Mia Waters opened his mouth, as if wanting to argue, but his face turned red and in the end he just lowered his head and fled in embarrassment, his single-strap backpack bouncing against his backside with every step, as if punishing him on behalf of the moon.

Zoe Young hadn’t expected the other to surrender so easily. Her smile froze on her face as she stood there awkwardly for a long time, only to realize that Sean Sherman beside her seemed not to have heard or seen anything at all, already bowing her head over her math workbook.

Well, that makes things easier—no need for greetings. Eric Young, even the nickname is out now.

Zoe Young turned her face to look out at the bright sunny day through the window, sighed, and muttered, “Ugh, what kind of weather is this?”

Not to be outdone, she wanted to take out her workbook and study a bit, but thinking of Mia Waters’s annoying smirk just now, she felt defeated again. Pretending not to work hard in front of the smart but lazy guy, and acting studious in front of the diligent and hardworking Sean Sherman...

Zoe Young, you might as well just die. She sat at her desk in a daze, letting out a long sigh.

So she didn’t notice at all when Sean Sherman beside her pressed too hard and snapped the lead in her mechanical pencil with a “snap.” She paused, turned her head slightly to glance at Zoe Young, who was lost in her own world, her eyes showing a hint of complicated confusion, then quickly refocused on her math problems.

The classroom gradually filled up, students sizing each other up, and some who were already familiar started chatting away.

Most students at No. 13 Middle School came from the local Haicheng Elementary, so even if they weren’t in the same class now, many already knew each other. Zoe Young listened to the noisy chatter and suddenly found herself missing her elementary school classmates.

How is Claire Daniels doing? She must be angry that I left for No. 13 Middle without saying goodbye. And Fiona James—will her new classmates recognize her as Swallow? Will they admire her, or bully her? I promised to write her a letter, but haven’t written a word. After all, what is there to say? And Zachary Lewis, is he still so quiet and well-behaved? Is Emily Xavier still so bossy? I hope she changes her ways, otherwise she’ll really get on people’s nerves...

Actually, the faces of these people are already a bit blurry.

Zoe Young knew that what she missed wasn’t these people themselves, but more a certain atmosphere. As if, just by looking up, she could see the snow-white tablecloths of her elementary classroom, the dark red curtains, and a slanting beam of sunlight streaming through the gap, shining right on the desk where Daniel Hughes and Claire Daniels napped. Fiona James’s seat was always empty, because she was always off at some performance, so her deskmate liked to pile all sorts of random things—like lunch bags—on her desk...

Back then, she’d run away so decisively, thinking she’d never feel reluctant to leave.

The shimmering light filling the room, created by the afternoon sun filtering through the translucent red tablecloth, was something Zoe Young could never pack away in a tin box to keep.

No matter what, she never could.

Just now, Mia Waters’s cheeky, troublemaking grin made Zoe Young’s heart skip a beat, like the arrhythmia Tina Young once described to her.

He really resembles someone.

That guy must be living a really, really good life now, right?

Zoe Young smiled, lowered her head, and that trace of tenderness—so subtle even she didn’t notice—made Sean Sherman’s mechanical pencil lead snap again with a “snap.”

She looked at Zoe Young again as if she were a weirdo—this girl who just sat there daydreaming and grinning foolishly, yet always managed to cling to her own score in every exam, the perpetual second place.

Sean Sherman suddenly felt a surge of anger and dissatisfaction, but even more, a sense of panic.

She could only work harder. She lowered her head and turned to the last few pages of her workbook to check her answers.

She could only work harder.

Never ask why others can do things so easily, while you have to work so hard.

And she never would.

Zoe Young finally snapped out of it. Sean Sherman had been like a Buddha the whole time, calm as still water, the only sound the soft scratch of her pen on paper.

Such an impressive girl.

People who claim they’re too lazy to work hard just because they’re smart and talented are idiots.

Because hard work and diligence are themselves a kind of intelligence—a precious talent called perseverance.

Sean Sherman is a mountain. Zoe Young let out a deep sigh. Maybe she would never be able to climb over that mountain.

Neither girl knew that, without a single word exchanged, they had both cast a cloud over each other’s morning.

The subject teachers for Class A were all the best in the grade, selected from different classes. The first period was English, and the sample questions written on the blackboard were all tricky, ambiguous preposition usages. Zoe Young always took a practical approach to English, but as soon as she encountered these nitpicky preposition fill-ins, she was done for.

Out of twenty questions, she got seven wrong; Sean Sherman got three wrong.

Zoe Young rolled her eyes and carefully wrote down the teacher’s explanations for each question in her notes.

Strangely, Sean Sherman wasn’t like the other students who loved to answer and ask questions. She always kept her head down, as if spacing out, but could quickly and concisely jot down the key points from others’ answers in her notes.

There’s never just one way to study—“listen carefully and do your homework well” isn’t the only method. Mia Waters had his own habits, and Sean Sherman had her own tricks. Zoe Young lay her cheek on the cool surface of her desk and sighed again.

“Alan Carter, there’s just so much to learn. But no one’s going to tell me, so I can only watch from the sidelines like a thief, waiting for my chance.”

One thing she learned today: the math workbook Sean Sherman used was called 《Easy Thirty Minutes》.

Second, when she took notes, she always used only the right side of the notebook—the most comfortable side for writing. Some notebooks, when you write on the left side, the whole thing bends up and you have to press it down with your arm, which is really inconvenient.

But actually, the left side wasn’t wasted. She’d write ancient poems on the right side of the front, then flip the whole notebook over and open it from the back, so the original left side became the right side, and she could use it for English notes. So when the notebook was open, the writing on the left and right sides was completely upside down from each other, with different content. It was comfortable to write, and naturally kept the content separate, so it didn’t get messy and crowded.

Zoe Young clenched her fist. Good idea. The best part is... she’d just found herself another excuse to buy a new notebook...

After four morning classes, everyone packed up to leave school. Zoe Young had spent the whole morning without saying a word to her meditative deskmate, and walked out of the classroom a bit glum. Looking up, she actually spotted Benny’s face in the crowd leaving school.

He looked a bit bored.

“Ben—” She started to call out, but swallowed the word halfway. She had to squeeze through the crowd and gently pat him on the back from behind.

When Benny turned and saw her, he was surprised and happy, but then quickly looked away, staring at the end of the hallway, and said softly, “Oh, it’s you!”

Zoe Young was taken aback. “Yeah, it’s me!”

The two of them walked one after the other, silent and inconspicuous in the crowd. Compared to the pairs of students walking side by side, they looked like they didn’t even know each other. Zoe Young suddenly felt a surge of anger, but couldn’t say where it came from.

What she remembered so clearly, the other seemed to have never cared about.

Finally, after leaving the crowd, Zoe Young followed Benny toward the bus stop. She didn’t call out to him, just followed in silence. At last, Benny stopped, looked up at the bus sign, glanced around, and caught sight of the girl behind him out of the corner of his eye, startled.

“Why are you following me?”

Zoe Young stared at Benny’s face expressionlessly, not blinking. After half a minute, she turned and walked away without a word.

Monica Zack had been going through a major crisis lately.

Although the teaching quality and management at No. 13 Middle couldn’t compare to the Affiliated School, that didn’t mean all the students were muddling through—nor their parents.

Class Six’s overall grades had always been below average. After the midterm, at the parent meeting, the parents’ questions were almost too much for Monica Zack to handle, and later there were even small gatherings of parents asking for a new homeroom teacher.

Zoe Young didn’t find this surprising—if they’d had the power to swap out the English teacher Monica Zack after the lottery, they could certainly replace Monica Zack now. Some of the parents in Class Six were definitely influential.

Zoe Young rested her chin on her hand, gazing at the obviously more haggard and anxious Monica Zack on the podium. The theorem “vertical angles are equal” had been repeated for the fifth time, and she hadn’t even noticed.