Ruan Qiu glanced at Zhou Yinian, who had been trying to stop her from taking the test all along, and asked, “I’m your sister-in-law, and your brother doesn’t feel embarrassed at all. What are you panicking about here?”
Zhou Yinian reacted instantly, raised his head to look at everyone around them, and awkwardly rubbed his nose. “I’m just worried you’ll embarrass my brother.”
“Whether or not I embarrass your brother is something I’m very clear on. Your brother is a soldier, and I would never do anything that harms a soldier’s character.”
Zhou Yishen gave Ruan Qiu a couple of extra looks before turning to Director Lu. “Director Lu, since you said she could take the test, let her take it.”
“Brother, you’re really letting her test? In case she doesn’t score well, wouldn’t that be unfortunate?”
Zhou Yishen’s gaze swept over him, and Zhou Yinian immediately shut his mouth.
Since Director Lu had already said it aloud, he bit the bullet and nodded. “The test, then let’s test.”
Ruan Qiu turned to Zhou Yishen and said, “You believe in me, right? Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you.”
With that, she cast another glance at Zhou Yinian and followed Director Lu into the office.
Zhou Yishen accompanied the principal to the principal’s office.
Once inside the office, Director Lu assigned two teachers to find high school exam papers.
“High school exam papers?” One of the male teachers adjusted his glasses. “This is a university. Where are we supposed to find high school papers?”
“I remember there used to be a set of high school papers in your cabinet, kept for testing the college entrance exam scores of incoming freshmen.”
“Oh, right, right! I remember now.”
The bespectacled male teacher hurriedly opened the cabinet and rummaged through it, pulling out several crumpled test papers.
“There aren’t many left. Let me see if the set is complete.”
The papers had been printed by their own school, covered in ink stains and smelling strongly of print.
“We’re missing a geography paper.”
Ruan Qiu felt a secret flash of joy, as geography was easily her weakest subject among all of them.
“That’s fine. Give these test papers to Comrade Ruan Qiu to complete. Teacher Yao, Teacher Tong, the two of you please take turns supervising,” Director Lu instructed the bespectacled man and another female teacher.
Teacher Yao glanced at Ruan Qiu with a cold attitude. “Have Teacher Tong watch. I have class later.”
Teacher Tong seemed hesitant to offend Teacher Yao, so he smiled at Director Lu and said, “No problem, I can handle it alone.”
“Alright then, it’s settled. Keep a close eye on her!”
“No problem.”
After Director Lu left, Teacher Tong finally took a closer look at Ruan Qiu. She looked somewhat familiar, though he couldn’t quite place where he had seen her before.
“Sit here, I’ll get you a pen.” Teacher Tong handed the pen to Ruan Qiu and asked curiously, “Why didn’t you take the regular college entrance exam?”
If she had taken the exam, she wouldn’t need to go through all this trouble to get an auditor’s pass.
“I didn’t finish primary school,” Ruan Qiu answered honestly.
Teacher Tong had a face full of blank lines.
Not finishing primary school and coming to audit university courses, was this a joke?
Still, he didn’t press further, quietly sitting down to supervise Ruan Qiu as she worked on the exam papers while he read a newspaper.
Ruan Qiu tackled the math paper first. With the college entrance examinations just recently reinstated, the exam questions for this cohort were actually quite straightforward. As long as one studied diligently enough, passing into a normal university was as easy as turning over one’s hand.
Before long, Ruan Qiu had finished the math test.
To ensure her results came out in time, she took each completed paper straight to the teacher for grading.
Teacher Tong specialized in the mathematics department. As he took Ruan Qiu’s finished paper and began carefully grading it, the more he checked, the more incredible it felt. For a rural girl who hadn’t even finished primary school, her problem-solving steps for every single math question were exceptionally complete.
Teacher Tong picked up a red pen and began placing checkmarks down the page.
By the time he finished grading the math test, Ruan Qiu had also completed the Chinese paper.
The Chinese paper clearly hadn’t been completed as neatly as the math test, largely because it featured many classical poems and literary passages. If one hadn’t specifically reviewed and memorized them, those verses were very easy to forget.
However, the English and physics papers were completed with stunning accuracy.
By the time four exam papers were finished, it was time for lunch.
Director Lu walked over and asked, “Are you done?”
Based on his estimation, a few test papers wouldn’t take much time, and she would surely get many answers wrong.
Teacher Tong stood up and replied, “Director, there are still chemistry, biology, and politics papers left undone.”
What?
Director Lu frowned, his eyes falling immediately on the Chinese paper on the desk, which had many blank spaces.
“Just leave whatever you don’t know blank and finish the rest quickly.” Director Lu hoped Ruan Qiu wouldn’t waste time and wanted her to wrap it up swiftly.
Ruan Qiu looked up, thanked him, and lowered her head to keep writing down answers.
Teacher Tong sighed. “Director, the Chinese paper wasn’t done very well, but this math paper is quite impressive.”
When Director Lu saw the score on the paper, he was dumbfounded. “Ninety-five points?”
Teacher Tong nodded heavily. “You don’t see scores like that very often even among regular examinees.”
With the college entrance exams newly revived, many students had rushed to take the test without enough time to review, so very few scored high marks.
Director Lu took the remaining papers to another office, having a representative from each department pull away to help grade them.
Ruan Qiu wanted to do one more paper, but the principal and Zhou Yishen walked over.
“Teacher Tong, how many tests has she completed?” the principal asked.
“There are still three papers left,” Teacher Tong answered truthfully.
“Then let’s go eat first and finish the rest after lunch.” The principal didn’t feel any need to push her so rigidly.
After all, this wasn’t an official college entrance exam.
“That works too.”
“The food in our school cafeteria isn’t bad either, you should go try it,” the principal warmly invited.
Zhou Yishen nodded. Eating out or eating in the cafeteria was pretty much the same, and he had food coupons anyway.
Ruan Qiu followed Zhou Yishen to the cafeteria.
The dining hall was packed with people. Ruan Qiu spotted many older students who had entered through this recent round of exams, and rumor had it that the oldest was over thirty, though the official upper age limit for enrollment was thirty.
“Sit down, I’ll go get the food.” Ruan Qiu pulled Zhou Yishen back, made him sit down, and took the food coupons to buy their meals.
Since Zhou Yishen still had one arm in a sling, he didn’t compete with her over it.
Suddenly, Zhou Yinian darted over from somewhere, holding an enamel bowl, and sat down directly across from Zhou Yishen.
“Brother, you’re just letting her run wild like this!”
“I think given her capability, this isn’t running wild.” Zhou Yishen looked at Zhou Yinian. “Are you really that dissatisfied with your sister-in-law auditing classes?”
Zhou Yinian almost bit his tongue. Of course he was dissatisfied! If Ruan Qiu ended up attending the same university as him, what would all his hard work amount to?
A joke?
A vicious woman who had ruined his wedding in his past life, by what right was she living such a good life and attending such a fine university?
Yet he couldn’t voice those thoughts aloud. Instead, he put on a deeply worried expression and said, “Brother, it’s not that I’m unhappy about sister-in-law auditing. I’m just worried she’ll make a fool of herself and embarrass you. Think about how glorious it was for our family to send you off to the military. If she messes it all up, what a pity that would be!”
Zhou Yishen asked another question: “Yinian, when I first signed up for the military, you said you wanted to take my place, but then you suddenly changed your mind the next day. Why was that?”
Zhou Yinian deflected, looking left and right. “I was afraid I wouldn’t pass the physical exam and would waste your slot.”
Why indeed?
He had been reborn. He didn’t want to walk the same old path as his past life, didn’t want to cross paths with Ruan Qiu in this lifetime, and wanted nothing more than to shake off Ruan Qiu as a burden.
He just hadn’t expected this woman to act like a curse, popping up everywhere in his life.