A Bet Is a Bet

The bell rang for the last class of the morning.

The atmosphere in the classroom instantly relaxed. Some students hurried to the cafeteria for lunch, while others headed to the sports field or the school shop together.

Pu Yu was in no hurry to leave. She took out the half-finished math paper from that morning, hoping to work through a few problems in the quiet of lunchtime.

The sunlight outside was lovely, spilling warmly over her arms.

The loudspeaker mounted in a front corner of the classroom crackled.

Then a familiar female voice came through, clear and pleasant:

"Good afternoon, teachers and students."

"This is the school radio station's lunchtime music hour. I'm today's host, roped in at the last minute to help out-Xu Suiran from Senior Year, Class Two."

Even over the airwaves, Xu Suiran's voice was bright and lively. "All right, let's get to it. Today's first song request comes from my good friend Pu Yu, dedicated to a 'friend who wishes to remain anonymous.'"

"She says, thank you for always showing up when I need you. I hope this song can keep you company through every moment, bright or dark."

"Here's 'Sunny Day' by Jay Chou, for that friend, and for all the students working hard toward their dreams."

"Sunny days will come, and there's still a long story ahead. Please take good care of yourselves."

The clear guitar intro rang out, instantly catching everyone's attention.

"The story's little yellow flower has drifted in the wind since the year I was born..."

The classroom gradually quieted.

Some hummed softly along, while others set down their pens and listened in silence.

Holding her pen, Pu Yu unconsciously looked at the empty seat beside her.

At last, the final line softly fell: "But at the end of the story, it seemed you still said goodbye."

The last note faded into the air, and the broadcast moved on to the next school announcement.

Yuan Su still hadn't come to school.

He hadn't heard this "Sunny Day," meant for him.

After recovering from his illness, Yuan Su's life seemed largely unchanged.

It was still school, the repair shop, and occasional trips to the county town to stock up and hunt for parts.

The only difference was that his cluttered repair shop now had an uninvited "regular."

With midterms approaching, physics and math had become Pu Yu's two biggest hurdles.

Driven by the thought that friends ought to help each other, she brought her exercise books to the repair shop one evening after school and asked him for help for the first time.

"Yuan Su."

Yuan Su was bent over a motherboard, soldering it with a soldering iron. He didn't look up. "What?"

"This problem..." Pu Yu pushed her notebook toward him and said quietly, "I've thought it through three times. I really can't figure it out."

She still remembered him saying, "Think it through three times yourself before you ask."

Yuan Su set down his tools and glanced at the complicated electromagnetic field problem.

Without a word, he picked up a pen, quickly sketched a force diagram on a sheet of scrap paper, and wrote out a few key equations.

"You got the direction of the magnetic field wrong."

He pushed the scrap paper back to her and tossed down the pen.

Huh?

Was it really that simple?

Pu Yu felt utterly defeated.

After the first visit came a second, then a third.

Pu Yu cleared a corner of the old wooden table piled with odds and ends in the repair shop, turning it into her own study space.

Under the dim yellow light, the boy bent over delicate parts, with a girl diligently doing her homework beside him.

Outside, the cold wind howled, yet somehow, the room had taken on the warmth of a home.

On the day the midterm exam notice came out.

Pu Yu wrote "first in the year" in her diary, then quickly crossed it out.

She turned to look at the boy's stern profile beside her. The bet over her portable cassette player weighed heavily on her mind, almost making it hard to breathe.

The senior-year midterms arrived on schedule.

For those two days, the atmosphere in the classroom was unbearably tense. Even the normally chatty Xu Suiran buried herself in Chinese revision and math practice for the sake of her allowance.

Yuan Su came to take the exams too.

This time, Yuan Su and Pu Yu weren't in the same exam room. He still spent most of his time spinning his pen and staring into space, or drawing circuit diagrams on the backs of his papers.

During the combined science exam, though, he did spend quite a while writing.

When he saw a few questions with hidden traps, the image of that girl hesitating and agonizing over them inexplicably surfaced in Yuan Su's mind. He wondered whether she could solve them. Would she know how to do this one, that girl who always got the magnetic field's direction backward?

The thought came out of nowhere.

He lowered his eyes and didn't dwell on it.

On the Friday after the exams ended, the rankings were posted in the year-group hall.

The crowd was packed tight.

Pu Yu struggled to squeeze through, scanning down the list for her name.

First place, Li Yunyi.

Second place, Song Jinnian.

Fifteenth place, Pu Yu.

Pu Yu's heart sank when she saw her ranking.

Compared with the twentieth place she'd earned just after transferring, she had indeed moved up five places.

But... that bet.

"Come first in the next exam. Show me you can."

"If you can't, leave the cassette player here, and pretend I never fixed it."

Yuan Su's words, spoken with that touch of cocky nonchalance, still echoed in her ears.

Pu Yu lowered her eyes, disappointment welling up inside her.

I still couldn't do it.

Although she had improved, first place in the year was still a mountain she couldn't scale.

After school, she shouldered her backpack and slowly made her way to the repair shop.

A dim yellow light glowed inside. Yuan Su sat at the workbench, carefully holding a tiny chip with a pair of tweezers.

Hearing her footsteps, he spoke without looking up. "Which problem can't you solve this time?"

Pu Yu hesitated in the doorway for a while, then took the carefully protected cassette player out of her backpack, walked over to the table, and gently set it beside his hand.

"This..."

Yuan Su's hands paused. He turned to glance at the object on the table, then looked at her. "What are you doing?"

"The results are out." Pu Yu lowered her head, her fingers gripping her backpack straps. Her voice was very quiet. "I didn't come first."

"Oh." Yuan Su's reaction was indifferent. He turned his attention back to the circuit board. "Where did you place?"

"Fifteenth in the year. Second in class."

"Mm. Not bad."

"But you said I had to come first before I could..."

Pu Yu glanced at the cassette player, reluctant to part with it, but gritted her teeth and said, "A bet is a bet. I'm giving this back."

Silence hung in the air for a few seconds.

Yuan Su suddenly set down his tweezers, turned around, and leaned casually against the table.

He reached out, took the results sheet from Pu Yu's hand, and gave it a cursory glance.

"Who said you didn't come first?"

Pu Yu froze. "Huh?"

Yuan Su tapped the results sheet with his long fingers, pointing to the Chinese and English columns. "Chinese and English. First in the year in both subjects."

He raised an eyebrow. The lamplight reflected in those usually distant eyes, bringing out a faint, elusive hint of a smile:

"Isn't that two first places?"