The monthly exam this time around was fairly difficult. Fang Zhuo could hear quite a few students complaining as she came out.
She walked back from the exam hall to her own classroom, set her scratch paper and pencil case on the desk, and ran through the questions on the paper and her own reasoning in her head.
It seemed like there were no problems. Today’s math paper had been like the chocolate in those advertisements — smooth and effortless from start to finish, every question falling exactly within the concepts she understood.
That made Fang Zhuo very happy. After all, her good luck was generally a rare commodity.
Yan Lie came back right behind her, and pulled out his phone from the desk drawer to turn it on. Noticing her gaze flicker eagerly toward him, he thoughtfully asked, “Want to check answers?”
Fang Zhuo was torn about it herself — worried her streak of luck might break halfway through. She sat with her book for a while, couldn’t focus, and finally said, “You can force me to check.”
Yan Lie: “…?” You’re into that kind of thing?
Yan Lie was still trying to decide whether to tease her about that phrasing when Shen Musi and Zhao Jiayou charged in like two little firecrackers. They swooped down on Yan Lie, grabbed him by his collar, and demanded loudly, “Lielie! That last big question, second part — tell me: is the answer one-half or two?”
Fang Zhuo quietly said, “No solution,” and then heard Yan Lie say beside her, “Neither. How did you go about it? Did you even look at the range? How did you draw the graph?”
The two firecrackers were quiet for a few seconds, then exploded all at once — holding each other’s heads and wailing, completely unable to come to terms with having been tripped up yet again.
Fang Zhuo felt even happier. Everything seemed to be going according to her expectations today. Very lucky indeed.
Yan Lie could see the invisible aura of radiance she was emanating. He leaned toward her ear and, with a bit of mischief, said, “Seatmate — next up is English.”
The gentle upward curve of Fang Zhuo’s lips flattened at once. Her expression turned despondent.
Is this how fleeting happiness is in the adult world?
Yan Lie laughed openly beside her, completely ignoring Fang Zhuo’s cold stare — a thoroughly uninhibited laugh.
His sense of humor was genuinely strange. But after a while he came back and consoled Fang Zhuo with an expression of good intentions: “It’ll be fine. If you memorize that essay I gave you, there are at least a dozen or so scenarios you can use it as a framework for. It’s a little trick Lielie is teaching you — could easily get your score up by ten-something points.”
Fang Zhuo had never had much confidence in English. Whether she did well or poorly, she never really understood why. This language was fundamentally mysterious and hard to grasp — yet as a language, it was also built from the most basic words pieced together. Often you could fumble toward the right answer through what felt like instinct…though fumbling in the wrong direction was not uncommon either.
Just like Yan Lie.
Fang Zhuo thought that, and aimed a cool sidelong glance at him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Yan Lie assumed she didn’t believe him. He thumped his chest earnestly. “I’m being serious!”
Fang Zhuo said faintly, “I know.”
The math papers were graded first, and fastest.
The night after Fang Zhuo finished her last exam, the math scores were already in — just the tally hadn’t been done yet.
Shen Musi, too young and too restless to sit still, ran to the office and sneaked a peek at the exam papers. He came back deflated, slumped over his desk, not wanting to move.
Since the monthly exam had just wrapped up, none of the teachers had assigned much homework.
Yan Lie finished a round of a game, feeling a little unaccustomed to the rare quiet. He walked over and patted Shen Musi on the back, attempting to deepen their father-son bond.
“Son, don’t be too sad. Dad didn’t do well on this one either, so I won’t hold it against you.”
Shen Musi shot up furiously. “Dad, get away from me! You practically got a perfect score!”
“Did I?” Yan Lie said with reckless abandon. “Still wasn’t perfect, was it?”
Fang Zhuo was genuinely worried that being this insufferably smug would get him taken out before the university entrance exams could even arrive.
Yan Lie paid no attention whatsoever to the state of his wounded “son.” He kept his head down and asked, “What about my seatmate’s paper? Did you see it?”
Shen Musi: “I don’t know her exam number!”
Fang Zhuo recited one.
Shen Musi loved reporting other people’s grades. He summoned a brief burst of energy and ran back to the office to look up the paper.
Five minutes later, the cake-loving student returned with a crestfallen look. Fang Zhuo knew from that face alone: she’d done well.
“Your score is really high — you did great this time around.” Shen Musi said miserably. “But I didn’t look it up for you — I only got a hundred and twenty myself.”
Fang Zhuo consoled him: “You definitely scored higher in English than I did.”
Shen Musi’s eyes went wide. “You could say that to literally anyone in the entire class.”
Fang Zhuo: “…?” This child is not kind.
Her score made its way back to her through the grapevine soon enough. She had scored 148 — currently the highest known score — two points above Yan Lie.
Her math had always been solid. She’d never taken first place, but she’d always floated near the top. No one was particularly shocked, only marveling that she had truly performed well this time — managing to work through even the final question on a paper of this difficulty.
Her other science subjects were not far from her usual performance, firmly at the level where she would never drag herself down.
The next day at noon, the English score that had been making Fang Zhuo anxious was finally released.
The grade marked in red at the top right corner made her face brighten instantly.
She had finally broken free of the curse of just barely passing. Not only broken free — she’d gone a dozen-plus points beyond it, landing just at the 85 mark.
It was hardly what anyone could call exceptional — the person sitting next to her had scored more than twenty points higher — but for Fang Zhuo, it was a genuine milestone.
Yan Lie didn’t even glance at his own answer sheet. He simply urged her to take out her exam paper, circled the mistakes, and said sternly, “Getting something right isn’t enough — the ones you guessed correctly don’t count as actually knowing it. Look through quickly and find what you don’t understand. I’ll mark the exam concepts for you.”
Fang Zhuo nodded, sincerely acknowledging the results of his teaching, and dutifully annotated each grammar point in red pen.
In the afternoon, the English teacher came in to go over the paper. After summing up, she specifically mentioned Fang Zhuo.
She was a young teacher, only a few years out of school. Fang Zhuo — this fossil who had been stuck in that pit of poor scores for what felt like ages and had at last poked her head out — seemed to rekindle the teacher’s memory of why she’d entered the profession. She was genuinely excited and praised Fang Zhuo at length.
Not that she was the world’s most accomplished at giving praise — she was young, after all. She couldn’t compliment Fang Zhuo on any great English talent, nor could she say her essay wording was exquisite or her vocabulary impressive. She just cycled through “worked incredibly hard!” and “hard work pays off!” over and over again.
Like a forced piece of assigned-topic writing, it made Fang Zhuo feel a little awkward.
Yan Lie noticed that Fang Zhuo wasn’t exactly basking in the praise. He chuckled quietly for a moment, then raised his hand. “Teacher, don’t you want to say a few words about me too?”
The English teacher paused, took a sip of water, and smiled. “Do you still need people to praise you?”
“I do!” Yan Lie said. “Fang Zhuo’s score is proof of our friendship! I’ve been working very hard too!”
“Then I hope your friendship will grow deeper and deeper,” the English teacher said, genuinely carried away in her enthusiasm. “There are only six months left in third year — work hard, both of you, and get that bond of yours even closer!”
Fang Zhuo: “…?” She kept turning this over, unable to shake the sense that something wasn’t quite right about how that had landed.
Chinese language papers were always the last to be graded.
That discipline — it was hard to score very high or very low on. Fang Zhuo had almost forgotten she had to worry about it.
Two days later, the homeroom teacher finally walked in with the answer sheets. Rather than distributing them right away, she made some overall remarks first, then had everyone take out the test papers for discussion.
Since a single class period wasn’t enough to cover everything, she went straight into the essays section after finishing the reading comprehension. She also took over the next study hall period.
After analyzing the reading portion, she moved on to the essay topic for this exam.
At first glance, the topic actually had something almost poetic about it.
Their province’s exam style had always leaned toward the abstract. The examiners’ thinking tended to be labyrinthine, hard for ordinary people to decipher. By comparison, this time’s topic was relatively straightforward.
The prompt used a short dialogue as source material, then asked students to write on the theme: “If you turned into a plant.”
The teacher went over the extended meaning behind the prompt material, then laughed and said, “A few students went off-topic, but overall it was fine. The largest group wrote about the ‘Four Gentlemen’ of plants. The ones who chose common wildflowers also had a good angle. But some students wrote about spider lily flowers. What’s that about? Are you going to take root in the underworld and welcome the dead?”
The class burst out laughing.
The teacher said, “I’m not saying you can’t. It comes back to this: if you go too far outside the box and don’t make it convincing enough, you’ll lose points easily. Take this one — the writing just didn’t land.”
She singled out a few high-scoring essays to read aloud as models.
The second piece she read was Fang Zhuo’s paper.
Fang Zhuo had written about tumbleweed — she entered through the angle of tumbleweed’s remarkable resilience, writing about how it endures hardship without giving up, waits with patience through extreme conditions, and seizes any chance for survival.
The middle section drew on several well-known classical allusions and poetic lines. The conclusion circled back to echo the opening, giving the essay a complete structure that didn’t lack for ambition. Several teachers had independently given it high marks.
After reading it aloud, the teacher still found herself moved by the piece. A few lines were pointed and well-phrased, and the emotional undercurrent was full and genuine. She sensed that Fang Zhuo had drawn on her own experience, and that was why so much tenacity seeped through between the lines.
She read it over a few more times, complimented it as “emotionally sincere with a smooth, flowing style,” and set it aside. Looking up, she found Yan Lie’s right hand raised high.
She was in a good mood. She called on him and asked, “What is it? Want to say something nice about your seatmate?”
Yan Lie stood up. “Teacher, I don’t think ’emotionally sincere’ is right. Fang Zhuo shouldn’t be a tumbleweed.”
Fang Zhuo looked up at him. Though his face still held that faint smile, his eyes were entirely serious.
The teacher said, amused, “What do you mean? It’s her own essay — it’s not up to you!”
“Tumbleweed is also called ‘pig bristle grass,'” Yan Lie said, wrinkling his nose. “Which is really not a great name.” He turned to ask Fang Zhuo, “Don’t you think so, seatmate?”
Fang Zhuo was instantly convinced. She immediately walked back her position: “I think so too. Maybe I should revise it.”
Yan Lie raised his hand again, not waiting for the teacher’s acknowledgment. “I think she’s a sunflower.”
“A sunflower doesn’t have that kind of tenacious vitality!” the teacher said helplessly. “Yan Lie, are you causing trouble? You’ve dismantled someone’s heartfelt essay just like that.”
Yan Lie cupped his chin. “But a sunflower always turns toward the sun.”
Fang Zhuo thought for a moment and realized she really liked the way Yan Lie came up with these ideas. They always seemed to come from nowhere and yet make complete sense. Every single one felt alive and full of possibility.
The teacher, exasperated, reached for a piece of chalk as though to throw it at his face. “I had you reading other people’s essays to learn from their technique and their arguments, not to be turning toward the sun at me!”
Yan Lie had stirred up chaos with a completely unapologetic smile.
The teacher could do nothing with him. She gathered the papers on her desk and had the front-row students hand them out.
The classroom quickly filled with noise — all sorts of overlapping chatter and commotion.
The teacher took a sip of water and looked at the rowdy bunch giving her headaches below. She clicked her tongue. “Settle down, everyone. Are you sitting on firecrackers?”
Just before the bell, she announced one more thing: “Also — don’t forget about the parent-teacher conference next week. This is third year, everyone. Those who can come, please come. You understand what I mean, right? Chances for every subject teacher to rack their brains finding nice things to say about you don’t come often — make sure to show up!”