The next day, during English class, Xu Yan was surprised to see Ji Ran, who was usually attentive in class, unusually drowsy.
Ji Ran’s way of dozing off was quite unique—his eyes half-closed, looking neither fully awake nor fully asleep, his elbow propping up his head, which remained perfectly still. If Xu Yan hadn’t noticed that the pen in Ji Ran’s hand hadn’t moved at all, he would have thought Ji Ran was pondering life just like him.
Top students were different—even their way of dozing off was distinctive. As Ji Ran’s deskmate, Xu Yan decided to fulfill his duty of solidarity and mutual assistance between classmates. He nudged his elbow to the side, and Ji Ran’s pen instantly fell to the floor.
Ji Ran finally lifted his half-closed eyelids and spoke indifferently, “What?”
“Are you dozing off?” Xu Yan whispered, tilting his head.
Ji Ran gave a slight nod before lowering his eyelids again. He had spent the entire previous night reminiscing about his childhood and was now exceptionally tired, needing to catch up on sleep. But Xu Yan beside him gave him no chance to rest.
“How could you be dozing off? Even top students get sleepy?” Xu Yan found it novel and even leaned his head completely onto Ji Ran’s desk.
From the perspective of English teacher Liu Yin on the podium, it looked like Xu Yan was actively trying to talk to Ji Ran. She stared at Xu Yan for a long time and, seeing him remain unresponsive, directly rewarded him with a piece of chalk: “Xu Yan, Ji Ran, you two are getting bolder by the day, daring to chat during my class. Get out and stand in the hallway!”
Xu Yan shuddered in fright. Oh no, he had dragged Ji Ran into this.
Ji Ran glanced helplessly at Xu Yan, sighed, picked up his open English textbook, and walked briskly out through the back door.
Xu Yan was puzzled: Ji Ran hadn’t waited for him!
Xu Yan hung his head and walked straight out of the classroom without even taking his book. As soon as he stepped outside, he saw Ji Ran leaning casually against the wall. Xu Yan glanced at him but didn’t approach, instead turning to stand at the other end of the wall.
Thus, the already short wall outside the classroom was automatically divided between them, with one person standing at each end. Ji Ran glanced at Xu Yan not far away, nodded slightly, and continued leaning against the wall with his eyes closed to rest.
Seeing this, Xu Yan secretly shifted a little closer to Ji Ran’s side. He needed Ji Ran to understand on his own that he was offering him a way out. He was easy to appease—as long as Ji Ran also moved a little closer to his side, he would take the initiative to talk to him.
Well, but his movement only caused Ji Ran to tilt his head slightly, not even glancing his way.
Unable to hold back, Xu Yan rushed to Ji Ran’s side in one swift step. Just as he was about to demand why Ji Ran hadn’t waited for him earlier, Ji Ran’s head tilted further and further until it rested on Xu Yan’s shoulder.
The soft, fluffy strands of hair tickled the skin on Xu Yan’s neck, making him itch slightly, but he let Ji lean on him. His deskmate was this exhausted—it was only right to help out.
With a serious expression, Xu Yan carefully adjusted Ji Ran’s head further onto his shoulder, completely unaware that the corners of Ji Ran’s lips had curled up into a faint smile.
But this state didn’t last long. Because Class 2 of Grade 11 was located near the homeroom teachers’ office for the grade, too many teachers passed by, and each one even stole a glance toward the entrance of Class 2.
Xu Yan blushed from all the glances and kindly reminded Ji Ran, “Wake up, stop sleeping. You can sleep again after class, okay?”
“Xu Yan, Ji Ran! Are you two inseparable?” Liu Yin, the English teacher of Class 2, had been keeping an eye on the commotion outside the classroom. She had originally intended to let them stand outside for a while as a minor punishment, but the situation only escalated. To her disbelief, she saw Ji Ran leaning on Xu Yan’s shoulder, sleeping right outside the door. How disgraceful! What, did they think her English class was a designated nap time?
“Get in here! Aren’t you ashamed enough?” Liu Yin was furious. Stomping in her high heels, she stormed out and yelled. As she turned, she shot Ji Ran a sharp glare. His feigned sleep was so obvious she could see right through it, which inexplicably reminded her of that troublemaker You Zhou from her previous class, making her even angrier.
“Yes, ma’am,” Xu Yan quickly replied, pulling Ji Ran by the hand as they hurriedly scurried back into the classroom.
After class, Liu Yin packed up her portable microphone, grabbed a thick stack of English materials, and marched angrily in her high heels to the homeroom teacher’s office for the sophomore year.
Du Bo was leisurely sipping tea, humming a relaxed Huangmei opera tune as he leaned back in his newly acquired soft leather wooden chair, thoroughly enjoying his free time.
Seeing this, Liu Yin slammed the materials and microphone onto Du Bo’s desk, crossed her arms, and said sarcastically, “You really have it easy as a homeroom teacher, don’t you? You don’t seem to care at all about your students’ grades.”
Du Bo squinted his eyes and smiled. “Oh dear, what’s the matter, Teacher Liu? Come, calm down, have a seat.” He stood up and offered his chair to her.
Seeing Du Bo’s cheerful demeanor, Liu Yin’s anger subsided slightly. “How did you arrange the seating in your class? Ji Ran and Xu Yan sit together and chat nonstop during class. I remember Ji Ran used to be quiet and obedient, but now he even dares to sleep during my lessons.”
Du Bo fell silent for a moment, then said with confusion, “But Ji Ran was the one who asked me to change seats. He said Xu Yan struggles with science subjects and that he could help him improve.”
Liu Yin sneered. “Do you think Xu Yan’s science grades have improved?”
“Well…” Du Bo flipped through the recent weekly science test scores. “No.”
“Exactly,” Liu Yin waved her hand dismissively. “Based on my experience as a homeroom teacher last year, those two absolutely cannot sit together.”
“Teacher Liu, let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s wait until the midterm results come out,” Du Bo sighed, rubbing his forehead.
Liu Yin pointed at Du Bo’s head, scolding him with frustration. “If you don’t listen to me, something will go wrong sooner or later.”
During the long break after the second class in the morning, Xu Yan and Ji Ran were unexpectedly called to the office by Du Bo.
“I heard about your punishment this morning from Teacher Liu,” Du Bo said, taking a sip of tea. “It’s normal for you two to get along as desk mates, but you can’t disrupt Teacher Liu’s class, right?”
Xu Yan nodded and explained, “Teacher Du, it’s my fault, not Ji Ran’s. I was the one who started talking to him. If you need to punish someone, punish me, not Ji Ran.”
Du Bo: “…”
He hadn’t even mentioned punishment.
“Punish me,” Ji Ran spoke up. “I was the one who fell asleep first.”
Du Bo: “I didn’t say I was going to punish you. I’m just considering rearranging your seats.”
Ji Ran: “No.”
Xu Yan: “Absolutely not!”
Seeing that they had taken the bait, Du Bo immediately smiled. “If you don’t want to change seats, it’s simple. Xu Yan, you need to score at least 180 in science on the midterm exam, and Ji Ran, you need to get at least 110 in Chinese. How about that? If you don’t meet these goals, I’ll rearrange your seats.”
Xu Yan was provoked into nodding eagerly. “We can do it! I definitely can, and Ji Ran can too! Right?” He anxiously tugged at Ji Ran’s sleeve. After a moment’s hesitation, Ji Ran turned to Du Bo and asked, “What if we exceed the target by a lot?”
Caught off guard, Du Bo raised an eyebrow, holding his thermos cup. “Then you two can keep sitting together as desk mates.”
“Fine.” Ji Ran snorted coldly, pulling the dejected Xu Yan away.
Watching them leave, Du Bo thought his tactic had worked surprisingly well and happily hummed an opera tune in the office: “To save my husband, I left home, who knew I’d top the imperial exams”
He mused that Teacher Liu Yin had been overly dramatic.
To continue sitting with Ji Ran, Xu Yan buried himself in his studies and even made an effort to involve Qiu Muyang. In truth, Xu Yan dragged Qiu Muyang along to make his own physics skills seem less embarrassing.
Qiu Muyang: “Top student, why do we solve this problem this way?” Xu Yan glanced at it and activated his mocking skill: “You don’t even know this? I already know it, and you still don’t? Are you really that dumb?”
Qiu Muyang chose to stay silent. He wouldn’t be affected by trash talk and went all out: “If you’re so good, you do it.”
“Fine, I will.” Xu Yan took it over enthusiastically. Based on his understanding of physics these past few days, this kind of problem was a piece of cake.
He grabbed a draft paper and started calculating intently until a helpless sigh came from above him: “You made a mistake in the very first step.”
“Hahaha, Yanzi, and you had the nerve to mock me. If I’m dumb, you’re a blockhead.”
“You know how?” Ji Ran tilted his head and glanced at Qiu Muyang. “Your approach isn’t even right.”
Qiu Muyang accepted it humbly: “Then how do we do it?”
To Qiu Muyang’s surprise, this time Ji Ran spoke slowly, his draft notes were neat, and his reasoning was crystal clear. Qiu Muyang nodded repeatedly: “Damn! Brother Ran! With you here, I’m definitely breaking into the top twenty in the grade this time! This is great, so great!”
“Top twenty in the grade? Yang’er, what are you guys up to?” Sun Rui had somehow crept over, and Qiu Muyang instinctively leaned back.
Ever since Xu Yan took leave last time and Sun Rui kept asking about him, Qiu Muyang had sensed something off about Sun Rui and had been keeping his distance, but the guy just loved sticking around.
“Sun Rui, we’re asking Ji Ran to explain some problems. Want to listen?” Xu Yan smiled as Sun Rui approached. Ji Ran, however, glared coldly at Sun Rui.
Sun Rui completely ignored Ji Ran’s gaze and replied, “Are you guys secretly getting study tips from the top student behind my back? Not telling me, huh? Are we even bros?”
Qiu Muyang joked openly: “Nope.” Seeing this, Xu Yan smoothed things over: “Yangzi, don’t say that. Let’s all listen together.”
Seeing Sun Rui join in, Ji Ran had no choice but to continue explaining with a dark expression. He hoped Xu Yan could understand.
As Ji Ran’s desk mate, Xu Yan took the spirit of friendly mutual assistance between desk mates to the extreme. To achieve the small goal of Ji Ran scoring over 110 in Chinese, he packaged up all his summarized cultural knowledge, idiom collections, poetry analysis question techniques, and his most precious mistake notebook, tossing them all to Ji Ran.
Xu Yan imitated Ji Ran’s tone: “If you don’t understand, ask me.”
Ji Ran: “…”
“You don’t want to sit with me anymore?!” Seeing Ji Ran remain silent, Xu Yan exclaimed in shock.
“I do,” Ji Ran pointed at the notebook Xu Yan handed over. “I already have these. The reason I didn’t score above 110 last time was because of my handwriting.”
Xu Yan didn’t care. He thought Ji Ran was just showing off, so he stuffed all his own notebooks into Ji Ran’s backpack anyway. “Don’t be polite with me. If you need more, I’ve got them. Got it?”
Ji Ran: “Okay.”
When a new wave of cold weather hit Lilin City, the second-year students of Lilin No. 3 High School faced the city-wide midterm exams. This time, Lilin No. 3 High School was also competing for the citywide school rankings, which would determine whether it could maintain its position as the second-best school in the city. As a result, the homeroom teachers of the second-year classes were all on edge.
Before entering the exam hall, Du Bo, who had been tirelessly worrying over Class 2 of the second year, once again stepped into the classroom to remind everyone: “Make sure you have your admission tickets, bring extra 2B pencils and black 0.5mm pens, your pencil case must be transparent, and your eraser should be 2B.”
Du Bo went on and on from the podium, while Xu Yan, sitting below, yawned from exhaustion. He had been staying up late for days, saving money to buy Ji Ran a secondhand phone from the online marketplace. Once the exams were over tomorrow, Ji Ran was in for a pleasant surprise.
“Did you all hear that clearly?!” Du Bo’s energized voice shot through the roof, startling the daydreaming Xu Yan, who immediately shouted back, “Yes, sir!”
For this exam, Xu Yan and Sun Rui were assigned to Exam Hall 2, while Ji Ran and Qiu Muyang were in Exam Hall 1. Before the Chinese language exam, Qiu Muyang sneaked from the front of Exam Hall 1 to the back door of Exam Hall 2. Spotting Xu Yan lining up to enter, he bowed respectfully toward him.
Xu Yan was baffled. “What are you doing?”
Qiu Muyang: “Paying respects to the subject-specific god for good luck on the exam.”
Xu Yan scoffed. “Superstitious nonsense.”
However, when the math exam rolled around in the afternoon, Xu Yan dragged Qiu Muyang to bow before Ji Ran. Between math and mysticism, Xu Yan chose to believe in the latter.
Ji Ran watched them in silence, his brow furrowed.
“Subject-specific genius, bless me to pass math,” Xu Yan said earnestly, patting Ji Ran on the shoulder before confidently striding into the math exam hall.
Ji Ran watched Xu Yan’s retreating figure, his expression unreadable.
Whether it was the power of superstition or not, Xu Yan found the math exam unusually smooth. Some questions, which Ji Ran had explained to him repeatedly, were answered with surprising ease.
After leaving the exam hall, Xu Yan checked his answers and found he had only gotten three multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions wrong. Ji Ran truly was a god!
Convinced that his superstitious ritual had worked, Xu Yan quietly approached Ji Ran before the science exam the next day. After nodding at him, he took Ji Ran’s left hand and straightened each finger one by one, positioning it palm-up in a relaxed, natural state.
Ji Ran remained silent, unable to comprehend what Xu Yan was doing. He had already covered all the key points with Xu Yan, and he didn’t approve of relying on superstition before an exam.
Just as Ji Ran was about to pull his hand back, Xu Yan raised his own right hand, breathed on it, and then carefully, almost reverently, pressed his palm against Ji Ran’s left palm. Closing his eyes devoutly, he murmured, “May the science exam gods bless me! Bring me the points! Bring them!”
Ji Ran: “Good luck?”
Xu Yan nodded solemnly and walked into the exam hall with calm composure.
The two-day midterm exams at Lilin No. 3 High School had finally come to an end. Due to the city-wide standardized testing, most of the subject teachers for Class 2, Grade 11 were pulled away to grade papers, leaving only the homeroom teacher, Du Bo, to supervise the evening self-study session.
After the midterms, the lively atmosphere in the classroom lingered even after the evening self-study officially began. Du Bo entered the room through the back door, tilting his head with interest as he watched Xu Yan excitedly comparing answers.
“Ji Ran! I got another one right!” Xu Yan exclaimed, holding Ji Ran’s science exam paper as he stood up in excitement. He had intended to tease Qiu Muyang, but when he turned around, he found himself locking eyes with Du Bo.
“Holy crap!” Xu Yan took half a step back, feeling a chilly draft from the early winter wind seep into his clothes. He shivered from the cold.
Du Bo was downright terrifying.
Du Bo stroked his chin, glanced at Xu Yan’s science exam paper, and said meaningfully, “Let’s see how well you did this time.” With that, he ruffled Xu Yan’s hair and walked up to the podium with a smile. “Looks like everyone did well on the exams. I have an announcement: classes are canceled tomorrow afternoon and evening. However, boarding students must return to the dorms before curfew. No wandering around outside.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the classroom erupted into cheers. Amid the excitement, Xu Yan smiled at Ji Ran, who heard him say, “Happy early birthday.”
Outside the window, fireworks had begun to light up the sky, dazzling and brilliant, as if celebrating the long-awaited half-day break for the students who had been under so much pressure. The glass reflected the brilliant bursts of light, and amidst the cheers, Ji Ran felt his heart skip a beat.
“Tomorrow is your birthday. I’m saying this now because I hope you’ll be happy from 17 to 18.”