After giving perfunctory answers to three questions, Xia Xu finally managed to shield Tang Youxin and get her out of the crowd and into the school, surrounded by people. The reporters, who already had plenty of material, no longer tried so hard to block their way.
Inside the school, things were naturally not as frantic as before. The school authorities still had to consider their image and public opinion and could not let too many unrelated outsiders in, so it was relatively quiet.
Even so, the pair still caused a commotion when they reached their classroom.
"Xia Xu! Xia Xu's here!"
"Xu, you really were fucking hiding your strength? A perfect-scoring Gaokao champion? Are you trying to kill the rest of us?"
"Come on, Xia Xu, take a photo with us! I need something to brag about back home."
"Holy shit, who's this beauty?"
The classroom erupted the moment the two entered.
But when everyone saw them take their respective seats-or, more precisely, when Tang Youxin sat down in her usual seat-they were all dumbstruck.
"She... she..."
"She's Tang Youxin?"
"Holy shit! No way!"
"She does look kind of familiar. Is that really Tang Youxin?"
"Tang Youxin's this pretty? Was I fucking blind before?"
The entire class, especially the boys, exploded, each looking utterly heartbroken, as if they had missed out on a fortune.
It was impossible to say that they could not recognize Tang Youxin at all.
But social interaction was always a two-way street. Tang Youxin was introverted and withdrawn and never socialized, so over time, naturally, hardly anyone bothered with her or paid attention to her.
Nor could their age group really be full of melodramatic romances, abortions, and jealous rivalries like in the movies. In their first and second years of high school, most were still