It was the second day of the mock exams.
During the final exam, English, Cheng Che finished the last word of his essay just as the bell rang for the papers to be collected.
He put down his pen and let out a long breath.
The moment Total Concentration switched off automatically, it felt as though someone had given the back of his head a gentle pat.
Then a weary ache slowly seeped out from between the bones of his spine. Like noodles boiled in warm water, his whole body went limp.
It was much better than the night before last. At least he wasn't about to fall asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them again, the classroom was already a noisy jumble of voices. The proctor was still at the podium, sorting the papers into neat stacks by exam number.
Cheng Che waited until she had collected the papers and left, then stood up and raised both hands over his head, stretching hard.
His neck and shoulder joints cracked several times. That felt good.
Guo Xin charged in through the back door and slapped him on the shoulder. "Come on, let's go put our stuff back! I'm finally alive again!"
Cheng Che and Guo Xin returned to their places and hurriedly put their desks back where they belonged.
"Cheng Che!"
A clear voice came from the front of the room.
Lin Xiao came over in small steps, clutching a sheet of answers she had checked, her eyes shining:
"I just compared English answers with the class monitor. How many did you get wrong on the cloze test? I got four wrong."
Cheng Che thought for a moment. "I got one wrong."
Lin Xiao froze.
Beside them, Guo Xin was tipping back his head to drink some water. At those words, he nearly spat out a mouthful.
"You got one wrong? Wasn't your English dancing on the passing line just like mine? Who are you trying to fool?"
Cheng Che thought back to the questions on the paper.
"Was question three A or C? I guessed A."
Lin Xiao looked down at the answer sheet. When she raised her head again, her expression had grown a little complicated.
"It was A... but you can't call that a 'guess,' can you?"
"I really did guess." Cheng Che smiled. "After I finished, the more I looked at it, the more it looked right, so I picked it."
He really wasn't lying. During this period, he had focused on math and the combined science subjects, and had only started cramming for English recently. He figured that although he had improved a great deal this time, his score wouldn't be very high.
Lin Xiao stared at him for two seconds, then said seriously:
"Cheng Che, you've really been improving so fast lately. Math and English too. The feel you have for solving problems now is completely different from before."
"Yeah." Cheng Che wasn't modest about it, nor was he smug. He simply acknowledged it.
For the past ten days or so, from morning to night, there had been nothing in his head but studying and the system panel.
He memorized vocabulary while running, reviewed questions he had gotten wrong over breakfast, and even recited model English essays from memory in the shower.
He knew very well where the "improvement" Lin Xiao spoke of had come from.
Guo Xin rolled his eyes beside them.
"All right, all right, stop praising him. Any more and his butt's going to stick up into the sky."
Cheng Che ignored him and suddenly remembered what he wanted to ask. "Guo Xin, didn't you say your part-time job group was still taking people?"
Guo Xin was taken aback. "You want a part-time job?"
"Yeah, I want to find something to do," Cheng Che said lightly. "Earn some pocket money on weekends."
Guo Xin pulled out his phone, opened WeChat, and swiped a couple of times.
"I'll add you. People often post jobs that pay daily in that group: handing out flyers, wearing mascot costumes, promotions at malls, that sort of thing. Take a look yourself when you're free on weekends."
"Okay, thanks."
Guo Xin slung an arm around his shoulders as they headed out.
"What the hell are you thanking me for? But it's a deal: next exam, let me copy off you... ah, no, give me some support with your eyes during the exam."
"Guess on your own merits," Cheng Che said.
"You're so cold-blooded!"
The two laughed and teased each other as they went downstairs.
As usual, Cheng Che didn't take the bus. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and, once outside the school gates, began jogging along the route he had run for the past ten days or so.
Five kilometers was no longer much of a challenge for him.
By the time he ran home, it wasn't completely dark yet.
He pushed the door open and went inside. Jiang Xue was in the kitchen stir-frying the last dish, while Cheng Jianguo sat on the sofa studying lottery tickets. Without looking up, he said:
"You're back? How did the exam go today?"
"Not bad." Cheng Che changed his shoes and went to the bathroom to wash his face.
"What does 'not bad' mean? Can you get over four hundred points?" Cheng Jianguo looked up and asked, half joking and half serious.
"Cheng Jianguo!" Jiang Xue came out carrying a dish and glared at him. "Our son just finished his exams. Can't you say something nice?"
"I'm just concerned."
Cheng Che came out wiping his face and said with a smile, "More than four hundred. I won't know exactly how much until the scores come out."
"Did you hear that? Our son said more than four hundred!"
Cheng Jianguo spoke to Jiang Xue as though Cheng Che had already scored six hundred.
Jiang Xue rolled her eyes at him and called everyone to dinner.
The family gathered around the table. As usual, there weren't many dishes, but they were steaming hot.
Cheng Che ate with great focus. He burned through a lot of energy and had a big appetite, putting away two large bowls of rice along with the soup.
Jiang Xue's face was full of smiles as she watched him eat with such relish.
After dinner, Cheng Che returned to his room and sat down at his desk.
He didn't rush to work through questions. First, he opened the system panel.
[Cheng Che (Inferior Incubus · Unawakened)] [Stamina: 59 (Just a little more and you can finally shed the glorious title of "good-for-nothing")] [Endurance: 54 (Very good, you're one step closer to the sacred gigolo physique)] [Charm: 57 (Your face finally no longer looks like it was smacked with a frying pan)] [Intelligence: 60 (With your current IQ, you should be able to tell a mushroom from... forget it, keep working hard)]
Cheng Che automatically ignored the trash talk, fixing his gaze on the line that read "Intelligence: 60."
Without a mission for intelligence, it had barely increased.
Cheng Che wasn't in a hurry. He figured that after he broke through to Lesser Incubus, there would probably be new missions.
He looked at his stamina with anticipation again. After one more run tomorrow, he would reach 60.
He wondered whether, just like when his intelligence had broken through to 60, there would be a lottery draw.
He took a deep breath and suppressed the anticipation in his heart.
He couldn't rush it. What was meant to come would come.
The most important thing now was to finish today's study tasks first.
He took out a physics paper and began working through the questions.
At ten that night, Jiang Xue knocked and came in with a cup of hot milk. Cheng Che had just finished the last question, so he took it and drained it in one gulp.
"Get to bed early," Jiang Xue said.
"Okay. Mom, you should get some rest early too."
At ten thirty, Cheng Che got into bed right on time.
He took out his phone and posted in the part-time job group that he was looking for work, then switched it off and drifted off to sleep.
At that moment, five kilometers from Clearwater Bay Residential Complex, at Spring City No. 13 Middle School.
The light was still on in the math department office on the third floor of the teaching building.
Old Xu sat at his workstation, a densely filled score sheet spread out before him.
The senior-year teachers from the entire grade were working overtime to calculate scores, and the sounds of keyboards and papers being turned rose and fell throughout the office.
To his left was a stack of freshly graded math papers; to his right was a cup of strong tea that had gone completely cold.
He pushed up his glasses, found Class Five's scores on the sheet, and looked down them line by line.
First place was still Lin Xiao, with a total score of 612. Second was the class monitor, Su Qingyue, with 605. Third was Zhou Mingxuan, with 597.
Old Xu's gaze moved down and stopped at tenth place.
Cheng Che.
He frowned, thinking he had read it wrong. He leaned closer, pointed a finger at the name, and checked each subject score beside it.
Chinese: 102.
Math: 128.
English: 105.
Combined science: 173.
Total: 508.
Old Xu sat up straight.
He had taught math for more than ten years and was extremely sensitive to scores.
A math score of 128 would rank in the top five in the class.
He didn't even need to check the papers to remember that Cheng Che had scored just over 80 in math last time.
He pulled out Cheng Che's math paper and began reading from the first question.
Multiple choice: correct.
Fill-in-the-blank: correct.
Long-answer questions: the working was unbelievably neat.
He hadn't completely solved the second part of the final challenge question, but the first step, taking the derivative and setting a parameter, was laid out clearly, more by the book than what many students who usually scored above average had written.
Old Xu took off his glasses, rubbed his aching eyes, and looked at the other subjects.
Chinese: 102. He had previously hovered around 95.
English: 105. Before, his score had been somewhere between failing and the passing line. Combined science: 173. That was the biggest jump; last time he'd only scored in the 140s.
"Well, I'll be..."
Old Xu muttered under his breath, but couldn't stop the corners of his mouth from rising.
He remembered how, over the past ten days or so, Cheng Che had sat straight and listened attentively in every class, then chased after him with questions afterward.
The boy who used to doze at the back of the classroom and hand in papers covered in scribbles here and there seemed like a different person.
"He's finally seen the light."
Old Xu picked up the cup of completely cold tea and tipped his head back for a big gulp, not noticing at all.
He looked back at the screen and entered Cheng Che's scores for the six subjects into the system one by one. When he pressed Enter for the last time, a line appeared on the screen:
[Class Five's scores have been submitted. The grade-wide rankings are being generated and are expected to be released tomorrow.]
Old Xu leaned back in his chair and stared at the line for a while. He couldn't help recalling the webnovels he had read, and then he laughed out loud.
Tomorrow.
When the time came, things would be interesting.