Chapter 11

The bell indicating the end of the exam rang and students left once the invigilator collected their exam booklets.

Yi Ran exited the hall first, but she didn’t leave right away. She leaned against the wall near the front door, waiting for Song Yu Meng.

One by one, the students exited the hall and Song Yu Meng finally came out too. Seeing Yi Ran loitering there, she said: “You annoying brat, why haven’t you left?”

Yi Ran smiled mildly, “I’m waiting for you, I have something to say.”

The first half of the sentence made Song Yu Meng blush imperceptibly.

“Hurry up and spit out whatever nonsense you want to say, this lady wants to leave.” Song Yu Meng turned around and acted as if she was about to walk off.

Yi Ran held onto her wrist, “Don’t go yet. I just wanted to say, I think I did pretty alright this exam, I should be able to get a pass I think?” Yi Ran put her hand to her chin and frowned as if deep in thought. “I was thinking, maybe the bread you made actually has the superpower of giving the person who eats it extra marks? No wonder Liu Luo Yang always scores so well.”

At the mention of the bread, Song Yu Meng flared up: “Stop talking rubbish, his grades were always good!”

“Alright then.” Yi Ran continued, “don’t bring the bread anymore, or else I might be unable to control myself and snatch it again. Oh right! Don’t forget you’re treating me to milk tea on Friday after school too.”

“Scram!”

Yi Ran ran into the crowd going down the stairs, Song Yu Meng couldn’t catch up to her even if she wanted to.

What a bother!

……

The maths exam was scheduled for Thursday afternoon, so plenty of people took the chance for a quick nap in the early afternoon after they finished revising.

Song Yu Meng was just about to stretch out over her table for a quick doze when Yi Ran grabbed her wrist and brought her to the empty classroom next door with an exercise book, a notepad and a pen in her other hand.

Song Yu Meng pulled her hand back and complained: “Hey, Crazy Yi, what’s the problem with you again? You’re not taking a nap but pulling me here instead?”

“To talk about the questions.” Yi Ran opened the exercise book and tapped the trigonometry question. “This question, I told you to remember how to solve it, did you? Explain it to me.”

Song Yu Meng glanced at the question and confidently replied: “First, use the sum and difference formula, then use the double angle formula to simplify. It’s such an easy question, but you’re still testing me.” Folding her arms, turning her head away, she looked incredibly confident and arrogant.

“Alright, alright, you’re smart, okay?” Yi Ran said, “the next time you see this sort of trigonometry question, just do it this way. As long as the important steps are all written down, you won’t get any marks deducted.”

Song Yu Meng raised her chin even higher, “this lady was smart all along.”

This scaredy-cat really knew how to only listen to stuff that she wanted to hear. Yi Ran smiled helplessly and asked: “If you’re so confident, then did you remember all the other formulas?”

“Of course! Every time I open my book, I see that piece of paper of yours. Even if I didn’t want to memorise it, I wouldn’t have any choice.”

Yi Ran’s smile grew bigger. She thought that the paper would have been thrown into the rubbish bin by now, who would have expected it to still be kept in the book?

“Then make sure you don’t make any mistakes for this question, double-check your work after you’re done.” Yi Ran nagged.

Waving her hand dismissively, Song Yu Meng said, “I got it. How could you be even naggier than Tang Seng?” Seeing Yi Ran covering her smile with a clenched fist, she asked, “Are you very bored? Why are you always trying to teach this lady maths?”

“You don’t want to study maths? Then how about I teach you physics and chemistry?”

Song Yu Meng immediately retorted: “Get lost. This lady is going back to sleep, who wants to hear you talking about boring subjects like maths, physics and chemistry.”

Song Yu Meng started walking out and right before she was about to turn the corner, she looked back at Yi Ran for a brief moment before returning to their classroom.

……

At 2.55PM, the exam invigilator handed out the maths exam questions and answer booklet, starting the examination.

In the first five minutes after the questions were handed out, students could only look at the questions, so the hall was filled with the sound of rustling paper.

Yi Ran skipped over the multiple-choice questions and flipped to the six big questions at the end. As she predicted, the first question was the trigonometry one. She scanned the question and smiled.

Nice.

The question in the exam was exactly the same as the one in the homework book, just with the numbers changed. The formulas and steps were the exact same ones.

Yi Ran mentally praised her ability to spot questions.

When the clock hit two on the dot, the bell rang.

“The exam is starting, students may begin writing their answers.”

In the five minutes of prep time, Yi Ran had already thought of the whole process in her mind and she was speedily writing down the steps on the paper now.

The whole process was incredibly smooth, and she only spent five minutes on the first question, with a confirmed 12 marks in the bag.

She secretly stole a glance at Song Yu Meng’s paper.

Song Yu Meng didn’t know which were the key steps to write, so she wrote every single step down. After working out the final answer and writing it down, she felt incredibly satisfied.

It was her first time attempting one of the big questions, they were always left blank in previous exams.

Yi Ran watched as Song Yu Meng completed the question. Although there were many small steps that could have been omitted in the workings, but it wasn’t a big problem. As long as she wrote down the key steps and got the final answer correct, she would get all the marks.

Seeing a self-satisfied smile on Song Yu Meng’s face, the corners of Yi Ran’s mouth lifted as well without her noticing.

Song Yu Meng noticed Yi Ran’s gaze and covered her answers with her arm, furrowing her eyebrows at Yi Ran in a warning.

If there were special effects, there would definitely be a big sweat drop on Yi Ran’s forehead. She withdrew her gaze disinterestedly and focused on her own paper.

This scaredy-cat might be too overconfident, Yi Ran thought, as if she would want to copy from someone who only scored 20 or 30 marks!

Besides, she clearly wasn’t even looking at Song Yu Meng’s exam paper.

The invigilator in the last exam hall was a teacher who was usually less strict[1] and he stood on the platform, staring at the two of them expressionlessly, not wanting to care.

In the last half an hour, Song Yu Meng guessed the answers to the multiple-choice questions. Aside from choosing the first four answers and working on the first big question, everything else was decided by guessing and intuition, or just throwing numbers in there. Aside from the first big question, everything else was left blank too.

At a glance, the paper was so clean it was practically glowing.

With an hour left in the exam, some students were still trying their hardest while some students had already slouched over the table and gone to sleep. Yi Ran belonged in the first category while Song Yu Meng belonged in a third category. She had started drawing on the empty space of the answer booklet.

The space for the second big question had a stickman hitting another stickman, with a big “Yi” written on the face of the stickman being hit.

The third question’s answer was a turtle that was flipped over on its back, with all four limbs waving in the air. Song Yu Meng even coloured the tutle’s shell a pale green, then drew a line to the turtle and wrote “Crazy Yi”. It was actually quite cute.

Song Yu Meng went all out for the fourth question, drawing a comic strip and even giving it a proper name, 《Crazy Yi Being Beaten Up By Me》.

First, a chibi Yi Ran went to provoke a chibi Song Yu Meng. Next, Song Yu Meng’s eyes were drawn as two large flames, raising her hand to punch Yi Ran. Yi Ran was then drawn as holding her hands up to protect her head while trying to run away, but eventually got caught.

She held her hand and cowered on the floor as Song Yu Meng sat on her, punching her. On the side, there was even text added for Yi Ran.

“I won’t dare to offend you again, miss!!!”

The final panel of the comic was the chibi Yi Ran kneeling on the ground, crying and admitting her mistakes with buns all over her head while the chibi Song Yu Meng had her hands on her hips and laughed heartily in victory.

Song Yu Meng stole glances at Crazy Yi while drawing this comic, smiling widely the whole time.

If Crazy Yi ever tried to bully her again, she would beat her up!

……

– 5pm –

“The exam is over, students, put your pens down.”

Song Yu Meng returned to the classroom, and Yi Ran followed after her.

Yi Ran smiled and said: “So? I didn’t lie to you, right? I told you that question would come out in the exam, you didn’t believe me.”

Song Yu Meng was in a good mood so she didn’t get irritated: “Sure, sure. You’re impressive, okay?”

“Hah, I don’t need your praise, I know that.”

“Cheh, narcissistic!”

Excited, Yi Ran said: “Hey, do you want me to help you spot a few questions for physics too?”

“Hell no!!!” Song Yu Meng’s reaction was abnormally large, rejecting immediately.

Smiling, Yi Ran asked: “Why not? Don’t you want to get a few more marks?”

Rolling her eyes, Song Yu Meng retorted, “what do you think? Wasting so much time just for that pitiful amount of marks, it’s such a loss for me!”

The students in the class were all grouping up to go for lunch, and Su Xiao Xiao just returned from the exam hall too, waiting silently at the rear door to accompany Song Yu Meng for lunch.

Song Yu Meng dismissed Yi Ran: “I’m not going to talk to you, this lady is going for dinner now.”

Su Xiao Xiao looked at Yi Ran and asked: “Student Yi, do you want to have dinner with us?”

Without waiting for a response, Song Yu Meng shouted in a fright: “What! I’m not eating with Crazy Yi! Let’s go!”

When Yi Ran had come to her senses, Song Yu Meng had already pulled Su Xiao Xiao far away, even looking back to confirm Yi Ran wasn’t following them.

Yi Ran: “……”

A little sad, Yi Ran asked herself: Does scaredy-cat really hate me that much? How odd……

……

Yi Ran wasn’t quite fond of the food options in the canteen today, so she chose to play a few matches of badminton instead of eating. With her good looks and talent in badminton, a number of male and female students all crowded around to watch her play.

Yi Ran could also be considered a popular person in First Middle School. She looked good and she had a good personality, getting along well with people in school. Song Yu Meng was also popular, but out of ten people, nine of them would hate her.

With ten minutes left in the break period, Yi Ran went to the commissary and queued up for a bottle of water.

The person queueing in front of Yi Ran was the class rep for English, He Xiao Meng. She also liked to play badminton, and had even played a couple of matches against Yi Ran earlier.

“Two bottles of Nongfu Spring water[2] please, thank you.” He Xiao Meng took the two bottles, paid for them and held one out to Yi Ran, asking, “do you want some water?”

Yi Ran was stunned for a second before taking the bottle hesitantly. “Thanks.”

Yi Ran and He Xiao Meng stood to one side to let the queue move forward. Yi Ran took a sip of the water, glancing at He Xiao Meng from the side of her eye.

If she hadn’t just played a match against her, Yi Ran would never believe that this petite, sweet-looking English class rep would be so good at badminton.

“You’re pretty good at badminton, I didn’t expect that.” Yi Ran complimented her.

He Xiao Meng capped the bottle and replied: “You’re not too shabby yourself.”

“Then shall we compete against each other again when we have the chance?”

“Sure.” He Xiao Meng smiled sweetly.

IS IT TIME FOR A LOVE TRIANGLE TO FORM BETWEEN HE XIAO MENG, YI RAN AND SONG YU MENG? Honestly, if I was the author I’d throw Xu Yuan into the mix and make it a love square with Liu Luo Yang. The more drama the better lol.

[1] 水 – Literally means water. I had to get my girlfriend’s help with this, but essentially, it’s a shortened version of 放水, which can be taken to mean the teacher is more tolerant and not as much of a stickler for the rules.

[2] 农夫山泉 – Literally means farmer mountain spring. Nongfu Spring is an actual company that sells water in China, so yeah, I’m keeping their name in here.