Brother! This is the adoption certificate. I don't want your sister-in-law!

He Shaojun waved his hand, gesturing for Su Xiao to sit down.

The gesture was like swatting away a fly.

Too lazy to take pictures, too lazy to look at them.

He tucked the report card into his lesson plan, then turned to write chemical equations on the blackboard, chalk dust falling onto his shoulders.

Su Xiao sat down, feeling a tightness in her chest.

It wasn't the kind of feeling of being wronged and stifled after being scolded, but I just couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Fang Yu leaned over from behind and asked in a low voice, "Brother Su, are you alright?"

Su Xiao didn't say anything.

He opened the chemistry textbook on the table and stared at it for a long time.

Then he suddenly raised his head, and there was a light in his eyes that Fang Yu had never seen before.

"Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river; never underestimate a young person's potential!"

His voice wasn't loud, but every word seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth: "From today onwards, I will study hard."

Fang Yu was stunned for a moment, then couldn't help but burst out laughing: "Brother Su, did you lose oxygen to your brain from standing for so long? You? Study hard? Xu Niannian helped you with your chemistry homework last week."

Su Xiao turned around and glared at him.

It wasn't the usual playful glare; it was a real glare.

Fang Yu's laughter stopped abruptly when he saw that look, and he awkwardly shrank back.

"Get up from where you fall."

Su Xiao left those words behind and began rummaging through her desk.

He stacked his textbooks one by one on the table, turned his schoolbag upside down, and even pulled out the half-pack of spicy strips that was stuffed deep inside the desk.

After searching for a while, he stopped and stared at the messy pile of things in front of him, his expression somewhat subtle.

"Brother Su, what are you looking for?" Fang Yu leaned over again.

"Last week's chemistry weekly test paper."

Fang Yu's lips twitched.

Then his whole face started twitching, and finally he couldn't hold back anymore, his voice filled with barely suppressed laughter.

"Brother Su, have you forgotten? After the exam that day, you said this lousy test paper wasn't good enough for you, and you crumpled it up and threw it in the trash can right there. You threw it in the trash can yourself, and you even scored a three-pointer on it."

Su Xiao's hand froze on the edge of the desk.

The air was still for a few seconds.

What a bad start!

He cursed himself inwardly, a hint of embarrassment flashing across his face. Just as he was about to say something to save face, a hand reached out from the side.

Xu Niannian was holding an exam paper in her hand.

It wasn't the wrinkled kind; it was folded neatly into a square, with the edges pressed flat and the creases barely noticeable.

She handed him the test paper with both hands, her fingers gripping the edge of the paper, afraid to touch his hands.

Her head was lowered, and her voice trembled slightly: "You, you can use mine."

Su Xiao took the exam paper.

The paper was clean and tidy, with annotations in red pen next to the answers to each question. The handwriting was small and clear, with each stroke distinct.

What he didn't know was that she had kept this exam paper for a long time.

I've kept it in the deepest part of my desk since the day it was delivered, afraid of damaging it or getting it dirty.

She always did this; she would carefully collect every exam paper that was handed out after each test.

She was waiting for him to speak up, waiting for the day he wanted to learn.

He asked, and she handed it to him.

Even though it was just handed over, her heart was beating faster than when she was called on to answer a question.

Thanks.

Su Xiao spread the test paper on the table and then took out the chemistry notebook that Xu Niannian had given him from his schoolbag, placing the two items side by side.

He looked down at the first multiple-choice question on the test paper for about half a minute.

Then he turned his head and asked, "Why did you choose C?"

Xu Niannian originally thought he was just saying it.

To my surprise, he actually started asking questions.

She paused for a moment, then quickly moved her chair a little closer to him, pointed to the annotations she had written next to the question, and explained in a low voice.

"This...this is an ionic equation...we need to see if we need to disassemble it first..."

Su Xiao said "Oh" and nodded.

Two minutes later, he pointed to a fill-in-the-blank question: "What about this one?"

Xu Niannian leaned closer again.

Her fingers touched the exam paper, her body trembling slightly with nervousness.

Su Xiao listened while glancing at her out of the corner of her eye.

She didn't dare look at him when she was explaining the questions; she only dared to look at the test paper.

He looked at her eyelashes, at the tip of her nose, at her lips that moved slightly as she spoke.

Every time she felt his gaze, her voice would falter and then become even softer.

"Did you understand?" she asked timidly.

"I didn't understand," Su Xiao said matter-of-factly.

Xu Niannian opened her mouth, but had no choice but to repeat herself.

Su Xiao didn't listen much this time, but he had seen enough.

After she finished speaking, he suddenly leaned closer and lowered his voice: "Xu Niannian, you look quite good when you're explaining the problem."

Xu Niannian's voice stopped abruptly.

She lowered her head even further, her bangs covering her entire face, revealing only her two bright red ears.

After a long pause, she finally spoke again: "Next... this one..."

Su Xiao leaned back in her chair, a slight smile playing on her lips.

Okay, I won't tease her anymore.

He turned his gaze back to the test paper and this time he really started listening.

……

After studying for a while, Su Xiao felt her eyes getting a little sore.

He put down his pen, rubbed his eyelids, and turned to look to the side.

Xu Niannian was doing her homework with her head down, in the exact same posture as before.

With his left hand on the textbook and his right hand holding the pen, he wrote line by line.

Sunlight streamed obliquely through the window, falling on the empty table next to her.

Su Xiao propped her head up and looked at her for a long time.

Xu Daidai is really good-looking.

It's not the kind of beauty that immediately amazes you, but the kind of beauty that grows on you the more you look at it, the more you want to look at it again and again.

She has a round face, a small nose, and long eyelashes.

Her bangs were very thick, always covering most of her face, as if she was deliberately hiding them.

How come he never noticed before?

What kind of face is hidden under those thick bangs?

Su Xiao changed her posture, propping her head up with her right hand and tilting her head to look at her.

"Xu Niannian".

Xu Niannian paused for a moment.

"I've thought it through."

Su Xiao's voice was languid, but her eyes were serious. "I will study hard in the future and go to the same university as you."

Xu Niannian's pen slipped from her hand, rolled once on the textbook, and stopped between the pages.

Her fingers froze in mid-air, still holding the pen, and she was completely still.

A blush gradually spread from her neck up her cheeks, across her ears, and finally even tinged her forehead, which was covered by her bangs, with pink.

"You, you..." She couldn't utter a complete sentence.

Su Xiao was delighted to see her looking so angry.

He moved half an inch closer to her, his elbow almost touching her sleeve.

"Can you teach me in the future? Look, Teacher He said I'll be expelled if this continues. Only you can save me."

Xu Niannian buried her face in her textbook and didn't say anything.

Su Xiao waited for a while but didn't receive a reply.

He raised an eyebrow, didn't press the matter further, picked up his pen, and continued looking down at the exam paper.

After a while, about seven or eight minutes, Su Xiao felt something gently touch his hand.

It wasn't a finger, but a piece of paper, pushed over from Xu Niannian's side.

The strip of paper was torn from the exercise book, and the edges were torn neatly.

He turned the note over.

There are only two words on it, written in small characters, one stroke at a time.

"Can".