Had her childhood friend finally wised up?

What was it like to have a photographic memory?

Thanks for asking. It felt amazing.

One glance was all it took to memorize an English word. His mind had never been so clear.

There was no need to memorize those English "idioms," though. Four generations under one roof: family 4.0. Hot spring: gurgle-gurgle water. Third concubine: three bitches.

Simple. A piece of cake.

Jiang Nian was glad he had a habit of bringing home all the important books for every subject during school breaks. Although he had never turned a single page, it still gave him the feeling that he had secretly been working hard.

Now they had actually come in handy. Amazing. Absolutely wonderful.

Jiang Nian spent the whole noon hour swimming in an ocean of learning. Those scattered bits of knowledge were like enormous mayflies and tiny shrimp, swallowed into the sea in great gulps.

Next door, Xu Qianqian groggily woke from her nap and clenched her teeth.

"So noisy!"

No matter how she covered her ears, Jiang Nian's excited sighs and gasps kept finding their way in. He had been making those weird noises forever. What was he so worked up about?

Was this that legendary thing boys did-watching porn and jerking off?

With a father who worked as an andrologist, Xu Qianqian knew the basics. She just thought Jiang Nian was being a little nuts. Couldn't he watch porn without making so much noise? And why was he at it for so long?

In broad daylight, too! Even I turn the lights off!

After finishing his morning studies, Jiang Nian had crashed. His pig brain felt a little overloaded. He only woke that afternoon when he vaguely heard someone knocking.

"Hello! Delivery!"

He remembered receiving a call from the courier that morning. When he opened the door, the courier pushed up the brim of his cap, pulling a small handcart behind him, and gave him a seemingly surprised look.

"Mr. Jiang?"

"Yes."

After signing for the delivery, Jiang Nian tried on his shoes. The sneakers had very soft soles. At two hundred yuan a pair, he had spent a thousand replacing the whole family's shoes. A pretty good deal.

He was hungry and had no interest in examining them any further. He put on a pair and went downstairs to eat.

In the past, getting new shoes would have made him put up with his hunger and bounce around for another minute or two. But now he had a cold, hard two thousand yuan sitting in his bank account.

Two thousand whole yuan. Why the fuck would he keep jumping around?

By evening, Jiang Nian was still sleepy, but he had to get ready for evening self-study at school.

Whether it was because he had brought her breakfast or for some other reason, Xu Qianqian had, for once, not left ahead of him. Instead, she sat in his family's living room, waiting for him.

The last time she had done that was back in middle school.

Jiang Nian was rather flattered.

"How come you're willing to wait for me?"

At that, Xu Qianqian got up to leave.

"Hmph."

"Hey, hey, hold on, mighty heroine! Pretend I never said that." Jiang Nian was packing his schoolbag and hurriedly caught her. "Sit down, sit down. Give me two minutes."

Xu Qianqian glanced down at his paw, then sat back on the couch without a word. Looking up, she watched him toss his English vocabulary book aside and couldn't help speaking.

"Jiang Nian, what did you tell me this morning?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're not even bringing your vocabulary book! This morning you said you were going to memorize words, and by the afternoon you've tossed the book aside?" Xu Qianqian gave him an exasperated glance.

"The college entrance exam only cares about your total score. Your English is so bad that raising it by a few dozen points would get you into a decent-"

She never finished the sentence. Xu Qianqian remembered Jiang Nian's godawful grades, enough to make his father despair and his mother cry. Raising his English score by a few dozen points would get him into a decent vocational college.

"Look, I can't explain it all right now." Jiang Nian tossed out his Chinese, biology, chemistry, and physics booklets too, leaving Xu Qianqian staring wide-eyed.

"Are you trying to get yourself killed, Jiang Nian? I'm telling Auntie Li!"

On that September evening, dusk mingled with the molten-gold sunset, and lights shone brightly along the streets.

Five- or six-story self-built houses lined the little county town's old streets, with power lines crisscrossing overhead. The alleys were narrow and dim. The only advantage was that the buildings didn't block the light, so the area got plenty of sun.

Xu Qianqian and Jiang Nian emerged from a dim alley. Zhen'nan County Middle School was not far away. The neighborhood where their families lived was much like a shantytown.

They rarely walked together like this, and the atmosphere felt a little strange.

As they neared the school gate, Xu Qianqian, walking half a step behind Jiang Nian, tugged at her schoolbag straps. She frowned and hesitated for a moment before speaking.

"You should stop hanging around Zhou Yuting and her crowd. They're pretty awful people."

Jiang Nian wholeheartedly agreed.

Ever since Zhou Yuting's birthday dinner, he had seen that crowd for what they really were. They had treated him like a clown, constantly putting him down to flatter Liu Feipeng.

There was no special reason. Liu Feipeng simply wanted to pursue Zhou Yuting. If he couldn't elevate himself, he could put someone else down and make himself look mature by comparison.

Among them, Jiang Nian had neither money nor good grades. All he had were his physique and looks, which made him even more of a target.

Xu Qianqian was only thinking of yesterday's lotus-leaf steamed chicken and the breakfast he had brought her. Although she and Jiang Nian didn't get along, accepting someone's food made it harder to criticize them. Besides, they had been playmates since childhood.

Her "toxic childhood friend" might have been a little slow, but he wasn't bad at heart, and he could cook. Whatever else, outsiders had no right to bully him.

In her eyes, Zhou Yuting was a fake innocent, a complete slut. Only a clueless straight guy like Jiang Nian would let Zhou Yuting string him along as her sucker and run circles around him.

She had said similar things before, only for Jiang Nian to snap back at her. Today, she was just saying it one last time. She wouldn't bring it up again.

To her surprise, Jiang Nian turned around, his black hair framing his bright eyes, and nodded solemnly.

"Yeah. I know."

He knew?

Xu Qianqian was a little stunned. Since when had he wised up?

Even after entering the classroom and sitting through an entire evening self-study period, she still hadn't recovered from her bewildered shock. Had the Jiang Family's ancestors blessed them from beyond the grave? Had the simp finally seen the light?

In the brightly lit classroom, the only sounds were the soft rustling of pages and pens scratching over homework.

"Qianqian, what's wrong?" Her deskmate, Yang Man, poked Xu Qianqian's fair arm. It was cool and soft. "You've been spacing out for almost a whole period. Did something happen?"

"Huh?" Xu Qianqian came back to herself. "N-no, nothing."

She shook her head. What am I even doing? I actually wasted a whole evening self-study period over Jiang Nian! Taking a deep breath, she lowered her head and started working through practice questions.

Jiang Nian was in the classroom next door. The two classes were neighbors, but their academic levels were worlds apart.

Students at Zhen'nan County Middle School were divided into four tiers: Key Class, meaning those needing targeted support; Parallel Class, the ordinary classes; Olympiad Class; and Zero Class, in ascending order.

The Key Classes were all placed on the first and second floors, close to the first-floor disciplinary office-

close enough to keep them in line if they got noisy. The Olympiad Classes and Zero Classes were mostly on the third and fourth floors, home to the favored academic elite.

The poor drudges in the Parallel Classes were all dumped on the fifth and sixth floors.

Xu Qianqian was in an Olympiad science class, while Jiang Nian was in a Parallel science class. He had been extremely lucky to land on the fourth floor, right beside Xu Qianqian's classroom.

Their homeroom teacher said they were soaking up the academic aura. Jiang Nian couldn't agree.

For convenience, the two classes had almost exactly the same subject teachers. They went over the same test papers, teaching the Olympiad Class first before coming back to the Parallel Class. How could that possibly end well for them?

Evening self-study passed in silence as Jiang Nian buried himself in practice questions.

The system's reward really was useful. After an afternoon of memorization, he had committed all 3,500 college entrance exam vocabulary words to memory. Working through English papers was hardly difficult anymore.

(End of chapter)