I have few friends, but many childhood sweethearts.

Chapter 471. That's also...

It's around six o'clock in the evening.

After having dinner at home, the six of them quickly returned to school.

When Xu Qingfan and Xiao Ruanwen returned to Class 16, nearly half of the students were already seated. Surprisingly, they didn't hear any noise when they entered; instead, they heard the sound of books turning pages.

He slammed Xiao Ruanwen's schoolbag onto the stool, sat down, and rubbed his shoulders to relax.

The commotion attracted only a few students, but after a quick glance, they soon returned their attention to their books.

Xu Qingfan suddenly recalled his university days in his previous life. Everyone was lazy and undisciplined in class, unable to get up at eight in the morning, and they were allowed to play on their phones. They didn't care whether they listened to the lectures or not.

However, during exam week, everyone studies like crazy, and it's harder to get a spot in the library than at a star's concert.

Sometimes, those who get up at 4 a.m. to study will bump into their roommates who stay up all night studying until 4 a.m.

[So this is how everyone's high school life is, huh? It's always been the same group of people.] Xu Qingfan thought to himself as he looked at Xiao Ruanwen, who was now seriously reviewing her studies again.

As darkness began to fall outside, the students sitting in the front row turned on their lights.

The teaching building, shrouded in night, was soon brightly lit, resembling a black-hearted factory that worked day and night.

At 7 p.m., the homeroom teacher returned to the classroom.

"What I'm projecting on the screen now are everyone's exam room and seat number. Students, please take notes and write them down on paper."

"After school, you need to arrange the desks so that everyone can sit alone. You need to take the books out of your drawers, and also move the small boxes piled up in the aisle outside. Class monitor, do you understand? You're in charge of this after school."

Guo Youcai turned on the microphone and finished giving his instructions.

After seeing Xiao Ruanwen nod, he concluded, "This is everyone's first exam of the new semester. This score will be useful for both the arts and sciences class selection next year, as well as for studying abroad or applying for independent admissions after the college entrance examination. So students should take it seriously. That's all I have to say so as not to take up any more of your study time."

After Guo Youcai left, the previously quiet classroom suddenly became noisy. Anyone who has been to school knows that a learning state that has been suddenly interrupted is not so easy to resume in a short time.

"Hey Fan, didn't you say the school doesn't have elite classes? Why do we still need to look at these grades to divide students into arts and science classes?" Wu Shichong poked his arm with his pen cap.

Xu Qingfan tilted his head: "You're asking me? Who am I supposed to ask?"

"Brother Fan, you don't know either? That independent admission, do they really look at the midterm grades?" Lai Chenglang chimed in.

Xu Qingfan did know this, because he had helped Xia Xiaoxiao find out about it in his previous life.

"Pretty much. For universities like HKU and SCUT, you need an admission ticket to participate in their independent admissions process, such as a provincial math Olympiad gold medal, a national first-class athlete award, or a first prize in the New Concept Writing Competition."

"If you don't have any of these certificates, you can use your midterm and final exam scores as an admission ticket, for example, how many times you scored above 140 in math, or something like that."

He spent a lot of time explaining, only to look up and realize that the students from the next group had also peeked over to eavesdrop.

"Then I need to study more math. I used to get full marks in math all the time in junior high!"

"The boss is awesome!"

"My best score on a middle school exam was only 135, awesome!"

Since it was the new semester and no one knew each other's grades, everyone was quite friendly.

Xu Qingfan recognized the first person who spoke. There was a guy named B in every class. His grades were above average, but every time his test results came out, he would tell everyone that he was careless and that if he had checked carefully, he would have been in the top ten of the grade.

Actually, Brother B doesn't have any bad intentions; in fact, he can be a source of joy for everyone in private.

"Awesome." Xu Qingfan also gave him a thumbs up.

After the bell rang for evening self-study, the crowd gradually dispersed, and the classroom quickly returned to quiet.

Xu Qingfan held a Chinese textbook in his hands, but his eyes were not on the book.

He glanced sideways at Xiao Ruanwen's profile, and sometimes his attention would wander to the army of mosquitoes swarming around the streetlights outside the window.

"What are you looking at? Study!" Xiao Ruanwen noticed his gaze, turned around and glared at him, then quickly continued reading.

Xu Qingfan smiled slightly and reached out to help her tuck her hair behind her ear.

His sudden action left Xiao Ruanwen speechless.

She tensed up, not daring to move, and only after confirming that Brother Fan had no further moves did her body slowly relax. However, her erratic heartbeat could no longer return to calm.

[What is Fan Ge doing? He's being so clumsy!]
Xiao Ruanwen remained focused on reading, but this particular page took her ten times longer than usual to finish.

The three evening self-study sessions ended quickly, but after school, everyone tacitly continued reading, and no one left.

"Everyone, please stop for a moment, pull up your seats to make individual tables, and pick up the trash under your feet," Xiao Ruanwen stood up and called out into the microphone.

After receiving the order, the class began to relocate shortly afterward.

Apart from Class 16, the other classes were doing the same thing at roughly the same time, and the whole school building was filled with the sound of table legs scraping against the marble floor.

After being converted into an exam room, the once densely packed classroom instantly became spacious. Unfortunately, Xu Qingfan would not be able to sit next to Xiao Ruanwen for the next few days.

“Let’s go too, we can study at home.” Xu Qingfan took his meal card and phone and went to Xiao Ruanwen’s table.

"I sigh deeply and wipe my tears. Fan-ge, wait a moment, let me finish reciting this poem first." Xiao Ruanwen didn't even look up, but simply wrote on the page with her finger.

After she finished reciting the words from memory and marked the ones she didn't know, the four girls couldn't wait any longer and came upstairs to find the two of them.

"Alright, Fan-ge. Oh~ why are you guys up here!" Xiao Ruanwen had just looked up when she saw her group of girlfriends.

"We waited downstairs for a long time before coming up to find you." Lin Wanning stood beside Xu Qingfan, curiously looking at Qingfan's classmates.

"Let's talk outside, don't disturb others' studying." Xu Qingfan tugged at her sleeve, because there were still many students in the class studying for the exam tomorrow.

Xiao Ruanwen obediently followed instructions, put on her schoolbag, and the six of them quickly left the classroom.

But after the six people left, a considerable discussion still broke out in the class.

"They must be the prettiest girls in our grade."

"Grade? School!"

On the way back, Xu Qingfan started the conversation, and then the six of them took turns reciting a line of ancient poetry.

"The people of Qin had no time to mourn for themselves, but later generations mourned for them."

"If later generations lament but do not learn from their mistakes, they will only cause future generations to lament again!"

"Hehe~ I've finished reciting the Ode to the Epang Palace. Brother Qingfan, I'm hungry. Let's have a midnight snack!" It was Lin Wanning's turn, just as he finished reciting the last line of the Ode to the Epang Palace.

"It's páng, not fang," Xu Qingfan corrected.

Lin Wanning stuck out his tongue and repeated, "房páng".

"That's right."

"whee."

Three days passed in a flash.

Wednesday afternoon.

"Everyone stop answering questions and sit down while the teacher collects the answer sheets."

The last chemistry exam of the midterm was over, and it was only four o'clock in the afternoon.

Xu Qingfan and Xiao Ruanwen were assigned to the same exam room. After the proctor announced the end of the exam, Xiao Ruanwen couldn't wait to come and compare answers with him using her exam paper. Because it wasn't a formal exam, the exam papers and scratch paper were not collected.

"Brother Fan, Brother Fan, is this how the reaction equation is written?"

"Can you check if I got this flowchart right?"

Xu Qingfan handed her his exam paper and pushed her out of the exam room.

After checking the answers and finding that hers was exactly the same as Fan Ge's, Xiao Ruanwen suddenly felt like she was good again.

"Hey~ I feel like I got at least a 95 in chemistry this time."

"The teacher asked me to go get the test papers, Fan-ge, can you come with me?"

The exams were on their third day, and the papers from the first two days had already been graded.

"Alright then." Xu Qingfan nodded, which was taken as an agreement.

Back in the classroom, the students who had finished their exams earlier were already moving their desks.

Xu Qingfan and Xiao Ruanwen joined in, and their first group was quickly restored.

After the students moved the books and miscellaneous items that had been placed in the corridor back to the classroom, the empty examination room returned to its chaotic state.

The two went together to the large office on the second floor of the teaching building, where Wu Lingyu and Xie Rui happened to be queuing up to get their exam papers.

"Brother Fan, Ruan Wen!" Wu Lingyu saw them first and stood on tiptoe to wave to them.

"Wow~ Xiaoyu!" Xiao Ruanwen broke away from the group and ran up to Xiaoyu in surprise to play.

Xu Qingfan had to queue politely, so he could only nod to the two people in place.

The first day's exams were Chinese, Politics, and Physics; the second day's exams were Math, History, and Biology; and the third day's exam was English. All of these have already been graded.

"Brother Fan, we're going back now." Wu Lingyu said to Xu Qingfan as she walked over, carrying several stacks of test papers.

"Okay, we'll talk on WeChat." Xu Qingfan patted Xiaoyu's head and watched her and Xie Rui walk away.

A few minutes later, it was his turn and Xiao Ruanwen's turn in the line. After they found all the test papers for Class 16, Xiao Ruanwen took one stack and gave the rest to him.

"98103135 This is Long Tongyin's. Wow, Fan-ge, I found yours! Full marks 150!" Xiao Ruanwen was holding a math test paper. She started flipping through it from the beginning and quickly found Xu Qingfan's test paper when she had flipped through a third of it.

"What's the big deal? Getting a perfect score is just basic stuff, isn't it?" Xu Qingfan didn't seem to care, but he still glanced at the impressive "150" out of the corner of his eye.

Xiao Ruanwen ignored him and continued flipping through her exam papers.

"No, why!"

"I got everything right, why did they deduct two points from my score!"

Xiao Ruanwen flipped through her test paper with surprise and excitement, but the score was not the perfect score she had expected, but 148, with two points deducted.

Xiao Ruanwen angrily flipped through the pages and finally found the place where she had been penalized on the second page.

"Depend on!"

"I'm done!"

I'm truly impressed!

Xu Qingfan's curiosity was piqued by her words, so he leaned over to take a peek and immediately burst out laughing.

"Hahaha!"

"Xiao Ruanwen, are you a pig? Hahaha!"

Xiao Ruanwen lost two points because she ruined the auxiliary diagram that came with the answer sheet, and then drew the same diagram on the next sheet using a ruler.

Then the teacher marking the paper wrote a big question mark on the picture.

"I didn't get the questions wrong, why did he deduct two points from my score?!" Xiao Ruanwen looked constipated. She had done this before in junior high school, and the teacher had never deducted points from her.

"I told you so long ago, you should have drawn the auxiliary lines with a pencil, but you insisted on using a pen. Now you've met a teacher who takes things very seriously."

Xu Qingfan bumped her head: "Why don't you ask your math teacher for leniency tomorrow? Maybe he can help you get your points back, hahaha!"

Seeing Xiao Ruanwen's expression of discomfort, as if she had eaten shit, he felt inexplicably happy.

"Fan-ge, don't be too happy yet. Maybe your grades in other subjects aren't even as high as mine!" Xiao Ruanwen crossed her arms, glared at him, and stepped into the classroom.

After the exam, the students all went to relax and have fun, so when the two returned to the classroom, it was empty.

"Just leave it here, we'll hand it out tonight. Let's go eat first," Xu Qingfan said as he slowly entered and placed the test paper on his desk.

"No, Brother Fan, aren't you curious about your grades in other subjects?" Xiao Ruanwen found his calmness a little hard to understand.

How much self-control does it take to not even glance at the test paper that has just been handed out after the exam?

"Looking at the score won't change anything, but if we don't go eat the pork chop rice at the second canteen now, it'll really be gone soon." Perhaps it's a different mindset, but Xu Qingfan doesn't really care much about his exam results.

"No, I want to know my score right now!" After sitting down, Xiao Ruanwen picked up a stack of test papers from Xu Qingfan's desk and began to search through them.

Xu Qingfan shook his head helplessly and could only sit down to watch her take it so seriously.

He ran around on the girl's hand with his index finger and thumb, but Xiao Ruanwen, busy looking for her exam paper, didn't chase him away.

She quickly found the two students' Chinese test papers: Xu Qingfan scored 132 points and Xiao Ruanwen scored 125 points.

"Why? My essay only got 43 points! Brother Fan, can you take a look?" After seeing Xu Qingfan's essay with a score of 50, Xiao Ruanwen handed him her test paper.

"You'll be writing argumentative essays in high school, and you're still writing narrative essays. Of course your grades will be low." Xu Qingfan was unconvinced. After all, he had undergone a year of grueling training in his previous life, so writing a simple argumentative essay was no problem for him.

"What argumentative essays and narrative essays? Aren't they all compositions?" Xiao Ruanwen continued looking for test papers for other subjects, temporarily putting aside the Chinese subject.

She quickly found their other exam papers as well. Except for politics, where he and Xiao Ruanwen both scored in the eighties, Xu Qingfan got full marks in physics, biology, and English.

Xiao Ruanwen maintained her usual performance, deducting a few points here and a few points there.

"Alright, you've finished watching, can we go eat now?" Xu Qingfan placed his hand on the girl's head.

"I feel like our scores are about the same, so how come Fan-ge has a score several tens of points higher than me?" Xiao Ruanwen said with a dejected look after calculating their total scores on her phone.

"You have to think of it this way." Xu Qingfan squeezed the girl's head with his hand.

"Hmm?" Xiao Ruanwen looked at him.

"Ruan Wen, if you get all the careless questions right, won't your total score be higher than mine?"

“It’s wrapped!” Xiao Ruanwen nodded vigorously.

“That’s right, it means you still have a lot of room for improvement, while I have no room for improvement.” Xu Qingfan pinched her face again.

"I feel like you're trying to fool me, but I can't quite tell what's wrong with it right now," Xiao Ruanwen said, wrinkling her nose.

"How could that be? Ruan Wen, you're so smart, who could possibly fool you!"

"That's true."

(End of this chapter)