We ordinary people also need to fall in love.

"You did quite well on the exam this time, but don't get complacent. What I said to the other students applies to you as well, understand?" Zhong Jianjun slammed his fingers on the desk with a dull thud.

"I understand, teacher."

Li Mubai and three other students who scored over 600 stood side by side in front of the desk.

Zhong Jianjun glanced at them and waved his hand: "Alright, everyone else go back first, Li Mubai stays."

The three men breathed a sigh of relief and quickly closed the door and left.

The office fell silent.

Zhong Jianjun leaned back in his chair, his right hand instinctively reaching into the inside pocket of his coat as if to grab a cigarette, but his hand stopped halfway and then withdrew.

"You did well on the exam," Zhong Jianjun said, his voice tinged with a hint of relief. "Keep it up. There are still more than forty days until the college entrance exam, and it's possible to take another step forward."

Li Mubai nodded without saying anything.

Zhong Jianjun's expression immediately hardened: "However, the closer you get to the crucial moment, the more you need to keep your composure and not give up on the exam because of a small thing."

"Okay, Teacher Zhong."

Li Mubai naturally understood what Zhong Jianjun meant by "trivial matter".

"The school's coming-of-age ceremony is in two weeks."

A coming-of-age ceremony? Li Mubai was taken aback. He was already nineteen years old this year. Was this ceremony a little late?

Before he could think it through, he heard Zhong Jianjun continue:

"A student representative needs to give a speech for the coming-of-age ceremony, so I've put your name on the list."

He has to give a speech and spend time and effort preparing it. He would be better off doing more practice problems with that time.

"Teacher Zhong," he hesitated before speaking, "can I not go?"

Zhong Jianjun didn't reply, but just looked up at him.

After a few seconds, he said, "Go back and study hard."

He leaned back in his chair, took out his cigarette case, and lit one.

Li Mubai replied with an "okay," and, not wanting to inhale secondhand smoke, turned and walked out of the office.

Before the door closed, he glanced at Zhong Jianjun, who was sitting in a chair, puffing on his cigarette. The rising smoke obscured his weathered face.

Li Mubai returned to the classroom, his gaze unconsciously falling on the college entrance examination calendar on the wall—forty-three days until the college entrance examination.

For many people, the college entrance examination is a liberation, a relief, and the end of endless tests and endless sea of ​​questions.

But for him, it was more like the end of a dream. Every night's dream would end when the sun rose. We can't be Sleeping Beauty; that's the established reality.

Li Mubai chuckled inwardly, then sat back down in his seat, waiting for the bell to ring to signal the end of evening self-study.

This is an unavoidable problem. Even if he tries to bury his head in exam papers and a sea of ​​questions like an ostrich, what's coming will still come.

He shook his head, sat back in his seat, and waited for the evening self-study session to end...

The next morning, he was still the first person to arrive at the classroom.

As dawn broke, the morning light slanted in through the windows, bathing the desks and chairs in the dim light.

He walked to the calendar and turned the page forward—42.

Without turning on the light, he sat back down, took off his backpack, and stared blankly.

In the quiet classroom, the only sounds were the chirping of birds outside the window and some other faint, fragmented noises, as if they were coming from inside the classroom.

mouse?

He didn't pay attention at first, but the sound kept coming from time to time, sometimes very faint, as if someone was deliberately suppressing it, and sometimes very obvious.

Li Mubai stood up and looked back, and immediately noticed a figure squatting at the back of the classroom.

Bang!

He instinctively stepped back, knocking over the books stacked on the edge of the table, which scattered all over the floor with a crash.

The figure was completely still. Could it be a mistake? Or was it just a black garbage bag?

Li Mubai put on his glasses uncertainly.

"..." He turned on the light. "Chen Qiuhe, what kind of performance art are you doing?"

Chen Qiuhe stood up as if waking from a dream, rubbing her eyes: "Where am I? Was I sleepwalking?"

Li Mubai stared at her silently, making her feel uneasy.

"Do you dream that you're coming to class? Wearing your school uniform neatly and carrying your backpack?" he said.

Chen Qiuhe paused for a moment, scratched the back of her head, and smiled stiffly: "It seems so. You know, dreams are like that. You don't remember them very clearly after you wake up."

Li Mubai didn't reply; he looked Chen Qiuhe up and down.

"What are you doing in our classroom so early in the morning?" he asked.

"Don't you believe me if I say I was sleepwalking?"

Li Mubai looked at her with an expression that said, "Do you think I believe you?"

Chen Qiuhe chuckled sheepishly, then rubbed her stomach. "Oh dear! I haven't had breakfast yet! I'm going to eat now. I wish you good luck getting into Peking University! Goodbye!"

She dashed out of the classroom in a flash, giving Li Mubai no time to react.

By the time he left the classroom, Chen Qiuhe had already run down to the bottom of the teaching building.

He shook his head, recalling Xie Shu's words: both Chen Qiuhe and he liked to keep things to themselves, but now, Chen Qiuhe was still better.

Li Mubai walked back to the classroom and glanced around again. The same bookshelves, the same potted plants, the same desks piled high with books—it seemed there was nothing different.

He crouched down, tidied up the books he had knocked over, then sat down and stared at the countdown to the college entrance exam, lost in thought for a long time…

"Shall we go back together?"

After finishing the test on Saturday, Xie Shu still spoke up as usual.

"Mm." Li Mubai nodded.

"Huh?" Xie Shu was taken aback, seemingly not expecting Li Mubai to agree so readily.

She looked Li Mubai up and down.

"Are you...possessed?"

Li Mubai chuckled dryly: "Because it's happened so many times, I know that refusing won't do much good."

Xie Shu raised her hand to her lips, as if she couldn't help but chuckle softly, then extended her hand to him: "You're smart enough to leave."

She naturally took Li Mubai's hand and walked towards the school parking lot.

Li Mubai walked beside her without saying anything, but he took a deep breath in his heart.

A black Bentley was parked in the school parking lot. Xie Shu glanced at Li Mubai beside him and found that he was not very surprised.

That makes sense, after all, only her mother, Xu Ting, likes to drive her car directly into the parking lot...

She opened the door and let Li Mubai get into the car first.

The car was still stuffy, filled with a dizzyingly cold air conditioner.

Xu Ting didn't say a word. At this moment, she was like a driver in a novel who picks up and drops off young masters and misses from school, silently releasing the handbrake and starting the vehicle.

Xie Shu opened the window, and the spring breeze blew in, refreshing and invigorating.

She looked to the other side, where Li Mubai had his head down, his gaze blank, seemingly lost in thought.

Xie Shu got up and lowered the window on his side a little.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked in a low voice.

Li Mubai snapped out of his reverie and said naturally, "I was thinking about the last math question on the weekly quiz."

"You mean the last derivative problem?"

"Um."

"My conclusion for the first question is that the decreasing interval is... For the second question, we found that a is greater than or equal to 1." Xie Shu's tone also became more focused.

"I think I asked the wrong question in my second question."

"Tell me how you asked for it; maybe you're right," Xie Shu said.

"I used an equivalent transformation by dividing both sides by x..."

Xu Ting, who was driving, glanced at the rearview mirror, then looked away. She didn't ask where they were going, but drove straight towards the villa...