry?” she asked.

“Of course,” Qin Ao pointed at Lin Lu. “He hugged the coach saying ‘wuwuwu don’t go,’ super depressing.”

At this point in the conversation, the students all had bewildered expressions. When asked why they played football?

It seemed that the coach had selected them, said they had talent, and they just kept playing.

From elementary through middle school, things were fine. When they reached high school, their longtime guide suddenly left, and they abruptly lost direction and purpose in life.

In that high school where they never truly fit in, they gradually walked to where they are today.

“After the principal stopped promoting the campus football project, and Coach Jiang left, you didn’t continue playing?” she asked.

“It had nothing to do with the coach. That year, anyway, something happened, so we stopped playing,” Qin Ao said directly, glancing at Fu Xinshu.

“What happened?” Lin Wanxing asked.

“You ask too many questions, woman!” Qin Ao rarely evaded the subject, changing topics. “Let’s talk about what kind of weird assignment your final project is!”