Exam Room Three.
Yun Xiang clutched her pencil case and found her seat number.
She flipped open her reference book, seizing every moment to study.
This time, she really wanted to do well—because she didn’t want to be desk partners with Shen Zhe anymore.
Last semester, Shen Zhe had consistently ranked in the top five of the class, and every time he picked a desk partner, he chose her.
This time, Yun Xiang really wanted to choose for herself.
Her gaze drifted to the label on the upper-left corner of the desk, and she suddenly deflated.
She hadn’t even made it into the top twenty of her class on the final exam—how could she possibly break into the top five?
She wasn’t smart, and she’d muddle-headedly chosen a science track that didn’t suit her. Her homeroom teacher had gently suggested she switch to liberal arts, but the moment Yun Xiang recalled those twisted, shadowed faces, she shook her head frantically in refusal.
No matter how hard math and physics got, they could never be crueler than the human heart.
[Good morning, wifey baby!]
[A beautiful day begins the moment this young master—the universe’s most handsome, most awesome, most cool, most badass, invincibly charming, bloodthirsty, domineering one—makes his entrance.]
The corner of Yun Xiang’s mouth twitched, and half of her worries were swept away by Pei Xingche’s narcissistic rambling. She looked up.
The boy strolled in through the doorway at an unhurried pace, his tall figure blocking most of the light from the entrance.
He wore a clean school uniform, his frame smooth and straight. His handsome face was expressionless, his thick lashes framing those ink-black eyes that swept past Yun Xiang with a hint of aloofness.
At the same time, the little puppy on his head wagged its tail frantically at Yun Xiang.
[My wife looks so cute today too, that little round face all soft and squishy, I wanna pinch her, kiss her, snuggle her (drooling) (drooling)]
[Can’t look anymore, can’t look anymore! Bro can’t control himself!]
Yun Xiang: …
Actually, she’d secretly looked it up online when she got home yesterday—the little puppy on Pei Xingche’s head was probably an Alaskan Malamute.
As for why she could see this puppy, most online explanations chalked it up to hallucinations or something.
Though most cases involved seeing people as animals outright—she’d never come across a case like hers, where she saw an animal on top of a person’s head.
[Whoo-hoo, my wife smells so nice~ Mmm, smells like milk (slurp slurp)]
[What kind of body wash does she use? I wanna get the same one, so I can fool myself into thinking she’s by my side every moment.]
Pei Xingche strode over on his long legs and stopped beside Yun Xiang’s desk. He leaned in slightly, a faint, subtle woody fragrance lingering around her hair.
Her fingers twisted together beneath her sleeves, her heart thumping wildly, and even her breathing slowed.
She was afraid Pei Xingche might lose his mind right there on the spot.
And Pei Xingche’s inner world was, indeed, already going berserk.
[AAAAAAH! Wahahahaha!]
[Today is super high-school-level lucky! Finally sitting behind my wife, bro’s smile is literally rocketing into orbit (happy puppy)]
Pei Xingche pulled out his chair and sat down behind Yun Xiang, his dark eyes sparkling as he stared at the back of her head.
He seemed to have noticed the label on his own desk too:
[Oh-ho, I’m number 98, and little snail is number 97. Baby’s so amazing, she moved up 6 places in the year ranking! Great job, great job! Even better than last time (thumbs up)]
Yun Xiang blinked slowly, her lashes trembling like the thin wings of a cicada.
Her small heart fluttered with quiet joy. She really had been improving with each exam, but this was the first time someone had praised her for it.
And besides—how did he know?
[Baby’s gonna improve this time too, right? Conservative estimate, five more places? Then I’ll have to score 93rd place. Let me calculate—total score needs to be around 550, within a 5-point margin.]
[Mhm, that old math geezer’s been worrying himself bald lately. This time I’ll score 20 more points on math. First exam is Chinese… mhm, I’ll throw two multiple-choice questions to bring the score down.]
Her big, dark doe eyes widened in shock.
Was Pei Xingche… controlling his score?
The shock was so great that she didn’t even notice the preparation bell ringing.
It wasn’t until the invigilator tapped her desk that she snapped back to reality, hastily closing her book and placing it on the podium.
[Little snail is so dazed and cute. She must have been too focused on reviewing just now.]
No. She was simply scared out of her wits by you.
The invigilator tore open the sealed exam papers and began distributing them from the first row.
As Yun Xiang passed the papers back, she suddenly felt a scorching gaze burn against her fingertips.
[How did she get hurt?]
[Shouldn’t she put a band-aid on that, baby? It looks so painful. I wanna lick her wound for her.]
Yun Xiang’s fingers stiffened. When she turned back around, the tips of her ears were faintly red.
She curled her fingers. It didn’t hurt anymore, really—if Pei Xingche hadn’t mentioned it, she would’ve already forgotten the wound existed.
But some wounds are like that. Once noticed, a faint, tingling ache creeps back in.
As for the second half of Pei Xingche’s sentence… she’d pretend she never heard it.
Five minutes later, the exam officially began.
Yun Xiang gripped her pen, about to mark key words and phrases, when she heard someone start reciting the answers.
[ABB. Mhm, I’ll randomly pick one wrong to lose three points.]
Yun Xiang: ?
She worked through the questions carefully and was astonished to find that her answers matched exactly what Pei Xingche had recited.
Among the questions, there was one where, without Pei Xingche’s answer, she would have fallen into the trap set by the question setter.
【CBA。】
Yun Xiang’s cheeks flushed slightly, her long lashes trembling nervously. Her hand was more honest than her heart, writing the answer on the test paper before she could second-guess herself.
This was cheating, wasn’t it?
But this feeling of getting something without effort was really… really quite satisfying.
Two hours passed in the blink of an eye.
When the teacher came to collect the papers, Yun Xiang had just finished checking the last question.
She was slow at solving problems, and stubbornly refused to skip any, often caught in hesitation and indecision. When faced with a difficult test paper, she couldn’t finish even in two hours.
This exam was actually quite challenging, but with an “AI machine” behind her accurately feeding her answers, it was hard for her not to hear them.
After the Chinese exam, there was a 30-minute break before the math exam began.
As soon as the bell rang, Pei Xingche hurried out.
Yun Xiang withdrew her gaze and opened her math notebook.
She was deeply conflicted inside.
Conflicted about whether to “cheat.”
On one hand, she wanted to hear Pei Xingche’s answers—maybe then she could break into the top five of the class and choose her own seat.
On the other hand, she felt it wasn’t quite right. She was, after all, a rule-abiding good student who had never cheated before today.
Yun Xiang furrowed her delicate brows, biting her pearl-like teeth, wearing a troubled expression.
“What’s the matter? Stuck on a question? I can explain it to you.”
A gentle voice came from beside her. It was Shen Zhe.
She had been so lost in thought that she hadn’t even noticed when he had arrived at Exam Room Three.
“Ooooh~”
The moment Shen Zhe finished speaking, the teasing cheers in the exam room erupted.
Especially from the Class Five students in Exam Room Three, who were particularly excited: “Oh my, isn’t this our class monitor?”
“Class monitor, I have a question I don’t understand too. How about you come explain it to me?”
“Who do you think you are? Can’t you see the monitor came specially to find his little deskmate?”
“Oh my, that’s so sweet.”
There were also some curious onlookers from other classes:
“Isn’t that Shen Zhe, ranked ninth in the grade?”
“Isn’t he supposed to be in Exam Room One? What’s he doing here?”
“Wow, he’s here to see his girlfriend. Even the top students secretly date.”
Yun Xiang’s head throbbed from all the noisy chatter, her fingers gripping her pen so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
She really hated being gossiped about like this, being unfairly labeled as “Shen Zhe’s girlfriend.”
But there was nothing she could do.
If she explained or refuted, everyone would just think she was afraid of being caught in a “secret relationship,” and everyone was all too willing to believe in this thrilling, ambiguous campus romance.
After all, it was one of the few sources of entertainment in the monotonous campus life.
Yun Xiang lowered her eyes and bit her lip, saying, “No need.”
With that, she stood up, walked past Shen Zhe, and headed to the restroom.
At just seventeen years old, she chose to escape at this moment.
But even so, some people still thought Yun Xiang was just shy, teasing her as she left.