The dismissal bell rang, and Liu Xia was the first to bolt out of the classroom.
For the entire two hours, she felt like she had eyes drilling into her back. She constantly felt that Patron Mom was glaring at her!
She couldn’t help but turn her head two or three times. Patron Mom was listening to the lecture very seriously and didn’t seem to notice her at all. But as soon as she turned back around, the feeling of being watched would return, so clearly she couldn’t ignore it.
This must be the guilt of a thief!
She, Liu Xia, had never played tricks on anyone in her life. This time, just to form a CP with Gu Lingluo, she had gone all out, not only throwing away all her pocket money but also owing a ton of favors. Was it easy for her?
The sequence of events was as follows:
Hao Yan, relying on her good social skills and treating the German class representative to a small hot pot, successfully manipulated the representative into listing the names of all students who had not yet reported their CPs.
Then, using Gai Gai’s convenient position as the Student Union secretary, they retrieved the contact information for these people. Using the German class representative’s name, they called each person individually to ask about their CP status, filtering out those who already had CPs but hadn’t reported them. The only ones left were the “salted fish” (slang for lazy people) waiting for the official match.
The number of “salted fish” was not as many as expected, only about twenty-something. Most people were quite proactive in finding their Mr. or Ms. Right, which Liu Xia found quite frustrating.
Clutching the list of twenty-something names, Liu Xia wracked her brains. Together with Hao Yan and Gai Gai, they first played a matching game, optimizing the combinations as much as possible to increase the success rate of persuading them to pair up with a stranger.
Then, the three split up. Acting as mutual friends, they told student A that B wanted to form a CP with him, and they told student B that A wanted to form a CP with her. Then they proceeded to embarrassingly oversell the advantages of the other person.
Things went smoothly. Students who hadn’t entered the workforce were usually easy to talk to. For the few who were stubborn, a little schmoozing and a couple of free meals were enough to convince them.
So, where did her 2,000 yuan of pocket money mainly go?
On those two foodies, Hao Yan and Gai Gai!
After five consecutive days of good food, including the money spent on winning over the “salted fish,” only 2,000 yuan was spent, which was considered low. She had to thank the students for their relatively low consumption levels.
In any case, the CP was finally formed. Gai Gai’s information was reliable: Gu Lingluo was indeed very respectful of teachers. When Mr. Seider personally assigned the CP, she didn’t show the slightest bit of resistance and readily agreed.
The Long March had finally taken its first successful step, and Liu Xia breathed a sigh of relief.
What was the next step?
To stubbornly cling to her, pursuing relentlessly?
No, no, no!
The key to victory was knowing when to press and when to relax. This time, she would take a passive approach and wait for Gu Lingluo to come knocking on her door.
Gai Gai joked, “With your skill level, you don’t need to take a passive approach; you’ll still fail the monthly exam.”
Yes, that’s right, the monthly exam!
There was no more bizarre professor, only the most bizarre. Mr. Seider was the only bizarre professor in the entire school who held monthly exams!
Monthly exams in college? Who would believe it?!
Yet, this was the brutal reality.
Mr. Seider would argue logically: “Our course has the highest failure rate precisely because you are not serious enough normally. The monthly exam is to push you, and the scores will be counted toward your overall grade.”
This tradition, of course, did not start with their cohort. Mr. Seider’s German class had already had this terrifying tradition for years.
The monthly exam… it was both a nightmare and what Liu Xia was now most looking forward to. She didn’t believe that if she flunked and dragged Gu Lingluo down to fail, Gu Lingluo would just sit there.
Hao Yan tapped the table. “Hurry up and memorize vocabulary! You can intentionally fail the exam, but you absolutely cannot not know anything. How else can you guarantee you fail spectacularly enough?”
Was failing spectacularly that hard? Did it need a guarantee?
Besides, intentionally failing was painful.
Thinking about the agony of knowing the answer but having to write the wrong one, she preferred not to know it at all.
Finding the perfect excuse for her laziness, Liu Xia completely gave up on German. She enjoyed a few easy days and even went on a short trip during the National Day holiday. It was wonderful!
The first German class after the National Day holiday was the monthly exam. To be precise, the first segment was review, and the second was the test. The test time was short, and the content wasn’t extensive, but looking at the test papers full of German that looked similar to, but was completely different from, English, the majority of students still found it highly frustrating.
Liu Xia didn’t know a single thing. She blindly filled in answers haphazardly. Fortunately, there were multiple-choice questions, so she hopefully wouldn’t get a zero—that would be too embarrassing.
The test scores came out quickly. Mr. Seider respected personal privacy, so all scores were distributed individually. No one knew anyone else’s score except for the group members.
Liu Xia nervously opened her score sheet.
Emmmm… tragic to look at…
Hehe~
Her heart finally settled. With a score this low, the average was definitely not going to pass.
It was impossible to pass…
It was imposs…
Liu Xia’s gaze fell on the group member’s score and the average score at the very bottom of the score sheet.
Uh…
Stunned.
Continuously stunned.
Hao Yan, frustrated by Liu Xia’s lack of ambition, almost poked her in the face with her sparkling, rhinestone-adorned fingernail.
“I told you to intentionally fail, so why did you score so high?!”
Liu Xia twitched her mouth. “Is it… high?”
Gai Gai also leaned in to look. “Oh my god! How can you guess that high? What kind of celestial being are you?”
Liu Xia looked at the blood-red “26” on her score sheet, almost thinking the full score was 30.
If anyone was a celestial being, it was Gu Lingluo, wasn’t it?!
How many mortals could score the full 100?!!!
100+26=126. Divide by 2…
The average score was 63.
Damn it, that was three points above passing!
The wind whistles, the water of the Yi River is cold…
No one could understand Liu Xia’s desolate mood at that moment.
This was the legendary top student? Does that mean Patron Mom’s scores will always be calculated as 100?
Hao Yan frowned and lectured her. “I told you to study properly. If you don’t study, how are you supposed to score below 20?! Did you think scoring in the teens was easy? Get your head in the game!”
Mr. Seider’s tests absolutely could not be handed in blank, unless she wanted to experience the bitter agony of outright failure.
If she couldn’t hand it in blank, she had to answer the questions, and she had to answer them incorrectly enough to score below 20…
For the first time, Liu Xia was agonizing over how to fail spectacularly enough.
It seemed she really needed to apply herself and study hard. Just like Hao Yan said, scoring in the teens wasn’t that easy.
For the next month, Liu Xia worked very hard. Not just to score low enough, but also because Patron Mom’s continued ignorance was starting to sting a little.
Perhaps it was disappointment. She had thought that once the scores were out, Gu Lingluo would proactively seek her out, but instead…
Hmph! She wasn’t going to believe this bad luck!
Next time!
If she still couldn’t get Gu Lingluo to seek her out next time, she would just take Gu Lingluo’s last name!
The second monthly exam slowly arrived.
Answering everything she knew incorrectly, and wildly guessing at everything she didn’t know—and specifically choosing the answers she felt were wrong. What kind of heartbreaking human suffering was this?!
Liu Xia miserably finished the test, waiting for the results with trepidation.
Please, let it be below 20!
Please, please, please!!!
May God, the Holy Mother, the Buddha, and the Bodhisattvas grant my wish!