He picked up his school uniform jacket, ready to leave as soon as the test was collected.

Suddenly, with a "swish," a piece of draft paper filled with writing was placed in front of him.

Grace Bennett paused in the middle of putting on his jacket. His gaze lingered on the draft paper for a moment, recognizing it as the one Brian Brooks had been writing on earlier, densely covered with formulas.

After making sure there wasn’t some stupid workbook title written on it, he asked coldly, “What’s this?”

“The answers and solutions to the test.” Brian Brooks tossed his pen into his pencil case and glanced at him. “Didn’t you want to see?”

“……”

Yeah, I want to see, I damn well want to see it in the last minute of the exam.

Chapter 9

After school, a group of people sat in the billiard hall behind the school, playing cards.

Anna Walker leaned back in his chair, his head drooping limply: “An exam right at the start of the semester, Fang Qin is really a freak.”

“Does your class have to post the test scores in the parents’ group every time?”

“Don’t even mention it, my dad’s going to beat me with a baseball bat again.” Anna Walker looked gratefully at the person next to him. “Luckily, with my bro here, I’ll never be last.”

Grace Bennett ignored him and threw down a card.

Emily Clark was the only girl in the group. She crossed her legs and sipped her milk tea. “Isn’t your deskmate the discipline committee member? Didn’t you copy off him?”

“Copy my ass, as if he’s a real discipline committee member,” Anna Walker got annoyed just mentioning it. “His handwriting is as bad as Grace Bennett’s, I almost went cross-eyed trying to read it, couldn’t make out a single—damn! I just played a 3, and you hit me with a king bomb?!”

“You’re annoying,” Grace Bennett said.

“……”

Emily Clark laughed so hard she almost spilled her drink. “But Grace Bennett, you handed in a blank test right at the start of the semester, didn’t even guess on the multiple choice, are you really trying to piss Fang Qin off?”

Mentioning the exam, Grace Bennett thought of a certain someone again, and threw his card a bit harder.

He asked, “Can you get 90 points just by guessing on the multiple choice?”

Emily Clark raised an eyebrow. “There aren’t even 90 points total on the multiple choice.”

Exactly.

If you can’t get 90, it doesn’t matter whether you write or not.

Feeling restless, Grace Bennett reached into his pocket, wanting to smoke a cigarette.

Instead, he touched a rough piece of paper. He cursed in his heart and quickly pulled his hand out.

It was that draft paper Brian Brooks had handed him.

He’d meant to crumple it up and throw it away, but just then Sarah Grant passed by the back door and called out to him, so he reflexively stuffed the paper back into his pocket.

Grace Bennett felt like he might develop an allergy to anything paper-related from Brian Brooks in the future.

“What’s the point of doing the test? I never do it either,” Matthew Lee said, cigarette dangling from his lips, acting tough. “The teacher doesn’t dare mess with me anyway.”

Anna Walker: “Maybe your teacher just can’t be bothered with you.”

Matthew Lee: “Isn’t that even better? Your homeroom teacher, just hearing you talk about her annoys me. If she were my homeroom teacher, I would’ve—”

Smack. Grace Bennett threw his last card on the table.

“Cut the crap,” Grace Bennett said. “Bring your face over here.”

Matthew Lee: “……”

Half a minute later, there was a turtle drawn with marker on Matthew Lee’s face.

“Damn, one more round…” Matthew Lee started to say, but the person next to him suddenly nudged his arm. Matthew Lee frowned, “What?”

“Bro Kuan, look, that girl outside—isn’t she the one who was chasing you before?”

“Who?” Anna Walker glanced outside.

“It’s her,” after seeing the girl hurrying away outside the billiard hall, Matthew Lee raised his eyebrows. “No one special, just a girl from Class 3. Chased me for two months, brought me water and snacks every day, drove me nuts, and she’s ugly too. Took me forever to shake her off.”

“That girl must be blind?” Emily Clark said coolly, looking down at her phone.

“Bullshit, I’m so handsome, tons of girls chase me, okay?” Matthew Lee looked at his cards. “You know what’s the worst? You know Class 3, right? Everyone says it’s the secret honors class for liberal arts. That girl wrote me a letter every week, full of ancient poems and classical Chinese, I couldn’t understand a damn thing—”

Grace Bennett: “How’d you shake her off?”

The usually quiet one suddenly spoke up, and Matthew Lee was stunned for a second. “What?”

“I said,” Grace Bennett repeated, “how did you get rid of her?”

“That’s easy,” Matthew Lee said. “I covered up my name on the letters she wrote me and posted them on her class’s bulletin board.”

Emily Clark shot him a look. “You’re such a jerk.”

“Huh? She wouldn’t stop pestering me.” Matthew Lee said. “Grace Bennett, why are you asking, is there a girl chasing you?”

“Duh, you think there aren’t enough girls chasing my bro?” Anna Walker raised his eyebrows proudly, as if he was the one being chased. “Grace Bennett just got a love letter—damn it, Grace Bennett, you bombed me again?! We’re on the same team this round! I’m a farmer too!!”

Grace Bennett: “You’re so noisy.”

Emily Clark put down her phone and leaned over to their card table, curious. “Is that true? Grace Bennett, who gave you the love letter?”

Grace Bennett: “No one.”

“Come on, tell us,” Emily Clark pressed. “From first or second year? Are they good-looking? Do I know them? Could it be—Brian Brooks?”

Grace Bennett threw all his cards out at once.

He instinctively wanted to refute her, but then heard Emily Clark continue, “So it’s Brian Brooks?”