Chapter 245: Love Letter

At the beginning of September, everyone hurriedly prepared for the class placement exam. The questions for this exam were quite difficult, mainly designed to encourage students to reassess their performance across all nine subjects and see if they were truly more suited for liberal arts or science. The exam also served to evaluate the achievements of the previous school year, with the intention of selecting top students from parallel classes and placing them in the specialized Science & Technology and Competition classes.

Lin Youxi continued to demonstrate the genius-level academic ability she had from her previous life, securing first place in the class once again, even after being busy with various tasks.

Mei Fang, having spent his first year of high school engrossed in making games and enjoying high school life, saw a drop in his academic performance, with his ranking falling from 10th to 15th place.

As for Xia Yuan, there’s not much to say—she was already prepared to be placed in the liberal arts class.

Due to her consistently excellent performance, Lin Youxi once again received an invitation to join the Competition class. This led to a series of talks with her grade director and the Competition class’ homeroom teacher. During these conversations, Lin Youxi also learned some valuable information:

Among the members of the Competition class, there were about 10 students focused on becoming “OIers”—those determined to participate in the NOI (National Olympiad in Informatics). This was also the goal that Mei Fang and Lin Youxi wanted to achieve during their second year of high school.

For the three of them to secure better opportunities for higher education, they needed to make significant achievements during high school. Currently, Xia Yuan has already gained some fame as a popular online celebrity thanks to her viral songs. Her path to being admitted as a student with a special talent in music in university, either through direct admission or with reduced entry requirements, was already quite well paved.

On the other hand, for Mei Fang and Lin Youxi to gain better opportunities within the existing rules, aside from excelling in the college entrance exam, they could also strive for success in the NOI competition.

The National Olympiad in Informatics is one of the most prestigious competitions at the high school level. Winning a gold medal in the NOI finals grants students direct admission to top universities in the country, such as Tsinghua and Peking. Even those who win silver or bronze medals can qualify for the Strong Foundation Program, which offers recommendations or reduced admission scores for other universities.

However, qualifying for the NOI is extremely challenging, with limited spots available for each province to send participants. Students must qualify by taking the NOIP (National Olympiad in Informatics in Provinces) exam to earn the necessary qualifications.

The NOIP is a prerequisite for the NOI, and there aren’t many restrictions on who can sign up for the NOIP. The preliminary round is scheduled to begin in mid-October. Mei Fang had actually started preparing for this competition at the beginning of the year, though his preparation time was rather scattered. After the new school term began, he and Lin Youxi started systematically working on practice problems.

Of course, only after actually engaging with it did Mei Fang realize that the problems in the NOIP were quite different from what he initially imagined.

Programming languages are merely a foundation; the competition is more about exercising discrete thinking. Most of the problems involve using programming languages to solve concepts from mathematical Olympiad logic problems.

Fortunately, Mei Fang’s mathematical skills had been solidly built up to a T1 level, so he felt relatively confident about the upcoming preliminary round.

When the final class placement list was announced, aside from Xia Yuan and Liu Xiaoyu being placed in the new liberal arts Class 11 due to their preferences, everyone else remained in their original classes. The division between liberal arts and science classes was thus swiftly concluded.

Over the next month, Xia Yuan began preparing her second album together with Liu Xiaoyu. Meanwhile, Lin Youxi and Mei Fang were busy reviewing the marketing and promotional plans, along with bug fixes, provided by their C Site team for Cloud Journey. They were also occupied with NOIP practice problems, and as the academic pressure of their second year increased, their time for after-school activities gradually diminished. Mei Fang spent most of his time in his seat working on practice problems.

Xia Yuan and Lin Youxi would occasionally visit to chat with him. While they would sometimes come separately, this was rare, usually occurring when the other couldn’t make it.

Besides them, there was also a new frequent visitor outside Mei Fang’s window.

Zhu Nainai, a freshman.

Zhu Nainai was the first-year high school fangirl Mei Fang had mentioned before. She was the first fan to ask him for an autograph, making her, in a sense, Mei Fang’s devoted supporter. Upon recognizing him, she immediately asked for his autograph.

After that, she and some of the girls from her class often appeared outside Mei Fang’s classroom window during breaks. They usually didn’t disturb him, preferring to watch him from a distance while chatting among themselves. If Mei Fang happened to look up and notice them, they would shyly scatter.

Among the fangirls, only Zhu Nainai would actively approach and talk to Mei Fang, and her approach was quite bold.

“Of all people to imitate, you choose to copy Yue Xinyi’s insults. I’m going to cry!”

“Yue Xinyi calls you ‘Mei Dog’ to insult you, but we’re childhood sweethearts. When I call you that, it’s definitely not meant as an insult.”

Taking advantage of the moment when a student was passing by next door and no one was paying attention, Lin Youxi suddenly reached out and stroked Mei Fang’s chin, as if teasing him, while making a kissing sound—the kind of sound someone makes when calling their dog.

After being teased by Lin Youxi, Mei Fang began to complain:

“Ah, this... You’re really treating me like a dog!”

“Don’t you like it?” Lin Youxi asked, tilting her head with her hands behind her back, smiling as she looked at Mei Fang.

Mei Fang’s heart raced.

“At least... don’t do that in public.”

“Alright, Woof-chan,” Lin Youxi replied, suddenly patting Mei Fang on the butt and giving him a playful push. “Hurry up and go upstairs to say hi to Yuan Yuan; otherwise, you’ll run out of time before class.”

When Mei Fang quickly went up to the third floor to visit Xia Yuan, whose new seat was by the window with Liu Xiaoyu, he found them both huddled around what looked like a letter.

A pink envelope—what else could it be but a love letter!

As Mei Fang knocked on the window, Xia Yuan and Liu Xiaoyu hurriedly shoved the letter under the desk in panic. But when Xia Yuan realized it was Mei Fang, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Ah Fang, don’t scare us like that...”

Mei Fang kept tapping on the window. “That thing you’re hiding—can I take a look?”

“Why should I show it to you?”

“I’m your childhood sweetheart after all. Anyone who wants to pursue you definitely has to get past me first, don’t they?”

At first, Xia Yuan didn’t quite understand what he was getting at, but then it clicked when Mei Fang explained. “Oh, you’re jealous, aren’t you? Haha...”

Xia Yuan reached out and gently patted Mei Fang’s head in a very affectionate manner as if she might kiss him at any moment.

“It’s not a love letter someone gave me! Everyone knows I have you as my childhood sweetheart. They know they’d never get past you, so they wouldn’t bother giving me love letters.”

Xia Yuan had an expression that looked like she wanted to cry but had no tears left. “At least the second and third-year students wouldn’t, but the new first-year students might not know. As for this love letter——”

“It’s actually for Liu Xiaoyu.”

Liu Xiaoyu, who had been blushing and silent the whole time, seemed terribly embarrassed that Mei Fang found out about this.