Chapter 5
Chapter 5
After another feverish night of study, I felt as if someone had injected pure adrenaline into my veins.
Trigonometry, solid geometry, English vocabulary, classical Chinese terms…
When I went downstairs for breakfast the next morning, I was still turning over the problem I had read before bed.
I ate in a hurry.
“Ruanruan,” Jiang Zhan said suddenly. “Do you want to—”
But I was already at the front door with my backpack, thinking about taking my test papers to Ms. Chen after school. I didn’t even hear the rest.
At lunch, Wei Yan cornered me beneath the teaching building on my way back from the cafeteria.
He pinned me against the wall. His upturned eyes gleamed with amusement.
“So,” he teased, “what color is it today?”
Huh?
Color?
My head was still full of our last biology class.
“The nucleus stains blue-violet, while the cytoplasm stains red.”
“?”
Wei Yan’s face froze. Then he laughed in sheer anger.
“Enough already. How long are you going to keep pretending? Don’t you know what you’re capable of? No amount of effort will help when your brain can’t keep up.”
He scoffed and tilted his head.
“What?” His eyes curved with his smile, but the mockery in them was undisguised. “Xue Ruanruan, don’t tell me…”
“You want to rank first in the grade?”
He cracked himself up.
“This performance to get my attention has gone far enough. Any more and it becomes a joke.”
Something about his words made me uncomfortable, though I couldn’t say what.
He wasn’t exactly wrong.
I had been an idiot all my life.
But…
But…
I pressed my lips together, remembering Ms. Chen’s gentle smile.
“Fuck him!” the system exploded. “That dumb piece of shit. Take first place and rub it in his face!”
I couldn’t.
“Why the hell not? I’ve turned you into the greatest study lover in the world. Just crush him.”
I didn’t answer. Lowering my head, I said softly, “…I’m only putting on a show for my mom.”
Another lie.
But Wei Yan seemed to hear the answer he wanted. He laughed once and walked away.
“System?”
Silence.
It was ignoring me.
After school, I called it again while packing my bag. Still nothing.
I went to the office and took out my last exam. The night before, I had circled everything I had already mastered.
Ms. Chen was grading homework. When she saw me, she pulled over a chair.
She laid my exercise book beside the test and went through every problem: where my reasoning was right, where I had gone wrong, and which chapter and section contained the weak point.
“Your foundation is indeed poor,” she said at last. “But you understand new ideas quickly. Work on filling in those gaps first.”
“Let’s set a small goal. Improve by fifty places next time. Does that sound good?”
I nodded hard.
Outside the office, I tried the system again.
“System, don’t be mad at me. Please?”
The electronic voice sounded distant.
“…Why did you say you couldn’t do it?”
“I rank in the eight hundreds.”
“How many students are in your grade?”
“…A thousand.”
The system was quiet for several seconds. “Are you a pig?”
“I never needed to study before. Jiang Zhan said I only had to graduate from high school, and then I could go abroad to university with him.”
“You score that badly in English. How will you talk to anyone overseas?”
“Jiang Zhan will be there.”
“Hah. You plan to cling to him twenty-four hours a day? What happens when he has something else to do? Will you sit at home waiting for him?”
“What are you, then?”
“A dog?”
I bristled. “You say the meanest things.”
It ignored me again.
“Oh, come on. Don’t be angry. I’ll work hard. I promise.”
“Fine.”
I took notes in class, asked teachers questions after class, and worked problems during self-study.
At home, I rebuilt all the knowledge I had missed. Every night I studied until the small hours, then went to school with dark circles under my eyes.
I no longer had time for makeup. I tied my hair into a careless ponytail and left.
One day, my deskmate stared at me for ages and said, “Ruanruan, you actually have dark circles.”
“Do I?”
I kept solving the problem in front of me.
“Didn’t you used to say that no one would want a girl with dark circles?”
My pen paused.
Before this, I had gotten up an hour early every morning to apply makeup, curl my hair, and match my hair accessories.
But now…
I resumed writing.
It didn’t seem that important anymore.
I was especially nervous on the day of the midterm exams.
For the first time, I filled in every answer sheet.
After the final subject, I checked myself in the restroom mirror.
Two pimples had appeared, along with tiny bumps across my forehead from staying up late.
I stole a glance at the girls beside me who were also looking in the mirror.
They had dark circles too.
I used to feel as if leaving the house without makeup was the same as walking around naked.
Now, it didn’t seem like a big deal.
I happened to run into Wei Yan in the corridor.
Leaning against the railing, he gave me his familiar mocking smile. “Well, if it isn’t our future number one.”
How had I never noticed how punchable he was?
“Because your brain has finally switched on,” the system said coolly.
I ignored him and walked around him without a word.