After Dreaming That the Top Student in My Grade Was My Wife - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Lily of the Valley Bookmark

Jiang Hanqi collected the keys from the building manager as usual. After heading upstairs and making a left turn, she immediately spotted a figure leaning slightly against the railing at the end of the corridor.

The girl was buried in the book in her hands, wearing the same pinkish-gray plush coat as yesterday. The hood was pulled over her head, making the little bear ears on top stand upright; they twitched slightly with the rhythm of the girl’s reading, looking exceptionally cute.

She didn’t seem to have any intention of looking up.

Jiang Hanqi slowed her pace. Although she was accustomed to the ways of social interaction, she always became indecisive when harboring personal motives, her mind racing with considerations.

“I don’t know why she came so early today—it’s about half an hour before the next student arrives, but this seems to be the first time we’ve been alone since we met.”

“Mhm, must seize the opportunity.”

Jiang Hanqi’s mental processing was quite sharp. After rotating through a few thoughts, she made up her mind.

“Morning.” After a long internal struggle, she chose the safest method, offering a greeting as steadily as possible. Yet, she still saw a look on the other’s face that she couldn’t quite place—was it terror, disappointment, or something else?

It seemed she had failed.

“Why does the stuff written in those books seem so impractical? Isn’t there an operational manual I can just copy directly?”

The scene was so awkward that Jiang Hanqi was unwilling to let the stalemate continue.

Their eyes met for no more than three seconds across a distance of five or six meters before Jiang Hanqi lowered her gaze and walked toward the classroom to open the door, completely unaware of Tao Shuran’s near-collapsing inner state.

Tao Shuran’s heart was in turmoil. Perhaps the book was a bit heavy, as her fingers gripping the pages twitched nervously.

A random flip of the pages landed on Encouragement to Learning, which said, “In the mountain of books, diligence is the path; in the sea of learning, hardship is the boat.” Why hadn’t she realized that it was perfectly natural for a top student to wake up early for self-study?

She had come here specifically to change her environment and calm her mind in solitude, and now look at this mess.

To hide her little schemes, Tao Shuran closed the book and held it to her chest, following behind Jiang Hanqi. While waiting for her to open the classroom door so they could sit at opposite ends of the earth, she responded with an awkward yet enthusiastic: “Hahaha, Jiang—uh, Student Jiang, so early, hahahaha.”

The air froze.

Tao Shuran looked at Jiang Hanqi’s back with some sadness, racking her brain but unable to scavenge any topic that could alleviate the suspicious atmosphere.

“Student Jiang, do you want to hand in the physics homework early so you don’t have to walk around during the break, hahahaha?”

While Tao Shuran was pulling faces and repeatedly rejecting her own ideas internally, a crisp click of the lock sounded.

“Get the keys at the building manager’s office,” Jiang Hanqi said suddenly as she flipped on the lights. “Just go there with your student ID to collect them. Next time, don’t stand out here in the wind.”

“Oh, okay.” Tao Shuran agreed obediently. While pulling things out of her backpack, she secretly rejoiced that a red face in winter always had a reasonable explanation.

She was short, and her seat was in the front row of the classroom, while Jiang Hanqi sat in the second-to-last row, closer to the storage lockers. By the time Jiang Hanqi had put her things away and stood beside her, Tao Shuran was just about to grab her backpack from the locker. Turning around, she found Jiang Hanqi standing tall and graceful right there, making her heart pound wildly.

Jiang Hanqi spoke with a tone of certainty: “Do you know where the building manager is?”

“N-no, I don’t.” Tao Shuran haphazardly stuffed her backpack into the locker and pulled out a few books needed for the morning classes.

Jiang Hanqi nodded, her face still expressionless, but for some reason, Tao Shuran felt that this answer seemed to satisfy the other party.

Then, the stack of books in her arms that she could barely hold was taken away by a pair of fair, beautiful hands.

Jiang Hanqi helped her place the books on her desk, then curled her middle finger to give the table a light tap. Seeing that Tao Shuran’s dazed head had finally come to its senses, she said softly: “Come, I’ll take you there.”

The experimental classes for each grade at No. 5 High School were set at the end of the long corridors on the top floors—the brightest and most secluded classrooms. They were only in the tenth grade, and the tense atmosphere of the college entrance exams wasn’t yet thick. In the empty building, Tao Shuran followed behind Jiang Hanqi, hearing only the sound of their footsteps and the drumbeat of her own heart, falling into a staggered rhythm.

In the middle of the first-floor stairwell, a small door had been opened on the side to serve as a small office. Jiang Hanqi knocked three times, pushed the door open, and led Tao Shuran inside.

Near the door was a rectangular office desk with a stack of logbooks on it. Jiang Hanqi pointed at the desktop and turned her head to say: “After you arrive at school, just come find the manager auntie directly. Sign your name on this, and the auntie will give you the key. Once you open the door, just leave the key on the podium; the last student to leave will return it.”

The page they opened was exactly today’s date. Only Class 1 of Grade 10 had been checked off. In the grid below was Jiang Hanqi’s fluid signature; it was much more casual than her formal writing. Every day in the past must have been her signature.

Tao Shuran nodded and gave an “Mhm” to show she understood.

“Yo, is the great scholar changing her shift?” The manager auntie at the next desk was shelling walnuts while watching a TV drama. She probably recognized Jiang Hanqi’s face. Hearing Jiang Hanqi explain things so seriously, as if she were handing over an official assignment, she couldn’t help but tease.

Jiang Hanqi hummed in contemplation, nodded, and continued to Tao Shuran: “Then come and collect it tomorrow.”

The tone was so natural that Tao Shuran even forgot to argue and followed her back to the classroom.

Fine, it was only two more days of waking up early. She resigned herself to fate, picked up the “Complete Explanation of Classical Chinese,” and continued her interrupted morning reading.

“…Do you want to switch to something else?” Sitting half a classroom away, Jiang Hanqi was flipping through the table of contents of several books. After a moment of thought, she spoke again.

Her tone was flat, yet it carried clearly through the empty classroom to Tao Shuran’s ears.

“What?” Tao Shuran turned to look at Jiang Hanqi. She didn’t know if it was just her preconceived notions, but she felt Jiang Hanqi was exceptionally different today. For instance, this was already the third time she had initiated a conversation.

Jiang Hanqi remained composed and continued according to the draft she had prepared in her mind: “Actually, your Chinese has always been very good; you’ll definitely pass the classical Chinese section. The midterm questions weren’t well-designed; they were too obscure. Getting them right involved an element of luck. You only lost massive points in translation due to a bias in judging functional words. The final exam won’t be set like that.”

Facing Tao Shuran’s somewhat stunned expression, Jiang Hanqi suppressed her inner unease, picked up a spiral-bound notebook from her desk, and walked over to Tao Shuran: “Do you want to study Arts or Sciences?”

Tao Shuran bit her lip, sounding a bit hesitant: “S-Sciences, I guess.” Her father was a physics professor, and her teacher held high hopes for her to be the physics class representative; she definitely had to study Science.

“Good.” Jiang Hanqi’s expression seemed to lighten a bit. She sat in the seat in front of Tao Shuran, facing her, and began sketching a framework in the spiral notebook. “Actually, your biggest problem is carelessness. The trick to multiple-choice questions is the traps. When you aren’t familiar enough with the theories, it’s easy to fall in.”

“The bilingual summary exam will refer back to the textbook. So, you must not get the classical Chinese knowledge points or the idioms we’ve learned wrong; don’t just memorize the college entrance exam supplementary materials. For English, focus on memorizing preposition usage; you have no problems with syntax…”

“…Mathematics is tested very fundamentally; just be careful. Physics won’t have new question types; just thoroughly digest the problems you’ve already done. Don’t worry too much about the ‘Longmen Special Topics’; at most, there will only be one question from there. You did very well in Biology and Chemistry during the midterms, which means you’ve got the basics down. Memorizing the textbook three more times during morning reading will be enough.”

“Here, for you… all of it is for you.” Jiang Hanqi handed the spiral notebook to Tao Shuran. The handwriting on it was flamboyant, listing the exam focal points for all the science subjects.

Although this performance by the Big Boss was truly beyond Tao Shuran’s expectations, it wasn’t a pie falling from the sky, and there was no chance of it being poisonous. She hurried to take it with both hands, thanking her repeatedly.

In fact, while the Great Deity Jiang was sharing her experience just now, her spoken words were even more flamboyant than her writing, hitting Tao Shuran like a machine gun—du-du-du—until she was dizzy. It was over before she could even fully understand.

She watched Jiang Hanqi flick her sleeves and walk away as if she had completed a mission. She blinked, her intuition telling her that Jiang Hanqi had been “forced.”

What did this mean?

Was it because her unprecedented early arrival for self-study had allowed Jiang Hanqi to see the academic enthusiasm in a decadent classmate, creating a sense of “scholar-to-scholar” mutual appreciation? Was she following the noble goal of chasing knowledge and felt compelled to condescend and give her some pointers?

Tao Shuran found it truly difficult to understand. One had to remember that this was Jiang Hanqi—the person who never skipped class but never listened either, who always followed her own pace and refused to answer any study-related questions from teachers or classmates.

Even Tao Shuran, who wasn’t one to meddle in others’ business, had seen classmates ask her for advice after exams at least three times, only for her to say expressionlessly: “Just look at my test paper.”

The semester was about to end. Come to think of it, this was her first time having a dialogue with Jiang Hanqi… she seemed… different from her impression.

Tao Shuran’s finger unconsciously scraped the side of the spiral notebook, suddenly catching on a long string woven from thin jade-colored silk.

She felt down the string and pulled out an exquisite bookmark, which carried a faint, fresh fragrance of wild flowers.

It was a fabric bookmark, made by sewing dried petals and then laminating them. On a light-colored background, petals in a blue-purple gradient formed a… creature she couldn’t quite identify. It had a pair of sharp little horns, a round head, and round, bulging eyes sewn from dark purple petals. On the lower sides of the large round face were three whiskers each, but the body was connected to a tail that looked like a sectioned braided pigtail. At the tip of the tail was a five-petaled light purple Lily of the Valley flower.

“What is this? A beautiful cat-fish?…”

Tao Shuran pinched the bookmark. There was some thickness inside; there seemed to be something else there.

She was just about to raise the bookmark and ask Jiang Hanqi when that sentence “All of it is for you” rang in her head. She feared the Great Scholar would think she was being tedious.

“It was probably a free gift with the notebook.”

“That is Jiang Hanqi, who is too lazy to even explain a problem to people.”

Just because the Big Boss was willing to initiate contact didn’t mean she liked others getting close to her.

Although it seemed very insensitive, Tao Shuran still felt she should say something to confirm, so she deliberated and finally spoke: “J-Jiang, Student Jiang, you usually don’t talk much.” Why so many words today?

Jiang Hanqi was still reviewing her own performance in her mind. Hearing this, the finger scrolling on her phone paused. Facing an unexpected topic, she decided to tell the truth: “I’m not very good at talking to people.”

It wasn’t just “not good”—she was completely incompetent at it.

Upon hearing this, Tao Shuran noted the blunt answer and the cold tone. Student Jiang said she didn’t want to talk to people, and only added the word “very” out of consideration for her feelings to suggest she just wasn’t “very” willing. In reality, she was probably extremely unwilling…

After this “deep reading comprehension,” Tao Shuran immediately became sensible.

“When a scholar offers porridge, just drink it; don’t talk too much.”

As for anything else…

What on earth was she fantasizing about?

Tao Shuran shook her head. After multiple shocks, she finally began to slowly pull herself away from the dream world.

In the end, the dream was just her fantasy. Jiang Hanqi didn’t look like someone who would have that kind of relationship with her. They had no connection in the past, and now they were just classmates who had spoken a few words. The other person was being completely open and upright; if she overthought things on her end, she was just creating trouble for herself.

Furthermore, she was just a high school student. Exams were approaching, and her mother had said this morning…

Tao Shuran instinctively gripped her pen tighter.

So, anything can be influenced, but not studying!

Having cleared her mind, Tao Shuran cheered herself on, pulled out a physics exercise book, and buried her head in her work.

Meanwhile, in the seat at the back of the classroom, Jiang Hanqi sat with her head down and a cold expression. She held a book, the spine tilted downward.

She was staring intently at the phone tucked inside the book. It was on a browser interface—

“High school student, how to chase a girl I like? Urgent.”

“How are the Original Poster’s grades? If they’re okay, go take the initiative to tutor her! There are many methods…”

“Save to bookmarks?”

“Confirm Save.”

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