“Distribution of the exam papers will begin now. Candidates, please do not start writing until the bell rings. If any rule violations are found, they will be treated as cheating.”
In the classroom, as soon as the invigilating teacher finished speaking, an untimely ringtone went off.
Listening to the ringtone, it was a lively, upbeat Japanese song. If anyone recognized it, they would definitely exclaim, “Koi no Cycle!”
“Whose phone is that? Don’t you know that high schools don’t allow students to bring phones?”
The invigilating teacher was instantly angry.
He had just finished saying that any violation found would be immediately treated as cheating, but then the next second, a ringtone went off. Great. Now, should he penalize this student for cheating, or let them go back to continuing the exam?
If he let them go back to continue the exam, wouldn’t that be slapping his own face?
But if he penalized the student for cheating, that would seem unfair, because the phone had rung from inside their backpack, not while they were at their seat.
“Sorry, sorry, teacher. I injured my leg the day before yesterday, so my brother told me to bring my phone so I can contact him anytime if something goes wrong with my leg.”
A girl dressed all cute and pink, with an apologetic look on her face, walked toward the invigilating teacher.
“Alright, considering the exam hasn’t officially started yet, go turn off your phone. After your leg heals, remember to hand the phone over to your homeroom teacher yourself.”
Sigh. Who am I to judge? I’m a teacher. How could I watch a student miss out on this crucial mock entrance exam because of a small accident?
Besides, if someone has a leg injury, it’s perfectly reasonable for them to carry a phone to contact their family, right?
Of course, the fact that Xia Yue was this cute also played a role. Xia Xi could be sure that if she looked less attractive, this so-called “teacher” would have punished her without mercy, and at the very least, she wouldn’t have gotten her phone back.
And what the teacher said would have turned into: “You need a phone to contact your family? Can’t you use a basic flip phone? You had to bring a smartphone? I’m confiscating it. If you need anything, go talk to your homeroom teacher yourself!”
That’s just how society is these days. Wherever good-looking people go, someone will like them—that’s the power of first impressions.
But if someone is good-looking yet has poor character, they’ll still be despised. So, while first impressions depend on the face, what comes after depends on behavior and principles.
Xia Xi ran toward the backpack, silently cursing her bad luck.
He hadn’t expected Xia Yue’s phone ringer to still be on.
It was his own fault. Last night, he had been scrolling through short videos on Xia Yue’s phone until very late, then unknowingly fell asleep. When he woke up early this morning, he found the phone pressing against his face. The screen was off, but there was still around ten percent battery left.
…
The first subject of the exam was usually Chinese.
And for Xia Xi, the Chinese exam questions would be very easy now, even without the system’s help.
No joke—his skill levels for writing and memory were already very high. Although Chinese reading comprehension wasn’t directly related to those two, he still trusted his reading ability.
Hah, how deep could a high school-level article be?
But when he received the exam paper and saw the six full pages of reading passages, he was completely dumbfounded.
The very first question was an expository text, densely packed with words spanning a full page and a half. The second and third questions were long, lengthy prose pieces and short stories. Together, the three questions plus the prompts took up six whole pages.
Back when Xia Xi was in high school, he had never seen such long passages in an exam. Back then, they were just one-page short excerpts.
Now he didn’t dare boast anymore. He obediently started reviewing the knowledge the system had fed into his mind.
To be honest, for someone who hadn’t read much in a long time, tackling such lengthy passages was quite difficult.
Luckily, the system was very reliable. With the knowledge the system had transferred into his brain, he breezed through these questions easily.
Even though he didn’t know why the passage compared a scarecrow to the author’s father. He was sure that if the author ever saw the answer the examiners had come up with, they would definitely shout, “Your father is the scarecrow! Your whole family are scarecrows!”
After finishing the three most difficult reading passages, only twenty minutes had passed. The Chinese exam was a full 150 minutes long—less than one-sixth of the time had gone by.
After the three reading passages came classical Chinese.
For something like classical Chinese, it mostly relied on accumulated knowledge over time. With the system’s knowledge base, Xia Xi could answer it perfectly without barely having to think.
As for the memorization and fill-in-the-blank questions afterward, they were even easier.
In just forty minutes, Xia Xi had already reached the essay-writing section.
Normally, the time left for candidates to write their essay is only twenty to fifty minutes. Those who can save fifty minutes for the essay are definitely top-tier students.
But that’s excluding those who rush through the earlier sections carelessly.
The essay prompts were very standard. There were three options: the first was based on a certain idiom, the second was a quote from someone about why humans need sleep, and the third was a classical Chinese passage from an ancient text.
So…
Xia Xi chose prompt two without hesitation!
What was there to think about with a prompt like this? He could easily write a great essay without any trouble!
(Prompt: Why does life sleep?
The great XXXX once said: “Why does life sleep? Because it is afraid of waking from the dream…”)
“Teacher! Can I hand in my paper now?”
The invigilating teacher had been staring blankly at the blackboard newspaper on the back wall, thinking about what he should eat for lunch today and whether he should add an extra chicken leg, when suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by a pleasant female voice.
He looked up and saw that it was the girl who had the phone earlier. So he put on a stern face and said seriously, “Only sixty minutes have passed since the exam started. Are you already finished? If you are, then go over your answers again carefully. An entrance exam won’t give you a second chance.”
Almost every teacher, when encountering a student who wants to hand in their paper early, will remind them to use the remaining time to double-check their work. Because there’s no “undo” button for entrance exams. Even if you choose to repeat the year, that’s an entire year of your youth—gone and unrecoverable. And that’s not even mentioning that no one can guarantee you’ll do better the second time.
“Teacher, I’ve finished, and I’ve already checked my answers. I don’t think there are any problems. May I hand it in?”
Xia Xi didn’t want to sit blankly in this stuffy classroom, staring into space. Wasn’t it much nicer to go out freely and stroll around campus with a little kitten?
“No, you can only hand in your paper thirty minutes before the exam ends. Please sit back down.”
To be honest, the invigilating teacher didn’t believe Xia Xi could finish the exam paper that quickly.
If it had been a science subject, maybe. But this was Chinese. Just the time needed for writing and thinking alone would take more than sixty minutes. Not to mention the 800-character essay, which required at least twenty minutes to start with, and writing a good essay took more than half an hour.
So, out of curiosity, he walked down from the podium and came over to Xia Xi’s side to take a look at her exam paper.
