Hopeless Romance (GL) - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

After a weekend with light homework and unreleased grades, the monthly exam results arrived alongside Monday to greet the students of Yunchuan Middle School. As the students walked toward school, even the wind seemed to have grown heavy.

The first period on Monday was Chinese. At the tail end of early self-study, Zhang Jianwei posted the transcripts on the back wall of the classroom next to the blackboard. Glancing at the still-empty blackboard, she suddenly realized the class bulletin board hadn’t been assigned yet and made a mental note to arrange it. She then clutched her books and walked toward the podium, offering Ye Du a smile as she passed—a smile that Jiang Xinwan later described as radiating “motherly benevolence.” Jiang Xinwan happened to be facing the transcripts; she pushed her stool back gently, trying to avoid any unpleasant scraping sounds, leaned in, and noticed that the first-place name had only two characters. A closer look confirmed it was Ye Du.

Jiang Xinwan swung around so abruptly that her chair collided with the concrete floor with a sharp crack, drawing several looks, including a warning glare from Zhang Jianwei. “What’s wrong?” Seeing Ye Du point at herself, Jiang Xinwan understood the question.

“You’re first!” Jiang Xinwan whispered, her voice low yet brimming with an obvious joy, as if she were Ye Du herself.

Chen Pupu heard the voices from the back but couldn’t quite make them out. She quickly turned around and asked Ye Du, “What are you guys talking about?”

Before Ye Du could even answer Jiang Xinwan, she was already looking at the back of Chen Pupu’s head again. Such agility was clearly the result of extensive experience in the “battle” against teachers. Deciding to tell Chen Pupu first, Ye Du leaned forward as close to Pupu’s ear as possible and kept it brief: “I got first.”

The moment the words left her mouth, Chen Pupu’s body, which had been pressed against the back of her chair, lurched forward. Although Ye Du hadn’t expected to rank first, she was used to high scores. Seeing the sheer shock radiating from Pupu’s back and glancing at Jiang Xinwan, she momentarily wondered if they had been running a secret betting pool behind her back—the kind where you bet ten yuan on who would rank first. Suddenly, a tapping sensation came from her knee; Ye Du looked down to see a notebook being passed back from the front.

Ye Du took it and found it was a brand-new notebook. The first page had been folded in half to create two columns. On the left blank space, Chen Pupu had written: “You are truly amazing! So happy for you~” followed by a smiley face.

Passing notes in class was a routine affair among students, but it was the first time Ye Du had seen someone use such a large notebook for a note. Wasn’t the essence of note-passing supposed to be discretion and subtlety?

She wasn’t sure how to respond. Usually, when complimented, she chose to offer a few humble remarks and move on—this was the lifelong teaching of Ye Sangshu: be a humble person. Over time, Ye Du had become very good at playing the role of the modest, “good” student. Last time was an accident, but now she didn’t want to go against her heart by saying something like “it was just okay.” After all, she was an ordinary person who felt a touch of vanity regarding her grades.

“Thank you, I’m very happy too.” After writing this reply, Ye Du looked at the two lines of text stacked together and began to wonder if she should recommend some of the calligraphy copybooks she had used to Chen Pupu.

The notebook acting as a note was passed back in the same manner, with the finesse of two secret agents making a handoff.

…

As soon as class ended, a crowd swarmed the small table of results. Jiang Xinwan led the charge and secured the best vantage point; despite being a bit squished, everything else was fine. The students on the outer ring could only see heads and had to poke the people in front of them to ask for their scores and rankings.

Ye Du’s total score was only five points higher than Shang Ruixi’s. Both had perfect scores in English. Ye Du got a 145 in Math—five points behind Shang Ruixi—but she scored 142 in Chinese, ten points higher than Shang Ruixi and the highest score in the entire grade. Logically, Ye Du’s scores were beautiful, yet Zhang Jianwei felt it was a pity that the top student in the grade wasn’t in her class. Peng Zexue from Class 11 had taken the lead by a single point. The crux of the matter was that Class 11’s head teacher, Chen Chao, had never quite gotten along with Zhang Jianwei. They had joined Yunchuan in the same year and were now leading the same grade for the second time. Both were in charge of the only two experimental classes in the grade and were locked in a silent competition, being young and at an age where they still had much to fight for. This was their first head-on confrontation.

Getting Ye Du to a perfect score in Chinese was no small feat; she had already maxed out the objective questions, and the subjectivity of the essay and open-ended questions made it difficult to squeeze out more. Thus, Zhang Jianwei decided to hand this “glorious task” to the Math teacher—after all, among the top twenty in the grade, Ye Du was the only one without a perfect Math score.

Shang Ruixi had entered Yunchuan Middle School as the top student in the entrance exams and had been accustomed to being first since childhood. Holding that narrow strip of paper with her scores, she didn’t know how to face herself. One of the hardest situations for a person to handle is losing something they once owned. For Shang Ruixi, losing it even once was unacceptable. She turned to look at Ye Du, who was sitting diagonally behind her, surrounded by several classmates. She watched for a while, then took a glue stick out of her bag, carefully applied it to the back of her score strip, and pasted it onto her desk.

As she did this, Shang Ruixi couldn’t help but wonder how her parents would react if they knew. They would surely blame her for putting too much pressure on herself and hope she could relax. This was exactly what Shang Ruixi did not want. She wanted to be criticized and spurred on. She knew deep down she wasn’t a “gifted” child; her good grades were entirely the result of her own effort—the daily cycle of reviewing the old and learning the new. It was an arduous process, especially for a thirteen-year-old. It was undeniable that Shang Ruixi was also tempted by TV dramas, manga, and new gaming consoles. In every battle against these temptations, she hoped she wasn’t fighting alone. Even if the support she received wasn’t the kind of love she craved, she persisted, because this was the only choice she had.

But Shang Ruixi wasn’t born this way. She remembered a Lunar New Year back when she was in the third grade. Her parents had decided to return to their hometown. she loved that village; it was so different from the city, and the passages she had to memorize in her textbooks came to life there. There was a river in front of the house, and the water made a crisp “ding-dong” sound as it flowed over the scattered rocks. Snow clung to the branches of withered trees amidst the crackling of firewood. When night fell, the small village seemed exceptionally quiet and vast. Walking from the woodshed back to the main hall, young Shang Ruixi heard her grandfather’s voice. He called her mother’s name and said, “Since you gave birth to a girl, you must realize you haven’t fulfilled your duty as a wife and daughter-in-law. You must compensate Xueliang more in other areas.” She remembered her father making some defense, saying, “Dad, the experts say that the sex of the baby isn’t determined by the woman. You can’t blame Qianhua.”

The sound of shattering glass broke the peaceful night, accompanied by her grandfather’s fury. His voice had grown old, and perhaps because it was weak, his words were no longer as weighty as they once were. His son, who never dared to cross him and always idolized him, was now speaking up for someone else—and a woman at that, even if she was his wife. At this thought, the old man, accustomed to control and dominance, roared even louder: “Experts? Which bullshit expert said that to deceive people? What use is a girl? She’ll just be married off! She can’t carry on the Shang family line! What use is she? What use is she!”

Shang Ruixi didn’t know if her grandfather was saying she was useless or if her mother, who couldn’t bear a son, was useless. She only felt that none of this could be ended in an instant. In the many moments when she wanted to give up, that cup thrown to the floor would shatter once again, and every detail would spontaneously line up to replay that night.

While going upstairs with her parents later, Shang Ruixi saw her mother’s tears. Sadness was likely contagious, as she suddenly began to cry softly as well. In her memory, crying was not a proper thing to do, especially during the New Year. Before she was discovered, Shang Ruixi wiped away her own tears, hoping she could wipe away her mother’s tears too, and decided she would be a “useful” person. And for the young Shang Ruixi, getting good grades was the definition of being useful.

…

Thinking about the results of the monthly exam gave Huang Yuqin a massive headache. The knowledge points in the first semester of seventh grade were so simple, yet some people still failed! The number of students who scored above 130 was barely half the class. This forced him to vent during Math class: “You are the worst batch I’ve ever taught! This paper was so easy; even with your eyes closed, you should have scored 120. When I ask you in class, doesn’t everyone say they understand? So what happened? The moment the exam comes, you give it all back to me?”

The ceiling fans whirred, blowing Huang Yuqin’s anger into every corner of the classroom. However, these young and oblivious children didn’t know yet that in their future lives, they would become “the worst batch” time and time again.

On the grade-wide monthly exam analysis sheet, Class 10’s average Math score was ranked fourth. In response, Huang Yuqin decided to launch a “one-on-one” assistance program early. Using 130 as the cut-off, students would form their own pairs; those with scores above 130 would be responsible for tutoring their teammates’ Math. There was no time like the present—the program would start today. In fact, this was also a form of review for the high-achieving students; after all, there was a significant gap between understanding a teacher’s lecture and being able to explain a problem clearly to someone else.

As the words on the podium died down, the notebook from the front once again landed on Ye Du’s knee.

It was still Chen Pupu’s very distinctive handwriting: Can we be partners?

Ye Du decided to agree—or rather, she had never even thought of refusing. She poked Chen Pupu’s back with her index finger. The latter instinctively leaned back, and heard a soft reply from behind: “Sure.”