Sandbag throwing and dodgeball (3)

Zhao Shihua didn't know what Pei Nachuan was thinking, but she could only force herself not to think about it anymore, because what she needed to think about now was her first major exam after entering school.

With a week left until midterm exams, the academic atmosphere was at an all-time high. Even during study sessions, everyone would discuss random topics, with some students even skipping class to play basketball (including the gym committee member). While this wasn't against the rules—study sessions were essentially about individual time—most people stayed in class to do their homework.

Now, even Shao Yifu and the others were sitting at their desks, reviewing their lessons, showing how serious they were. A minute ago, Zhao Shihua had faintly heard mumblings coming from behind him: "That's not right... No, how could it be this number..."

There are always people who unconsciously speak out their thoughts, and such people are better off being kept behind glass during exams. Zhao Shihua wasn't interested in his thoughts at all, and just wanted to focus on solving the physics problem in front of him.

"Old Li!" Shao Yifu was probably at his wit's end, so he turned to ask Li Xuping, "Look at this one—you're doing the listening comprehension test, so forget it."

The problem before her was still a mystery, and the formulas she had written on her scratch paper were still unanswered. Zhao Shihua couldn't help but divert a small amount of her attention to speculate on what was happening behind her: Shao Yifu must have seen her deskmate reviewing other subjects and felt embarrassed to interrupt. A sudden sense of foreboding came over her, as if she were receiving a burning gaze from someone on her back, and she quickly closed her workbook. But in a split second—

"Huh? Uncle Master, are you also doing physics problems?"

Shao Yifu leaned forward, and Zhao Shihua instinctively turned around, almost bumping into his chin. The distance between them was suddenly too close, and she was so scared that she hurriedly leaned over the table, covering the physics book with her whole body, making a loud noise.

There were so many eyes around! Didn't this person know how to avoid suspicion? Zhou Xin, who loved to tease them, was sitting in the next group, and a few students in the front seemed to be looking over curiously.

"I just have a question for you." Judging from the sound of his voice, Shao Yifu had already sat back in his chair. Seeing that she didn't respond for a long time, he rolled up the draft paper and knocked on her head, "Hey, what's wrong?"

Shao Yifu, a thick-skinned man, was of course completely oblivious to the internal conflict going on in Zhao Shihua's mind: if he paid attention to him, Zhou Xin would be staring at him like a paparazzi; if he ignored him, it looked like he would continue to pester him: "Are you okay? I don't think I touched you just now..."

"...Which question!" Zhao Shihua hesitated for a moment before finally deciding to cut the Gordian knot. The moment she spun around, she felt as if she had created a tornado.

"Here's a question, here's a question. You do the math?" He handed her his draft paper, scratched his hair with one hand, and pointed at the question with the tip of his pen with the other hand. "Look, this little ball—"

Zhao Shihua didn't wait for him to finish explaining, he grabbed the test paper and turned around, anyway, he wanted to say as little as possible.

The question looked a little familiar, perhaps she had done it a few days ago, but she didn't think much about it and started drawing a force analysis diagram, listing the formulas, and plugging in the numerical values ​​- the mechanical pencil swished back and forth on the draft paper. A lot of practice has made Zhao Shihua almost form a kind of conditioned reflex - the result is C.

"You figured it was a C, right? But the teacher gave me a D, so it can't be 5. That must be the wrong answer!"

When faced with an inconsistent answer, a normal person's first thought would be to mistake their calculations rather than immediately claiming the answer was wrong. Zhao Shihua didn't think Shao Yifu, with his mediocre grades, was qualified to question the answer. This man's confidence, or more accurately, his arrogance, was like a hydrogen balloon, which could be blown up into the sky.

But how come I came up with the same number as him? There must be a trap somewhere, and I fell into it without paying attention. Zhao Shihua's desire to win was instantly aroused. He spent even longer and carefully calculated it from beginning to end, paying special attention to not copying the wrong numbers when calculating.

The question is... why is it still C?

She turned around hesitantly and saw Shao Yifu's proud smile that said "I was right, wasn't I?" The certainty that had just risen in her heart was dispelled again.

As the saying goes, three cobblers are better than Zhuge Liang, but now there are only two cobblers, so it is better to ask Zhuge Liang next to him for advice. Zhuo Siqi happened to have put away his political book and was pulling out his physics book from the drawer.

"Um, Siqi..."

"Oh, this seems to be the test paper handed out before the school sports meet," Zhuo Siqi paused and added, "I remember the teacher later said the answer to this question was wrong."

"YES!!!" Shao Yifu almost shouted into Zhao Shihua's ear, as if he had won a trophy in a national physics competition, and raised his fist excitedly.

Too close, too close! Zhao Shihua could even feel his warm breath against her ear. She moved away a little, then looked up to meet Pei Nachuan's gaze, which had returned after hearing the noise. Zhao Shihua couldn't tell if that look was one of curiosity, rebuke for being too noisy, or something else entirely.

But she suddenly realized, as Xu Jiamei had said, that she couldn't endure it indefinitely any longer; she had to resist. After hearing Zhou Xin's predictable teasing, "Men and women working together makes the exams less tiring," she was instantly furious. She had no choice but to act now.

But she was no longer as decisive as the little heroine of that year. She had made a huge determination in her heart, wishing she could stir up a bloody storm and be irreconcilable with those who talked nonsense; however, in reality, she only stretched out her toes and took a small step forward on the ice.

Zhao Shihua pretended not to hear the bickering between his two sworn enemies behind him, silently stuffed his stationery and textbooks into his schoolbag, said hello to his deskmate softly, "I'm going to the library." Of the thirty-six strategies, running away is the best one. If you can't afford to provoke someone, can't you just hide from them?

So from then on, she tried every possible way to avoid contact with Shao Yifu: during breaks, she would rush to the podium to listen to the teacher explaining questions to individual students; or go to the seats of Xu Jiamei and Qiao Xiaoling to talk to them; at worst, she would run to the corridor alone, enjoy the autumn breeze and think about life, and if she saw him in the corridor, she would take a detour.

As for self-study classes, Zhao Shihua would simply go to the library. She wouldn't solve any problems anyway, and the change of location wouldn't affect her IQ either. Later, even Zhuo Siqi joined her in the library, explaining, "Shao Yifu is well-suited to group study, but I don't like group discussions." This was like a teacher's assessment of a student, essentially meaning he was too noisy.

Away from the boisterous Shao Yifu, Zhao Shihua's surroundings were indeed much quieter, but the main reason was that Zhu Miaoyan and the others had also gradually drifted away from her. Ever since she had refused the invitation to the celebration party on the playground, a rift had opened between them, widening and deepening with each passing moment.

A week after the school sports meet, Zhao Shihua tried to make amends. She pretended nothing had happened and went to the cafeteria with them as usual at noon. Only then did she realize that she was the only one trying to act out a one-man show as if everything was normal, while others were keeping up with current affairs and couldn't help but make a few jokes at the dinner table.

"What are you planning to do this weekend after the exams?" Zhao Shihua tried to change the subject to something unrelated.

"I don't know. Maybe he slept in all day." Zhu Miaoyan put down her chopsticks, seemingly unable to eat anymore. She looked over curiously, "How about you two? What are your plans?"

"The two of us?" Zhao Shihua pointed at himself and Zhang He.

"How is that possible?" Zhang He pressed Zhao Shihua's hand down. "Of course I'm referring to you and our Uncle Shao!"

It was always like this, the conversation endlessly dragging on like a black hole, unable to escape the three words "Shao Yifu," and she felt nearly torn apart by the dual forces of leaving and staying. She couldn't clearly determine whether such jokes were friendly or not, or whether there was a hint of ill will hidden within them. She just knew that she didn't find the "waffle couple" they were talking about funny at all.

Zhao Shihua was naturally upset to be back in such a deserted state in the blink of an eye. The lively scenes since the start of the school year seemed like a dream. Could it be that true growth really depends on a single person's efforts? — It's okay, she can do it. Without anyone to disturb her, she could calm down and study hard.

Zhao Shihua asked himself questions to comfort himself, then turned his gaze from the deep green shade outside the library window to the black and white exercise book in front of him. He put on his headphones, and the English listening test was playing: Why didn't the woman go to the party?

A. Because there was a traffic jam.

B. Because she remembered a wrong date.

C. Because she was not invited by her friend.

Why did she miss the party again and again?

Unfortunately, no matter how well Zhao Shihua prepared or how diligently she reviewed, she couldn't overcome the negative effects of a sudden cold. Her constitution wasn't bad; as a child, she was so tough she was practically immune to all poisons. Even her wish to gain more attention from her parents by pretending to be sick proved difficult to fulfill.

But this time, for some reason, maybe it was because the first major exam was too much psychological pressure, she had been feeling a bit irritable recently, plus maybe she went out without drying her hair after taking a shower, or maybe she took a few breaths of cold wind while memorizing words in the playground early in the morning. In short, the army of colds completely occupied her body and her clear mind the day before the midterm exam.

To make matters worse, she didn't even dare take cold medicine, fearing she'd pass out in the exam room. She had no choice but to persevere, hoping for good things to come. Maybe even a fever could lead to a state of euphoria, as she had once managed with a high fever in her third year of junior high, yet still managed to score second in her grade.

But her thoughts were optimistic, and reality was cruel. Her Chinese test on the first day was okay, but with liberal arts subjects like these, your own feelings and your actual scores are always a blur. It was only after she finished her math test the next morning that she truly realized her tragedy.

On the third day, things took a turn for the worse. The other tests were fine, but the sniffles and uncontrollable sneezing were the bane of the English listening test. Zhao Shihua, worried about disturbing others, prepared a box of tissues and placed them on the table. Whenever the listening section started, she would roll up two sheets of tissue paper, plug her nostrils, and breathe through her mouth.

This look is a bit silly, but because the seating arrangement for the final exam at Yangcheng Middle School is disrupted, there will basically be no classmates in front, behind, or around you; plus everyone is concentrating on staring at the test paper during the exam, no one will notice you at all.

“…and the government has invested——”

"A-choo!" It wasn't me.

I don't know who was deliberately trying to trip me up, but a loud sneeze like thunder occurred at the most important place.

"——million dollars on this project."

A chorus of complaints rose up from all around, and the invigilator immediately slammed the table to quiet the students. Zhao Shihua cursed that person a million times in his heart, though he also had himself to blame for missing the information the first time.

Alas, another two-point question. One after another, three-point and five-point questions, like the hammer of a whack-a-mole game, hammered her down, leaving her no longer able to raise her head to face another round of blows.

After finishing her last geography exam amidst celebratory cheers, several classmates in the same exam room had already left, ruefully, their shoulders linked. Zhao Shihua was left alone, gloomily packing up her stationery and dumping the tissues on her desk into her own trash bag. She then wiped the surface with a wet paper towel. After all, it was someone else's desk, and it would be a disaster if germs were left behind. Perhaps her nose was so stuffy that even her brain was blocked. She had completely forgotten there was a trash can in the exam room and had to climb two flights of stairs back to her classroom to throw away the trash.

"Why are you carrying a bag of wontons?" Just as Zhao Shihua was walking towards the trash can in the sanitary corner, she suddenly heard Shao Yifu asking her from behind.

She didn't know if he was playing dumb or if his observation skills were really flawed, so she pretended not to hear. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Shao Yifu approaching with an empty plastic bottle, so she deliberately avoided him and left the classroom through the front door.

"Hey, you're so disgusting!" When Zhao Shihua passed by the corridor, he saw Zhu Miaoyan walking up to Shao Yifu and complaining through the window.

"What's disgusting?" Shao Yifu turned around and asked back, holding the football under his arm.

"You actually said those were wontons. I can hardly eat dinner." Zhu Miaoyan covered her mouth with her hands and pretended to vomit.

She was saying she was disgusting. But she also thought the other person was disgusting. Shao Yifu, the one who caused the incident, was also disgusting.

Zhao Shihua suddenly quickened his pace, as if he was trying to avoid the zombie virus and fled the scene at all costs.