The Scorching Sun - 39
This year's Spring Festival holiday came unusually early. As soon as New Year's Day was over, the school immediately organized a citywide joint examination so everyone could get back into the rhythm of studying before the holiday.
Fang Zhuo didn't have much of a concept of the joint examination, nor did she particularly care about her ranking across the province or city. As far as she was concerned, they were all just endless practice papers. Class rankings felt much more tangible.
As long as she could stay somewhere in the middle or above, she was sure to get into a decent first-tier university. That was simply the idea that had been drilled into her by everyone around her for years.
Because all the papers had to be marked together, it took quite a while for the results to be released.
Fang Zhuo had known the moment she finished the exams that she hadn't performed that well. After listening to the teachers go over the answers, she had a rough idea of how she'd done, so she wasn't expecting much.
She actually knew how to solve the final mathematics question. The approach itself wasn't particularly difficult, but the calculations were excessively tedious.
Unfortunately, she made an embarrassingly basic mistake on the very first differentiation step, and everything that followed went completely wrong.
Her luck hadn't been much better in physics. The questions themselves clearly weren't difficult, yet she had to stare at one of the diagrams several times before she finally understood it, and still managed to overlook one of the conditions while analyzing the motion.
She didn't quite know how to describe the state she'd been in during the exams. It was probably something like pouring water into concentrated sulfuric acid. She'd barely touched the surface before everything started exploding with a violent crackle.
Yan Lie analyzed it for her, and said that she was nervous, which affected her reaction speed. But it wasn't a big deal. She could work on it and overcome it with practice.
Compared with those two subjects, the chances of her crashing and burning in Chinese and English were much lower. For the first time, Fang Zhuo felt genuinely grateful for those two subjects.
When her final English score was released, Fang Zhuo had gotten over ninety points for the first time in her life.
Her English teacher was thrilled. She had originally thought Fang Zhuo's English was like a deadweight ox cart that no amount of pulling could move, she hadn't expected such a dramatic improvement within a single semester.
She'd even specifically gone through the paper with Fang Zhuo. Fang Zhuo's progress had been steady and solid. The questions she'd blindly guessed on were almost never correct. The biggest changes were in her vocabulary and her ability to apply basic grammar.
At this rate, even if she did nothing else, all she had to do was write the words in her English essay a little more neatly, get just a tiny bit luckier with her guesses, and she could probably squeeze another five or six points out of her score. She might even break into triple digits.
Who wouldn't love a diligent, smart student?
Even after systematically analyzing the paper, the English teacher still couldn't quite calm down. She simply had Fang Zhuo share her secrets of success with everyone.
The whole spectacle was so grand that Fang Zhuo almost thought she'd become the city's top scorer.
The students cheered and applauded. Fang Zhuo couldn't very well refuse, so she stood up.
She let both hands rest on the desk and thought it over. In truth, there wasn't anything particularly sophisticated about how she'd improved. Even with some artistic packaging, she couldn't come up with a good-sounding explanation. After much struggle, she finally managed to summarize it in one sentence. "Work hard and memorize vocabulary."
She looked completely serious when she said it, but after racking her brain, she genuinely couldn't think of anything else, all that remained was this seemingly perfunctory sentence. She stood there stiffly and awkwardly.
Yan Lie led the applause, dispelling the awkward silence that had begun to gather at exactly the right moment.
Fang Zhuo breathed a sigh of relief, then added, "Thank you, everyone."
Yan Lie pointed at himself meaningfully.
Fang Zhuo hurriedly added, "Oh, right. And find yourself a good deskmate."
The English teacher burst out laughing. Remembering something, she seized the opportunity to tell everyone about it.
"I know. One of the teachers in Grade Eleven mentioned it to us. He happened to be on duty over New Year's, and sometime after eight that evening, he ran into two students at school. They were standing under a streetlamp in the freezing cold, diligently memorizing vocabulary. He was so moved! I knew right away it had to be you two!"
Neither of them objected. The English teacher joked around with them for another couple of minutes until the bell rang to signal the end of class.
That afternoon, the teachers had to attend a staff meeting.
The English teacher copied a movie clip onto the computer and told them to pick out one memorable line from it, then choose a topic related to the film and turn it into a short piece of essay to hand in. After giving them their instructions, she hurried off.
Fang Zhuo had no idea what movie was playing anymore. The moment the soothing background music began, the exhaustion brought on by her perpetual lack of sleep quickly pulled her into unconsciousness.
By the time she woke up, the self-study period was almost over. She hurriedly took out her notebook, wanting to write down a line.
The movie was beautifully shot, but so much of the earlier story had passed her by that Fang Zhuo couldn't make sense of it.
On the screen was a stretch of golden sand, white waves breaking against the shore, and people running along the beach.
The scene was tranquil and beautiful. Fang Zhuo instinctively remembered Yan Lie had once said he wanted to go see the sea. She turned to look at him. Sure enough, he was watching with complete attention, his entire face washed in a blue shimmer from the light reflected off the screen.
Then the voice-over began. The film's heroine recited the words in a languid, peaceful voice:
"That day, when I slipped into the sea with him and watched the sunlight glimmering across the surface, I finally realized that even in my spring, the sun could bloom."
Fang Zhuo savored the words for a moment, finding them wonderfully evocative with a distinctly Eastern kind of romance. It happened to echo the idea she'd once had about the sun and osmanthus blossoms, so she decided to copy it down.
But the sentence was too long for her to remember. After writing down two words, she turned to Yan Lie for help and asked him to repeat and translate it for her.
Yan Lie wrote it out for her word by word. When he finished, he asked pointedly, "Do you know what this means?"
"Of course I do." Fang Zhuo said matter-of-factly. "I'm actually a very romantic person."
Romantic down to her bones, apparently, considering the kind of romantic dreams she had.
Yan Lie: "...??" How dare someone with the romantic sensibilities of a steel straightedge say something like that?!
Fang Zhuo ignored the disapproval written all over his face and asked, "What line did you copy?"
Yan Lie casually picked up the notebook beside him and showed it to her.
There were only three words.
"You complete me."
Fang Zhuo read them twice, still couldn't quite understand. "You complete me? Is that the saying about men and women each being only half a person?"
"Where did your romance go?" Yan Lie curled his lip and crooked a finger, signaling for her to lean closer.
Fang Zhuo thought he was being strange and probably had some kind of trick up his sleeve, but she still leaned over and brought her ear closer.
"It means," Yan Lie explained, each word spoken clearly from less than ten centimeters away, "you complete my life."
His clear, bright voice struck against her ears, leaving Fang Zhuo momentarily dazed. Some of the warmth of his breath brushed against her ear, she felt her skin flare hot as fire.
Fang Zhuo casually touched her ear and pulled away from him, drawing out a long, nonchalant, "Oh."
The lights were still dim, and the air was still cold. The strange fluttering in her chest soon settled.
After a while, Fang Zhuo asked hesitantly, "Aren't the themes we picked a little... off? Is this also what everyone is going for?"
"Who cares?" Yan Lie said.
He didn't care whether the sun really could bloom in spring. Right now, he felt that his troubles were like flowers blooming in winter. Just when he thought they'd disappeared, they'd suddenly emerge somewhere unexpected.
When spring finally came, they would be everywhere, covering the mountains and plains.
His troublesome spring would officially arrive on the day the final exams ended.
The winter holiday lasted a little over a week. Fang Zhuo wouldn't be able to stay at school anymore and would go home with Ye Yuncheng.
And he would have no more excuses to make. He'd have to return to Yan Chengli's home and once again play the part of the quiet, high-achieving student.
It hadn't even begun, and he already felt that this winter holiday was going to be unbearably long.
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