It was the Monday after the holiday.
The entire building for the final-year students was shrouded in anxiety over the monthly exam results.
Their homeroom teacher, Cheng Siyi, walked in carrying her lesson plans and exam papers. She always wore a faint smile and was almost unbelievably good-natured.
"The monthly exam results are out." Cheng Siyi gently set the papers on the lectern, her voice soft. "First, an overview. Our class performed consistently, with six students in the top fifty of the year. Special praise goes to-"
Cheng Siyi's gaze swept across the class before settling on Pu Yu in the back.
"Pu Yu. In your first major exam since transferring here, you ranked first in the year in both Chinese and English. Your Chinese essay in particular was outstanding."
"The teachers in your year unanimously agreed that its central idea, writing, and structure all made it a model essay. Copies will be handed out to the entire year during evening study."
Her gaze was gentle and encouraging. "There's still room for improvement in your combined science score, though. Your total placed you third in our class and twentieth in the year. If you can bring your physics up a little more, a place in the top five is practically guaranteed."
A wave of quiet gasps rippled through the classroom.
Xu Suiran turned around excitedly and emphatically mouthed a word at Pu Yu.
"Awesome!"
Pu Yu herself was stunned.
Even her best ranking at City No. 1 High School had been several hundred places down. The number twenty was far too unfamiliar to her.
There was no way she could have improved so dramatically in such a short time.
Perhaps the overall competition at Town Middle School simply wasn't nearly as fierce as at City No. 1 High School.
Though bewildered, she still nodded politely. "Thank you, Teacher."
Cheng Siyi praised several more students.
Finally, her eyes settled on the figure slumped over his desk in the last row.
"Yuan Su."
At the sound of his name, the boy ruffled his hair and lazily straightened up a little.
Cheng Siyi sighed, her expression complicated. "Full marks in physics, 148 in math. Your math teacher told me that if you hadn't left out two key steps in the final problem, that would have been full marks too."
The classroom immediately erupted.
Full marks in physics and math?
Those two papers had been insanely difficult!
"As for your other subjects, you can leave questions blank if you don't know the answers, but could you at least make an effort with the multiple-choice questions? Even if you just choose C for everything?"
Cheng Siyi knew about Yuan Su's family situation, and she knew the state he was in now.
But his near-perfect physics and math scores showed that the foundation that had once put him first in the year was still there. No matter how carelessly he answered the other papers, he shouldn't have scored zero.
Yuan Su's face was expressionless.
Only a very faint "Mm" escaped his throat, careless and cold.
"Also," Cheng Siyi continued, her brows drawing together slightly and her voice turning sterner, "come to my office after class. A student reported that you tore up his exam paper during the exam and 'threatened and intimidated' him."
Tore up an exam paper?
The whispers in the classroom grew louder.
Somehow, that sort of thing didn't seem out of character for Yuan Su at all.
He was always getting into fights and hanging around the streets with all sorts of people. Maybe he'd even taken after his gambling-addict father and was capable of any deranged act.
Pu Yu remembered what had happened in the exam room.
That boy had clearly been the one to throw paper balls at her first.
The invigilator had ignored it, and only then had Yuan Su stood up to confront him.
She tightened her grip on her pen and carefully began, "About what happened that day, I..."
"Don't."
Yuan Su cut her off, his voice cold.
"That boy was harassing me first. It wasn't your-"
"I said don't."
A trace of weariness crept into Yuan Su's tone as he slumped back onto his desk. His voice drifted faintly from the crook of his arm, distant and indifferent. "My business is none of your concern."
Pu Yu froze, all the words she had prepared catching in her throat.
The bell had barely finished ringing.
Yuan Su stood up without expression and headed out of the classroom.
Pu Yu watched his back disappear down the corridor. With barely a moment's hesitation, she got up and followed him.
She couldn't let Yuan Su take the blame for this alone.
Whether he wanted her help or not.
In the office.
Cheng Siyi looked at the boy standing before her, her tone utterly helpless. "Yuan Su, I know you can answer those questions. Your high school entrance exam results proved what you're capable of. You can't keep handing in blank papers like this. Your records in the future will..."
"Teacher." Yuan Su interrupted her. "Is that why you called me here?"
Cheng Siyi paused, then returned to the main issue. "There's also the matter of tearing up another student's paper. He complained to the head of your year and asked for you to receive a formal warning. What exactly happened?"
Yuan Su lowered his eyes, his expression indifferent. "I didn't like the look of him."
"You-"
Cheng Siyi let out an exasperated laugh. "You tore up his paper because you didn't like the look of him? If you didn't like the look of me, would you rip down the blackboard?"
"May I come in?"
A knock sounded at the door.
Cheng Siyi and Yuan Su both turned.
Pu Yu stood in the doorway, breathing hard. She had clearly run all the way there.
Cheng Siyi looked up and was surprised to see her. "Pu Yu? Is something wrong?"
Pu Yu's face was slightly flushed, and she hadn't quite caught her breath.
She walked over to Yuan Su and stood beside him, her voice firm and clear. "Teacher, what happened with the torn exam paper wasn't Yuan Su's fault."
The hand Yuan Su had tucked in his pocket went still.
He turned his head, his gaze settling on the little whorl at the crown of her head.
"The boy sitting behind me started it." Pu Yu spoke quickly, as though afraid of being interrupted. "He kept hitting me with paper balls during the exam and wanted me to write down the multiple-choice answers to help him cheat."
"Yuan Su was trying to... he was trying to stop him from harassing another student."
Cheng Siyi frowned and turned to Yuan Su. "Is that what happened?"
The boy still looked as though he couldn't care less.
His thin lips pressed into a line. He neither denied it nor admitted it.
Pu Yu raised her head and added, "Yes. A lot of the students in the back rows saw it. You could also request the surveillance footage, or ask the teacher who was invigilating."
"Speaking of the invigilator," Cheng Siyi asked, puzzled, "why didn't you tell them when something like that happened?"
Pu Yu had called for the teacher twice that day, but received no response.
Just as she was about to tell the truth, the person beside her suddenly interrupted.
"There's no need."
"Handle it however you want. I have no objections."
Pu Yu couldn't quite understand him, and stubbornness crept into her voice. "How is there no need? That's unfair to you. He was clearly at fault too."
Yuan Su's expression remained cold. "Does it make any difference who was right or wrong?"
"It does." Pu Yu was rarely this insistent. Her voice wasn't loud, but every word was clear. "Right is right, and wrong is wrong. It has nothing to do with which exam room you're in or how many points you score."
Cheng Siyi's gaze lingered on Yuan Su for a moment.
She had taught him for three years. She knew what kind of person her student was.
But "evidence" always carried more weight than "understanding."
Pu Yu's insistence had given her exactly the opening she needed.
"Teacher Liu?" Cheng Siyi turned to an older history teacher at a desk in the corner. "You were invigilating in the last exam room that day, weren't you?"
Teacher Liu was drinking tea from an insulated flask and replied offhandedly.
"Oh, I must have been too tired. I shut my eyes for a bit..."
"Teacher Liu, exam discipline is a serious matter too. Both of these students are good students in my class. If interference affected their performance, who would take responsibility?"
Teacher Liu nodded perfunctorily and said with a smile, "Yes, yes, Teacher Cheng is right. We'll arrange for you to invigilate next time. Then your good students will be sure to come first."
Seeing that she couldn't get through, Cheng Siyi stopped paying attention to the older teacher's snide remarks.
She turned back to the boy, her tone serious. "Yuan Su, your way of handling the situation was excessive. Write a self-criticism of at least a thousand words and hand it in to me tomorrow."
"I'll report what actually happened. Whoever is responsible will be held responsible. If things really happened as Pu Yu described, and he deliberately harassed her first, the school will deal with him separately as well. Can you both accept that outcome?"
Pu Yu nodded. "Yes. Thank you, Teacher."
The office fell silent for a moment.
Yuan Su said nothing, not answering right away.
He had long since stopped caring about right and wrong. The outcome was always the same anyway.
Yet today, someone had insisted on standing beside him and stubbornly fighting for fairness on his behalf.
At the edge of his still field of vision, the girl's upturned face suddenly appeared, along with those clear, questioning eyes looking at him-
A faint tingling stirred in his heart.
He averted his gaze, his voice so low it was almost inaudible.
"...Mm."
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