Beyond The Outline

There were four exam papers on the table. The score for English was the lowest, only 36 points.

Meng Guowei’s inner heart was tumultuous. In the entire grade, only Xu Sheng would score lower than this score. There was no other person. 

This score and Xu Sheng’s were practically evenly-matched.

He had spent so much effort in making sure the two of them sat together at a desk in the hopes that Xu Sheng could learn more from Shao Zhan, but he had never thought that the person who would be influenced was actually Shao Zhan!

What exactly had happened?!

“The English teacher originally wanted to ask you herself.” When Meng Guowei looked at this English test once again, he discovered his calmness from earlier had somewhat disappeared. He recovered a breath before saying, “But she had something to do and went to the administrative building…Shao Zhan, your homework situation is usually…usually very normal, and your grades are very steady, so can you explain this?” 

Shao Zhan, “I…”

No, he couldn’t.

Shao Zhan couldn’t say anything.

His world was also rapidly collapsing. Shao Zhan’s world was no less split than Meng Guowei’s.

Shao Zhan faced that line of English that was so wild it was barely readable or understandable, and fell into a deep silence. No matter how difficult the questions, he only needed a single glance to find the logical pattern, yet his brain was currently an expanse of blank whiteness.

It wasn’t just blank whiteness.

Shao Zhan felt like he was at the point where a nerve somewhere in the depths of his head had uncontrollably burst.

To say that this sentence was in English was high praise. It did not follow any normal laws of language. Flipping through all the dictionaries in the world would not yield any word that matched up with ‘hua’ and ‘shua’, it was completely a language of its own. 

Shao Zhan forced himself to control his feelings, so that he could stop himself from grabbing the student who sat across the table from him, who was pretending like nothing was wrong, and pressing him to the table to ask him what the hell he was doing.

“That’s why it’s like this.” Zhou Yuan, who was sitting a table away from Meng Guowei calculated the final step, and his red pen came to a pause before he turned around and passed the pen to Xu Sheng. “Did you understand it? Come, give it a try.”

Xu Sheng’s entire attention was focused on Shao Zhan, and he heard nothing of what Mr. Zhou said. He just curled his hand into a fist and covered his mouth to let out a soft cough, trying to draw Shao Zhan’s attention, then lowered his voice to say, “That thing, uh, use your imagination.”

Xu Sheng was afraid other people would hear, so the meaning of the sentence was very vague and his voice was very quiet. 

Shao Zhan, “…”

Xu Sheng wasn’t able to talk much, and he couldn’t make his hints too obvious. He was afraid Shao Zhan didn’t hear him so he tried to vaguely squeeze out another three words to emphasise, “Imagination.” It wasn’t hard to understand what that meant, but he did admit that a little bit of imagination was needed.

Shao Zhan thought to himself, what imagination, someone like him who didn’t have an imagination wouldn’t know.

Right now, he only wanted to murder someone. 

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

We Vtfcu kjr rtbmxfv ys atf ibbx lc Vtjb Itjc’r fsfr. Dfobgf tf tjv jgglnfv ja atf boolmf, tf kjr jogjlv atja Vtjb Itjc tjv vlfv lcrlvf. Rbk tf ofia ilxf jr ibcu jr Vtjb Itjc vlvc’a vlf, jcv tf rafqqfv bea bo atja boolmf, atf cfza bcf ab vlf kbeiv qbrrlyis yf tlw.

Because he knew that if he was Shao Zhan, he would also kill the answerer named Xu Sheng.

But Xu Sheng felt quite wrongly accused. He was pretty serious about the exams this time, otherwise he wouldn’t have translated out such beautiful words!

He was never that serious before in exams usually. 

In fact, the other three subjects did see improvements in grades. In addition to Shao Zhan’s tuition, there was also his hard-earned serious attitude, and those three subjects had an average of about 60 to 70 marks. It was just that English wasn’t like the other subjects, and the vocabulary wasn’t something that could be learned in one or two days. The reading comprehension question followed by a multiple choice question, he couldn’t understand it at all. Never mind the four ABCD options, other than blindly guessing, there was no other solution for him.

At the same time, Zhou Yuan tapped his red pen against the table again. “Xu Sheng, what are you mumbling about?”

Xu Sheng regained his senses. “Ah, I was saying… That’s why it’s like that.”

Zhou Yuan gave the pen to him. “If you understand it then give it a try. How did you get the idea to come to the office to ask questions? Previously, other than being punished to stand and receiving remedial lessons for scoring horribly for exams, you’ve never come into the office. Has the sun risen from the west today?” 

One single lie needed countless other lies to bring it around.

Xu Sheng, “I recently discovered the joy in studying. Actually, studying isn’t boring, especially under Shao Zhan’s tutelage, I’ve received inspiration.”

Zhou Yuan was also puzzled by Shao Zhan’s test scores. He didn’t know who was inspiring whom at this point.

Meng Guowei was still quietly waiting for Shao Zhan’s answer. 

Shao Zhan, under Xu Sheng’s suggestion of ‘imagination’, tried to abandon his previous years of education, and also threw away his knowledge of English. In the end, he just gave up. The key idea was that even if he figured it out, there was no way he could answer Meng Guowei. Meng Guowei would think he had gone insane. “This sentence, I probably wrote it wrong.”

Meng Guowei, “A mistake?”

Shao Zhan made a noise of agreement.

This mistake was quite surprising. 

But comparing it to Shao Zhan’s score, a mistake seemed to make more sense. Meng Guowei asked again, “Then what… were you learning messy calligraphy for?”

Shao Zhan, “A change of style.”

Meng Guowei choked. “Your writing is already very good, you don’t need to practise… Sometimes, seeking for breakthroughs is a good thing, but messy calligraphy doesn’t quite suit you, you really don’t need to practice it anymore.”

Other than that sentence of English, Meng Guowei still had a lot of questions. 

“Ah, Shao Zhan, that composition question, how could you run off topic like that? It doesn’t seem like a mistake you would make.”

“Your last few questions in the math paper just had ’answer?’ written, then nothing else. What were you thinking?”

“The lightning flashed and thunder roared, the first rains came to rest… This poem that you rearranged, it was Liu Yong’s. Were you not satisfied with it?”

“…” 

Each sentence was a thorn stabbing into Shao Zhan, until he wanted to just leave this place immediately. Xu Sheng handing in a blank paper was better than creating answers like this!

But a human’s will to live and sense of urgency was a surprising thing, in addition to something that they had never experienced before, Shao Zhan’s blank mind gradually began to return to normal. Meng Guowei was still asking questions, but Shao Zhan interrupted him. “Sir.”

Meng Guowei paused and looked at him.

Shao Zhan, “It was actually like this. On the day of the exam, I wasn’t feeling very well.” 

After a few seconds, Shao Zhan’s mind began going through thoughts at lightspeed, and quickly started to back up this excuse with logical reasoning. “At first it was a cough, then the symptoms quickly disappeared. At the time, the school nurse thought it wasn’t anything serious, but when the second day came my head was still hurting. You can go and ask the invigilator. When the exam was about to end… I almost lost my mind.”

Meng Guowei, “Ah?”

Not only Meng Guowei was shocked. Even Xu Sheng was surprised.

After waiting for him to react, there was only one thing to say. 

Fucking amazing!

Being able to fake sickness and bullshit about fainting in the exam hall, this entire thing had a beginning and an end, supporting evidence and logic, a cause and effect.

The year’s number one wasn’t for show. This mind was meticulous!

Meng Guowei had indeed heard about Shao Zhan falling asleep during the first exam, and the invigilator hadn’t been able to wake him up, but they had all thought that Shao Zhan was just in a normal state of sleep. It was strange that Shao Zhao of all people would sleep during an exam, but he hadn’t given it much thought. 

Meng Guowei understood! It was like that! The realisation was groundbreaking.

“That’s why I was saying,” Meng Guowei neatened the stack of exam papers and put them back. “You definitely wouldn’t have scored like this. Do you feel better now? How come you suddenly got a headache?”

Shao Zhan, “I’m fine, it must have been a cold.”

Meng Guowei once again pulled Shao Zhan over to talk, and nagged at him to definitely go to the doctor to get checked. “This body of yours, the next time you don’t feel well you should raise your hand and report it, don’t power through it, it was so bad that you couldn’t answer the questions… No wonder your writing also became so messy. All right, then go back to class first.” 

The two of them let out a sigh of relief at the same time.

Xu Sheng also wanted to go back to class, but Zhou Yuan cleared his throat and then yelled at him. “Did you hear me! Listen! I gave you the formula, what is your solution. You drew a triangle at the bottom of the page, is it for me to solve?!”

“…”

After Xu Sheng held the textbook and solved that formula, by the time he had returned to class, he saw that most of the people had gone, and then he remembered that the next class was physical education. 

Looks like today’s physical education class wasn’t taken by other teachers.

Xu Sheng passed by the window and was about to enter from the back door, but saw that there was someone leaning against it.

The boy was leaning against the door frame. He was tall and his legs were long, there was a cold aura about him, and the light from the window fell into the corridor, but stopped right in front of him. This uniform of his had the last button undone, and he was probably here to cool off from the suffocating atmosphere of the office. He lifted his hand and undid two more buttons. When he heard footsteps arriving, the youth raised his eyes and was obviously waiting for someone. “Come here.”

Although Xu Sheng had become Shao Zhan for a period of time, looking in from the outside was a completely different vibe. 

Xu Sheng thought to himself that his life was probably going to end here. “It’s P.E. next period, aren’t you going?”

Xu Sheng didn’t get too close. He leaned against the window, and kept an arm’s length between him and Shao Zhan. After all, there was the possibility of him sticking his hand through the window and throwing his textbook onto his desk.

Shao Zhan seemed to have seen through him. “Either you come here yourself or wait for me to act.”

Xu Sheng, “If you have something to say, say it, don’t use your fists…” 

However, in the next second, Shao Zhan really did take action.

The energy that Shao Zhan had unintentionally revealed in the exam hall previously was quite real. The way he moved barely gave anyone time to react. He was fast, accurate, and with a shove and push, harshly fought like a school tyrant who went out to fight every day.

“Fuck!”

Xu Sheng cursed at him, his back pressed against the door. The force pressing down on him wasn’t heavy, and it was obvious that Shao Zhan was holding back. 

Shao Zhan’s hair was longer, and wisps of hair covered his eyes. That “intruder” aura was quite obvious now, his features were sharp, and a little lower was his Adam’s apple. Xu Sheng watched it bob up and down.

Shao Zhan, “That English sentence, what did it mean?”

Xu Sheng was too lazy to fight back, and leaned back against the door. “It was said that reading hundreds of books would give you the ability to write like a god… Isn’t that how it’s translated?”

Xu Sheng continued, “In order to raise the standard of your English a bit, I fucking used all I had to translate it so nicely. I don’t even have such high English standards in my own exams, but you and Lao Meng didn’t even see it.” 

“…” He felt so wronged for caring.

Xu Sheng, “Think, think carefully. The flipping of book pages, doesn’t it make ‘hua hua’ sounds, doesn’t writing make ‘shua shua’ sounds?”

Shao Zhan, “It’s better if you shut up.”

TofuNoodle: Zhou Yuan: I offer you one-on-one help in mathematics, Xu Sheng: In return I offer you a triangle.