Chapter 6

Chapter 7: Terrifying problem-solving

Su Can had forgotten where his seat was. The seating changes in middle school were already very hazy to him, so when he found a classmate and asked, "Where do I sit?" Tang Wu, who was passing by, could not help giving him a strange look.

Following his classmate's directions, Su Can sat down and discovered that his seat was in the fifth row of the third group. To save classroom space, the second and third groups had been pushed together, forming one large group with four people to a row in the middle. Su Can occupied the second seat, beside a long-unseen deskmate who looked very young. Sitting in the row directly ahead was none other than the deputy class monitor, Dong Qingyun. To Dong Qingyun's left, in the leftmost seat of the fourth row of the second group, beside the aisle, sat Tang Wu.

Today was their last day of classes, and everyone felt a touch of excitement and sadness. Tang Wu was also somewhat reluctant to part with the middle school life that was about to slip away. As she chatted with her deskmate, the girl sitting behind her tapped her shoulder and passed her one yuan and fifty cents, along with a note.

The girl behind her also pointed toward Su Can's seat with a knowing smile.

Tang Wu took the note and the money Su Can was returning for yesterday's photocopies. She unfolded the note, which read, "After school this afternoon, could you let me photocopy the practice papers the teachers gave you yesterday for all the subjects? Thank you."

Tang Wu crumpled the note and turned to look at Su Can in puzzlement. She had not expected him to ask her for the remaining internally distributed practice papers today after photocopying Dong Qingyun's extremely difficult math exercises yesterday. After dinner last night, she had tried working through those exercises and had only completed sixty questions by midnight. Although her accuracy had reached ninety-five percent, if she wanted to work through all the practice papers for every subject over the next two days to consolidate what she knew, the break would only just be enough-provided, of course, that she gave up her time for rest and relaxation.

She did not think Su Can could do the same as her.

Besides, what he should be attending to now was the basics. For Su Can, rather than spending the two days off before the high school entrance exam on these difficult exercises, devoting himself entirely to reviewing the basics would help him more. She had never heard of a bird starting to fly before it had even learned to stand.

Although full of questions, Tang Wu still nodded to Su Can. As class monitor, she had always been fair-minded and aloof, and she disliked little antics such as passing notes. Moreover, she had never exchanged notes with any boy since starting school. Particular as she was about such details, she certainly would not make an exception for Su Can.

Su Can did not care about any of that. Seeing young Tang Wu nod put his mind at ease.

His middle school homeroom teacher walked into the classroom with a solemn air, went over a few things they needed to keep in mind, then began his final math review to identify and fill the gaps in their knowledge.

The homeroom teacher matched his memories almost exactly. In the years to come, after leaving high school, Su Can had hardly ever seen his middle school teachers again. Whatever impressions they had left in his mind back then were more or less how they were now.

During the break, Dong Qingyun, who had watched the entire process of Su Can passing Tang Wu a note early that morning and resented it, approached Su Can and looked at him with a mocking expression. "Hey, how did you get on with the exercises I gave you yesterday? You didn't get many right, did you? Or did you never even look at them?"

Su Can ignored his sarcasm outright. "Oh, right, I did those questions, but I didn't have the correct answers to refer to. Let me see your answer key so I can check whether I got them right."

The corner of Dong Qingyun's mouth twitched. "You did them?!" Then he continued casually, "Or you only did some of them, right? Fine, the answers are in my bag. Let's see how much you accomplished with a night of revision."

Dong Qingyun deliberately raised his voice a little, letting some people out on the balcony hear him clearly. He had intended to mock Su Can in the first place. Now quite a few people became interested and found themselves following Su Can and Dong Qingyun back into the classroom. Dong Qingyun wasted no time finding the answer key for the internally distributed exercises in his schoolbag. He eagerly came up to Su Can and slapped it down on the desk. "Come on, check your answers. Let me see which questions you did. Maybe I can even give you some revision advice!"

The sisters Cheng Yun and Cheng Lan, who already knew what the two boys had done yesterday, came over. They also wanted to see how many questions Su Can could solve without an answer key, after actually daring to ask for the extremely difficult internal practice papers that the teachers handed out only to the top students. They could probably count them on their fingers.

Dong Qingyun watched smugly as Su Can took out his papers and spread them open. Dense blue fountain-pen writing covered the entire mimeographed paper like a tide.

All one hundred questions solved!

Someone nearby had already gasped. The sisters Cheng Lan and Cheng Yun both stared blankly.

Dong Qingyun was beginning to lose face. He had worked on the same set of questions last night, too, and had gotten stuck to varying degrees on questions ten, twenty, thirty-three, and forty-five, wasting a great deal of time. By one in the morning, he had only completed fifty-eight questions. After checking the answers and correcting a few mistakes, he had washed up and gone to bed.

Who would have thought that after a night's sleep, just a few hours later, he would find himself looking at Su Can's fully completed paper during the break?!

"Impossible..." Dong Qingyun spread out the papers and gave Su Can an awkward smile. "You just scribbled down a bunch of nonsense, didn't you? The answers... we'll know once we check the answers..."

As he worked through and checked the answers, Dong Qingyun's expression changed bit by bit. Only Su Can beside him kept following along, occasionally remarking, "Oh, I got this one wrong... ah, another one wrong..."

"That's the third one already..." Su Can sounded somewhat dejected as he said this. By then, they had checked as far as question ninety.

Once all one hundred questions had been checked, Su Can's accuracy was ninety-seven percent.

Now the three classmates sitting around Su Can, beside him and in the row ahead, as well as Cheng Yun and Cheng Lan, who had come to watch, were all dumbfounded.

After staring blankly for a long moment, Dong Qingyun finally broke into an easy smile. "Who would have guessed... I didn't realize you already had the answers! You copied everything from the answer key, didn't you?! You deliberately got three wrong to make us believe you'd done it all yourself! Ha!"

Su Can could not be bothered to argue with him, and explaining would be even harder. After all, how could someone like him, who had always hovered in the lower-middle ranks of the class, suddenly have such a thorough grasp of exercises meant for the elite top students? That alone invited suspicion, so offering no explanation was the best answer.

Seeing Su Can remain silent, the sisters Cheng Yun and Cheng Lan, who had already been doubtful, thought even less of him. They had thought a miracle had occurred and Su Can could actually solve exercises this difficult. They had never expected him to resort to such a tiresome ploy to attract everyone's attention. Both girls snorted at the same time, then left as though they could not bear to watch any longer.

Dong Qingyun, however, let out an enormous sigh of relief. That had given him a fright. So Su Can had been cheating after all. If he could really complete this entire set of questions with ninety-seven percent accuracy, Dong Qingyun truly would have met a monster!