The Scorching Sun - 25

 This month's exams were considerably difficult. As Fang Zhuo walked out of the testing room, she could hear complaints coming from all directions.

She returned to her own classroom, set her scratch paper and pencil case on the desk, her mind still replaying the problems from the test and her own solution logic.

Everything seemed fine. Today's math paper had been as smooth as the chocolate in those commercials, every single problem landing squarely on a concept she understood.

This made Fang Zhuo feel very happy. After all, good luck was generally a rare commodity in her life.

Yan Lie came back right after her. He fished his phone out of his desk and turned it on. Catching the eager look she immediately shot his way, he thoughtfully asked,"Want to compare answers?"

Fang Zhuo was actually deeply conflicted, terrified her luck would get cut down mid-stride. She picked up a book and read for a while, but absolutely couldn't find her focus. Finally, she said, "You can force me."

Yan Lie: "...?" You have that kind of hobby?

He was just about to make a joke about her definition of force when Shen Musi and Zhao Jiayou burst into the classroom like two lit firecrackers. 

The instant they were through the door, they swarmed around him, grabbing his collar and demanding loudly, "Lie Lie! The second part of the last big problem, tell me, is the answer one half, or two?"

Fang Zhuo silently mouthed the answer neither.

Right on cue, Yan Lie said,"Neither. What's wrong with you guys? Didn't you read the value range? How did you draw the graph?"

The two little firecrackers went silent for a few seconds, then exploded with a crackling pop, like a lit fuse. They clutched their heads and wailed, completely unable to accept the fact they'd been tripped up yet again.

This only made Fang Zhuo happier. Everything today seemed to be unfolding exactly as she'd hoped.

She felt unusually lucky.

Yan Lie caught the invisible glow radiating off her. With malicious delight, he leaned in close to her ear and reminded her, "Deskmate, the next exam is English."

The slight upward curve of Fang Zhuo's lips instantly flattened, her expression shifting to one of pure misery.

Was happiness in the adult world always this fleeting?

Yan Lie burst into loud laughter beside her, completely unrestrained despite Fang Zhuo's icy glare.

His sense of humor was honestly bizarre, and his attitude could flip on a dime. 

A while later, he came back to comfort her, his face an expression of sincere concern, "It's fine. Just memorize that essay template, you can apply it to at least half the topics. Trust Lie Lie's secret technique can definitely bump your score up by at least ten points."

Fang Zhuo had never had much confidence in English. She never knew why she did well or why she bombed.

The essence of the subject was hard to grasp, yet as a language, it was still built from simple vocabulary and grammar.

A lot of the time, you could rely on some vague intuition to feel your way to the right answer... although, of course, cases where that feeling led you wrong were not uncommon.

Kind of like Yan Lie.

Thinking this, Fang Zhuo shot him a cool glance.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Yan Lie assumed she didn't believe him. He thumped his chest in assurance, "I mean it!"

Fang Zhuo said, faintly and ominously: "I know."

The math papers were graded the fastest.

By the time Fang Zhuo finished the last exam that evening, the papers had already been marked, though the scores hadn't been tallied yet.

Shen Musi really was young and couldn't sit still. He ran to the office to sneak a peek at the test papers, then came back looking utterly defeated, collapsing face-down onto his desk.

Since monthly exams had just ended, the subject teachers hadn't assigned much homework.

Yan Lie played a round of a game. Finding the long-missed silence a bit unsettling, he went over and patted Shen Musi on the back, attempting to deepen their father-son bond.

"Son, don't be too heartbroken. Dad also didn't do well this time, so he won't blame you."

Shen Musi howled in fury: "Get the hell away from me, Dad! You nearly got full marks!"

"Did I?" Yan Lie said, in an insufferably blithe tone, "But it's not full marks yet, is it?"

Fang Zhuo was increasingly concerned that one day someone would beat him to death before he ever made it to the college entrance exams.

Yan Lie showed zero concern for his emotionally wounded son. Instead, he lowered his head and asked, "What about my deskmate's paper? Did you see it?"

Shen Musi said, "I don't know her exam number!"

Fang Zhuo recited it.

Shen Musi, who loved looking up people's scores, briefly rallied his spirits and dashed back to the office to find her paper.

Five minutes later, the Mousse Cake classmate trudged back, his face a mask of dejection. 

The moment Fang Zhuo saw his face, she knew she was safe.

"Yours is so high. You did so well this time," Mousse Cake said. "But I didn't calculate the total for you, I only got a hundred and twenty."

Fang Zhuo consoled him: "You definitely scored better than me in English.”

Shen Musi's eyes widened. "You could say that to literally anyone else in this class."

Fang Zhuo: "...?" This child is not kind.

Soon, other students brought back her scores. She'd gotten a 148, currently the known highest score in the grade, two points above Yan Lie.

Her math had always been quite good. She'd never been first before but always hovered near the top. Nobody found it especially shocking, just impressed she'd performed so exceptionally well this time, managing to crack the last problem on such a difficult paper.

Her scores in the other science subjects weren't much different from usual, a level that would absolutely never drag her down.

At noon the next day, the English scores Fang Zhuo had been so nervously awaiting came out.

A bright red number was marked in the upper right corner. The digit on it instantly cleared the sky for her.

At last, she had escaped the curse of barely passing. Not only escaped, but exceeded it by over a dozen points, ultimately clearing the 85 mark.

While this was by no means excellent—after all, the person next to her had scored over twenty points higher—for Fang Zhuo, it was a major breakthrough.

Yan Lie didn't even glance at his own answer sheet. He just pressed her to pull out her test paper, circled the questions she'd gotten wrong, and instructed her sternly: "Getting it right isn't enough. Guessing right doesn't count as knowing it. Hurry up and see what you don't understand, I'll mark the key points for you."

Fang Zhuo nodded, sincerely acknowledging the results of his teaching. She obediently took a red pen and annotated every grammar point.

In the afternoon, the English teacher came to go over the papers. After her summary, she made a point of mentioning Fang Zhuo.

She was still a young teacher, just a few years out of graduation. 

Perhaps seeing Fang Zhuo, that fossilized player who'd been squatting in the trenches for ten thousand years, had finally poked her head up, it reminded her of the passion she'd once had for this profession. 

She was visibly excited and heaped praise on Fang Zhuo for quite a while.

You really could tell she was young. Her compliments lacked the technical finesse that comes with years of experience.

She couldn't praise Fang Zhuo for some innate English talent, nor could she commend her elegant phrasing or vast vocabulary. So she kept repeating:

"She's worked so hard!"

"Hard work pays off!"

"Effort really does matter!"

The whole thing sounded like an essay written to satisfy an assignment prompt.

Fang Zhuo felt increasingly embarrassed.

Noticing her less-than-thrilled expression, Yan Lie quietly laughed to himself before raising his hand.

"Teacher, aren't you going to praise me too?"

The English teacher paused, took a sip of water, and laughed. "Do you really need more praise?"

"Of course!" Yan Lie said. "Fang Zhuo's score is a testament to our friendship! I worked really hard too!"

"Then I hope your friendship grows ever deeper," The teacher was so happy she stopped thinking before speaking. "There's only half a year left in senior year. Work hard and deepen those feelings, quickly!"

Fang Zhuo: "...?" 

The more she thought about that statement, the stranger it sounded.

***

Chinese was always the slowest subject to grade.

With this subject, it was hard to score exceptionally high or disastrously low. Fang Zhuo had almost forgotten about it entirely.

Two days later, the homeroom teacher finally walked in holding the answer sheets. She didn't hand them out right away. First, she gave a summary, then told everyone to take out their test papers for review.

Since one class period wasn't enough, she directly commandeered the self-study session after. Once she finished analyzing the reading comprehension, she moved on to the essay prompt.

At first glance, this month's topic seemed almost poetic.

Their province always produced wonderfully abstract essay prompts, the examiners' minds a labyrinth of twists and turns that were deeply unfathomable. 

Compared to the usual madness, this one was surprisingly straightforward. 

The prompt presented a short conversation and asked students to write on the topic:

If You Become a Plant.

The head teacher explained the implied meaning of the source material, then said, amused: "A few students went off-topic, but overall everyone did pretty well. The Four Gentlemen plants were the most popular choice. Ordinary wildflowers and weeds weren't bad either. But one student actually wrote about the red spider lily. What for? Are you planted on the road to the underworld, welcoming and seeing off the dead?"

The class roared with laughter.

The head teacher said, "I'm not saying you can't. It's like I always say: if you try to be too unconventional and your argument isn't convincing enough, your score will suffer. Like this one this time, it just didn't work."

She pulled out several high-scoring essays and read them aloud as examples.

The second essay happened to be Fang Zhuo's.

Fang Zhuo had written about the tumbleweed. Using its remarkable resilience as her starting point, she talks about its tenacious refusal to surrender despite bitter hardship, patiently awaiting its moment in the most unforgiving environments, then seizing a single thread of survival.

The middle section cited a few well-known classical allusions and verses. The ending circled back to echo the opening. The structure was solid and possessed a compelling momentum. Several teachers had independently awarded it high marks.

After the head teacher finished reading, she still felt the essay was genuinely well-written. A few lines were incisive and moving, and the emotion was remarkably full. She figured Fang Zhuo had probably poured her own experiences into it, every sentence seemed infused with perseverance.

She glanced at it a few more times, offered the praise "genuine emotion, fluid writing," and set the paper aside. 

Looking up, she noticed Yan Lie's hand raised high in the air.

In a good mood, she pointed at him, "What is it? Want to compliment your deskmate?"

Yan Lie stood up and said, "Teacher, I don't think it's genuine emotion. Fang Zhuo couldn't be a tumbleweed."

Fang Zhuo raised her head, tilting her face up to look at him. Though his face held a smile, she could see the seriousness in his eyes.

The head teacher laughed in exasperation. "What does that even mean? It doesn't matter what you think! This is her essay!"

"Tumbleweed is also called pigweed. That name is way too awful," Yan Lie turned his head and asked Fang Zhuo, "What do you think, deskmate?"

Fang Zhuo was persuaded within a second. She changed her tune on the spot: "I also don't think so. Maybe I should revise it."

Yan Lie raised his hand again, and without waiting for permission, he declared: "I think she's a sunflower."

"A sunflower doesn't have that kind of tenacious vitality!" the homeroom teacher said, helpless. "Yan Lie, are you just stirring up trouble? Her essay was so moving and you've completely ruined the atmosphere."

Yan Lie rested his chin on his hands, "But a sunflower always turns toward the sun."

Fang Zhuo paused to consider this, and discovered she really liked Yan Lie's various whimsical ideas. They always sounded baseless, and yet somehow made perfect sense. Every one of them felt alive. 

The homeroom teacher was so annoyed she grabbed a piece of chalk, ready to throw it at him. "I asked you to appreciate the writing techniques and arguments! Who's asking you about turning toward the sun!"

Yan Lie, having thoroughly stirred the pot, just stood there chuckling quietly, no trace of repentance on his face.

The teacher had no way to handle him. She straightened the papers on her desk and had the students in the front row pass them out.

The classroom quickly erupted into noise, all kinds of chatter mixing together.

Drinking from her water bottle, the teacher looked at the troublesome children below and clicked her tongue. "Everyone sit properly, stop moving around. What, do you all have landmines buried under your chairs?"

Just before dismissing class, she made another announcement: "Also, don't forget, parent-teacher conferences are next week. It's senior year, folks. If your parents can come, make sure they do. You understand what I mean, right? There aren't that many opportunities for your subject teachers to rack their brains thinking of nice things to say about you. So make sure they show up!"

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