Chapter 30
At first it was only a small group in 1st Year Cla.s.s One who were howling in grief. Later, some people pa.s.sed it on to the other cla.s.ses, and finally the entire high school 1st year was in an uproar.
“The scope of this month’s monthly language exam will be enlarged!”
“Inside information, the Chinese language will have a senior year question. Let’s experience the ‘charm’ of the college entrance exam in advance!”
“Dude, isn’t your cousin in 3rd year high school? Hurry up and check out their exercise sheet!”
Outside, everyone was gripped by a reign of terror but the place where the rumors originated was quite peaceful.
Qiao Shao praised He Shen. “You didn’t sleep for most of the day. That’s really commendable.”
He Shen supported his chin on his hand and looked at him. “Shouldn’t Teacher Qiao give me a reward?”
Qiao Shao stared at him. “What reward should I give you? Learning is your own business, you didn’t learn for me.”
This tone of speaking was really like a teacher’s.
He Shen fell to the table. “Then I’ll reward myself with sleep.”
“Hey …” Qiao Shao struck him with a pen, “Aren’t you being too c.o.c.ky after just being praised a little?”
He Shen yawned.
The next cla.s.s was physics, which Qiao Shao thought was rather difficult and he didn’t want him to miss it. “Fine, fine, fine. What reward do you want?”
He Shen glanced at his cheek from out of the corner of his eye, and slowly said, “Give me …”
Qiao Shao: “Huh?”
He Shen turned his head and said in a m.u.f.fled voice, “Give me a drink of your water.”
Qiao Shao: “???”
What kind of reward was that!
Forget it, this guy loves to do things like these.
“If you’d said earlier, I would have had you prepare your own gla.s.s …” Qiao Shao said and handed him his gla.s.s, “Drink, it’s refreshing.”
He Shen took his cup and took a sip after opening the lid.
“Cough!” He Shen almost sprayed it out.
“What’s this?” He Shen sat up straight, his brows wrinkled tightly.
Qiao Shao laughed happily. “Were you invigorated?”
He Shen: “…”
Qiao Shao grabbed his own gla.s.s and took a sip for himself: “No sugar or milk, double black coffee. Absolutely refreshing.”
He Shen couldn’t help asking, “Isn’t it bitter?”
Qiao Shao said in earnest, “One cannot achieve glory and wealth without having been through trials and tribulations. You think I don’t get sleepy in cla.s.s?”
If only he had it so easy!
He slept at eleven in the evening and woke up at five in the morning. All day long was filled with obscure lessons that just enticed people to sleep. He depended on black coffee to refresh and clear his mind!
He Shen paused: “If you’re sleepy, then sleep for a bit.”
What was the difference between drinking that sh*t and drinking poison?
Qiao Shao stared at him: “I came to school to study hard and improve every day. If all I wanted to do was sleep then I should have just stayed home!”
He suffered untold hardships in order to be able to attend East High. If he didn’t produce any good results, how could he face Comrade Da Qiao who stood up to his grandpa’s dressing down and his granddad’s violent attack.
He Shen had a complicated expression. For a while, he didn’t know how to feel sorry for this child.
In a deep tone of voice, “You’ve worked hard.”
The crux of the matter was that he was working so hard but still wouldn’t be able to get first in their year.
Qiao Shao waved his hand and said, “No pain, no gain. Besides, I don’t feel bad about working hard.”
In fact, he was quite happy. It has been nearly ten days since he came to East High, and every day, he was happier than the day before.
He Shen took his black coffee again and forced himself to take a sip …
He gagged!
Qiao Shao laughed: “Okay, if you’re thirsty, buy water for yourself.”
They were often together from morning to night. Qiao Shao had discovered early, that He Shen had a sweet tooth. He puts two spoonful of sugar in his soy milk. He liked his pastries sweet. If there was sweet and sour spareribs in the canteen for lunch, he was sure to order it.
Thinking of this …
Qiao Shao rummaged around his drawer for a long time. “This is for you.”
It was the lollipop that Lin Su, the English cla.s.s representative, gave him. Qiao Shao was not interested in sweets and just threw it into his drawer.
He Shen was slightly dazed.
Qiao Shao peeled off the candy wrapper and said, “I’m letting you have this candy so you have to behave.You must also behave well tomorrow, and you are not allowed to sleep.”
This was the tone you used to coax a child!
He Shen approached suddenly, biting the candy directly from his hand.
Qiao Shao was startled.
He Shen was very close to him. His eyes were looking up at him and they were filled with a distinctly domineering quality, but his tone was light and casual. “Then, Teacher Qiao must prepare a lot more sweets.”
Qiao Shao understood why the girls secretly called him a male G.o.d.
He was certainly … a little handsome!
He, who himself was a boy, totally got it.
Qiao Shao put his hand on He Shen’s forehead and pushed him away.”Study hard, I’ll buy you a sugar factory after you pa.s.s the exam.”
He Shen asked: “How will you buy it?”
Buy it with money, obviously. Buy one, two, three, four sugar factories …
Oh, Young Master Qiao remembered his poor student persona. He said: “Knowledge is the greatest productive force. When I get ahead in the future, I’ll be able to afford a sugar factory.”
He Shen laughed: “I’ll wait and see.”
Seeing him with a lollipop in his mouth, two words suddenly jumped into Qiao Shao’s head—
Roguishly handsome.
En, sure enough, he had the essence of a delinquent slacker!
By Tuesday afternoon’s cleaning, Qiao Shao’s foot was almost healed.
Although it had hurt pretty badly, Qiao Shao’s injury wasn’t actually that bad. In addition, the timely application of the medicine and hot compress, made it a lot better.
However, the hygiene committee member still did not arrange any work for him. But due to Qiao Shao’s insistence, he was given the small task of wiping the desks.
Chen Su, who had cleaned the toilet for the past six months, finally got rid of this ch.o.r.e.
Jie Kai and the others, probably feeling very apologetic, took on this job.
Chen Su came to help Qiao Shao clean the tables.
As for He Shen … He had long ago slipped away to who knows where.
Who would dare mess with the bad boy who mingled with the school tyrant all day?
— Qiao Shao thought so.
Chen Su helped Qiao Shao clean the table, and at the same time said to him, “I heard that this month’s Chinese exam is going to be difficult. You should remember to review it.”
This was Qiao Shao’s first exam after transferring schools, and Chen Su knew that this was important to him.
Qiao Shao wasn’t added into any of the groups in the school, so he was hearing this for the first time: “Chinese?”
Wasn’t mathematics normally the subject which liked to go beyond the scope of the syllabus? So why was the gentle and refined Chinese Gongzi coming in to join the fun?
Chen Su, “They say that it’s inside information that got spread around.”
Qiao Shao wondered, “Where’d the inside information come from?”
Chen Su said, “I’m not sure either, but the Chinese cla.s.s representatives from different cla.s.ses said so, all of them were very nervous.”
Although the source originally came from First Year Cla.s.s One and the originator of all this hubbub was Qiao Shao himself, the tricky thing about rumors was that after it was pa.s.sed about thirty-six times, no one knew what form it would take.
Qiao Shao cautiously said, “Thanks for reminding me.”
Chen Su smiled. “You don’t have to be too nervous. No matter how difficult the language exam, they can’t ask us something we haven’t studied before. They’ll most probably just test us on stuff from before.”
As for reading comprehension and composition, it all depended on your acc.u.mulated knowledge and innate talent, which can’t be mended in just a day or two.
“I’ll pay attention to that.”
He basically missed the whole last semester. It seems he’ll need to hurry and make up for it.
The next day, Qiao Shao caught He Shen and began to enlighten him of the latest gossip. “This month’s Chinese exam is going to be difficult. They’ll probably test us on some things from the previous semester. Let’s review the Cla.s.sics!”
Don’t talk about the Cla.s.sics, He Shen remembered the entire book of compulsory readings for high school first year Chinese. Oh, he also took a look at the compulsory readings for second year as well, so it’s all in his head now.
“Which one do you want to memorize?” Although He Shen already has it memorized, the child was such an enthusiastic learner that he didn’t want to deal him this psychological blow.
Qiao Shao said: “Let’s do this first …” Then he already started reading, “Six nations defeated, united into one, E"fang Palace emerges. Three hundred li covering from Weinan to Xieyang, towering tall to blot out the sky …”
He Shen heard his soft voice and couldn’t bear to remind him of E’fang’s correct p.r.o.nunciation.
During the break between cla.s.ses, the Chinese cla.s.s representative, who had been called over by Song Yixu to a.n.a.lyze his composition, was once again shocked.
E’fang Palace!
G.o.d He Shen was memorizing E’fang Palace!
Mo Xiaoxiao couldn’t pay attention to Song Yixu anymore. She hurriedly sent a message to her sisters: “We’re in serious trouble! It turns out that this month’s exam focused on topics from last semester!”
“Why do you say that?”
“The male G.o.d is memorizing E’fang Palace!”
“WTF, old Qin is so treacherous!”
Qin Zhongxian was the leader of the Chinese language group and their Chinese language teacher.
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” said the representative of the Chinese cla.s.s in Cla.s.s Two. “Will simple memorization stump our male G.o.d? I suspect Lao Qin will make us recite it backwards.”
“Emmm …”
“I think that’s bit ridiculous …”
“I think that’s impossible …”
The second cla.s.s representative was shamed into anger. “How can it not be possible! Even G.o.d He Shen has begun to memorize the lesson. What else is impossible? Brothers and sisters, this is a vision from heaven, we mustn’t be careless!”
When this reached Qiao Shao’s ears, he quickly said to He Shen, “What should we do? Teacher Qin is looking to kill us. I heard that he is going to set the questions backwards. He’s going to make us recite it backwards.”
He Shen: “………”
He was fully capable of reciting it backwards but wouldn’t that be the death of this little kid?
Because E’fang Palace, this single narrative, the little shorty pulled out quite a few hairs.
“Don’t listen to them.” He Shen comforted him. “That’s impossible.”
Qiao Shao said, “I think so too. I mean what’s the sense of an exam like that?”
He Shen felt his nervousness and continued to comfort him: “Relax, let’s just review normally.”
“En…” Qiao Shao agreed but he was still nervous. He said, “Have you finished your homework?”
He has been taking pains to check if He Shen did his homework every day for the past few days.
He Shen gave him last night’s Math exercises.
Qiao Shao looked …
All done, but for the last few big questions he only wrote down the answers. Let alone his calculations, he didn’t even put down his process solution.
Qiao Shao thought, ‘Even when he’s just copying he can’t even be bothered to copy a lot!’
Obviously, he hadn’t done this paper himself. He either made wild guesses all the way, or found the answer sheet and copied the answers.
If he had done his exercises truthfully, how come there weren’t any corrections?
He Shen’s paper was completely neat and tidy, as though he had done it in just ten minutes.
But……
Let’s do it like this for the time being. He mustn’t push too hard. Taking the initiative to do his own homework was already a big step forward.
Qiao Shao said reluctantly, “It’s fine, continue to work hard.”
He Shen looked down at him.
Qiao Shao felt around for a piece of candy in his pocket.
He Shen was dissatisfied. “Such a small piece.”
Qiao Shao unwrapped the candy and was about to hand it to him, when He Shen lowered his head and ate it out of his palm.
“You,” He Shen’s lips had made slight contact against Qiao Shao’s hand. His words stumbled a bit, “you — answer it seriously next time and I’ll give you a bigger one.”
For such perfunctory homework, it’s more than enough that I even gave you any candy!
This paper was 100% correct. If this wasn’t considered seriously answering it, then Xiao Qiao tongxue’s requirements were a bit too high.
But it didn’t matter, He Shen smiled and said, “It’s so sweet.”
At this time, the bell rang, and Qiao Shao sat still and looked at the blackboard, his eyes gave the slightest tremble.
In the blink of an eye, it was now Thursday.
The monthly exam was scheduled for Friday.
Boss Tang arranged the examination room and seat number. He also thoughtfully prepared some food for thought for his students. “This is the last monthly exam. Next time it will be the end of term exams. I hope that the students will take it seriously and grasp firmly every exam. Take every one as a final sprint to the finish line so that you will not disappoint your youth! ”
Old Tang talked pa.s.sionately, and gave Qiao Shao a rush of blood, and a little nervousness as well.
He hasn’t taken the exam for a long time, not since …
En, he hasn’t been in an exam room since.
In this first exam, he wanted to prove himself and get a good result!
“Our seats are front and back to each other.” He Shen’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
Qiao Shao turned his head to see He Shen’s examination room and seat no. Exam room 16, no. 1.
And Qiao Shao’s own was exam room 16, no. 2.
Qiao Shao’s nervous heart suddenly relaxed a lot. “What a fateful coincidence.”
He Shen’s lips hooked up. “Yes, very fateful.”
In fact, the seats in the test room were ranked according to the results of the previous monthly test.
He Shen didn’t partic.i.p.ate last time, so he was last in cla.s.s; Qiao Shao was a transfer student without any grade.
So both were in the last examination room.
But being able to get a table front and back to each other was fate.
What you have to know is that the students in the last exam room have comparable grades.
Come Friday, Qiao Shao entered the exam room and found a lot of acquaintances.
Chen Su was definitely not there. The second in their year was far away in the first exam room, which happened to be Cla.s.s One’s usual cla.s.sroom.
And as for exam room sixteen…
The school tyrant Lou Xiao, Blue Hair a.k.a Wei Jiayu, Song Yixu from the table in front of him, and his own seatmate, He Shen.
Seeing all these familiar faces, Qiao Shao was a little fl.u.s.tered —-
Shoot! They say birds of a feather flock together. Doesn’t he seem to know quite a lot of slackers?