“The construction of the top floor of the teaching building is special. The soundproofing is especially bad. Even the slightest noise carries very clearly,” Lu Qingjia reminded them expressionlessly. “The grade director has, for years on end, been squatting on the staircase one floor below, eavesdropping to catch high school students who violate school rules and discipline by getting into early romances. You didn’t know that?”
Lu Luoluo and Ming Nan exchanged awkward looks. They really did not know.
Ming Nan hesitated before asking, “Then…”
“When I came up just now, I checked. There was no one. I only heard the last two sentences.” Lu Qingjia raised both hands to show that he absolutely had not been eavesdropping on girls whispering to each other.
Ming Nan and Lu Luoluo both quietly let out a breath of relief at the same time.
“So now, can you tell me what you need me to do?” Lu Qingjia asked.
“It’s like this.” Since she had to come clean anyway, Lu Luoluo cleared her throat lightly and forced herself to speak. “In my family, there’s a younger generation member.”
“Mm, a junior. And then?”
“And then, me, at one point, starting from the idea of encouraging this junior, I made some… adjustments to my personal image in front of them. That kind of adjustment. You know what I mean, right? The adjustments mainly involved my academic performance and my gaming skill level.”
“I get that kind of embellishment. And then?”
“And then next week, he’s transferring into our class.” Lu Luoluo put on an awkward smile.
“So when you were embellishing your image, you borrowed my ID and also said your grades ranked near the top?”
Lu Luoluo kept the awkward expression and nodded silently.
Lu Qingjia thought for a moment and said, “I’ve used that account for a long time. I’m attached to it. I can’t give it to you, but helping you smooth things over is not a problem.
“As for academic performance, however you boasted about it, first place is not an option. You can’t manage that.”
Lu Luoluo said, deeply moved, “Of course you don’t need to give it to me. With the genius being so righteous, how would I dare harbor such unreasonable thoughts! First place is definitely yours. I won’t fight you for it. How about second place? Top twenty would also work, right?”
Top twenty could still count as being near the top, right? It should be enough to pass muster with Lu Ran, right?
But let alone top twenty, even top two hundred sounded like sheer fantasy.
“You want one week? That’s impossible,” Lu Qingjia concluded. Then, in the next instant, he changed tack. “But for the time being, the school won’t print exam rankings into big-character posters and paste them on the bulletin boards. The teachers also won’t read out grades and rankings one by one. They will only send the grade reports to the electronic mailboxes reserved by students and parents.”
“Then I’ll grind my Photoshop skills?” Lu Luoluo’s eyes lit up, instantly coming up with a terrible idea.
Ming Nan, exasperated that her friend refused to live up to expectations, reminded her,
“Key point. Temporarily not. Temporarily. The content on the bulletin board at the school gate is changed once every semester, and every time it helps publicize the top fifty students in the grade from the previous semester’s final exam. You didn’t forget that, did you? You still have more than two years of school to get through together. Sooner or later it’s bound to be exposed, okay? Leaving everything else aside, what about the National college entrance exam? I remember you’re not planning to study abroad, right? The school doesn’t put up big-character posters for the regular monthly exams, but when people go to the office to ask about other students’ grades, the homeroom teacher always lets them look. Otherwise, where do you think the nickname ‘genius’ came from?”
Lu Luoluo drooped her eyelashes listlessly.
Right. When the results of the first monthly exam came out, everyone knew that the classmate who usually nodded off in class, read comics, and rarely talked to anyone had taken first place with a score fifty points higher than the second-ranked student. They kindly bestowed on him the title of “genius.”
Lu Qingjia nodded in agreement with Ming Nan’s point and continued, “The good news is that we had our midterm exam two weeks ago, and the papers have already been reviewed. By next week, the discussion buzz will have completely died down. I just got word from the homeroom teacher. According to the academic office’s arrangements, the third monthly exam has been canceled. There are still two months until the final exam, which means two months of preparation time. Our grade has fewer than a thousand students in total. Top twenty means the top two percent. That’s not difficult.”
“Is it really not difficult?” Lu Luoluo asked doubtfully. “But in the first two monthly exams, I ranked around seven or eight hundred.”
Lu Qingjia said, “That’s because you didn’t study.”
Lu Luoluo looked confused. “You didn’t either—”
She stopped halfway through the sentence. Could the genius really be compared to her?
Lu Qingjia woke her up to reality. “I already finished the high school curriculum in advance during summer vacation. During regular classes, aside from reading comics and sleeping, I also work on competition problems when I have time. Before exams, I spend an hour organizing key knowledge points and typical questions. Do you do any of that? High school has only been in session for two months. For most subjects, the material in the latter half of the semester is not tightly connected to the first half. For the majority of subjects, not mastering the earlier content will not hold up later learning. These subjects can be handled by listening in class during the day, then finding time for self-study during evening study periods and on weekends. As for the other two subjects, you need to self-study first and get a grasp of the basics, but the knowledge itself is simple, and you’ll pick it up quickly. High school material isn’t difficult.”
That was what Lu Qingjia said.
No matter how she looked at it, Lu Luoluo could not bring herself to think that high school knowledge could be described as “not difficult.”
She exchanged a glance with her good friend Ming Nan. From each other’s eyes, they found the same kind of sorrow.
The heartbroken sorrow of an underachiever.
Lu Luoluo said earnestly, “Genius, you have to take into account the objective differences in individual talent. You don’t know. Some people understand as soon as they listen in class, know how to do a problem the moment they see it, and get it right as soon as they try. Others, on the other hand, might listen ten times in class and still not understand, look at a problem ten times and still not know how to do it. And even when they do understand it at a glance once in a while, the moment they try to do it, everything falls apart.”
Lu Qingjia nodded in understanding. “I’ve tutored my cousin before. I have experience with this.” He paused briefly. “That’s why I suggest you aim for second place.”
Lu Luoluo froze. Did the genius mean that, across the entire grade, aside from himself, there was fundamentally no absolute difference in innate talent among everyone else? Wasn’t this level of invincibility a bit too strong? This was not just arrogance.
Then she thought of how Lu Qingjia had beaten second place by fifty points in both exams, and her heart began to stir. The one saying this was the genius himself. It actually sounded somewhat credible. He had also said he had tutoring experience. Maybe it really was possible?
Lu Qingjia spoke up. “In this regard, I can provide some assistance. Explaining problems, answering questions, marking key points before exams, and predicting likely test questions.”
Lu Luoluo said, “That’s amazing!”
Lu Qingjia stared at Lu Luoluo without blinking, the hint in his gaze unmistakably strong.
In an instant, Lu Luoluo perfectly received the message, decoded it, and translated it. “I just happen to have some money lately with nowhere to spend it. The latest sets of skins released by the game’s official team would go very well with a five-year game annual pass and match the ‘Qingshui Riverside’ style perfectly.”
“Three years will do,” Lu Qingjia said with satisfaction. “I might switch games when I get to university.”
He raised the comic book in his hand and said to Lu Luoluo, “I got it back from the homeroom teacher. Do you want to take it back?”
Lu Luoluo said reluctantly, “I won’t read it anymore. I’m giving it to you.”
She said in deep grief, “From now on, for the sake of studying properly and maintaining my image, I won’t read comics anymore. But I’ve already ordered three years’ worth of books from the bookstore owner at the school gate and paid for them. Genius, just go pick them up from the bookstore. Don’t let them go to waste. The code phrase is ‘Just Say I’m in Luoyang City.’”
Lu Qingjia fell silent for three seconds, then asked sincerely, “This junior you mentioned. Is it your biological son or daughter?”
“Son,” Lu Luoluo answered solemnly. She dared to say it, but would anyone dare to believe it?
Lu Qingjia raised an eyebrow. Ming Nan laughed. No one believed it.
The little orange cat sunning itself on the rooftop rolled over again and swished its tail. Clearly, it did not believe it either.
Perhaps it was because she had slept her fill during the physics quiz. Or perhaps it was because she had found a goal worth striving for and the motivation to move forward.
In any case, for the rest of the day, Lu Luoluo was radiant. She did not sleep in class anymore, nor did she read comics. She stared wide-eyed, listening attentively and taking notes. Every now and then, she would suddenly look up and startle the teacher.
When evening self-study came, she followed the “rigid method” taught by the genius Lu Qingjia. She read through the knowledge points once, did the corresponding problems, and if she could not do a problem, she went back to read the relevant knowledge points again.
Repeating this cycle, by the end of one evening self-study session, she had actually mastered half a unit of physics knowledge.
Stepping through the front door, Lu Luoluo felt a surge of confidence. Her back straightened.
Madam Lu Mingzhu had not returned home yet. Lu Ran was sitting on the sofa, holding a laptop and browsing current affairs news.
Under the combined glow of the crystal chandelier and the laptop screen, the Lu family’s characteristically soft facial features made Lu Luoluo sigh in heartfelt admiration.
No wonder. A face that shared an eighty percent resemblance with hers really was good-looking and pleasing the longer one looked at it.
“Has Mom come back?” Lu Ran set the laptop aside and looked up with a smile. “Are you hungry? Do you want some late-night snacks?”
Luoluo nodded. “Should we ask Auntie to make something?”
She really was a bit hungry. She had once heard people say that studying made you hungry easily, and she had never felt it before. Today, after studying seriously for half the evening, she finally realized it was true.
“Auntie’s son got married these past couple of days, so Grandma gave her a few days off,” Lu Ran said with a smile. “I happen to be a little hungry too. I was planning to cook a bowl of noodles. Mom, do you want to eat some together?”
“You can cook?” Lu Luoluo was shocked. Come to think of it, from her maternal grandfather to Madam Lu Mingzhu and then to Lu Luoluo herself, there was not a single person in the Lu family who knew how to handle pots and pans.
“I can only cook noodles,” Lu Ran said shyly with a smile. He stood up and headed toward the kitchen. “After I learned, every year on Mom’s and Grandma’s birthdays, I’d cook a bowl of longevity noodles.”
Filled with intense curiosity, Lu Luoluo went over to watch.
He lit the stove and brought a pot of water to a boil, heated a pot of rich broth, added oil to a frying pan, and once the oil was hot, cracked in two eggs.
He washed the scallions and sliced them lengthwise into thin shreds, prepared two bowls with soy sauce, vinegar, and other seasonings, and dropped the noodles into the boiling water.
When the surface of the eggs turned golden brown and released a fragrant aroma, he transferred them into the two bowls. He poured oil into the pan again, and once it was hot, added the scallions to slowly infuse scallion oil.
After the noodles were cooked, he fished them out into the bowls, ladled the broth over them with a big spoon, and drizzled on the scallion oil.
Smooth and fluid, completed in one continuous motion. He set the bowls on the dining table, and it was done.
Steam rose from the bowls, and the scallion fragrance was rich. Lu Luoluo picked up a bite of noodles. To her surprise, they were pleasantly tasty. On an autumn night with a hint of chill in the air and a certain hunger in her stomach, eating a bowl of noodles like this was genuinely comfortable.
All of a sudden, Lu Luoluo’s resentment about having to study hard and not being allowed to read comics faded.
With a son like this, who would not want to preserve a parent’s dignity and maintain a radiant image in front of their child?
In that instant, Lu Luoluo understood her future self.
She finished all the noodles, even drinking half of the soup.
“So good!” Lu Luoluo set the bowl down and praised it. She just wondered whether it would make her gain weight.
“Just tell me anytime Mom wants to eat.”
“That would be too embarrassing.” Lu Luoluo yawned. Feeling full often made her sleepy.
“There’s no need to be polite with me. I’m already two years older than Mom now. Taking care of Mom is only right,” Lu Ran said with a smile. “If Mom is sleepy, go to bed earlier. Oh right, do you want to go for a morning run together tomorrow?”
Lu Luoluo’s expression suddenly froze.
She was the type who avoided even short runs during class breaks whenever she could.
Fortunately, Lu Ran was busy clearing the dishes, his attention not on Lu Luoluo, and he did not notice her expression.
Lu Luoluo forced a dry laugh. “Sure. Running is great. I especially love running.”
That familiar sense of guilt crept back again.