The Mastermind

The question slipped out, and Yu Shujun immediately tucked both legs under her desk.

...Feeling guilty?

Wen Nan looked at the uniform pants hidden behind the corner of the desk.

Yu Shujun took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Though it was a summer night, he had the strange impression that the moisture in her breath was about to freeze into frost.

She still didn't answer Wen Nan's question. She merely glanced at her watch again and said, "There are seventeen minutes and twenty-three seconds left. For the rest of that time, I don't want to hear you say a single word unless it's about the test. Otherwise, you'll be responsible for the consequences."

Wen Nan raised his hand, pinched two fingers together, and held them to his lips, miming a zipper.

Yu Shujun lowered her head and refocused on her mock Olympiad exam.

Wen Nan stopped talking, but he had no intention of actually looking at the test.

There was no way he was doing problems—not in this lifetime.

He leaned against the desk and turned his head, staring up at the girl beside him from below.

Yu Shujun must have felt his gaze. Her lashes, hidden behind her glasses, trembled, but she stubbornly refused to spare him a glance.

The two of them sat in a silent stalemate for a while.

In the end, Wen Nan broke the silence again. "I have a question."

Yu Shujun turned to look at him, her eyes saying, You'd better actually have a question.

This time, Wen Nan pushed the test toward her and pointed to the first problem. "I have a question about this multiple-choice problem."

Yu Shujun looked at the problem--

[Xiao Wei and Xiao Jun are designing an irrigation system for a hospital garden. They plan to install a central fountain in an elliptical garden, where it can irrigate the entire garden evenly. The garden's major axis is 40 meters long, and its minor axis is 30 meters long. To ensure the greatest coverage, the central fountain should be placed at a focus. The garden's center is at the origin (0,0).

Question: Where should the fountain be placed to optimally cover the entire area of the garden?

A) (±5, 0)

B) (±10, 0)

C) (±15, 0)

D) (±20, 0)]

It was the first question on the whole test, an easy point, and it didn't even require any high school senior math!

Yu Shujun took a deep breath to calm herself, then said, "What's your question?"

Wen Nan pointed at the problem. "I want to know whether Xiao Wei and Xiao Jun are best friends."

At the question, Yu Shujun's pupils contracted. Though she tried to hide it, a flicker of surprise crossed her face.

But she quickly returned to her icy expression and asked, "Do you think your question has anything to do with the test?"

"It does." Wen Nan nodded earnestly. "It's part of the problem's setup. If I don't figure it out, I'll have trouble solving it."

As he spoke, Wen Nan's gaze drifted back beneath the desk, toward the patch of iodine antiseptic on Yu Shujun's pants.

"Xiao Wei scraped her knee and was taken to the school clinic. It was already quite late, and there was no one there except the doctor on duty. Xiao Jun was supposed to be in the classroom waiting to tutor Xiao Jiu, but she left halfway through and went to the clinic to see her. Why?

"Was it because Xiao Jun and Xiao Wei are best friends, and she didn't want to leave her alone at the clinic? Or... was there something else going on?"

Yu Shujun stared at Wen Nan in silence, her gaze heavy with scrutiny. She seemed to have seriously underestimated the intelligence and perceptiveness of the boy in front of her.

When she didn't answer, Wen Nan continued on his own:

"Suppose we assume that Xiao Jun and Xiao Wei are best friends. We know that Xiao Wei had earlier written Xiao Jiu a letter and slipped it into his desk, asking him to meet her at the sports field. But Xiao Jiu never saw the letter, so he missed her invitation.

"In theory, then, Xiao Wei and Xiao Jiu shouldn't have been able to meet that night. But her best friend found the letter in the classroom in time and told Xiao Wei about it. So Xiao Wei took the letter and hurried to the sports field, where things got very chaotic.

"In other words, what happened at the sports field that night wasn't really an accident. Someone made it happen on purpose, didn't they?"

When he finished, Wen Nan looked Yu Shujun in the eye and said, slowly and clearly, "Xiao Wei's best friend?"

At last, Yu Shujun put down her pen and turned to meet his gaze. "What exactly are you trying to say? Is it strange for Xiao Wei to have a best friend? Is there anything wrong with her friend looking out for her, making sure she didn't miss the invitation and bringing her the letter, then going to the clinic when she heard Xiao Wei had scraped her knee?"

In theory, there was nothing wrong with it.

It was normal for characters in this beginner Trial Zone to interact. Qiqi and her aunt Lin Xuemei, for example, were in frequent contact and even shared a blood relation.

If the school beauty Wu Yuwei and top student Yu Shujun were best friends, it wouldn't be strange for one to step in when the other was in trouble.

But...

Wen Nan felt that Yu Shujun's behavior had already gone beyond what one would expect from a character in a dungeon.

It wasn't strange for these characters to have their own motivations. But Wen Nan felt that, at the very least, the underlying logic behind the actions of his chosen targets should revolve around him.

For example, before Wen Nan failed to show up, Qiqi would keep waiting for him by the flower bed outside the sports field. Little Chili and Aunt Mei would also try to find him when he didn't arrive, so they could complete their rendezvous with him. Wu Yuwei's actions had deviated somewhat, but everything she did still revolved around the idea of confessing to Ye Jiu.

If that was the logic, then when Yu Shujun couldn't find "her tutoring student, Ye Jiu" waiting by the classroom's back door, shouldn't she have kept waiting, messaged Ye Jiu to hurry up, or simply left in a huff?

Instead, she went to the school clinic to see Wu Yuwei, then came back to the Class 3-2 classroom and waited for Ye Jiu as if nothing had happened. What was her real purpose?

And the trip to the clinic wasn't the only thing.

When he'd first arrived in the classroom and seen Yu Shujun, Wen Nan had frozen because she looked exactly like someone mentioned by two other characters--

According to Little Chili's backstory, she wasn't a student at Seventh High School, so she shouldn't have been allowed onto campus. She'd only managed to get in because a girl in a Seventh High School uniform, wearing thick glasses and a high ponytail, had spoken to the old gatekeeper on her behalf.

Aunt Mei had mentioned something similar. She said a girl with glasses had escorted her inside, too.

Taken together, it all pointed to one fact--

Whether it was the small love-triangle showdown between Liu Qi and Wu Yuwei earlier, or the later, larger one with Little Chili and Aunt Mei joining in, the mastermind behind it all was Yu Shujun.