Over the next week, Shen Nanhao, Zhang Yang, Shi Ranran, and Yang Qingyuan were all called in one after another. Finally, it was Su Yunluo’s turn.
“Su Yunluo?” Teacher Gao pushed his glasses up, his gaze pausing on her face for a moment before dropping to the very bottom of the ranking sheet. “Last place.”
“I’ve heard about how you used to compete with Xie Chen back in your first year,” he said with a small smile. “That takes some courage.”
Su Yunluo looked at him and knew—that smile wasn’t praise. It was mockery.
“Do you know why you’re sitting where you are now?” His tone shifted, turning earnest, almost instructive. “Based on the average of your two final exams in your first year, you did qualify for the rocket class. But if we only look at your ranking before summer, you wouldn’t have made it. And with the way your grades were slipping, there was a real chance you’d drag the class down. So at first, I didn’t plan to take you. I considered replacing you with a few other students who didn’t do well over winter break, but still ranked above you before summer.”
Su Yunluo said nothing.
Silence was her armor.
Truth was, she never wanted to come to this rocket class just to hold everyone back.
She would’ve rather stayed in an ordinary class.
And she definitely didn’t want to stand here, listening to words that chipped away at her dignity, piece by piece.
“It was your former homeroom teacher, Teacher Song, who came to me several times…”
Su Yunluo froze for a second and looked up.
“Teacher Song said you have potential. That your drop in grades this past year was probably due to your mood, or your state of mind—or maybe you just hadn’t found the right study method yet. He thought that if you changed classes, changed your environment, surrounded yourself with top students, you might recover… so he asked me to give you a chance.”
Su Yunluo bit down on her lip, hard.
“So now, arranging the seats like this is also part of giving you that chance,” Teacher Gao continued. “Look at your former competitor, Xie Chen. He used to rank below you, and now he’s second in the class. And there’s Yan Zichen, Shi Ranran—they’re all excellent students. They’ve been improving steadily since first year. Sit with people like them, ask questions often, learn their methods. See how others make progress.”
He paused, then added, “I won’t make things too difficult for you. Let’s set a realistic goal for now. In the next exam, just try not to fall more than 120 places behind Xie Chen. How does that sound?”
Su Yunluo thought: you could’ve just said I need to rank within the top 120. Wouldn’t that have been simpler?
She stayed silent.
But somewhere beneath that armor, something softened, just a little.
She wasn’t someone who showed her wounds to others. Over the past year, no matter how much her grades dropped, how bad her state became, how severe her insomnia got—she always kept her back straight, chin lifted. She never complained to anyone. Never thought of asking a teacher for help.
After all, a teacher was still an outsider.
He couldn’t fix the fear and helplessness of a girl who had once realized she’d been abandoned by her own family. He couldn’t make parents love a child they had never truly loved.
And yet… Teacher Song…
“Do you have confidence?” Teacher Gao asked again.
“I’ll do my best,” Su Yunluo said. Her voice came out softer than she expected.
That answer wasn’t for the man in front of her.
It was for Teacher Song.
She wouldn’t turn her back on that quiet kindness.
When she returned to the classroom, Shi Ranran stood up to let her pass. Then, for the first time since school started, she actually looked at her and spoke.
“Teacher Gao set a goal for you too, right? So… who are you trying to surpass?”
She paused on purpose, then smiled. “Though honestly, you’re luckier than us. You’ve got such a wide range to choose from—anyone in our class could be your target.”
Su Yunluo shot her a look that clearly said, what does that have to do with you?
Shi Ranran clutched her chest dramatically. “Wait—don’t tell me it’s me? Oh my god. Having someone as hardworking as you chasing right behind me? That’s a lot of pressure.”
Su Yunluo said flatly, “You’re not qualified.”
“Huh? I’m not qualified?” Shi Ranran had clearly expected no kindness from her, but she kept smiling anyway. She turned to Yang Qingyuan behind them. “Could it be that Teacher Gao still wants her to keep battling Xie Chen? That would be a bit much, wouldn’t it?”
Yang Qingyuan played along right away. “No way.”
The meaning was obvious to everyone. With Su Yunluo’s current grades, there was no way the homeroom teacher would still have her compete with Xie Chen.
Su Yunluo lifted her head and looked at the boy in front of her.
He had his head slightly lowered, probably reading or working on a problem. He hadn’t moved for a long time. All she could see was his straight back, even shoulders, and thick hair.
That back… it looked just like it had back then at the wedding banquet, when she saw him being scolded by his mother. Upright, steady, quietly unyielding—like a small mountain.
And now, he really did feel like a mountain standing right in front of her.
Su Yunluo looked away.
She didn’t want to say his name. Even less did she want anyone to know about the goal the teacher had set for her.
From once trying to hold on to her rank of sixteenth in the grade and not be overtaken by him… to now just trying not to fall 120 places behind him.
Even if she had truly reached a state of detachment, the contrast still felt painfully ironic.
Shi Ranran glanced at Su Yunluo, then at Xie Chen in front of her, a satisfied smile slowly forming on her lips.
The worse things got between Su Yunluo and this teacher-favored top student, the happier she was. Noticing the subtle attention drifting their way, she decided to make a show of it. To highlight how easily she got along with everyone—and how isolated Su Yunluo was—she pulled out her physics workbook and pushed it forward toward Xie Chen. Her voice was bright, playful.
“Xie God, are you busy? This poor student ran into another hard problem. Mind giving me some guidance?”
Xie Chen turned around, glanced at the question, and seemed to find it too simple. “Just approach it from energy conservation.”
“Ah?” Shi Ranran clearly didn’t understand, but she kept up her eager, curious look. “But how exactly do I start?”
Su Yunluo watched coldly.
Back in the girls’ dorm, she had heard Shi Ranran describe this kind of behavior. She called it “clinging to the strong.”
One night, Shi Ranran had come over to their dorm to find Yang Qingyuan, saying that the second- and third-ranked students in the grade were sitting right in front of her—basically free tutoring resources. Yang Qingyuan had admired her for it, saying she had great social skills to get close to two top students on the very first day.
Shi Ranran had just laughed and added, almost like a warning to everyone else, “If you want to cling to the strong, you’ve got to keep your eyes open. Know who you can approach and who you can’t. Know who’s on bad terms with whom. Otherwise, you might fail to latch on—and worse, offend someone without even realizing it.”
Su Yunluo understood perfectly.
The person you “couldn’t approach” was her.
After all, she was the only one who had ever been Xie Chen’s rival.
And now, the two people she found most unpleasant to look at were putting on this little act right in front of her again.
Maybe it was Teacher Gao’s speech about “the influence of environment” earlier. Maybe it was the pressure of that target he’d set. Or maybe Shi Ranran’s behavior had simply disgusted her one too many times.
Or maybe… it was that quiet kindness from Teacher Song.
Whatever the reason, something that had long sunk to the bottom of a dry well suddenly stirred again—her fighting spirit, stubborn as ever, bubbling back up.
She let out a faint, cold laugh.
Clinging to the strong, was it?
She could do that too.
The next second, she pulled out her own physics workbook, flipped it open, and with a sharp smack, placed it right on top of the one Shi Ranran had just handed to Xie Chen.
Both of them froze, caught off guard.
Then, with a bright, almost dazzling smile, Su Yunluo turned slightly and looked at Yan Zichen across from her.
“Hey, top student,” she said lightly, “can I ask you about a problem? Oh, and I should introduce myself first—I’m Su Yunluo.”