But that’s not wrong either—they’re all competitors, so it’s natural to take things seriously.

“But my answers are correct. You can’t just mark them all wrong,” David Carter said.

“Who knows if you copied someone else’s answers,” the little girl said darkly.

Hearing this, Brian Foster turned his head and shouted loudly, “What did you just say!”

Kids from the north say this with particular force, and little Lu, being chubby, had plenty of energy.

“Lu, Zhi, Hao!” Mr. Thompson’s lesson was interrupted, and she looked displeased.

Brian Foster stood up and complained, “Teacher, Charlotte Parker changed the questions at random!”

David Carter had no idea why classmate Lu suddenly started defending her. But Mr. Thompson was already stepping down from the podium, so she could only stand up as well.

Anna Thompson glanced at her son, who was standing tall, and at the little girl beside him, who stood with her head down. Without a word, she picked up the test paper that had caused all the commotion.

Her first reaction was that the paper looked very empty; on a second look, she saw the huge X mark.

On the test, questions 1–3 had the solution process, but starting from question 4, there was nothing. After that, each question only had the answer written, and the handwriting was crooked and messy—very ugly.

But when she looked closely at each answer, she was surprised to find that all the numbers were correct.

Like Charlotte Parker, she also thought David Carter had copied Brian Foster’s answers because she was pressed for time and cheated. But as a teacher, she certainly wouldn’t jump to conclusions about her students.

She took a step back and picked up Brian Foster’s test from David Carter’s desk, comparing the two side by side. Brian Foster’s paper was well done—every answer was correct, and the solution process was good, except for question 10...

Question 10 was left blank; her son simply didn’t know how to do it.

But David Carter’s...

David Carter had written the correct answer for question 10!

Holding both test papers, Anna Thompson stared at David Carter and asked very seriously, “How did you know the answer?”

“I worked it out,” David Carter replied, turning slightly.

Anna Thompson was quite surprised. Not because David Carter claimed to have worked it out, but because of how David Carter was acting now.

David Carter used to have a difficult personality—probably because she was an orphan—so her self-esteem was extremely strong. Even the smallest thing would make David Carter cry and throw a fit. That’s how her son’s conflict with David Carter started. Even as a teacher, she was afraid to say too much to this child, worried that any word might hurt her fragile pride.

If she had asked this question before, David Carter would probably have started crying and making a scene again. But now, the same little girl stood at the desk, half bathed in sunlight, her face turned to the side, as if she didn’t think there was anything wrong with this line of questioning.

She was very calm and confident.

Of course, David Carter had no idea what Anna Thompson was thinking. But even if Mr. Thompson voiced her doubts, all she could say was that she really didn’t think there was anything wrong with just writing the answers.

“You did it all in your head?” Mr. Thompson asked.

Well, you could call it mental math.

David Carter nodded.

“No scratch work?”

“No.”

Mr. Thompson was still suspicious. “Tell me your thought process for the last question.”

The last question was roughly about two boats, A and B, moving toward each other. Behind boat B was a third boat, C, which would turn back after meeting boat A. The question was about the distance boat C traveled.

Looking at the question, David Carter was suddenly flooded with memories and couldn’t speak for a moment. In her memory, a long time ago, there had been a moment just like this.

The same question, also in an Olympiad math class. A primary school student was called on by the teacher to explain their solution, but just gave the answer. When the teacher asked for the thought process, the student calmly said a single sentence. The whole class, including the teacher, was left speechless.

But what was different this time was—

Back then, it happened in the Olympiad math advanced class at the neighboring experimental elementary school, and the student called on to explain why they only wrote the answer wasn’t her, but Henry Clark.

How did Henry Clark answer at the time?

—“I summed an infinite series. The process was long, so I didn’t write it out.”

Later, David Carter asked Old Carter and learned that what this meant was: I calculated the distance boat C traveled each time it turned back and added them all together. Old Carter even comforted her, saying that the computer scientist von Neumann did it the same way—just a brute-force method, and Henry Clark wasn’t so special.

Afterward, David Carter went to look up who von Neumann was. She saw that this computer scientist not only invented computers, but also worked on the atomic bomb, was a founder of game theory, and made important contributions to quantum mechanics, among other things. Only then did she realize that Old Carter was saying she was ignorant.

It was from that moment that she gradually understood what it meant to be a genius. And now, she could write the answer to this question directly only because, back then, she had deeply remembered both the question and the answer Henry Clark gave.

David Carter took a deep breath, wanting to honestly say that she’d just seen this question before, but before she could, the teacher said, “So you didn’t really have a method, you just summed things up?”

Uh! Actually, that wasn’t it.

“Sit down.” The teacher took her test. “You really did get a perfect score on this test. That’s very impressive.”

David Carter’s eyes widened. She was actually being praised?