Chapter 8: Their Lives

Afternoon self-study class.

“What’s the next step?”

Xiali asked excitedly, because she was very satisfied with the perfect cooperation with Su Nian. This man being the Savior was simply too good.

“We’re almost there. We’ve gathered all the information we can from other angles. Next, just tutor her normally and adapt as we go.”

“So that means we’re starting to raise her affection level and unlock the CG scenes?”

Xiali had recently realized that watching romance dramas was useless for helping out, so the cat had started playing galgames.

“Don’t learn random stuff.”

Su Nian began adjusting his phased plan. With the Demon incident, he had to make trade-offs in his studies. After all, since he had agreed, he had to do it well, even if it meant saving the world.

He’d set aside his regular coursework for now and just maintain his competition studies. Su Nian only studied broadly anyway, so last year he only got first place in each subject at the provincial level, without making it into the provincial team for any one subject.

That was why Su Nian never thought of himself as a genius. He was just a person who lived with a clear head.

Dropping his regular classes for now wouldn’t be a big deal. He originally planned to devote only a month to Yun Buran. So the picture was clear: maintain his own competition studies while tutoring Yun Buran.

Xiali was still muttering about how to trigger affection events, but Su Nian had never planned that. He did need to win her over, but he didn’t want the girl to fall in love with him.

So Xiali didn’t know that the tutoring was already in the later stages of Su Nian’s plan. If her heart had a flaw, then Su Nian would guide Yun Buran to become a strong and independent person.

“Su Nian, we’re in the same exam room.”

An Hexi’s soft voice came through. As class monitor, she had already seen everyone’s exam room assignments.

For regular exams, rooms were arranged by score, so they would definitely be in the same room anyway. No need to mention that.

But next Monday through Wednesday was the city-wide unified exam. For large exams, their school tried to simulate the Gaokao as realistically as possible, so rooms were assigned randomly. Now the admission tickets had been handed out early, and An Hexi was about to distribute them.

‘One more week, huh?’ The freshmen and sophomores would take it first, then the juniors and seniors. He planned to let Yun Buran see results from the next exam. That was his confidence in himself, and also his confidence in Yun Buran.

Because that first glance had revealed not only the girl’s moving name, but also the stacked notebooks and the band-aid on her finger.

“That is quite a coincidence.”

Su Nian replied indifferently. After all, there were many students in their grade, so randomness was high. For example, in this exam room, his only classmate was his little deskmate.

So An Hexi wore a faint smile. She didn’t dare to be too happy, or when she went back to the dorm at night, she would definitely face “sanctions” from the girls’ dorm. Though it seemed she couldn’t escape no matter what she did.

The tutoring time Su Nian and Yun Buran had agreed on was evening self-study from Monday to Friday, plus weekends. Initially, both Yun Buran and Aunt Yun refused, saying it was too much trouble for him.

But he stubbornly insisted that he needed to prove his ability in the shortest time, so they thought it fit his personality and didn’t refuse.

Thus, he and Yun Buran requested leave for all the evening self-studies this month. It was easy for Yun Buran—at their stage, many students went to outside tutoring centers directly, only returning for mock exams.

As for Su Nian, he could only say that Brother Tao was truly a god.

When approving the leave, Brother Tao joked that if Su Nian didn’t take first place in the city-wide exam next week, he wouldn’t approve it. Su Nian had hesitated when deciding to put aside his regular studies—first place was hard, but top five was definitely achievable.

“By the way, Honorable Class Monitor, if you don’t see me during evening self-study this month, don’t be surprised.”

“Huh? What’s up?”

“I signed up for a competition training institution to settle in.”

Their school was not a traditional competition powerhouse, so competition resources were weak. That made it understandable.

“Alright, good luck.”

An Hexi once again regretted that her science subjects weren’t strong. She was an English and language top-scorer. When Su Nian first went to competition class, it saw the highest number of female students in the school’s history for competition courses. Regular classrooms couldn’t accommodate them all, so they had to switch to the conference hall.

But in the end, things calmed down. On one hand, Su Nian felt the courses were too shallow and stopped going; on the other hand, everyone was scared off by the difficulty.

“By the way, how do you do this problem?”

An Hexi always approached Su Nian with a sense of proportion, but Su Nian was usually bland and didn’t chat long. However, if she asked him a problem, he would be very patient, and this was her exclusive privilege.

Previously, Su Nian thought that helping classmates would also help himself, so he was enthusiastic about everyone’s questions. But later, too many people had ulterior motives, so now he only solved problems for An Hexi.

An Hexi was a girl with a little scheme. Su Nian had always known that. But she was a deskmate he would choose without hesitation even if he had to do it all over again, because An Hexi was also a clever girl who knew how to keep her distance.

Su Nian took the pen. It was a tough conic section fill-in-the-blank. The moment he finished reading the problem, he thought of multiple methods: affine transformation, poles and polars, asymmetry, and more.

But he knew An Hexi’s foundation, so he patiently started drawing coordinate axes.

An Hexi leaned over, openly staring at the boy’s profile. He thought quickly, so she treasured these few seconds every time, because soon she would have to focus seriously on the problem. She couldn’t stare at him like a lovesick fool like other girls.

An Hexi didn’t want to be hated by Su Nian.

The sunlight was completely tactless, climbing from the window onto the boy’s profile without greeting, trying to disturb the serious and patient youth, intruding on this little world for two.

The girl’s high school life wasn’t hard at all.