After checking on the students, Chen Jinghua began teaching.

Chemistry was Xiang Di’s weak subject. She had to listen carefully, and for once she finally behaved.

At last, it was quiet.

“After this class, I’m leaving. Help me tell the teacher,” Bai Jiangxin said.

“Didn’t you just say your illness was completely better? Now you’re leaving again after just one class?” Ye Minjia was inexplicably baffled. “Even the grade’s top student can’t be this much of a show-off, right?”

Bai Jiangxin frowned, his tone slightly displeased. “I’m being a show-off?”

“Then who is, if not you?” Ye Minjia shot back.

Bai Jiangxin was left speechless for a moment.

Forget it.

Not wanting to talk, Bai Jiangxin started working on the chemistry test paper that had been handed out yesterday.

Ye Minjia couldn’t make head or tail of it.

What was going on with this guy, anyway? It felt like his temper had been especially unstable these past two days. Before, at worst, he was just aloof and didn’t like talking to people. Now it felt like he was heading toward bipolar disorder.

Could it be pre-exam anxiety?

Ye Minjia couldn’t figure it out.

Since it was the homeroom teacher’s class, it wasn’t appropriate to whisper openly. As the class monitor, Ye Minjia had an obligation to care about his classmates’ mental state. What’s more, Bai Jiangxin was his good brother, so he had to care even more.

Ye Minjia decided to wait until class was over and have a proper heart-to-heart with Bai Jiangxin.

After one class ended, before he could even open his mouth, Bai Jiangxin dropped his pen and went out.

Ye Minjia called after him, “Hey, where are you going?”

Bai Jiangxin didn’t even turn his head. “To the bathroom.”

Walking that fast—about to pee himself or what?

Ye Minjia curled his lips. There was no way he could have a heart-to-heart in the men’s restroom anyway; better wait until the guy came back.

Lowering his head, he reached into his desk to look for the papers that might be needed for the next class, when someone suddenly came looking for him.

“Class monitor.”

Ye Minjia looked up. The first thing that came into view was a slightly nervous little oval face.

How rare. Xiang Di was actually taking the initiative to come find him.

Girls liked to do everything in groups, including coming to see the class monitor. Xiang Di had Liang Qianqian beside her. Liang Qianqian had been in the same class as him back in their first year of high school, so Ye Minjia was more familiar with her.

So he looked at Liang Qianqian and asked, “Do you two need something?”

“Oh, didn’t homeroom say there’s been a lot of flu going around lately? Xiang Di heard from her mom that there’s a medicine that specifically treats the flu, one dose and you’re better. I was thinking, why not suggest to homeroom that we use class funds to buy a few boxes and keep them in the classroom?”

That was a good suggestion. Their class funds were plentiful anyway; leaving the money sitting there was still leaving it there. Might as well buy something useful.

“Didn’t expect you to be so thoughtful.”

“It wasn’t me, it was Xiang Di who suggested it,” Liang Qianqian said.

Xiang Di immediately explained, “I just heard the teacher say during class that Bai Jiangxin got the flu, so I happened to think of it.”

Only she herself knew—it wasn’t a coincidence. She used the whole class as an excuse, just so her concern for that one person wouldn’t be so obvious.

That way, if Bai Jiangxin got sick again next time, there would be no need to worry.

─── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ───

It wasn’t until the bell rang for the second class that Bai Jiangxin stepped into the classroom right on time.

“I thought you fell into the toilet,” Ye Minjia said. “Come with me to the pharmacy at noon.”

Bai Jiangxin: “Are you sick?”

“You’re the one who’s sick. It’s to buy flu prevention medicine, okay?”

“Not going.” Bai Jiangxin refused outright.

Ye Minjia wasn’t surprised at all. Usually, even asking him to accompany him to buy milk tea was like inviting an old lord let alone buying medicine.

“You’re heartless enough, kid. Then don’t think about me helping you ask homeroom for leave.”

Worst case, he’d just go buy it himself. He wasn’t a girl, no need to have someone accompany him for everything.

“I think I forgot to ask what the medicine’s called,” Ye Minjia suddenly remembered and called toward the seats in front, “Xiang Di, Xiang Di.”

Bai Jiangxin instinctively paused and lifted his head.

Xiang Di turned around. Even though she clearly knew it was the class monitor calling her, the moment she turned her head, her gaze still stopped on Bai Jiangxin for an instant.

Afraid to linger too long and reveal something, she quickly shifted her eyes away again.

Ye Minjia asked, “What was the name of that flu medicine you recommended I buy?”

After answering the class monitor’s question, Xiang Di continued doing her own thing.

She actually really wanted him to know that she suggested buying the medicine because of him, but she was afraid that if he knew, her feelings for him would have nowhere left to hide.

【I like Bai Jiangxin.】

But confessing was impossible—impossible in this lifetime.

Just saying it in her heart already made her feel extremely embarrassed, let alone saying it to that person’s face.

【Ahhh, so embarrassing!】

Xiang Di suddenly slumped down onto the desk, half her face buried in her arm, only a pair of eyes exposed. She picked up her pen and wrote the initials of a name on the scratch paper.

【BJX, I really like you.】

【…Although you might never know in this lifetime.】

【There is a kind of love called being unnoticed, that is my love for you.】

Unnoticed?

It was obviously noisy as hell.

So noisy that he hadn’t forgotten for even a single second that she liked him.

Watching the meatball ponytail in the front row droop down together with its owner as she lay slumped on the desk, Bai Jiangxin tugged at the corner of his lips.

But what was the use of her shouting so loudly in her heart? In the end, she was still just a gopher with lustful thoughts but no courage.

Bai Jiangxin suddenly said, “I’ll go with you to buy medicine at noon.”

Ye Minjia: “Huh?”

Bai Jiangxin repeated himself with rare patience. “I said I’ll go with you to buy medicine at noon.”

“Oh my god, the sun’s rising from the west.” Ye Minjia asked, “Then are you still leaving later?”

“Not leaving,” Bai Jiangxin said flatly. “After all, there are still eight hundred test papers to write.”

Since she had gone out of her way to worry about him, then studying like a tonic pill it was.

He’d treat it as returning her concern.

Even though she wouldn’t know.

But very soon, Bai Jiangxin regretted it.

─── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ───

Tonight’s evening self-study was supervised by the biology teacher.

The biology teacher walked into the classroom holding a thick stack of test papers. One look, and everyone knew that tonight’s self-study had been arranged to the fullest.

In the past, when self-study periods were taken over for tests, they could still complain a bit like living humans. Now that they’d been worn down to this point, they were long numb.

The biology teacher rubbed his fingers together and started handing out the papers.

“This period is an exam. Students in the first row, pass the papers back. No answer sheets, write directly on the test.”

“Test it, test it, test me to death and be done with it,” Ye Minjia complained while passing the papers. “Must’ve committed murder and arson in my last life to be preparing for the college entrance exam in this one.”

He glanced at Bai Jiangxin beside him again—he had already started writing, the first two multiple-choice questions already filled in. Ye Minjia had even seen the answers.

“Bro, can you have even a little bit of normal human emotions?” Ye Minjia couldn’t help asking. “Are you AI?”

“Hurry up and write.”

Bai Jiangxin couldn’t be bothered with him.

Ye Minjia scanned the test paper, every cell in his body resisting.

“Don’t want to write…” Ye Minjia said, clutching his head. “If this keeps up, I’m really going to hate studying.”

It wasn’t just him who didn’t want to write. Most people didn’t. Dragging their feet, just passing the papers back alone took nearly seven or eight minutes before they reached the students in the last row.

The classroom finally quieted down.

Bai Jiangxin had already reached the last few multiple-choice questions. It was only then that he heard a certain half-dead voice.

Heh. The exam had already started for over ten minutes, and only now was she finally reading the questions.

【Among the following descriptions of cell structure, which is incorrect? A, the cell membrane has selective permeability… okay, that’s right. B, mitochondria are the main site of aerobic respiration—yeah, also right… C, ribosomes are the site of protein synthesis—damn it, why is C also right?】

【Pick D? So annoying, why put the correct option as the last one, making me analyze all four options and waste my time! Question two!】

【Why did you pick D again?! Is there something wrong with the test writer’s brain?!】

Such intense resentment—just because two consecutive multiple-choice questions were both D, someone sounded like she was about to drag the test setter out and sell them off.

【The third question is A. Mm, not bad. I hereby personally confer upon Multiple-Choice Question Three the title of Legitimate Eldest Question. The questions after this had better be sensible and mark the correct options for me themselves, otherwise they’ll all be demoted to Concubine Questions, exiled to the Cold Palace of the Wrong-Question Notebook, never to be released for eternity!】

“…” The Legitimate–Concubine Sect had begun invading the biology test paper.

Fortunately, there were no more consecutive D answers after that. The remaining multiple-choice questions all escaped the fate of being demoted to concubine questions.

【During the cell cycle, when does DNA replication occur? What period was it again? Crap, I forgot.】

Bai Jiangxin was a little speechless.

S, S. Such a simple basic question, where did all that memorized knowledge go?

【It’s fine, look at the options first, use elimination. G1 phase, S phase, M phase… huh? S|M? That’s so perverted.】

S is the DNA synthesis phase, M is the mitotic phase. The perverted thing was clearly her brain.

The moment she ran into a question she didn’t know, she started thinking about this kind of messy nonsense again.

Bai Jiangxin sighed.

Still, Xiang Di’s multiple-choice questions were finally finished safely, and she smoothly moved on to the next type of question.

Fortunately, biology didn’t really have any complicated calculation problems to begin with. Although during the exam someone’s muttering was still quite frequent—gushing about how smart she was when she encountered easy ones, blaming the test setter for being inconsiderate when she hit difficult ones—it was, for now, still within Bai Jiangxin’s tolerance.

After these past few days, he had even grown a little accustomed to Xiang Di’s wild inner monologue.

As long as she didn’t keep thinking about him.

During the exam, although her resentment was heavy and her mouth busy, Xiang Di was actually fairly focused—until she reached a question about trait inheritance.

The original question involved two guinea pigs of different colors mating, calculating the probability of their offspring’s colors.

A question with no real difficulty. This time, she probably wouldn’t pull any stunts.

But Bai Jiangxin had clearly underestimated Xiang Di’s capacity for causing trouble.

【Black guinea pigs are a dominant trait, double eyelids are also a dominant trait. I have double eyelids, Dd, and Bai Jiangxin also has double eyelids, Dd. Then the probability that the child we produce will have single eyelids, dd, would be…】

“…”

So she wasn’t going to be a gopher anymore, now she wanted to be a guinea pig, huh.

Pressing his temples, Bai Jiangxin tried to persuade himself to let it go—it was just answering questions.

Facts proved that Bai Jiangxin had once again underestimated Xiang Di’s powerful associative ability.

【But if Bai Jiangxin and I were going to have a child, then first we’d have to…】

Xiang Di lightly bit the tip of her pen, her gaze gradually drifting out of focus.

Not long after, she bit her lip to hold back a laugh and slapped her thigh hard.

Liang Qianqian beside her was startled and whispered, “What’s wrong with you?”

Xiang Di snapped back. “Nothing.”

Guiltily, she glanced at the biology teacher on the podium—the teacher was playing on his phone—then looked around at her classmates. Everyone was focused on writing their own test papers.

Xiang Di turned her head again in a small motion and looked toward the back.

Not long after, she bit her lip to hold back a laugh and slapped her thigh hard.

Liang Qianqian beside her was startled and whispered, “What’s wrong with you?”

Xiang Di snapped back. “Nothing.”

Guiltily, she glanced at the biology teacher on the podium—the teacher was playing on his phone—then looked around at her classmates. Everyone was focused on writing their own test papers.

Xiang Di turned her head again in a small motion and looked toward the back.

Bai Jiangxin was also focused on writing his test.

The biology teacher, who had been looking down at his phone, happened to lift his head to stretch his neck and noticed a girl glancing around. He coughed and offered a tactful reminder: “Everyone, write your own test. Don’t look around everywhere. Will the college entrance exam let you look around like that?”

Xiang Di’s face flushed red. She immediately turned back, stared fixedly at the test paper in front of her, and didn’t dare glance around anymore.

At the same time, she let out a sigh of relief. Luckily, it was just a fantasy—no one would know except herself.

No, she couldn’t keep thinking about it. She had to focus on answering the questions.

She reminded herself inwardly, but this kind of imagination was like a poison—once it started, it was hard to quit.

Imagination was a magical thing. It could take a person into a completely mental world, letting them obtain a kind of pleasure they couldn’t get in reality.

Whenever pressure made her mentally tense, Xiang Di liked to think about all sorts of random things on her own, without restraint and without self-control. This was her own private behavior, something that belonged only to her, where she could immerse herself freely and amuse herself to her heart’s content.

When the imagining ended, she would feel a special sense of satisfaction, and then she could once again face real life with full energy.

Even though she knew this kind of indulgent fantasy was very unrealistic.

But people just had to fantasize about some unrealistic things. It was only fantasy anyway. What she was thinking in her head, no one else would know—no risk of embarrassment—so why not be bolder and indulge in a big one?

For example, suddenly being found by her billionaire biological parents, or becoming a top superstar adored by the masses—things that were basically impossible in real life were what made fantasy worth fantasizing about. Otherwise, how could it be called fantasy?

Xiang Di bit the tip of her pen, her legs under the desk quietly pressing together.

In the silent classroom, the ceiling lights shone bright as day. The biology exam continued. Ye Minjia finally finished the first page, and when he turned it over, he casually glanced at Bai Jiangxin beside him.

His test paper was still on the first page.

What was going on? He’d clearly been so much faster at the start. Now Ye Minjia had already finished the first page, but he still hadn’t?

Curious, Ye Minjia leaned over to take a look.

What the hell, he hadn’t even finished the fill-in-the-blank questions? After all this time, this guy basically hadn’t written much at all.

Something was off. Ye Minjia shifted his gaze from the test paper to Bai Jiangxin’s face.

Bai Jiangxin’s expression looked very wrong.

His lips were pressed tightly together, his face pale yet tinged with an extremely unnatural flush. Even the skin behind his ears and along his neck was red. His jaw was clenched tight, as if he were about to bite through the inside of his lip.

It looked like he was enduring something. Ye Minjia whispered, “What’s wrong with you? Need to pee?”

Bai Jiangxin shut his eyes hard.

When he opened them again, his voice was already a little hoarse, carrying an indescribable tone, almost spoken through clenched teeth: “I want to kill someone.”

Ye Minjia paused.

Was this test really that hard?

Hard enough that even Bai Jiangxin felt like killing someone?