Chapter 15: Monthly Exam and a Sense of Oppression

The monthly exam at Haizhou No. 3 Middle School was held at the end of September.

Haizhou City mandates that junior middle schools have a three-year curriculum, and Haizhou No. 3 Middle School was naturally no exception.

As students in Grade Three, the children had already been taught all the necessary courses before the start of the school year.

Therefore, the tone for the entire third year was set: the students would steadily review according to the school’s schedule, preparing themselves to face next year’s Unified Entrance Examination for Senior High Schools of Xijiang Province.

For this month’s exam at Haizhou No. 3 Middle School, the students in Class 3-6 were told by Yanli Teacher that the test paper’s length and question types would align with the format of the senior high entrance exam.

The subjects would no longer be tested separately; instead, physics and chemistry would be combined into one paper, and the timing would follow the official rules of the entrance exam.

The first day would cover Chinese and the comprehensive subjects, while the second day would test math and English.

At the same time, Yanli Teacher reassured the students that since they had only just started their final review about a month ago, the difficulty of the papers would be somewhat reduced.

It would definitely be easier than the entrance exam itself, at least not enough to scare the kids.

But even with Yanli Teacher’s reassurances, the students still lacked confidence in this exam. Some of the weaker students had already started complaining.

Without a firm footing, even the relatively better students couldn’t calmly face this new exam rhythm.

On the other hand, the school had cleverly arranged the monthly exam to perfectly coincide with the National Day Golden Week.

Haizhou No. 3 Middle School first held the monthly exam at the end of September, lasting two days. After the exam, the Autumn Sports Meet was scheduled. Then came the rare National Day Golden Week holiday.

This schedule was the optimal solution. If the exam were set after the National Day holiday, few students would be able to rest properly during the week.

Then there was the sports meet. The whole class sat together, eating, drinking, playing, chatting, and cheering on classmates who participated in events— a truly relaxing time.

Just thinking about finishing the test and then having two days to unwind, followed by a whole week of National Day break at home, the Grade Three students of Haizhou No. 3 Middle School should be able to face the exam with relative happiness, right?

However, at this very moment.

In the Fifth Exam Room of Haizhou No. 3 Middle School, with just an hour left before the monthly exam ended, and with students planning to head to the mall to shop and prepare snacks for tomorrow’s sports meet, an overwhelming pressure hung in the air.

All because of one person— someone with white hair, red eyes, and a face so exquisitely beautiful it seemed otherworldly, like a fairy.

Zheng Ziyan.

Except for the Chinese exam on the morning of the first day, which was fairly normal, from the comprehensive exam yesterday afternoon to the ongoing English test, he had completely shattered the illusions of the students in the entire Fifth Exam Room.

By the way, Haizhou No. 3 Middle School’s exam arrangement placed students ranked in the top 100 by grade in the first four exam rooms, while the remaining rooms were assigned based on surname order.

Zhao, Qian, Sun, Li, Zhou, Wu, Zheng, Wang— the surname Zheng placed Zi Yan as the last student in the Fifth Exam Room.

30.Lily is my

classmate.We( )each other since she came to our school.

A.know B.knew

C.have known D.will

Zi Yan glanced at the question, then lifted his pen and chose C, quickly moving on to answer the next questions.

According to the English teacher of Class 3-6, the key point of this question was clear: it tested verb tenses. “Since she came to our school” clearly indicated the present perfect tense, so answer C was the obvious choice.

However, Zi Yan didn’t like the teacher’s way of explaining English.

It felt as if a language that should be vibrant and alive, learned for communication, was being formalized and rigidified.

He preferred to answer questions based on his intuition. If it didn’t sound awkward when read aloud, it was probably right.

Regardless, Zi Yan’s rapid answering pace kept pressing on the nerves of the students present.

This pressure had been palpable since yesterday afternoon.

During the math exam yesterday, Zi Yan finished all the questions in less than an hour. After checking, with no obvious mistakes, he shaded his answer sheet and handed it in.

Honestly, any student who hands in the paper early— unless they’re widely recognized as weak— will inevitably put pressure on the students still working.

Zi Yan was taking Haizhou No. 3 Middle School’s exam for the first time, so no one knew whether he was a top student or a poor one.

But when Zi Yan handed in his answer sheet, the densely packed, neatly written work visible on the back, including the last two difficult proof questions (27 and 28), made it clear that this was no careless or desperate scribbling.

Finishing math early, then finishing the comprehensive exam (physics and chemistry) early, and calmly walking up to the stage had repeatedly and invisibly piled pressure on everyone else.

Finally, with about thirty minutes left before the English exam ended, Zi Yan pinched his answer sheet and stood up again.

“……”

Since the exam was still in progress, the students remained silent, but several heads lifted from their writing as they watched him walk toward the stage once more, leaving them behind with a carefree back.

“Phew……”

Handing in his paper and stepping outside into the hallway, Zi Yan looked up at the sky outside the teaching building.

He took out the phone he had just left with the proctor during the exam and checked the time—it was exactly 3 p.m.

The sky outside already had a faint glow of the setting sun.

Zi Yan still remembered when he first arrived in Haizhou, it wouldn’t get dark until six or seven in the evening. The sun wouldn’t start to set until around five.

In the blink of an eye, it had been so long in Sunflower Country, and he didn’t even know how his mother was doing over in Antwerp.

“And now, Dad should finally agree to buy me a sewing machine… right?” Zi Yan muttered, lacking confidence.

For now, his strengths seemed to be math, physics, and chemistry, and with years of immersion in English, it wouldn’t be terrible either.

But Chinese…

If he could choose, Zi Yan really didn’t want to answer the Chinese exam paper.

For him now, it wasn’t just about answering questions. Even when others spoke Mandarin to him at normal speed, he sometimes couldn’t keep up and failed to understand.

Please spare a child who grew up abroad, who always thinks in German first and then translates into Mandarin during conversations.

Especially those classical Chinese translation questions.

What does “The people of the domain do not rely on borders to defend the country, nor do they depend on mountains and rivers for security, and do not rely on the benefits of warfare” even mean? Can you eat that?

Couldn’t understand, couldn’t interpret, couldn’t translate— triple fail.

So on the entire Chinese exam paper, Zi Yan’s classical poetry and prose reading, ancient text comprehension, and even the basic application questions at the start were basically doomed.

His Chinese had already tragically fallen by the wayside— sigh, might as well burn some incense.