Transfer Student

A tall figure walked into the classroom. He was six foot one, with a handsome face strikingly similar to that of a popular star, dressed in clean, eye-catching designer sportswear. His jacket hung casually open, a branded MP3 player dangling from his chest. The slight upward curve of his lips and his roguish stance made it obvious at a glance that he had a bit of a bad streak. Yet that wicked smile made the girls' hearts race like startled deer. Chen Wanwan, always proud and aloof, froze for a moment, unable to take her eyes off the transfer student.

Transfer Student

"Wow, he looks so much like Lin Changkong. He's practically a prince!"

"Now that's what you call the school heartthrob!"

Lin Changkong was a currently popular idol star who had shot to fame overnight through an idol drama. The characters he played were princely young gentlemen, and there was hardly a high school student who did not know him. Eight out of ten girls were Lin Changkong's fans.

Liang Kui, a high school student who bore an uncanny resemblance to the star Lin Changkong, had been the same way back then. On his first day after transferring in, he had become the biggest piece of news, drawing countless eager stares from boys and girls alike.

Back then, even Su Yan, who had also been called one of the school's top heartthrobs, had seemed dim beside Liang Kui. It was not that Su Yan was not handsome enough; he simply did not have a celebrity face.

Girls who idolized stars blindly chased after Liang Kui, and their enthusiasm had nearly driven Teacher Ma bald with rage.

With a roguish grin, Liang Kui raised his voice. "My name is Liang Kui. Let me make this clear in advance: Lin Changkong and I have absolutely nothing to do with each other. He doesn't know me, and I don't know him. If anyone calls me Lin Changkong, I won't be polite." After saying that with a smile, his beautiful eyes swept across the classroom. When he spotted several pretty girls, an excited gleam clearly flashed in his gaze. His scorching stare finally settled on Chen Wanwan, the class beauty. Embarrassed, Chen Wanwan lowered her head, her ears turning red as her palms began to sweat.

"Move your desk and chair in. Sit at the back for now, and we'll change your seat another day," the homeroom teacher said gently.

Liang Kui politely replied, "There's no need to make special arrangements for me. I'm tall, so sitting in the back is perfect."

Teacher Ma nodded in satisfaction. Liang Kui's seat was beside Su Yan's, separated from him by only an empty aisle.

The seat beside him, vacant for many days, now had someone in it, but Su Yan seemed entirely unaffected. He held a pen and rapidly wrote something down—programming that no one else could understand. No one knew what had come to mind. Everything from that time was the same as it was now, even Liang Kui's self-introduction unchanged. Only Su Yan's deskmate had changed from a boy to Chen Yan.

As soon as Teacher Ma left, the class was nearly over. The bell rang, but Su Yan did not move.

The class was in an uproar. A crowd of people watched Liang Kui curiously. Liang Kui loved to smile; he was clever, but he also loved playing around and causing trouble. He was considered a bad student at school, yet even so, countless people liked him.

Liang Kui was exceptionally good with people, and in the blink of an eye, he had hit it off with many of his classmates. Not everyone could do that. Take Su Yan, for example—after a month of school, the number of times he had spoken could be counted on one hand. In his previous life, he had remained immersed in the grief and anger of losing his parents, depressed and withdrawn, unwilling to speak to anyone. Because of that, the girls had called him the "cool guy."

Now, he did it deliberately.

The second class was math. The teacher carried a stack of test papers and said with a smile, "The results of the end-of-September exam are out. The overall scores were quite good. I'll call out the names now—come up and collect your papers. Su Yan, perfect score, first in the class."

The teacher watched Su Yan rise with satisfaction. Expressionless, Su Yan walked to the podium to collect his paper. Quite a few gasps sounded below. A perfect score in math was not impossible, but it was not easy either. Moreover, since this was the first test of the school year, sixty percent of the questions covered the month's high school math material, while the remaining forty percent tested middle school fundamentals.

"Second place, Chen Wanwan, 119."

This math paper had been written jointly by all the first-year math teachers. The full score was 120.

Chen Wanwan gritted her teeth. She had been just one point away from a perfect score, and she was deeply annoyed. She snatched her paper and returned to her seat in low spirits. She had felt that the questions were not difficult at all while solving them, so how had she lost a point? Chen Wanwan stared at the paper as if she wanted to bore a hole through it.

"Second place, Lin Qiang, 119."

Class monitor Lin Qiang let out a breath and walked up to the podium. As class monitor, 119 was respectable enough. As for Su Yan's perfect score—hmph, he was the math class representative. It was only natural.

The math teacher's smile never faded, and he was clearly in an excellent mood.

After Lin Qiang, three more students scored 119, while eight students scored 118. The overall results were very good.

After handing out all the papers, the teacher smiled and said, "This exam was very good. Our class ranked first in the entire first year. Classes One, Three, and Five each also had one perfect score. Chen Wanwan, Lin Qiang, you two were too careless. You actually got such a simple true-or-false question wrong and lost a point for nothing. Let me explain this question—it had the most mistakes!"

The math teacher seriously picked up a piece of chalk and began explaining the problem. The students below fell silent at once.

The class passed quickly. Once the teacher left, Su Yan's head drooped, and he lay facedown on his desk to sleep. The back of his head faced Liang Kui's seat. Liang Kui was surrounded by a group of classmates, all gathered together and chattering with laughter, making it impossible for Su Yan to sleep. From time to time, someone accidentally bumped his desk or knocked his books to the floor. He heard "sorry" so often that it became endless. Su Yan wore a frosty expression and did not say a word. Gradually, the classmates crowded around Liang Kui no longer dared get too close to Su Yan, leaving an empty space around him.