Grandpa Jiang was an excellent cook.
Tao Zhi’s taste buds had been spoiled by Aunt Zhang since she was young. She was quite particular about food. Now, at the small square dining table that was somewhat cramped, the three of them each sat on one side. With several simple home-cooked dishes laid out, Tao Zhi only realized how hungry she was when she smelled the aroma.
From the kitchen, Jiang Qi Huai brought out the last dish. The braised chicken wings were piled on the plate, covered in sauce. Tao Zhi’s eyes lit up, and she couldn’t help but smile at him.
Jiang Qi Huai deliberately placed the plate of chicken wings in front of her.
“Ah Huai said you like these,” Grandpa Jiang smiled at her and said, “Try Grandpa’s cooking.”
Tao Zhi responded with an “Ah,” and before using her chopsticks, she picked up a piece for the elderly man first: “You eat first.”
Grandpa Jiang smiled with his eyes curved into crescents, repeatedly saying it was good.
Tao Zhi looked up and glanced at Jiang Qi Huai sitting across from her. He sat there eating vegetables without saying a word, cold and distant.
He wasn’t anything like his grandfather in personality.
The meal was enjoyed in harmony. Tao Zhi was naturally talkative, and she kept the elderly man so entertained that his smile never left his face all evening.
After dinner, Tao Zhi played chess with him for a while.
She was terrible at Chinese chess. She had learned from Tao Xiu Ping when she was young, but he never went easy on her. When she couldn’t win, she would cry in frustration, and Tao Xiu Ping would stand beside his daughter, laughing heartily as she wailed.
Grandpa Jiang went easy on her. The two played back and forth, and Tao Zhi finally experienced a bit of the joy that chess could bring.
Jiang Qi Huai came out of his bedroom and saw the young and old sitting in front of the chessboard in the living room, chatting and laughing. He paused in his steps.
The living room was warmly lit, and a thin line of sandalwood incense smoke curled up from the TV cabinet. The young girl was propping her chin up, frowning at the chessboard, her delicate white fingers resting on a chess piece, about to move it.
“Ah,” Grandpa Jiang said, “Think carefully now. If you move your cannon there, I’ll have to move my horse.”
The girl was reminded and paused her action again, looking somewhat troubled.
The air conditioning in the living room made everyone feel warm and lazy. Jiang Qi Huai stood there, leaning against the wall, watching for a while.
At some point, he suddenly felt that the scene before him was warm and harmonious.
It was a sight he hadn’t seen in over a decade.
Tao Zhi stayed until after eight in the evening.
She was having a great time, but the elderly man went to bed early, and it wasn’t appropriate for her to stay too late at a boy’s house. After finishing several games of chess, Tao Zhi checked the time, got up, and said goodbye.
Grandpa Jiang was reluctant to see her go. He walked her to the door, repeatedly telling her to come play again when she had time.
Tao Zhi smiled and agreed. Jiang Qi Huai closed the door.
The corridor instantly became quiet. The tungsten bulb on the ceiling cast dim light. Tao Zhi stood at the doorway, watching as Jiang Qi Huai turned around.
The young man was tall, casting her entire figure in shadow. Tao Zhi lowered her eyes, looking at their overlapping shadows on the cement floor, feeling a secret and happy satisfaction.
She walked in front, with Jiang Qi Huai following behind her down the stairs. Tao Zhi deliberately walked slowly, stepping on the shadows one by one as she went down. Jiang Qi Huai didn’t rush her.
The two walked in silence all the way to the alley entrance, neither speaking.
Passing through the small alley, the street ahead became bright. It was a weekend evening, the busiest time, with crowds of people moving about.
Tao Zhi turned her head to look at the convenience store beside them before asking, “You don’t work here anymore?”
“No, no time.”
Tao Zhi nodded, didn’t ask further, and stood at the roadside waiting to hail a car.
Jiang Qi Huai stood beside her and handed her a book.
He had been walking behind her the whole time, and Tao Zhi hadn’t even noticed he was carrying anything. She took it and looked — it was the English essay collection she had been reading at his house earlier.
Tao Zhi looked up at him: “I already have one at home, swindled from Jiang Zheng Xun!”
“This one is more suitable for you,” Jiang Qi Huai showed no reaction, paused, then added, “You can return his, it’s not worth keeping.”
“Oh,” Tao Zhi nodded somewhat bewilderedly, “Then I’ll return it to him on Monday.”
Just then, an empty taxi passed by. Tao Zhi waved her hand and got in.
She sat in the back seat, told the driver her address, then leaned back, flipping through the book in her hands.
Until the car drove past Jiang Qi Huai.
Tao Zhi glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the young man turning away in the distance.
When she got home, Ji Fan was lying on the couch playing with his tablet and eating fruit. Hearing the door open, the young man tilted his head to look at her: “Why are you home so early today?”
Tao Zhi was hugging the essay book, sat down beside him, and happily flipped through it.
The test papers were still on the coffee table. Nobody usually touched her things. Tao Zhi put the book aside and gathered up the test papers one by one.
The red correction marks on them had decreased from covering entire pages at the beginning to becoming fewer and fewer. Tao Zhi tapped the papers on the coffee table to straighten them, stacked them neatly, and put them aside.
She leaned back into the couch and continued looking at her precious essay book.
Ji Fan peered over: “What’s that thing?”
“If you can’t understand it, don’t look,” Tao Zhi said leisurely, “This isn’t something someone of your intelligence level can comprehend.”
Ji Fan looked at the familiar book, thought for a while, then remembered: “Isn’t this Jiang Qi Huai’s book? I saw him reading it the other day.”
As if her little secret had been exposed, Tao Zhi suddenly became uncomfortable. She raised her hand and slapped Ji Fan’s head: “Can’t I have bought the same one myself?”
“What the hell—” Ji Fan covered his head as he sat up, “If you bought the same one, fine, but why did you hit me?!”
Tao Zhi ignored him and continued flipping through the book on her own. She had only skimmed through it randomly before, but now that she was home, she planned to savor it page by page.
She opened the cover, and on the clean title page, there was a character casually written in black ink.
— Jiang.
Ji Fan: “…”
Tao Zhi: “…”
Ji Fan raised his head and looked at her suspiciously.
Tao Zhi kept a straight face and pointed at him: “Shut up, don’t say anything, keep your mouth shut.”
Next week would be the monthly exam.
It was still only a one-day exam, with just a week left. Tao Zhi divided her time into blocks, spending two days focusing on essay writing, then separately allocating the remaining three days equally between reading comprehension and multiple choice listening. She didn’t do any more complete test papers, afraid that if she got scores below the standard, it would affect her mood for the monthly exam.
Fu Xi Ling seemed even more nervous than her.
The girl who was usually more attentive than anyone in class couldn’t focus now, constantly asking her to explain grammar points or checking if she had finished memorizing the day’s vocabulary.
Tao Zhi actually wasn’t confident herself, but since Fu Xi Ling was already somewhat weak in science subjects, she didn’t want her to be affected by her situation. She could only put on a very confident face, as if she could score 150.
The people and teachers in Class 1 watched her going about leisurely every day, looking completely unbothered, as if she wasn’t nervous at all and was totally relaxed.
The night before the exam, Tao Zhi couldn’t sleep.
Before bedtime, Ji Fan knocked and came in to bring her a glass of milk. Tao Zhi didn’t drink it, and after tossing and turning in bed for two hours, she sat up dejectedly.
Originally this was just a bet with Li Shu Fei, and Tao Zhi didn’t think much of it, but now, this matter had become more than just a simple bet.
Tao Zhi wanted to do as well as possible.
She had to do well this time.
Only then could she have something slightly brilliant about herself.
Only then could she become, even just a little bit, worthy of Jiang Qi Huai.
She irritably ran her fingers through her hair, got out of bed, picked up the glass of milk from the desk, and gulped it down in one go.
The milk had gone completely cold, and the cold liquid sliding down her throat into her stomach made Tao Zhi feel even more awake.
She turned on the desk lamp and sat at her desk memorizing vocabulary for a while.
When her eyes started to feel sore, she looked up and saw the essay collection on her desk.
Tao Zhi put down her pen and picked up the book, opening it.
The young man’s usual handwriting on test papers was as neat as print, probably to avoid losing points, but his casual writing was much more relaxed. His strokes were sharp and bold, and he had written the character “Jiang” with such momentum that it seemed to encompass all rivers and seas, as if waves and tides were unfurling before her eyes like a painting.
Tao Zhi stared at that character for a while, and suddenly felt she understood Li Si Jia’s persistence.
When you like someone who’s very outstanding, you can’t help but feel somewhat inferior, wanting desperately to catch up to their footsteps and walk beside them.
Even though she had done almost nothing else this month except doing test papers, solving problems, and memorizing vocabulary, she still felt it wasn’t enough.
She took the book to her bedside, thought for a moment, then lifted her pillow and placed the book underneath. She lay down on top of it, pulled up her covers, and closed her eyes.
High density flows to low density, so when she wakes up after sleeping, all the content in the book will have flowed into her brain.
Mm-hmm.
Five hours later, Tao Zhi woke up before her alarm went off.
She squinted, lying in bed for a while to gather her wits, and her first realization upon becoming fully conscious — the high-density-to-low-density thing was a lie, there clearly weren’t any essays in her brain.
Because her English and Chinese scores had pulled up her total score quite a bit in the last monthly exam, Tao Zhi wasn’t in the last exam room this time. There were no familiar faces in the exam room, not even the rowdy Ji Fan. Tao Zhi sat in her assigned seat, handed in her phone, and waited for the proctor to enter and distribute the papers.
The English exam was in the afternoon. After finishing her morning exams, instead of cramming last-minute review, Tao Zhi returned to the exam room and took a nap on her desk.
The exam room was completely quiet, and she slept deeply, not hearing any sounds.
When Jiang Qi Huai passed by after lunch, he glanced inside.
The girl was lying sideways on her desk, her face nestled in the crook of her arm, her soft cheeks squished, lips slightly pouted, long eyelashes covering her eyelids.
The windows in the exam room were open, directly facing her seat. The draft paper under her arms rustled in the wind. She seemed a bit cold in her sleep, frowning and shrinking her neck before turning her head to face another direction.
Tao Zhi was awakened by the exam preparation bell.
When she lifted her head, the exam room was already full of returned students. The guy behind her had been playing basketball all afternoon and had taken off his school uniform jacket, leaving only his inner shirt, and was calling out: “Who closed all the windows?”
As he leaned forward to open the window, the proctor walked in.
Tao Zhi sat up, patted her face, and took a few sips of water to wake herself up.
After the afternoon exam ended, the experimental school came back to life.
As usual, they had to return to their classroom to arrange the desks and chairs. When Tao Zhi got back, a group of people were huddled together with a draft paper comparing answers.
Ji Fan glanced at her and very automatically dragged her desk and chair back into place, making a “please” gesture.
Tao Zhi raised her eyebrows at him: “What’s made you so attentive?”
“Well, you’ve been taking exams all day, thought you must be tired,” Ji Fan carefully observed her expression, “How do you feel?”
“How do I feel about what?” Tao Zhi played dumb.
“You know, how you feel,” Ji Fan said, “Aren’t you usually the most accurate about these feelings? Do you think you did okay?”
“Don’t know,” Tao Zhi yawned, pulling his backpack strap as they walked out, “Let’s go home, let’s go home, I’m starving.”
For several days in a row, the house played English listening exercises in the morning as usual, the only difference being that Tao Zhi no longer did listening exercises while eating breakfast.
Ji Fan was confused: “Wait, the exam is over, why are you still listening to these?”
“Got used to it,” the listening track just switched to the next section, and Tao Zhi looked up while biting her sandwich, “You know, learning never ends.”
Ji Fan didn’t understand this. He only knew that the sea of learning was endless, and he was painfully jumping into those endless waters day after day, never reaching the bottom.
Tao Zhi seemed no different from usual, still going about her routine. She returned all the borrowed notes and essay books one by one. She kept Jiang Qi Huai’s book out of personal desire, went to the teaching materials store to search around, bought an identical copy, and returned that to him.
When she returned the book, Jiang Qi Huai didn’t take it.
Tao Zhi waved the book in front of him: “Then I’ll just leave it here, okay?”
Jiang Qi Huai looked up and suddenly asked out of nowhere: “Did you return Jiang Zheng Xun’s book?”
Tao Zhi tilted her head: “Yeah, I did. Why?”
Jiang Qi Huai looked away, his lips unconsciously curling slightly: “Nothing, take it back, I’ve finished reading this one.”
Is your brain a machine or something?
Once you’ve saved and backed up the data, you never forget it?
Tao Zhi rolled her eyes and put the essay book on his desk.
Jiang Qi Huai opened it and looked, paused for a moment, his expression unchanged.
Tao Zhi felt somewhat guilty.
This book was obviously new, and it didn’t have his name on it.
But Jiang Qi Huai didn’t say anything, so she didn’t ask either, secretly keeping his essay book to herself, pressing her lips together while the little person in her heart put on a grass skirt and danced, as if she’d gotten away with something huge.
The experimental school graded the papers very quickly, and the next day, the monthly exam results were out.
That afternoon during the last class, when Teacher Wang brought in the results, he didn’t even maintain discipline as usual, and the entire class instantly fell silent.
“The questions this time were generally harder than last time. Last time we were lenient since it was the start of the semester, gave you all a taste of sweetness, and sure enough, some students started getting carried away, thinking they’ve ascended to immortality just because they scored seven hundred points,” Teacher Wang said, “Li Shuang Jiang, how does it feel to drop twenty points?”
Li Shuang Jiang had already been called to talk with Teacher Wang that afternoon and knew his score. He scratched his head, not looking particularly disappointed, and said quietly: “Six hundred and eight isn’t bad either… This is my real level anyway.”
His deskmate laughed beside him.
Teacher Wang continued: “I won’t read out all the scores, but overall, they’re not as high as last time. Our class only has one person above seven hundred, and I don’t need to say who it is, you all know.”
Everyone turned their heads to look at Jiang Qi Huai.
The subject of their attention remained unmoved in his chair, showing no reaction.
Teacher Wang continued, “However, our class monitor—”
Both Jiang Qi Huai and Tao Zhi looked up.
“The vice one,” Teacher Wang looked at her and said, “Your Wang teacher asked me to ask you if you have some grudge against him. How is it possible that your math score could get even worse than before?”
Teacher Wang smiled sarcastically and said: “I also want to ask you, for your physics score, the total is only one hundred points, and you haven’t even reached your lowest score limit yet?”
Ji Fan laughed out loud from behind, while Tao Zhi looked up at the ceiling, standing up obediently to accept the criticism.
“Alright, class representative will post the score sheet in front after class, you can look at it yourselves,” Teacher Wang opened his book, “Let’s start class.”
Tao Zhi sat down and took out her physics book and exercise book.
She spent the entire class daydreaming, feeling like grass was growing in her heart, and as if there was a small claw inside, scratching here and there, one moment hoping class would end quickly so she could see her scores, the next moment wishing this class would just continue forever, letting her never know how much she actually scored.
The class finally dragged to an end.
When the bell rang, no one rushed to pack their bags and go home like usual. Everyone crowded to the front of the classroom.
The study representative looked at the score sheet first, paused for a moment, then went to post it on the wall.
A bunch of heads gathered to look, with some people’s gazes occasionally scanning between her and Li Si Jia.
Tao Zhi slowly packed her bag, debating whether to act cool and go home to ask Ji Fan about her scores, or to go look for herself.
“Come on.” Fu Xi Ling couldn’t wait anymore and quietly urged her. Seeing no reaction, she stood up and pulled her hand, dragging her to the score sheet.
Tao Zhi stood behind the crowd, pressing her lips together as she looked.
The experimental school’s score sheet was very detailed, showing class rankings, individual subject scores, and year rankings for each subject.
The first line still had that name, Jiang Qi Huai steadily sitting at the top like a mountain, with a neat row of number ones following his name.
Tao Zhi lowered her eyes to scan down, finding Li Si Jia at sixth place, with an English score of 141, tied for first in the grade with Jiang Qi Huai.
Her heart suddenly jumped, and her gaze moved further down, finding herself at the bottom.
She directly ignored the other subjects and found English.
Subject ranking in the grade: 3.
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