“Dad, do you think there’s any way you can help Zhou Yuwei?” Liu Changyun squatted beside his father.
One hand was pouring tea while the other held the bag of preserved fruit.
“Your old man here is just a department director—a lousy one who can’t even teach his own son properly. I’m not the principal, so what exactly do you expect me to help her with?” Liu Aihua said helplessly.
Has this silly boy really fallen for Old Zhou’s daughter?
Liu Changyun immediately set the teacup down.
“You’re seriously underestimating yourself. Do you know who you are?”
“It wouldn’t matter if I were the Emperor himself. Tell me first—did that girl copy someone else’s exam or not?”
“She said she didn’t.”
“Then what the hell are you panicking for?” Liu Aihua replied calmly after taking a sip of tea.
“…You’re right. Why am I so worried? If Zhou Yuwei says she didn’t cheat, then she didn’t cheat. Forget it. I’m going back to sleep.”
Liu Changyun grabbed the bag of preserved fruit and walked off.
“Hey! At least leave the preserved fruit behind!”
“I’m saving it to give Grandma in a couple of days.”
In other words, his father wasn’t getting any.
“That little brat! He’s burning the bridge after crossing it!”
Mrs. Liu chuckled.
“Isn’t it a good thing when a child shows filial piety to his grandmother?”
“Of course it is. I’m just afraid that’s only an excuse. He probably wants to sneak off and eat it himself instead of sharing it with anyone.” Liu Aihua couldn’t resist teasing.
“My son isn’t like that.”
Mrs. Liu picked up two pieces of preserved fruit and deliberately popped them into her own mouth right in front of him.
Liu Aihua was speechless.
That brat…
He’s doing this on purpose to annoy his old man.
Looks like making him clean the school toilets was too light a punishment.
…
Early the next morning…
The two boys waited for Zhou Yuwei at the entrance of the residential courtyard compound.
Zhou Yuwei slowly pushed her bicycle out.
“Hurry up! Move it! Time for school!”
“It’s still early.”
A coarse-grain steamed bun was still clamped between Zhou Yuwei’s teeth.
The bun was so rough it scraped her throat, making it hard to swallow.
Even though the family’s financial situation had improved considerably, her mother still couldn’t bear to throw away the mixed-grain flour.
“This bun is already pretty good. Remember those ‘remember-the-hard-times’ meals we had a few years ago? Besides, wasting food isn’t right.”
Perfectly good flour couldn’t just be left there until it grew mold and insects.
After living through more than a decade of hardship, there was no way their habits would change overnight.
Xu Zitao tossed her an egg pancake.
“My grandma made it last night. She said it’s a thank-you gift.”
Zhou Yuwei caught it immediately.
She wasn’t joking—Grandma Xu’s cooking was leagues better than her mother’s.
She had no intention of torturing her own stomach.
By the time they reached school, the elderly gatekeeper greeted them with a smile.
“Changyun, you’re here.”
“Yep! Morning, Grandpa Wang!”
“Quite early, aren’t you? Well, the bell’s going to ring in just a few minutes. Hurry up or you’ll be late.”
“As fast as we can!”
The students behind them immediately sprinted through the school gate.
Instead of returning to her classroom, Zhou Yuwei headed straight to the principal’s office as instructed.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Come in.”
She entered and saw the principal sitting behind his desk with his head lowered over a stack of documents.
Principal Tan looked up at her.
The silver lenses of his glasses flashed with reflected light.
“Student Zhou Yuwei?”
He set aside both her academic records from the past two years of high school and her latest midterm results, then lightly tapped the desk.
“Good morning, Principal.”
“What do you have to say about these exam results?”
The previous day, the teachers had already held a meeting to discuss the matter, gathering all of Zhou Yuwei’s subject teachers.
“Her improvement is simply too dramatic. These scores are nothing like her previous performance.”
Math teacher Mr. Chen was the first to voice his opinion.
Zhou Yuwei had always hovered just around the passing mark in mathematics.
This time she’d scored ninety.
“Although Zhou Yuwei’s previous grades weren’t this good, she did consistently stay around the passing line.”
Ms. Xu held up Zhou Yuwei’s English exam paper.
She taught both English and Chinese to Class Eight of Senior Year Three.
To be honest, she was shocked.
A perfect score in English.
Although English currently counted for only thirty percent of the total score, almost no students managed to achieve full marks.
Her Chinese score, on the other hand, was a different story.
Everything else had been fairly good, and her essay was particularly well written.
But the simple textbook passages students were required to memorize had been written in complete disarray.
That left Ms. Xu utterly speechless.
Even the style of Zhou Yuwei’s essay was completely different from everyone else’s.
If she had to summarize it in one sentence—
It was remarkably original.
Because of that, the score she awarded wasn’t especially high, but it wasn’t low either.
Political Science teacher Mr. Qi stared at the exam paper with an unpleasant expression, saying nothing.
What was there to say?
After looking through all of Zhou Yuwei’s subject scores, only his class had received a failing grade.
Fifty-five points.
Politics had previously been her strongest subject.
Wonderful.
Now that all her other grades had improved, Politics had plummeted instead.
What could he possibly say?
He was completely speechless.
As her homeroom teacher…
She was driving him crazy.
“Mr. Lin, what do you think?”
Mr. Lin taught Physics and Chemistry.
“If these scores are genuinely hers, then she’d have her pick of universities.”
“But I honestly don’t believe she’s capable of achieving results like these.”
It wasn’t that he looked down on Zhou Yuwei.
She simply had never stood out before.
Especially in Physics and Chemistry.
Her performance had been… difficult to describe.
So he genuinely couldn’t believe she had improved this much all of a sudden.
“So you also think she cheated?”
Mr. Lin merely smiled.
His meaning couldn’t have been clearer.
“I didn’t copy anyone else’s answers.”
“Oh? But what Jiang Chao said paints a very different picture.”
“Principal, you can’t rely on just one person’s testimony.”
“If you don’t believe me, you can have the teachers prepare a brand-new exam paper. Let me and… Jiang… whatever-his-name-is…”
She paused briefly before continuing.
“Let me and that student take the exam again together. If you have time, you can even supervise us personally.”
She was still waiting for Wu Di to call her “Great-Aunt” after losing the bet.
She wasn’t just competing against the student who ranked fourth.
She had actually held herself back during the previous exam.
Even so, she’d still failed to control herself.
She should have improved gradually instead—
Or stunned everyone by soaring to the top in the National College Entrance Examination.
Maybe then she wouldn’t have attracted so much trouble.
She had simply failed to think things through.
“Very well. In a moment I’ll have Mr. Chen bring out the backup examination paper for the two of you.”
For every midterm exam, First High School required the teachers to prepare two separate sets of exam papers.
The principal would then decide which one to use.
Since one version was significantly more difficult and might hurt the students’ confidence, he had ultimately chosen the easier paper for the official exam.
But since today’s purpose was to verify their true academic ability…
Fine.
They would use the more difficult paper instead.
Before long, Jiang Chao arrived.
He glanced at Zhou Yuwei.
When he’d first heard they would be taking another exam, he’d secretly been delighted.
The original papers had already been returned, and he’d figured out every question he’d gotten wrong.
Maybe this time he could finally beat Cao Bingkun and become the top student in the school.
After all, the only purpose of this retest was to determine whether Zhou Yuwei had copied his answers.
But the moment he saw the paper…
He frowned.
It wasn’t the same exam.
And it looked even harder.
He had assumed he’d finish quickly, then go back and brag about it.
Reality, however, proved far more difficult than he’d imagined.
Principal Tan spent the entire morning supervising the examination, carefully observing both students as they worked.
That morning’s subjects were Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry.
He noticed that Zhou Yuwei solved problems noticeably faster than Jiang Chao.
Then he looked at her solution process and final answers.
His eyebrows rose slightly.