Makeup Exam

Su Yuan had never exposed her private parts in front of anyone before. Though the organ had become unfamiliar to her, she still felt terribly uncomfortable, as if ants were gnawing at her body, leaving her tingling and itchy.

Then her body trembled. Something touched her most sensitive area. It turned out Doctor Li, wearing rubber gloves, had parted the folds on either side of the slit. The inside was pink and glistening, soft in texture and bright in color; the intact membrane could vaguely be seen as well.

Doctor Li was experienced. One glance was enough to determine that the young girl had no serious illness, so she quickly finished the examination of her private area. She then pressed a stethoscope against Su Yuan's abdomen and began examining her internal organs.

"Pain!!" the girl suddenly cried out. Doctor Li frowned, moved the stethoscope back to her lower abdomen, and asked, "Does it hurt here?"

Su Yuan nodded pitifully.

"Here's what we'll do. Go get a color Doppler ultrasound later. It isn't urgent. First, lift up your shirt."

Since the doctor had said so, Su Yuan complied, pulling her thin top all the way up to her chest. Doctor Li's gaze fell on Su Yuan's nearly flat chest. Why "nearly"? Because while Su Yuan lay flat, there were faint, slight rises where her breasts were, though they were not very obvious.

Doctor Li reached out and pressed them. Su Yuan immediately felt a swelling pain and told her honestly. Grass was just that vigorous. Even with bluestone slabs blocking it from above, once it found a crack through which to sprout, it would grow uncontrollably.

Doctor Li nodded and prescribed several tests for Su Yuan: a urine test, a color Doppler ultrasound, four female immune-function tests, and six hormone tests. She did not have Su Yuan undergo chromosome testing; presumably, Doctor Li had not considered that possibility.

Su Yuan hurried off to get the tests done, only returning with the lab reports after quite a while.

Doctor Li first looked over the lab results. Many of the values were low. Then she glanced at the ultrasound report and immediately understood the situation. She diagnosed, "There are no organic problems with your body. It's simply delayed development."

Hearing that conclusion, Su Yuan was stunned. Her body... had no problems? For her, this should have been the best possible outcome in an unfortunate situation, yet an indescribable bitterness filled her heart.

Seeing her blank expression, Doctor Li felt this would not do. How could such a fine young girl be so irresponsible? Her condition had to be taken seriously, so she said sternly, "Although the organs themselves have no problems, your uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, mammary glands, and a series of other organs all show delayed development. This needs to be taken seriously. You must not be careless in the slightest. You also have mild anemia, and the estrogen levels in your body are below normal. This can trigger a chain reaction."

Su Yuan listened blankly to Doctor Li's warnings. Doctor Li then prescribed her some medicine, including anti-androgens and oral estrogen.

After leaving the hospital, she headed back toward the school under the blazing sun.

Today's examination had cost her several hundred-yuan bills, leaving her with an indescribably tangled mood. Fortunately, seeing that she was a student, Doctor Li had not tried to overcharge her. Aside from some necessary medication, most of her advice focused on dietary therapy and exercise.

Even so, Su Yuan's wallet had suddenly gone flat. She used to joke with others that if you did not get checked, you would not know anything was wrong, but once you did, every part of your body would turn out to be sick. Wasn't that true? Today's examination had uncovered "delayed development," involving several important organs, along with a lack of "estrogen." How could "she" possibly lack that stuff?

She had never imagined, not even in her wildest dreams, that she would lack something like that! There was also the mild anemia, which she truly had not known about before. In short, after leaving the hospital, Su Yuan felt as though she had taken a trip through a laboratory. She had always been the one in the white coat conducting experiments; this time, she had made a guest appearance as a lab rat.

"Life is unpredictable!" She threw back her head and let out a long sigh.

By the time she returned to school, Su Yuan was starving, so she first went to the fast-food restaurant beside the dormitory to deal with lunch. As she passed through the corridor, a dark figure blocked her path. Looking up, she realized it was Wang Ping, who was heading out to play basketball.

"What's wrong? Are you sick?" Wang Ping asked in surprise when he saw Su Yuan carrying a plastic bag with a red cross on it.

She had not expected to run into him. Seeing his concerned expression, Su Yuan could only nod helplessly. Without drawing attention, she rolled up the bag as much as possible. She understood—this illness could not be made public!

"You just don't exercise enough. A grown man as frail as a little girl? Men should be like me, Wang Ping, showing off their masculine charm with powerful biceps!" Wang Ping spun the basketball in a showy manner. With his dark skin, anyone who did not know better might have thought he was from Africa.

Honestly, Su Yuan did not envy Wang Ping's healthy complexion. He had an excessive amount of health. Compared to him, she preferred someone like Ji Yehao.

After saying goodbye to Wang Ping, she returned to Dormitory 330. A stack of new books sat on the desk, probably textbooks that Ji Yehao and the others had picked up for her.

After hesitating, her gaze fell on the plastic bag. In the end, she opened the medicine box and swallowed several pills with warm water. This was treating a dead horse as if it were alive. Even she did not know what she had been thinking as she took those pills. Perhaps she had not been thinking of anything at all, merely following the doctor's instructions by reflex and taking the medicine.

After hiding the medicine in her wardrobe, she spread out her books for one final review. The makeup exam was scheduled for one-thirty in the afternoon, leaving less than half an hour. Since she still had some time, she might as well cram a little more.

Strangely enough, this "serious illness" seemed to have made her mind work much better. As she worked through the Calculus exercises one by one, there were very few she could not solve. Su Yuan contentedly attributed it all to last night's all-nighter. But whenever she thought of the strange things happening to her body, a shadow once more fell over her good mood.

The makeup exam was being held in classroom NA110 and would last two hours. N referred to the northern campus area, while A was the building code. Su Yuan entered ten minutes early and discovered that quite a few students were taking the makeup exam—more than one-third of the entire class.

"Looks like this course really is a disaster zone!" As she thought that, a stack of stapled exam papers was handed out. After the proctor checked the students' ID cards, the exam began.

The question types were fixed. The multiple-choice questions came first, mostly covering basic material. But seeing the surrounding examinees frown, grit their teeth, and scratch their heads, Su Yuan knew the difficulty was no small matter.

"Strange. This isn't hard?" Su Yuan's eyes flashed with surprise. Had she oversimplified the questions and failed to spot the traps? Hmm, that was very possible! But after thinking it over, she decided to trust herself.

There were not many multiple-choice questions. Of the ten questions, she hesitated only slightly over the last two. The fill-in-the-blanks, true-or-false, calculation, and application questions that followed also seemed to be of only moderate difficulty. While the other students were still stuck on the fill-in-the-blanks, Su Yuan had already reached the final section—the proof problems.

There were two questions in total. The first asked her to use limits to prove that if "as x approaches positive infinity, lim f(x) = a," then "as x approaches 0+, lim f(1/x) = a."

This question was not difficult.

The second asked her to prove that the equation "xe^x = 1" had one and only one real root in (0,1).

It did not seem difficult either, so Su Yuan scribbled in wildly elegant cursive with one hand, then boldly handed in her paper.

After finishing the exam, she knew her mind had truly clicked into place. Especially the second problem—she remembered asking Ji Yehao about it before. Back then, she had seemed not to understand his explanation and only knew that the Zero-Point Theorem had to be used. Now, however, she truly understood it.

After leaving the classroom, she could not help letting out a long sigh. "A late bloomer indeed!!"