NOVPUB"Don’t shower too long; be careful of gas poisoning!" Xu Qingfan knocked on the bathroom door, reminding Xia Xiaoxiao inside.
"Almost done; Xu Qingfan, can I borrow your towel? I forgot to bring mine!"
"So forgetful, just open the door a bit, and I’ll give it to you." He took down the bath towel hanging on the rack.
Xia Xiaoxiao carefully extended a hand out, and once she felt the towel in her grasp, she quickly withdrew her hand.
"Thanks."
"What’s there to be shy about? It’s not like I’d look when you’re barely dressed," Xu Qingfan teased.
Xia Xiaoxiao pursed her lips and glanced down at her own proportionally superb long legs, "Hmph~"
Not long after, the little girl came out of the bathroom in her pajamas, draping Xu Qingfan’s bath towel over her shoulders and drying her hair with it as she walked.
"Why are you staring at me?" Seeing Xu Qingfan continuously watching her, Xia Xiaoxiao flicked the droplets of water from her hair at him.
"You’ve turned bad." Thinking of the quiet little girl from his past life, Xu Qingfan couldn’t help shaking his head.
"Hmph, it’s the case of ’You are the company you keep’!" Xia Xiaoxiao plopped down next to Xu Qingfan, squeezing him into the corner.
"You’re really something, born in ’96. I have so many good qualities, and you didn’t learn a single one, did you?" Xu Qingfan lightly knocked on her head.
"I didn’t see any good qualities in you!" Xia Xiaoxiao retorted, playfully bumping her head against his.
Xu Qingfan was about to boast about himself but couldn’t immediately think of any good qualities—if not doing homework counted as one, "That’s because you don’t have the eyes to see beauty!"
"I don’t want to bother with you, I’m leaving." Xia Xiaoxiao placed the used towel on his lap and got up to leave.
"Xu Qingfan!" Just as she was about to close the door, the little girl popped her head back in.
"What?"
"Good luck on your exam!"
"Yeah, you too." Xu Qingfan paused for a moment and then flashed her a toothy smile.
"Heh~" Xia Xiaoxiao happily closed the door and bounced back to Room 509.
[Good night.]
Taking advantage of the bathroom warmed up by Xia Xiaoxiao, Xu Qingfan also quickly spent a few minutes taking a cool shower.
After comfortably lying down on the bed, he suddenly slapped his forehead, "Shoot, I forgot to call Lin Wanning!"
Luckily, it was only a little past nine in the evening. Xu Qingfan hurriedly got up and dialed Lin Wanning’s home landline phone.
The call was immediately answered this time.
"Brother Qingfan~ Ningning thought you had forgotten about her!" Lin Wanning’s soft and sticky voice came through the receiver.
"Because I have an exam tomorrow, I’ve been busy reviewing all day, and right after I showered, I called our Ningning, didn’t I?" Xu Qingfan’s blatant lie came effortlessly.
"That’s right, Brother Qingfan, you must do well on your exam. Yiyi said on QQ that she’s bought us a gift!"
Lin Wanning quickly believed what Xu Qingfan said, [He didn’t call in the morning because Brother Qingfan must have been busy reviewing!]
"What gift? Ningning, did you go out and have fun today?"
"Hehe, that’s a secret, I can’t tell Brother Qingfan yet, I’ve been in the living room all day, didn’t go out to play!" Lin Wanning said proudly.
Xu Qingfan paused, quickly picturing her waiting all day in the living room for his call.
[I’m such a jerk!] Xu Qingfan silently cursed himself in his mind. How could he have forgotten to call Lin Wanning during his nap?
"Hmm, Ningning, you were very good today. I’ll buy you a lot and lots of gifts later on."
"And Yiyi’s, don’t forget Brother Qingfan!" Lin Wanning reminded him.
"Alright~ Just like last time, I’ll buy three gifts, one for each of us."
"Mhm mhm mhm!"
After chatting for a while longer, Lin Wanning said with reluctance in her voice:
"Brother Qingfan, you have an exam tomorrow, so rest early, okay? Good night, Brother Qingfan!"
"Yeah, Ningning, you should also go to bed early." Xu Qingfan replied with a smile.
"Ha~, Ningning will go to bed after her bath," Lin Wanning said with a yawn.
"Good night."
Xu Qingfan hung up the phone, dried his hair, and quickly turned off the light to sleep.
...
The night passed without incident.
The following day.
While Xu Qingfan was brushing his teeth in the bathroom, there came a knocking on the door from Guan Biyue.
"Xu Qingfan, are you up?"
"I am, teacher, please wait a moment," he replied, his words muffled by the toothpaste.
When they went downstairs for breakfast after washing up, the small eatery was already full of students who had come for the competition.
Unable to get used to the bean juice and liver stir-fry, Guan Biyue ordered four soy milk and deep-fried dough sticks. After a short wait, they found an available space and sat down to eat and chat.
"Don’t be nervous, after all, the top 50% all get prizes," Xu Qingfan said, patting Wu Lingyu’s shoulder to comfort her.
"Being able to participate in the final is already impressive, just keep a normal mindset," Guan Biyue added.
Only the top ten from the city competition could come to Yanjing for the finals, so Guan Biyue’s words were indeed true.
"Yeah!" Wu Lingyu straightened her back, nodding and smiling with the others.
"I wonder if there will be any of those irregular cuboid path problems this time," Xia Xiaoxiao said, looking at the notebook where she had organized her wrong answers.
"If they do appear, just measure with your ruler, scale it up or down proportionally as I’ve taught you. The answer won’t be too strange; you can just take a guess based on your feeling."
Guan Biyue, not understanding this part, wisely chose to keep her mouth shut.
"Okay then."
Xia Xiaoxiao pursed her lips; her success rate of guessing the answers with a ruler wasn’t even one-fifth. If such a problem really came up, she wouldn’t be able to get the same score as Xu Qingfan.
As for how Xu Qingfan got it right?
He directly established a spatial Cartesian coordinate system, expressed the two corresponding points with their coordinates, and then answered using the distance formula between the two points.
Having already scouted the location yesterday, they quickly arrived at their respective examination rooms after breakfast.
Before separating, Xu Qingfan extended his palm in front of the two, and Xia Xiaoxiao and Wu Lingyu immediately understood his intention, placing their hands on top of his.
"Good luck on the exam!"
"Good luck!"
"That wasn’t in sync, let’s do it again, shout good luck on the exam!" Xu Qingfan stretched out his hand again.
"Three, two, one,"
"Good luck on the exam!"
Xu Qingfan waved goodbye to the two and entered his examination room.
In a gigantic classroom that could hold hundreds, contestants from all over the country were seated two desks apart.
Xu Qingfan closed his eyes to rest and composed himself.
[I’ve pulled out all my skills in Advanced Mathematics and Probability Theory; I don’t believe I can be stumped!]
The pristine white exam papers were quickly distributed by the invigilator. As usual, Xu Qingfan started from the back, confident that there was nothing he couldn’t handle.
He breezed through the linear equations in two variables and tackled the subsequent major problems. Whenever he encountered a geometry pattern-recognition problem, he just applied an arithmetic or geometric series.
In less than twenty minutes, the rustling of pages turning became the nightmare of his fellow examinees.
With half an hour left in the exam time, Xu Qingfan decisively raised his hand.
"Is there a problem?" the invigilator approached and asked.
"Teacher, I’ve checked it over twenty times. I want to submit my paper!" His voice was neither too loud nor too quiet, just enough for a large number of students nearby to hear.
"Hiss~" Many students who had just started the application problems turned their pages in a panic upon hearing Xu Qingfan’s words.
"Close your test papers, collect your belongings, and you may leave," the invigilator glanced at his paper and said indifferently.
"Okay!" After double-checking his name and test number, Xu Qingfan gathered his pencil case and water bottle, then stood up to leave.
Afterward, many of Xu Qingfan’s fellow contestants recalled that in room A108 there was a jerk whose constant page-flipping was unbearably loud. While I was still working on my first set of problems, he submitted his test, which threw me off and caused me not to complete questions I knew how to do!
