Chapter 13: A Small Quiz

Liu Yunyi turned his head, glanced at me, raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

Caught red-handed, my heart fluttered with anxiety. I quickly shifted my gaze from the comic book, grabbed my fountain pen, and continued copying the key points our teacher had written on the blackboard.

Unexpectedly, Liu Yunyi slid the comic book closer to me. I hesitated for a moment, but in the end, the allure of Dragon Ball proved irresistible.

Well, just for a little while, I thought.

So, as he turned a page, I followed along. The book was hidden inside the desk. When reading during class, you had to sit upright, your upper body leaning against the backrest, so your eyes naturally fell on the storybook.

Sometimes, as the teacher lectured from the podium, she would suddenly step down and walk around. At that moment, your movements had to be quick, and your expression calm—not a hint of panic—as you slid the book back into the desk.

I knew I didn’t have the nerve or the reflexes for this. That’s why I never dared to read storybooks in class on my own.

Besides, I’d once stood at the teacher’s podium and looked down at the classroom—I realized the teacher could see everything we were doing, clear as day.

So, if you read storybooks in class and didn’t get called out or have your book confiscated, perhaps it wasn’t that the teacher didn’t notice; perhaps she simply chose to let it go…

I thought I’d only read this one comic and stop. But to my surprise, I ended up reading one after another.

As the saying goes, walk by the river often enough, and your shoes are bound to get wet. During this time, our books were confiscated by teachers two or three times.

Once, Liu Yunyi’s aunt—who happened to be our literature teacher—found out as well. She called him over and gave him a stern scolding.

Though I didn’t know exactly what she said, it wasn’t hard to guess: “Your parents entrusted your studies to me. You can’t be reading novels in class,” and so on.

As for me, though I’d been reading too, there was never any evidence—the book was never in my desk. So each time, I came through unscathed, without a hitch.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty.

Even though we sometimes read storybooks during class, neither Liu Yunyi’s grades nor mine suffered.

Liu Yunyi was sharper than I was—he excelled at math, though English was another story. Whether it was vocabulary, grammar, or speaking, he struggled with it all.

In the first semester of eighth grade, not long after the school year began, our homeroom teacher, Ms. Zhang, was promoted to vice principal. That meant she could no longer be our homeroom teacher, nor continue teaching us English.

At the final class meeting, our entire class sang a song for her. Several of the girls cried.

I cried too, because Ms. Zhang was an exceptional English teacher. She often said, “To learn English, you need to be shameless.”

What she meant was, don’t be afraid to make mistakes or to embarrass yourself—speak boldly.

Normally, I was soft-spoken, even when answering questions in other subjects. But in English class, it was the opposite; my voice rang out loud and clear.

It was Ms. Zhang’s encouragement that helped me overcome my initial insecurity in English. Over time, I grew confident, and eventually, my English grades topped the class.

Ms. Zhang was my first true mentor in English.

Though my achievements were inseparable from my own hard work, I was genuinely grateful to Ms. Zhang.

So, when we had to change English teachers, I felt some resistance at first.

Fortunately, I adjusted quickly. After all, you learn for yourself, regardless of who is teaching; you must always pay attention in class.

Even if the new English teacher’s methods were lacking, a teacher is still a teacher—there is always something to be learned.

Many classmates struggled to adapt to the new teacher, and their English grades slipped.

But I continued to excel, quickly adapting to the new teacher’s style.

The new English teacher, Ms. Zhao, was in her thirties, wore her hair in a short ponytail, and spoke with a slightly husky voice.

Ms. Zhao liked to give frequent quizzes. She would often write five or six questions on the blackboard, have us answer them on our English paper, and then collect them for grading.

One day in English class, she gave us five questions, but this time, the questions were much harder than usual.

Relying on my sense for English, I picked the answers I thought were right, though I couldn’t be sure.

Liu Yunyi had no idea how to answer and, once I’d finished, simply copied my answers.

To my surprise, all my answers were correct. And so, Liu Yunyi, having copied me, also scored a perfect hundred.

But that wasn’t the main issue—the problem was that only two students in the entire class got perfect scores. And those two happened to be desk mates.

That was awkward, because with Liu Yunyi’s level of English, there was no way he could have gotten a perfect score.

When Ms. Zhao announced the results, I was terribly anxious, afraid the teacher would accuse me of letting someone copy my answers.

Liu Yunyi’s face and ears flushed red, though his darker skin made it less obvious.

I thought, if I’d known I’d gotten them all right, he definitely wouldn’t have copied everything…

But there are no what-ifs in life.