Jack Harris pointed to the last row by the window, where the only two desks in the entire classroom were still together and hadn’t been separated according to exam regulations.

“You go sit there with Brian Clark for now, pull the desks apart and get ready for the exam.”

Laura Bennett entered the classroom from the front door, with more than forty pairs of eyes staring at him.

Someone whispered, saying things like “Poor guy, just arrived and already has to take an exam,” or “Why did he come straight to Class Four?”

He pretended not to hear, walked past the teacher’s desk, and Brian Clark lazily walked ahead of him.

As they passed the second-to-last row, a boy on the left stopped Brian Clark, “What’s going on?”

Brian Clark ignored him, pulled the desk by the aisle in the last row half a meter out, sat inside, and said, “Just focus on the exam.”

That boy didn’t give up and turned his head toward Laura Bennett, “Hey handsome, what’s your name?”

“Laura Bennett.”

“Ah, nice to meet you, I’m Samuel Grant. Where are you from?”

A boy who didn’t look too happy turned and glared at him, “If you want to get scolded by Jack Harris, don’t drag the new student into it.”

“Oh. I’m just curious.” The guy rubbed his nose and shrank back.

Jack Harris wrote the time for the first exam on the blackboard: 7:30-10:00, then split a stack of test papers into six parts and passed them down row by row from the front.

The last copy landed in Laura Bennett’s hands. The first page was almost two full sides of text, with three passages, each followed by three multiple-choice or written questions.

Laura Bennett skimmed through it; he recognized more characters than he expected, probably more than half. But the questions were all very tricky—not exactly hard to understand, but he simply had no idea how to answer them.

Staying calm was key. He turned to the next page.

The reading material on the second page was much shorter, just a few lines, but unfortunately, it was in classical Chinese.

He flipped further—poetry fill-in-the-blanks, skip, skip, skip.

A wise man adapts to circumstances. He quickly assessed the situation and flipped straight to the last page, planning to scrape some points with the essay.

In China, it’s not called an essay, but “composition.”

The prompt—

Mozi said: “Look at another’s country as you would your own; look at another’s home as you would your own; look at another’s person as you would your own.”

The British poet John Donne said: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Requirement: Write an argumentative essay based on the materials above, with your own chosen thesis, no less than 800 words.

Laura Bennett stared at those lines in silence for a full minute.

Then, he slowly uncapped his pen and circled the only half-sentence in the material he could fully recognize and more or less understand—“No man is an island.”

Hmm.

But why is that?

Why isn’t a person an island?

Suddenly, someone nearby said in a low, lazy voice, “You can copy the reading passage onto your essay paper.”

Chapter 4: Mutt

After a whole morning of exams, the elite students of Class Four had lost their backbone.

Laura Bennett was actually doing a bit better; math had saved his mood, especially when he realized he could read every question—he was instantly on a roll.

When the papers were collected, he glanced up from the last row and a Chinese idiom popped into his mind—corpses strewn everywhere.

“Desk mate! Herring desk mate—” Samuel Grant turned to the left and wailed to the guy with droopy brows and eyes, “I’m dead. It’s one thing if Chinese isn’t my strong suit, but I even bombed math, which is supposed to be my strength!”

The boy called “Herring” replied listlessly, “Don’t even mention it, my math maxes out at a hundred, okay?”

After a pause, the two of them turned around at the same time, staring straight at Brian Clark.

“Bean, how did you do?”

Brian Clark glanced up from his phone screen, “So-so.”

“Brian Clark says so-so too!”

Everyone in the class who was slumped over their desks sat up.

Those eager eyes—another string of beautiful Chinese idioms popped into Laura Bennett’s mind—

A dead tree comes to life in spring.

Rain after a long drought.

A dying flash of brilliance.

Lovesick men and women.

Wait, that last one doesn’t seem right...

“What are you looking at me for?” Brian Clark flexed his wrist. “The exam’s over and you’re still talking about it? Don’t you have anything better to do?”

As he spoke, he pressed his hand down on Laura Bennett’s desk.

Laura Bennett: “?”

Brian Clark gave him a friendly smile, then lowered his head and continued playing on his phone.

“Oh, right.” Samuel Grant suddenly realized, “We all forgot there’s a new handsome guy here!”

Everyone echoed, “Oh, right.”

Laura Bennett: “……”

He finally understood—everyone in this elite class was like an owl, and their way of showing interest could be summed up in one word: staring.

Look, at ten o’clock, the one in the white sweater, a bit chubby with round eyes, dignified and cheerful—definitely a snowy owl.

At two o’clock, the one in the brown jacket, eyes half-squinted, sharp yet a little shy—that’s an eagle owl.

After being stared at for a full half minute, a girl with a high ponytail broke the ice, “I’m Crystal Ford, the class monitor of Class Four. What’s the new student’s name?”

“He’s Laura Bennett, I already asked!” Samuel Grant answered quickly. “He must be a transfer, right?”

Laura Bennett gave a hum of confirmation.

Immediately, everyone started chattering.

“From the Affiliated School?”

“Didn’t they say there were no handsome guys in this year’s Affiliated School?”

“Then Third High? Ninth High?”