In the corner,
Cuicui sat by the wall, never saying a word.
From where she sat, she could see the two uniformed men. They seemed to make a round of the classroom.
They hadn't appeared to do anything before leaving.
But they had lingered by Fang Shuwen for an extra minute.
Had those two men come for Fang Shuwen?
Cuicui shook her head, pushing the strange thought aside.
She was probably overthinking it.
Rather than wonder whether the uniformed men had come for Fang Shuwen, she ought to think about how he'd managed to place ninth!
After all, last semester he'd been a hopeless student who'd failed six out of seven subjects.
No matter how much he'd turned over a new leaf, he couldn't have changed so much in such a short time.
"So Fang Shuwen... must have cheated, right?"
Cuicui stared at the blue-green figure ahead of her, turning the thought over and over in her mind.
She and Fang Shuwen weren't in the same class.
But they'd lived in the same courtyard for years, and she knew exactly what he was like.
He'd been useless since childhood: all ambition and no ability, looking down on everyone, too lazy to even open a textbook. All he did was trail after Guo Ziming, sucking up to him.
She got up before dawn every day to study, then worked through problems by lamplight until late at night. Her eyes were nearly ruined before she'd barely managed to get into the Elite Class.
And Fang Shuwen?
She'd never once seen him open a book all summer.
He'd spend the day running a chess stall, then come home at night and drop straight into bed.
How could someone like that get into the Elite Class?
And place ninth?
She only thought to herself, When they put up the score sheet, let's see how you explain yourself.
She even found herself looking forward to that moment.
No—not looking forward to it. She was certain.
She was certain there was something wrong with Fang Shuwen's results, certain that the "useless one" in their courtyard couldn't become one of the Elite Class's top ten overnight.
That certainty gave her a strange sense of calm.
She just had to wait and watch Fang Shuwen make a fool of himself.
Just then, the classroom door swung open again.
"What's all this noise?"
The head of discipline, Zhou Changping, boomed into the classroom like a muffled thunderclap.
He stood in the doorway wearing a well-worn Zhongshan suit, a stack of documents tucked under his arm. His gaze was sharp behind his round glasses.
The classroom fell silent at once.
After all, Director Zhou was famous for being strict.
Zhou Changping walked in and set the documents on the lectern, sweeping his gaze over the students.
"I could hear you arguing from the hallway. Is this the standard of the Elite Class?"
No one dared to answer.
Sun Mao hunched his shoulders and quietly slunk back to his seat, the glee still lingering on his face.
Zhou Changping's gaze paused on him.
"Sun Mao, you've been jumping around like a monkey. Tell us what happened."
"Director Zhou, Fang Shuwen cheated on the exam. We don't think someone like him deserves to be in the Elite Class."
Zhou Changping stared at him for two seconds, then picked up the stack of papers on the lectern and held it up.
"These are all the results from this assessment. I've already had the academic affairs office make copies. Everyone's scores in the academic subjects and physical education, their total scores, and their rankings are all listed here."
He paused, his gaze turning stern. "I'd planned to hand these out after the class meeting. But since someone can't wait to question a classmate, I'll pass them out now and let you see for yourselves."
He handed the score sheets to the student in the front row, signaling for them to pass them back.
The papers rustled as they traveled from the front rows to the back.
As soon as each student got a copy, they immediately looked for their own name and compared scores with everyone else's.
"I got eighty-seven? That can't be right. I estimated I'd get ninety..."
"Forty points in physical education? How is that possible? I lifted eighty jin!"
The classroom grew lively again, but this time the students weren't questioning Fang Shuwen. They were comparing their own results.
The moment Sun Mao got his score sheet, he flipped to the first page and rapidly scanned down from the top.
"Han Tieshan, total of ninety-one..."
His gaze continued downward.
"Zhang Mingcheng, eighty-nine... Li Yueru, eighty-eight... Fang Shuwen, eighty-three?"
His pupils contracted sharply.
Eighty-three.
An overall score of eighty-three, ninth place.
And he, Sun Mao, had scored seventy-nine point five, ranking eleventh.
A difference of three and a half points.
Sun Mao's face flushed a liverish purple, and his fingers crumpled the score sheet.
Three and a half points. He'd scored that much lower than Fang Shuwen, the useless one!
"Finished looking?"
Zhou Changping's voice rang out again.
He picked up the remaining sheets from the lectern and gave them a shake.
"The score sheet only lists total scores, not the breakdown. To put certain people's doubts to rest, I've also brought Fang Shuwen's exam papers."
The classroom erupted.
"What? You're putting up his exam papers?"
"The head of discipline himself is vouching for him?"
Sun Mao's face darkened further.
If they were willing to put up the exam papers, that meant Fang Shuwen hadn't cheated.
Ignoring the students' chatter, Zhou Changping walked to the bulletin board on the back wall and pinned up Fang Shuwen's papers one by one.
Chinese, mathematics, English, steam industry, steam biology, and antiquities studies.
Six papers, lined up in a row.
The handwriting was neat, the pages clean, and every answer clearly written.
On the short argumentative essay in Chinese, Zhou Changping had drawn several red circles and written two characters beside them: "Excellent."
"Come take a look."
Zhou Changping stepped back and folded his arms.
"Look at the answers. Which one was copied? Which one came from cheating?"
The students surged forward.
"W-wow, his handwriting is so good!" someone exclaimed.
"That essay is really well written. Much better than mine."
"Only two people in the class got the big steam industry question right. Fang Shuwen was one of them."
"Are these really Fang Shuwen's papers? Didn't he used to never turn in his homework...?"
The doubts ebbed away like the tide, replaced by astonishment and confusion.
Sun Mao pushed to the very front, staring hard at the papers, desperate to find even one wrong character.
But he couldn't find any.
Every character was written properly, and every answer was correct.
His lips trembled—not with anger, but with an indescribable dread.
"Now that you've seen his exam papers, take a look at his physical education score."
"Fang Shuwen lifted a 150-jin stone lock during the test. With everyone watching, that couldn't have been cheating, could it?"
The physical education test had been held on the open-air field.
There had been students all around, even if many of them had been distracted by Han Tieshan on the other side.
Plenty of people had still been there.
Fang Shuwen couldn't possibly have cheated.
So his physical education score had to be real.
"Fang Shuwen, you—you—how did your grades improve so much over one summer?"
Sun Mao's eyes widened. Stunned and disbelieving, he looked at Fang Shuwen.
The gap between them was so huge that he'd sooner believe someone who claimed to be Qin Shi Huang than believe Fang Shuwen had turned his life around in one summer.
At that, Fang Shuwen rose unhurriedly. Facing the class's doubtful stares, he spoke in a gentle voice.
"It's nothing. After I went to the temple fair over summer and prayed, my mind suddenly opened up. I hadn't even meant to study, but whenever I looked at those books, the words just seared themselves into my brain."
"Ah, I'm really not interested in studying. Who knew I'd turn out like this!"