The first math class of the afternoon.

Old Yu entered the classroom right on time as usual, but the stainless steel thermos he normally carried had been replaced with a white ceramic mug — one printed with a Doraemon design.

The quality of the Doraemon print was, however, quite mediocre. The two eyes were squeezed tightly together, looking exactly like a cross-eyed rooster.

“……”

Lin Tao thought Old Yu’s taste was truly something no ordinary person could appreciate.

Old Yu didn’t say much. He set the mug down on the desk, glanced at the nest of little brats below, gave a light cough, and said, “Alright, class is starting — everyone put your phones away.”

As he said this, Lin Tao glanced over at a certain someone who had already taken out his phone to catch up on a drama. “Class has started,” she said.

Jiang Yan lifted his head and looked at her. “I know.”

“……”

Lin Tao thought to herself: you know, and yet you still won’t pay attention.

With that kind of attitude toward studying, she had every reason to suspect that his previous number-one ranking had been achieved by hiring someone else to take the exam in his place.

Old Yu had already begun the lesson. Jiang Yan hadn’t moved, still maintaining the same posture as before.

His desk was very tidy. A math textbook was casually flipped to a random page and spread open on the desk, with a neat stack of books lined up along the front edge — his phone was tucked behind that natural barrier, exactly like the slacker students from Lin Tao’s old class.

To his credit, this person still retained one last shred of respect for his teachers. Whether he was watching TV or playing games during class, he always kept it on silent and never wore earphones.

Seeing him like this, Lin Tao couldn’t be bothered to say anything more. She opened her book and began listening to the lesson.

Old Yu taught slowly but meticulously. Whenever he reached an important point, he would go over it again and again using various example problems that were essentially the same question in different clothing, all to reinforce their understanding.

Today he hit another crucial concept — a question type that frequently appeared on the university entrance exam. As a result, even though half the class had already passed, Lin Tao’s math textbook was still open to the very first page she’d turned to at the start.

“……”

She wasn’t particularly keen on listening anymore either.

Fortunately, a class was only forty-something minutes long. Old Yu wrapped up that particular concept ten minutes before the bell.

He tossed the tiny remaining stub of chalk into the chalk box, clapped his hands, picked up his mug for a sip of tea, and said unhurriedly, “Students, you are now second-years. Round it up and you’re practically third-years. We must keep our motivation to learn going at all times.”

“……” Lin Tao twirled her pen listlessly. She’d been hearing that line since first year — she was thoroughly sick of it.

“We’ve now been in class for over half a month, and the school plans to arrange a placement exam at the end of this month. It works out perfectly — this year, Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day fall together, so after the exam you’ll have eight days off to go home and enjoy yourselves properly.”

Lin Tao stopped twirling her pen and glanced over at Jiang Yan, only to find that he hadn’t shifted his posture even once throughout the entire class. She couldn’t help feeling a little curious.

She leaned her head closer and lowered her voice. “What are you watching?”

“Einstein’s Mistake.” Jiang Yan’s eyes were a little sore after watching for a whole class. He raised a hand to rub them, then turned his head and saw Lin Tao’s blank expression, so he added an offhand explanation: “It’s a documentary about the cosmological constant.”

“……” Lin Tao thought this person was truly remarkable. He used to watch dramas during class about the Hong Shixian period, and now he’d moved on to Einstein.

The gap between those two figures was a full lap around the Earth.

She was impressed.

A school bully was a school bully — had to be this astonishingly cool.

Old Yu was still talking. “The placement exam will group you by class according to your final exam rankings from last semester. The groups aren’t posted yet — the class representative can come to my office a little later to pick up the list.”

The moment he finished speaking, the dismissal bell rang right on cue. Old Yu carried his aesthetically unique mug out of the classroom.

The moment he was gone, the classroom erupted like a pot of boiling water finally coming to a full rolling boil.

Hu Hanghang sat in the back, counting the classmates he’d run into at the last exam hall during the previous semester. When he got to Lin Tao, he reached out and tapped her shoulder. “Hey! Sis, we’ll probably be in the same exam hall again this time — remember to look out for each other, okay?”

Lin Tao made an absent sound and scratched her head. “I might not actually be in the same hall as you guys this time.”

“?” Hu Hanghang slumped over his desk. “How come? Don’t tell me your grades are so bad you can’t even take the exam?”

Lin Tao: “……”

Hu Hanghang had always thought that he and Xu Yichuan had bad enough grades, with their combined total scores putting them at a perpetual last and second-to-last in the class — one at ten points total, the other at nine. But apparently there was someone who had it even worse, which sparked a tiny flicker of pride in him.

Still, Hu Hanghang figured that Lin Tao was a girl after all, and that having such poor grades probably wasn’t what she wanted. In the end he even turned around to comfort her: “Sis, it’s fine. Grades don’t define you. Just think about Edison — people thought he was an idiot when he was little, but was he? He wasn’t! He was the world-famous King of Inventions!”

“……”

Lin Tao thought to herself: well, aren’t I just so grateful for that.

After finishing his words of comfort, Hu Hanghang turned back to chat with Tao Jia, who sat in the very last row. Lin Tao paid him no more attention and turned to ask Jiang Yan, “Do you think we’ll be in the same exam hall this time?”

“Probably not.”

Jiang Yan was very confident about his own scores. Setting aside the English exam he’d missed, he was fairly certain he could ace everything else — except perhaps Chinese. Scoring full marks on the rest shouldn’t be a problem.

Back in first year, there had been few large-scale exams, and the one midterm that had been held, he’d missed entirely. So outside of his original classmates, very few people at the school actually knew his true ability level.

Still.

Jiang Yan glanced at his small seatmate. Though he found it hard to believe, he thought about it for a moment and smiled, then asked casually, “Did your grades really get bad enough that you can’t take the exam? That can’t be right — I watched you writing with real energy during the exam. You don’t seem like someone who’d score lower than Hu Hanghang.”

“……”

Get lost.

The exam seating chart came out that same afternoon after school.

The math class representative, Tian Qiongqiong, went to Old Yu’s office before evening study hall to pick up a copy and pinned it to the blackboard at the back of the classroom.

Hu Hanghang and Xu Yichuan showed their maximum level of enthusiasm for the seating chart. The moment Tian Qiongqiong had it pinned up, the two of them elbowed their way to the front, using their impressive physical advantage to plant themselves firmly at the head of the crowd.

Lin Tao couldn’t figure out where they got that much enthusiasm. She turned to Jiang Yan. “Want to make a bet?”

Jiang Yan was slumped over his desk, face turned toward her. “Bet on what?”

“On whether I end up in Exam Hall One.” Lin Tao had checked her scores over the summer break — she’d ranked in the top fifty in the year across all nine subjects, so barring any surprises, she should be placed in Exam Hall One again this time.

“Sure.” Jiang Yan nodded, then dug a coin out of his pocket and set it on her desk. “I’m betting you’re in Exam Hall One.”

“?”

What — on — earth — is — this?!

Jiang Yan had his head resting on his arm, watching as she made a face like she’d just swallowed something awful. He couldn’t help laughing.

Earlier that evening, he’d been called to Old Yu’s office. Old Yu had gone on at length — the gist of it being that he was reminding him not to miss the exam again this time.

The seating chart had been laid out on Old Yu’s desk at the time, and he’d glanced at it casually — spotting her name in the second row, with her exam hall number right after it.

Old Yu had noticed his gaze and offhandedly remarked, “Several of our class’s students are in Exam Hall One this time. Don’t even think about skipping — I’ll have someone keep an eye on you. For example, your seatmate who’s in the same hall as you: Lin Tao.”

Jiang Yan looked resigned. “I promise I absolutely won’t skip this time. But,” he tipped his chin slightly upward, “if my seatmate is such a good student, why was she placed in the last exam hall last semester?”

At that, Old Yu lifted his mug and said with clear displeasure, “Same as you — she missed the exam.”

“The two of you: one only sat the Chinese exam during the midterm, the other only sat the English exam. Then at the start of the new year, one broke her left arm and the other broke his right arm. If those two aren’t meant to be seatmates, nothing is.”

Jiang Yan: “……”

Of course, Lin Tao — who had been dead asleep in the classroom at the time, having lost all track of day and night — knew none of this. Which was why she had planned to make a bet with Jiang Yan, hoping to catch him off guard.

Little did she know she’d ended up digging her own hole.

She forced herself to speak, with some difficulty. “……Then I’ll bet I’m not in Exam Hall One.”

The moment she said it, she felt like an idiot.

Jiang Yan looked down at her calmly, straightened up, his brows and eyes full of amusement. “All right, then the stakes —”

Then his tone shifted, and he said in an unhurried drawl, “— will be decided by whoever wins.”

Lin Tao: “……”

I. Am. Going. To. Lose. My. Mind.

At the back of the classroom.

Hu Hanghang read the seating chart aloud as he scanned it. “In the last exam hall: Tao Jia, yours truly, Xu Yichuan, Song Yuan, Wu Wang, Yang Tianqi.”

“What the — seriously? Only five of our class are in the last hall. Has everyone gotten this good at studying?”

Hu Hanghang could barely believe it. Back in Class Sixteen during the midterms, their class had practically filled the last three exam halls by themselves.

How was it that in second year, only a handful of them were left?

Yang Tianqi, who was also in the last hall, cracked a joke: “Looks like the few of us have really contributed to dragging down the class average. Worthy of praise, worthy of praise!”

The existentially troubled Hu Hanghang scanned the chart again, and his gaze snagged on a name at the very top. He froze — then his eyes slowly widened, filled with pure disbelief.

“What the —” He grabbed Xu Yichuan’s shirt and shook it hard. “Quick, quick, pinch me, tell me this isn’t real, tell me the person at the top isn’t our little Tao Sis.”

Xu Yichuan followed his gaze and also went still.

Just this evening at dinner, Hu Hanghang had specifically reminded him that Lin Tao’s grades were really bad — she might not even be able to sit the exam — and had told him and Song Yuan to be careful what they said around her for a while.

And yet now, staring at the seating chart showing Lin Tao ranked second in the class and assigned to Exam Hall One, he was thunderstruck.

Was this what you’d call having bad grades?

Their combined total score didn’t even match this girl’s score on a single subject.

Xu Yichuan felt deceived.

“Tao Sis, that’s not cool. Your grades are this good, and you let me think — you deceived me, you deceived the pure, adorable, kind, and innocent heart of a young man.”

Having seen Lin Tao’s ranking, Hu Hanghang felt his fragile soul had taken a blow.

Lin Tao looked at him and clicked her tongue. “I did say… I might not be in the same hall as you guys…”

Hu Hanghang thought about it — and she really hadn’t said her grades were bad.

Lin Tao looked at his deflated expression and offered comfort: “Pangpang, it’s fine. Grades don’t define you. Just think about Edison — people thought he was an idiot when he was little, but was he? He wasn’t! He was the world-famous King of Inventions!”

Hu “Edison” Hanghang: “……”

I really am just an idiot.

Jiang Yan had been sitting nearby listening to the whole show. He leaned against the wall, one arm resting on his desk, the back of his hand pressed to his lips — and he couldn’t hold back his laughter.

His little seatmate was truly extraordinarily vindictive.

Author’s note: Tao Sis: I’m a low-key overachiever