Chapter 3 “It’s Dirty. Don’t Touch It.”

At nine o’clock in the evening, the dismissal bell rang.

The first-year curriculum was not as intense as the third-year one. Most day students packed up and went home at this hour. Only a very small number of particularly diligent ones stayed until ten.

But today the midterm exams had just ended, so everyone was relatively relaxed. Few people stayed behind to study.

Boarding students did not have that much freedom. Even if they had nothing to do, they still had to stay until ten before returning to the dormitory.

Class 6 had a total of forty-eight students. There were only about a dozen boarding students.

Today there was no teacher supervising. By the third period of evening self-study, everyone gradually became more casual. Two or three gathered together, chatting in low voices.

Clearly, they were full of curiosity about the new classmate.

“What’s your name?” The boy in front of Luo Yi turned around and asked her. “I’m Li Xiang.”

He looked over the new classmate in front of him: fair skin, large eyes, a delicate little nose tip. Only her lip color was a bit pale, carrying a soft, fragile air of illness.

“Luo Yi.” This time she simply wrote her name down on the notebook with a pen.

“Which school were you from before?”

“Tongze Experimental Middle School.”

“There’s also someone from Tongze in our class.” Li Xiang shouted toward the window side, “Hey, Qian Jiayun, this is your fellow townsman.”

The girl whose name had been called turned her head and walked over.

Qian Jiayun was about half a head taller than Luo Yi. She wore a pair of red-framed glasses and had a round face.

“I studied in Tongze until the fourth grade of elementary school, then I’ve been in Xishui ever since. The teaching quality here is better, and the rate of advancing to higher education is also higher.” Qian Jiayun squeezed Li Xiang aside, plopped down, and asked, “Which elementary school were you at? Foreign Language or the Affiliated Primary School?”

“Foreign Language.”

“What a coincidence. I was at Foreign Language too.”

Qian Jiayun had been in Class 1 in elementary school, Luo Yi in Class 5. They had been relatively far apart and had never really heard of each other.

But when fellow townsmen met fellow townsmen, both sides’ eyes filled with tears. Just based on this connection, the two could quickly become familiar.

“There are twenty classes in our grade. Classes 1 through 6 are the experimental classes selected based on the combined results of the high school entrance exam and the placement test.” Qian Jiayun said, “Being able to transfer from Tongze into an experimental class at No.1 High is not simple.”

The implication was that either her grades were especially good, or her family had special connections.

Luo Yi was a bit dazed. How could she have known that her dad had actually gotten her into an experimental class?

“What was your high school entrance exam score?” Li Xiang asked. “Our class average is 720. The unified admission line for No.1 High is 710.”

Luo Yi: “……”

Talking about grades really hurt feelings.

Luo Yi had scored 680 on the high school entrance exam. In Tongze that was considered a pretty good score. She had never expected she could not even touch the threshold of No.1 High.

“My grades aren’t as good as yours,” she said awkwardly.

“It’s fine. As long as you’re in an experimental class, it’s equivalent to having one foot in a key university.” Qian Jiayun secretly pinched Li Xiang’s arm, meaning he had asked too bluntly and scared the new classmate.

That was true. The advancement rate of the experimental classes at Xishui No.1 High was astonishingly high.

Last year, every student in the experimental classes had scored above the first-tier university line on the college entrance exam. About half of them had gotten into the few domestically recognized elite universities with extremely high score lines.

Sigh, was she going to drag everyone down? Luo Yi thought sorrowfully.

“Where did you go just now?” Qian Jiayun changed the topic. “You only came back after the class bell rang.”

Luo Yi did not want others to know she had been invited for tea by the director of the Moral Education Office, so she said, “I got a little lost.”

“Our school is a bit big, hahaha.” Li Xiang chimed in. “But how come you came back together with Ye Xiaoyang?”

“I only ran into him in the corridor.” Luo Yi stopped there.

“Ye Xiaoyang, huh…” At the mention of this person, Qian Jiayun had things to say. “His grades are super good. He almost always ranks first in the grade. Practically non-human.”

“He’s a reserve for Tsinghua and Peking University.” Li Xiang glanced at Ye Xiaoyang’s empty seat. He had already gone home.

“If my grades were as good as his, I could laugh myself awake even in dreams.” Li Xiang sighed.

Big brother, you scored around 720 on the high school entrance exam. You’re already non-human, okay? Luo Yi thought to herself. Who knows if even the top scorer in Tongze reached 720.

“Girls from other classes often come during breaks out of admiration and stand at the classroom door secretly looking at him.” Qian Jiayun gave Luo Yi a look, letting her understand for herself. “You’ll know later.”

From just these few sentences, Luo Yi understood a little.

Although she and Ye Xiaoyang were in the same class, the gap between them was almost enough to fill Mount Everest plus the Mariana Trench.

At least when it came to academic performance.

When ten o’clock arrived, Qian Jiayun took Luo Yi back to the dormitory.

The dormitories at No.1 High were four-person rooms. Originally there had been only three girls from Class 6 living on campus. With Luo Yi’s arrival, the number was now complete.

The other two girls were also very friendly when they met Luo Yi and thoughtfully taught her how to use the independent bathroom in the dorm room.

Perhaps because everyone usually put their energy into studying, there was not much scheming among the girls in this dorm. Their relationship was very pure.

After washing up, Luo Yi changed into her Rilakkuma pajamas, climbed onto the bed, covered herself with the thin quilt, and lay down properly.

After lights-out, the girls’ dormitory started a room meeting.

“The teachers should still be grading papers right now, right?”

“Probably only physics and chemistry haven’t been finished yet. Chinese, math, and English were tested the first two days, so the results should already be out. They’re probably entering the scores now.”

“Sigh, I didn’t understand the last long dialogue in the English listening section at all. I’m probably going to fail.”

“What are you panicking about? One listening section is at most three or four points. I’ve already checked answers on the math fill-in-the-blank questions and gotten three wrong. If I can score 130 this time, I’ll thank the heavens.”

Isn’t 130 in math pretty high? Luo Yi thought.

In any case, she did not dare to say anything, and she did not dare to ask.

Luo Yi carefully pricked up her ears to listen to this group of top students discuss. Listening and listening, she unconsciously fell asleep.

The next day was Thursday. The first class in the morning was physics.

The dazed morning reading session had just ended when Ji Changming strode into the classroom with a stack of graded papers.

The student on duty had not cleaned the blackboard. Ji Changming set the papers on the podium and picked up the eraser to start wiping.

Instant alarm bells rang through the classroom. Several classmates who had been about to leave their seats to move around pulled back their eager feet and became quiet as chickens. Every student sat on pins and needles, their gazes locked tightly on the stack of papers on the podium.

Luo Yi saw Ye Xiaoyang resting one hand against his cheek, spinning a pen with the other, his expression leisurely, his sitting posture relaxed.

There was an extra soccer ball under his stool. It seemed he had gone to the little woods early in the morning to retrieve the ball.

After the class bell rang, Ji Changming did not rush to announce the scores.

“Our class has a new classmate. Everyone welcome her.”

After a round of applause, under the gaze of dozens of pairs of eyes, Luo Yi stood up awkwardly.

“Hello everyone, my name is Luo Yi.” She had not prepared a self-introduction and did not know what else to say.

Ji Changming pressed his palm downward, signaling Luo Yi to sit.

“The new classmate looks pretty young,” Zhou Jiahang said. “Doesn’t look like a high school student.”

Ye Xiaoyang suddenly blurted out, “When you should speak you don’t, and when you shouldn’t speak you still have a lot to say.”

Tsk.

Zhou Jiahang shot him a sideways glance.

This guy, he wouldn’t still be holding a grudge from last night, would he?

Next came the tense and exciting part of announcing the scores.

“This time our class average is 80, first in the grade.” Ji Changming changed his tone. “But the average score cannot represent individual performance. Those who did well in the class can get full marks. Those who did poorly actually only scored in the sixties.”

“Classmates who didn’t do well need to carefully reflect. Was it carelessness or knowledge points you didn’t understand? Classmates who did well need to guard against arrogance and impatience and keep working hard.”

So even in the experimental class of No.1 High, the gap between the rich and the poor was shockingly large.

“Now announcing the scores.” Ji Changming unfolded the papers and picked up the first one. “Ye Xiaoyang, 100.”

Ji Changming rarely showed a smile of approval and said, “This is the only perfect score in the entire grade for this midterm exam.”

Under a sea of envious gazes, the paper was passed from the front row to Ye Xiaoyang’s hands in the back.

Ye Xiaoyang’s face did not show much emotion. Only one corner of his lips curved up slightly. That look of disdain mixed with confidence seemed to declare that everything was within his control.

“Chen Shuang, 92.”

Chen Shuang was also one of the top students in the class. She had not expected there to be a full eight-point gap between her and Ye Xiaoyang.

After all the papers had been handed out, the classroom was filled with wails of misery.

This physics exam could be described as a bloody storm. On the surface the average was 80, but most students’ scores hovered around 80. Very few scored above 90.

Ji Changming went over the paper. Luo Yi could not understand more than a few of the questions.

Not only were there contents she had never learned, even the parts she had studied had extremely difficult questions.

Thinking about it this way, those who could score 80 were all quite something.

During the activity period in the afternoon, Ji Changming arranged for everyone to switch seats.

Luo Yi moved to the front. Her deskmate was none other than Qian Jiayun.

Although Ji Changming was a typical science and engineering man, he did not lack the sensitivity of a people’s teacher. He had noticed the two were from the same place, so he arranged it this way.

After evening self-study ended, Luo Yi remembered she was on duty the next day and went to the notice board to look at the cleaning group information.

“Friday, cleaning area…” Luo Yi stood on tiptoe and carefully searched for the information. That column clearly wrote “Group leader: Ye Xiaoyang.”

Last night she had not known him, but today, even if she wanted to ignore him, she could not manage it.

Ye Xiaoyang’s halo was too dazzling. Not only had he scored full marks in physics, he had full marks in all four subjects of math, physics, chemistry, and biology.

This kind of person was generally not called a top student, but an academic god. Top students had an upper limit. Academic gods had no upper limit. That was the difference.

The next day, Luo Yi arrived at the classroom early. Ye Xiaoyang was already there, organizing the cleaning tools at the cleaning corner.

“I’m in your group,” Luo Yi said softly.

Her voice was very light and soft, carrying a trace of sweetness, like a cotton candy.

Ye Xiaoyang lowered his long black lashes and discovered that this petite and delicate transfer student seemed a bit afraid of him.

When speaking to him, half of her palm was hidden in her sleeve, her index finger curling uneasily.

“I’ll take you over.” Ye Xiaoyang handed her several brooms, while he himself took the dustpan and trash can.

“What about the others?”

“They’ll go over by themselves.”

The handles of these brooms together were very thick. Luo Yi’s hands were small and could not hold them. The broom in the middle kept falling down.

So Luo Yi simply hugged the brooms and stumbled after him. Ye Xiaoyang saw her looking like a clumsy penguin and could not help smiling.

“Give them to me.” He hooked the trash can onto his other hand and used the free one to take the brooms from her hands.

Before Luo Yi could react, Ye Xiaoyang had already pulled away several brooms, leaving only one in her hands.

Looking at him again, both of his hands were full of cleaning tools. Luo Yi felt embarrassed and said, “Let me help you carry the trash can.”

“No need.” Ye Xiaoyang’s thin lips parted slightly. “It’s not clean. Don’t touch it.”