Chapter 6: The Childhood Friend Finally Gets It?

Is photographic memory really an experience?

Thanks for asking. It's amazing.

English words — just one glance and they're memorized. My mind has never been this clear.

Though there's no need to memorize English slang — stuff like "Four Generations Under One Roof: family4.0," "Hot Spring: guluguluwater," "Third Concubine: threeb*tch."

Simple as that, easy as pie.

Jiang Nian was grateful for his habit of bringing every important textbook from every subject home for the break. He hadn't turned a single page, but he still felt that secretly-studying-hard vibe.

Now it came in handy — amazing, indescribable.

The entire noon, Jiang Nian was immersed, swimming in the ocean of study. Those scattered bits of knowledge were like tiny shrimp, swallowed whole by a whale.

Next door, Xu Qianqian groggily woke from her nap, her pearly teeth clenched tight.

"So noisy!"

No matter how she covered her ears, Jiang Nian's long sighs and excited exclamations always drilled into her ears. He kept going "yiii" for ages — she had no idea what he was so worked up about.

Could it be the legendary… boys' temple?

Xu Qianqian, whose father was an andrology doctor, was hardly lacking in common sense. She just figured Jiang Nian was out of his mind. Could he not watch that stuff so loudly, and fiddle with it for so long?

And it's broad daylight — I've got my lights off!

Jiang Nian had crashed hard after finishing his morning study session, feeling his pig-brain was a bit overloaded. It wasn't until the afternoon, when he sleepily heard a knock on the door, that he finally woke up.

"Hello, delivery!"

He remembered taking a delivery call that morning. He pulled open the door; the courier lifted the brim of his cap, pulling a little handcart, and gave him a once-over that seemed a little surprised.

"Mr. Jiang?"

"Yes."

After signing for it, Jiang Nian tried on his shoes. The sneakers had soft soles — two hundred yuan a pair. He'd spent a thousand yuan replacing shoes for the whole family. Pretty good deal.

He was hungry and had no mind to keep looking at shoes. He slipped on a pair and went downstairs to eat.

In the old days, after buying new shoes, he'd have borne the hunger and jumped around for a minute or two. But now his card still held a chilly two thousand yuan.

Two thousand big ones — jump for what, f**k?

By evening, Jiang Nian was still drowsy, but he had to get ready to go to school for evening self-study.

Whether it was because of the breakfast delivery or some other reason, Xu Qianqian, for once in a blue moon, hadn't left first. Instead, she sat in his living room waiting for him.

The last time she'd done that was in middle school.

Jiang Nian was a little flattered.

"Why are you willing to wait for me?"

Hearing that, Xu Qianqian got up to leave.

"Hmph."

"Hey hey, fair maiden, hold on — pretend I didn't say that." Jiang Nian was packing his schoolbag and hurriedly held her back. "Please, sit, sit — give me two minutes."

Xu Qianqian glanced down at his paw, said nothing, and sat back on the sofa. She looked up, watched Jiang Nian toss his English vocabulary book aside, and couldn't help saying—

"Jiang Nian, what did you tell me this morning?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're not even bringing your vocabulary book! This morning you said you'd memorize words, and by afternoon you're tossing the book aside?" Xu Qianqian was a bit speechless. She shot him a look.

"The college entrance exam only looks at total score. Your English is so bad — even pulling it up by a few dozen points could get you into a decent…"

She didn't finish that sentence. Xu Qianqian was aware of Jiang Nian's grades — the kind that made fathers sigh and mothers weep. Bumping his English up a few dozen points might land him in a decent vocational college.

"Ugh, can't really explain it to you right now." Jiang Nian tossed aside his little booklets for Chinese, biology, chemistry, and physics, making Xu Qianqian's eyes go wide.

"Are you trying to die, Jiang Nian? I'm telling Li Yi on you!"

September evening, dusk and molten-gold sunset blended together; the streets were ablaze with lights.

In the small county town's old streets, five- or six-story self-built houses stood with power lines crisscrossing overhead. The alleys were narrow and dim — the only upside was that the buildings didn't block the light.

Xu Qianqian and Jiang Nian walked out of a dim alley; not far away was Zhen'nan County High. The area where both their families lived was something like a shantytown.

The two rarely walked together like this, and the atmosphere felt a little strange.

As they neared the school gate, Xu Qianqian, half a step behind Jiang Nian, tugged at her schoolbag strap, frowned, hesitated a moment, then said—

"Hang out less with Zhou Ting's crowd from now on. They're pretty rotten."

Jiang Nian couldn't agree more.

Ever since Zhou Ting's birthday party last time, he'd seen that crowd for what they were. They'd treated him like a clown the whole time, stepping on him to lift up Liu Feipeng.

There was no special reason — just that Liu Feipeng wanted to chase Zhou Yuting. If you can't elevate yourself, step on someone else; use the contrast to highlight your own steadiness.

Jiang Nian had no money and his grades were bad — only his body and looks — which made him an even easier target.

Xu Qianqian was only thinking of yesterday's lotus-leaf steamed chicken and breakfast. Even though she and Jiang Nian didn't get along, her mouth was softened by his food — after all, they were childhood playmates who'd grown up together.

Her "poisonous childhood friend" might be a bit slow-witted, but his heart wasn't bad, and his cooking wasn't bad either. No matter what, it wasn't anyone else's place to bully him.

In her eyes, Zhou Yuting was a green-tea bitch — a pure slut. Only a straight-laced guy like Jiang Nian would get baited by Zhou Yuting, led around by the nose.

She'd said similar things before, but Jiang Nian always shot her down. Today she was only saying it one last time — after this, she wouldn't say it again.

Who would've thought — Jiang Nian turned, his dark hair and bright eyes serious, and nodded firmly.

"Mm. Got it."

Got it?

Xu Qianqian was a bit dumbfounded. When did he finally get it?

Even after she got to the classroom and sat through a whole period of evening self-study, that stunned-dumb feeling still hadn't faded. Was the Old Jiang family tomb really sending up green smoke? Did the simp finally turn back?

In the brightly lit classroom, the only sound was the soft rustle of pages turning and pens writing.

"Qianqian, what's wrong?" Her seatmate Yang Man poked Xu Qianqian's fair arm — cool and soft — and said, "You've been spacing out for almost a whole period. What happened?"

"Huh?" Xu Qianqian came back to herself. "N-no... it's nothing."

She shook her head, thinking to herself what on earth she was doing, wasting an entire evening self-study period on Jiang Nian! She drew in a deep breath and bowed her head to grind through problems.

Jiang Nian was in the class next door. The two classes were adjacent, yet their tiers were worlds apart.

Students at Zhennan County Middle School were divided into four tiers: Key (Key Assistance), Parallel Class (Regular Class), Olympiad, and Zero Class — from lowest to highest in order.

The Key Classes were all arranged on the first and second floors, close to the first-floor teaching affairs office, so that any commotion could be managed easily. The Olympiad and Zero Classes were basically on the third and fourth floors — heaven's favored children.

The Parallel Classes toiled miserably; all the workhorses were tossed up to the fifth and sixth floors.

Xu Qianqian's class was the Olympiad science class; Jiang Nian's class was the Parallel science class. By great luck, his was assigned to the fourth floor, right next to Xu Qianqian's class.

The homeroom teacher said they were absorbing spiritual Qi. As for that, Jiang Nian dared not agree.

For convenience's sake, the two classes' subject teachers were almost all the same people. The same test paper — after the Olympiad class finished going over it, it came back to the Parallel class to be explained again. How could they possibly have anything good coming their way?

Evening self-study was utterly silent; Jiang Nian buried himself in grinding through problems.

The system's reward really was useful. After an afternoon of memorization, he had thoroughly committed all three thousand five hundred gaokao vocabulary words to memory, so doing English papers was basically no challenge at all.