Monday’s extended break between classes was, as usual, a tedious and drawn-out flag-raising ceremony — and this semester, the school had added yet another segment to it.

Every Friday, two students would be randomly selected from the top twenty of each grade, and after the following Monday’s flag-raising ceremony, they would give a learning-experience presentation.

The school had even come up with a slogan for this event: “Share a little of your study experience today, and together we’ll make it into Tsinghua tomorrow” — an absolutely ridiculous motto.

Because of this added segment, a full thirty minutes of the thirty-five-minute break were eaten up, leaving everyone just five minutes to disperse and return to their classrooms.

As a result, quite a few students would sneak away during the speeches. The lucky ones made it back to class smoothly and could even stop by the small convenience store along the way — the unlucky ones, however…

“Which class are you lot from? Who’s your homeroom teacher? Do you think the rule about not leaving the flag-raising ceremony early is just for show?! All of you, stand right there! I’d like to see who dares walk away today!”

A male student’s perfectly serious voice was broadcasting through the three-hundred-sixty-degree surround speakers across the entire sports field.

Blackie’s booming voice completely drowned it out.

Students near the west gate of the sports field all turned to look.

Lin Tao, standing in the back rows of her line, was also drawn by the commotion and tilted her head to look over — but unfortunately, their class’s spot wasn’t well-positioned. She could vaguely hear Blackie’s voice but couldn’t see what kind of bloodbath was unfolding over there.

Hu Hanghang and Xu Yichuan, standing beside Lin Tao, were also craning their necks trying to see — but likewise couldn’t make out a thing.

Hu Hanghang gave up and turned sideways to talk to Lin Tao. “Tao-mei, what were you and Yan-ge up to last Saturday? Neither of you came to dinner. It was a rare occasion — Xu Yichuan was actually treating us — and you missed it. I feel bad for you.”

At the mention of dinner, Tao Jia standing in front of Lin Tao also turned around to join the conversation. “Right, did you two have something going on that Saturday?”

Lin Tao lifted her eyes to meet the girl’s gaze, then glanced over at the boy holding the class placard at the front of the line, and proceeded to lie through her teeth with a straight face. “I don’t know — didn’t Jiang Yan go to dinner? I went to the hospital to get my cast removed. It ran too late, so I didn’t make it.”

“…”

Hu Hanghang was a little disbelieving. “But didn’t Yan-ge go with you to the hospital? He didn’t go to dinner?”

“No, I went alone.” Lin Tao’s expression didn’t change.

Hu Hanghang was utterly incredulous. “He didn’t go to the hospital with you — so where did he go? Don’t tell me he was off grinding ranked games behind our backs again?”

Lin Tao shook her head, pointing at Jiang Yan, who had just handed the class placard off to someone else and was now turning to walk in their direction. “He’s coming. Ask him yourself.”

Before she’d even finished speaking, Jiang Yan had already made his way over, positioning himself between Hu Hanghang and Xu Yichuan — one on each side of him.

Hu Hanghang said: “Bro, tell me honestly — where were you yesterday?”

The morning sun was bright, the sports field entirely without shade, the light sharp and glaring. Jiang Yan squinted slightly, hands shoved in his pockets. At the question, he barely lifted his eyelids, his voice languid. “I took my deskmate to the hospital.”

Xu Yichuan looked pained. “Bro, come clean. Your little sister already said she went to the hospital alone — what do you have to say for yourself?”

Jiang Yan tilted his head and glanced at Lin Tao, who was standing beside him watching the drama unfold with great interest. He reached up and touched the mark on his nose bridge that hadn’t quite faded yet. Who knows what he was thinking, but the rebuttal that had been on the tip of his tongue came out instead as: “Ah — right, now I remember. I didn’t go to the hospital.”

Hu Hanghang pointed at him. “I knew it!!”

Jiang Yan didn’t even look at him. “I went to the psychiatric ward.”

Everyone: “…”

Jiang Yan, under the collective stare of “let’s see how you spin this one”, continued to fabricate with a perfectly serious face: “Ran into a nutcase on the road. Since it was on the way, I dropped her back at the asylum.”

Everyone: “…”

Lin Tao: “…”

What the—

Although Xu Yichuan and the others didn’t quite buy his story, faced with the intimidating authority of the great one himself, they all held onto the thought of “I know you’re making this up but I can’t not believe you”, and reluctantly accepted this explanation.

The dinner incident was thus — somewhat messily — put to rest under Jiang Yan’s wild fabrications.

A few days later, the diagnostic exam arrived on schedule.

After the arts-science division, all diagnostic exams followed the college entrance examination format — two days, Thursday and Friday. Once Friday ended, it was immediately followed by eight days off for the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day.

So on exam day, no one had even a trace of nerves. Everyone was enthusiastically and passionately discussing the upcoming eight-day holiday.

“My mom said she’ll take me abroad after the exam.”

“Travel? My dad said if I end up at the bottom of the rankings again this time, he’ll set up a mixed-doubles beatdown for me.”

“Tragic. That’s absolutely tragic.”

“If I meet an untimely end, I’ll give you my game accounts — all the ones with the full skin collections. Oh right, a new hero dropped in Honor of Kings last night — have you guys tried it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I tried it. This game’s gotten so bad lately — might as well play PUBG and be a gunfight king.”

…

The atmosphere was so light and cheerful that when Lin Tao walked into the classroom that morning, for a brief moment she got the illusion that there was no exam today.

When she carried her bag back to her seat, Jiang Yan hadn’t come yet. Similarly, Hu Hanghang and Song Yuan sitting behind her also hadn’t arrived.

Lin Tao didn’t pay it much attention — those few always cut it right to the wire when getting to class. Old Yu, the teacher making the rounds to check the classroom, was quite worried though.

After waiting ten minutes with no sign of him, Old Yu walked over to Lin Tao’s desk and asked: “Your deskmate isn’t here yet?”

“Mm, not yet.” Lin Tao, a carton of milk in her mouth, looked up at Old Yu.

A tangle of conflicting emotions — anxiety, urgency, panic — quickly spread across Old Yu’s face. “So… will he be coming for the exam today?”

“He should.” Lin Tao genuinely hadn’t heard Jiang Yan mention skipping the exam, but it wasn’t the first or second time the great one had skipped an exam either — not showing up wouldn’t exactly be unusual.

Old Yu clearly didn’t see it that way. Jiang Yan’s exceptionally outstanding grades had led him to consistently believe that this child was still someone who could be guided — he just hadn’t found the right approach yet.

Old Yu lingered in the classroom for another ten minutes, and finally, in the last few minutes before the self-study period ended, he got the person he’d been waiting for.

Jiang Yan looked like he’d only woken up a short while ago — the fringe of hair at his forehead lay soft and flat against his forehead, his whole face heavy with fatigue. He hadn’t even had time to change clothes, still wearing what he’d had on when he’d sent Lin Tao off to the bus.

Lin Tao glanced down at his feet. Fortunately, the great one had at least thought to change his shoes before leaving — he wasn’t going to show up in slippers.

When Old Yu spotted Jiang Yan, his face lit up like a flower blooming. He called out to him immediately. “Jiang Yan!”

The not-quite-awake student squinted and swept the classroom with his gaze, eventually spotting Old Yu beside his own seat. He greeted him with lazy ease. “Good morning, Mr. Yu.”

“Good morning! Jiang Yan, the morning is the most important part of the day.” Old Yu clapped him on the shoulder. “Do well on your exam today.”

That clap from Old Yu jolted him into alertness even if his brain hadn’t quite caught up. He rubbed the corner of his brow and sat down, then said the words Old Yu had been hoping to hear: “Don’t worry — I’m definitely not skipping.”

“That’s the spirit.” Old Yu then glanced at Lin Tao sitting beside him. “Lin Tao.”

Lin Tao immediately chimed in: “Mr. Yu, don’t worry! I know what you’re about to say! I will definitely fulfill my duty and keep a close eye on Jiang Yan!”

“…”

Old Yu thought: keeping an eye on him is one thing, but you can’t skip the exam either — but before he could get that out, the bell rang right on time. The classroom erupted like a boiling pot, and everyone poured out in a swarm, heading to their assigned examination halls.

Exam Hall One was in Class One — a different building and floor from Class Eighteen.

Meng Xin was also assigned to Exam Hall One. The moment the bell rang, Lin Tao grabbed her bag and headed out, and in the split second Jiang Yan looked away, she had vanished.

The students assigned to Exam Hall One were all in the top thirty of the grade, excluding the accelerated class.

The atmosphere in this exam hall was completely incomparable to the last one. As someone who had tested in the last exam hall before, Lin Tao, upon entering Exam Hall One, nearly thought she had walked into some sacred silent sanctuary.

She found her seat by her student number. Meng Xin sat behind her. The two huddled together to chat. “How come I never noticed how quiet this exam hall was when I used to come here before?”

Meng Xin was still applying nail polish, head down. “That’s because you came too rarely before. As someone who has been a regular in Exam Hall One for years, I can only tell you this is the norm. Talking would be the abnormal thing.”

Lin Tao stared at her nails. “You like this make it feel like I’m back in the last exam hall.”

“Get lost.” Meng Xin finished the last nail, held her hand up to let it air dry. “Where’s your deskmate — isn’t he in this exam hall too?”

Honestly, when Lin Tao had told her the great one was in their exam hall, Meng Xin hadn’t quite believed it at first. Had the great one’s capabilities really expanded this far? Top student and school overlord combined — dominating both academia and the streets.

Hearing Meng Xin’s question, Lin Tao only now remembered that in her hurry to get here, she had completely forgotten about her deskmate. She couldn’t help furrowing her brow slightly. “He’ll probably come soon — he always cuts it to the last second.”

As expected, before Lin Tao had even finished speaking, the preliminary exam bell rang, and the great one walked through the door right on that clear chime.

His was the only empty seat in the entire classroom — not far from Lin Tao’s, separated by one aisle, roughly the same arrangement as the end-of-semester exams last term. Except this time, he was on Lin Tao’s left side.

The students in Exam Hall One were not like those in the last exam hall. These were all earnest students who kept their minds on their studies, and their impression of the great one was one-dimensional: just another competitor.

As for the gossip and rumors about the great one, they neither knew nor cared to know — that time could be better spent working through two more multiple-choice questions.

So when the great one walked in, it didn’t cause much of a stir, certainly no scene of collective shock. Only a handful of people looked up at him briefly.

Jiang Yan wasn’t someone who cared about such surface-level attention anyway. He walked to his seat and sat down.

He’d worked a night shift the previous night and hadn’t gotten to sleep until past three in the morning. He was still a bit drowsy, so he leaned against the desk behind him and closed his eyes to rest.

He became an unusual fixture in the exam hall.

Lin Tao turned and looked at him, noticing that he at least had some semblance of exam awareness — he hadn’t come empty-handed and had brought two pens and some scratch paper.

The second preliminary bell rang.

Jiang Yan opened his eyes with some difficulty, and saw the two pens and a scratch paper that Hu Hanghang had stuffed into his hands before leaving, sitting on his desk.

He moved his wrist, picked up one of the pens, uncapped it, and made a stroke on the paper.

Red?

Why is it red??

He picked up the other pen — the click-type one — and kept scribbling.

Why won’t it write?

This is a pen, isn’t it?

Why won’t it put down any ink? Can something that won’t put down ink even be called a pen?

Jiang Yan felt a headache coming on. He tossed both pens along with the scratch paper into his desk drawer, raised his hand to rub the back of his neck, and let his gaze drift — landing on his little deskmate sitting across the aisle.

The third preliminary bell typically rang when the invigilators entered, and there was a five-minute gap between the second and third bells.

Lin Tao was using this five-minute window to hold her hand out to Meng Xin, asking her to apply some shimmering nail polish for her.

Meng Xin’s technique was practiced — she had once sworn, during her angsty middle school phase, that she would drop out and set up a nail stand in the university district to become a self-made nail artist.

She finished in less than five minutes, each nail coated with smooth, even coverage, not a single ragged edge.

Lin Tao drew her hand back and blew on her nails gently. Noticing Jiang Yan’s gaze, she raised her hand toward him and asked very quietly, “Pretty, right?”

The girl’s fingers were slender and fair as spring onions, her nails evenly rounded, coated in a soft translucent pinkish polish scattered with barely-visible tiny glittering fragments.

Jiang Yan’s gaze slid sideways, meeting her eyes — bright, luminous eyes with a slight smile in them, as though hiding stars in their depths. Genuinely captivating.

In that instant of eye contact, Jiang Yan felt slightly unmoored. The retort he’d been about to fire back somehow refused to come out.

He hastily averted his gaze, and before he could say anything, Lin Tao had already withdrawn her hand and muttered: “Never mind, you and your straight-man taste — you probably don’t get it anyway.”

“…”

The third preliminary bell rang.

The invigilator walked in carrying the exam papers. “We’ll now begin distributing the papers. Please put anything related to the exam on your desk.”

They were all good students, so exam-hall discipline was given a cursory rundown, and the papers were handed out.

When Jiang Yan received his paper and was about to write his name, he suddenly remembered his two pens exiled to the desk drawer and couldn’t help letting out a curse under his breath.

Damn.

He pressed his exam paper flat on the desk, then tapped the boy sitting in front of him on the shoulder, doing his best to make his voice sound not entirely cold: “Hey, could I borrow a pen?”

The boy in front turned to look at him, his expression conveying one simple thought: you came to sit an exam without a pen — what exactly are you here for?

“…”

Jiang Yan held his gaze. The boy didn’t say anything, and picked up a black ballpoint pen from his desk to hand over.

The exam began.

The first subject was Chinese. Chinese was always the subject where Jiang Yan lost the most marks — not because he was weak in it, just his handwriting. The Chinese department teachers felt they couldn’t in good conscience not deduct points — it was an affront to their time spent marking.

The exam hall was silent except for the steady scratch of writing.

The two invigilators paced around at first, but after half an hour, they settled down at the front desk and began chatting about everything except their invigilating duties.

Jiang Yan found the Chinese exam torturous — writing from beginning to end with an eight-hundred-word essay waiting at the back.

He finished the earlier questions and flipped to the reading comprehension section at the back.

The title was straightforward: My Deskmate — though “deskmate” was in quotation marks, suggesting a second layer of meaning.

Seeing this title, Jiang Yan paused his pen and instinctively glanced at Lin Tao sitting on his right — and as it happened, Lin Tao had also just reached this part and was looking up at him at the same moment.

Their gazes crossed the aisle and met in the air.

The exam hall light was bright, dust motes seemed to float in the air, and the boy happened to be sitting right in the light — the contours of his face soft, as though burnished with a natural gentle glow, lips lightly pressed together, expression not particularly at ease.

Lin Tao stared at Jiang Yan for a few seconds, and seemed to realize something. She swiftly raised her hand and slid her answer sheet inward — then pressed her exam paper over it.

“?”

(Author’s note: — Yan-ge: I was going for a deep, soulful eye-contact moment and you thought I wanted to copy your answers? — Yan-ge: How are we supposed to develop our relationship like this — Yan-ge: I’m exhausted —)