Chapter 6: Has the childhood sweetheart finally come to his senses?

Is photographic memory an experience?

Thanks for asking, it’s great.

English words are memorized with a single glance; my mind has never been so clear.

However, there’s no need to memorize English slang, like ‘family 4.0’ for four generations living together, ‘gulugulu water’ for hot springs, or ‘three bitches’ for a third mistress.

Simple and effortless.

Jiang Nian was glad he had a habit of bringing all important textbooks home during holidays, even if he never opened a single page; it still felt like he had secretly put in effort.

Now, it’s coming in handy, and it’s an indescribable pleasure.

Jiang Nian spent the entire afternoon immersed in the ocean of learning, those fragmented pieces of knowledge like colossal copepods and krill, swallowed whole by a whale.

Next door, Xu Qianqian woke up groggily from her nap, gritting her teeth.

“So noisy!”

No matter how she covered her ears, Jiang Nian’s excited sighs and exclamations would always penetrate them. He would exclaim for ages, she had no idea what he was so excited about.

Could it be the legendary… male Dao temple?

As the daughter of a urologist, Xu Qianqian wasn’t lacking in common sense, but she found Jiang Nian a bit neurotic. Couldn’t he watch his videos without making so much noise, and for so long?

And in broad daylight, too, when I even have my lights off!

Jiang Nian had passed out after studying all morning, feeling like his pig brain was a bit overloaded. He only woke up in the afternoon, vaguely hearing a knock on the door.

“Hello, delivery!”

He remembered receiving a delivery call that morning. He opened the door, and the delivery man, pulling a small cart, lifted his cap brim and looked him over, seemingly surprised.

“Mr. Jiang?”

“Yes.”

After signing for it, Jiang Nian tried on his new shoes. The sneakers had very soft soles. At two hundred yuan a pair, it was quite a good deal to replace everyone’s shoes for a thousand yuan.

Feeling hungry, he wasn’t in the mood to keep looking at shoes. He put on a pair and went downstairs to eat.

If it had been before, after buying new shoes, he would have, despite the hunger, jumped around for another minute or two. But now, he still had a cold two thousand yuan lying in his card.

Two thousand yuan—a huge sum! Why would he jump around for a few dicks?

In the evening, Jiang Nian was still sleepy but had to prepare to go to school for evening self-study.

Perhaps because he had brought her breakfast, or for some other reason, Xu Qianqian, for once, didn’t leave first. Instead, she sat in his living room, waiting for him.

The last time she had done this was in junior high.

Jiang Nian was a little flattered by this.

“Why are you willing to wait for me now?”

Hearing this, Xu Qianqian stood up to leave.

“Hmph.”

“Hey, hey, hold on, my lady, I take that back.” Jiang Nian was packing his schoolbag and quickly stopped her. “Please sit, please sit, wait for me for two minutes.”

Xu Qianqian looked down at his hand, said nothing, and sat back on the sofa. She looked up and watched Jiang Nian toss his English vocabulary book aside, then couldn’t help but speak.

“Jiang Nian, what did you tell me this morning?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not even bringing your vocabulary book! This morning you said you were going to memorize words, and this afternoon you threw the vocabulary book away?” Xu Qianqian was a bit speechless, glancing at him.

“The college entrance exam only looks at the total score. Your English is so bad; even a few tens of points improvement could get you into a decent…”

She didn’t finish the last sentence. Xu Qianqian realized that with Jiang Nian’s terrible grades, which would make his father worry and his mother cry, a few tens of points improvement in English might get him into a decent vocational college.

“Oh, it’s hard to explain to you right now.” Jiang Nian then tossed out his Chinese, biology, chemistry, and physics booklets, making Xu Qianqian’s eyes widen.

“Are you trying to die, Jiang Nian? I’m telling Aunt Li!”

On a September evening, the twilight blended with the molten gold of the setting sun, and the streets were brightly lit.

In the small county town’s old street, there were five or six-story self-built houses and crisscrossing power lines. The alleys were narrow and dim, the only advantage being that the buildings didn’t block the light, providing good natural illumination.

Xu Qianqian and Jiang Nian emerged from a dim alley, and not far away was Zhennan County High School. The area where their two families lived was similar to a shantytown.

The two rarely walked together like this, and the atmosphere was a bit strange.

As they neared the entrance of the county high school, Xu Qianqian, who was half a step behind Jiang Nian, clutched her backpack strap, frowned, and hesitated for a moment before saying,

“You should have less to do with Zhou Yuting and her crowd in the future. They’re not good people.”

Jiang Nian deeply agreed with this.

Ever since Zhou Yuting’s birthday party last time, he had seen through that group’s true colors. They treated him completely like a clown, constantly stepping on him to elevate Liu Feipeng.

There was no specific reason, just that Liu Feipeng wanted to pursue Zhou Yuting. If they couldn’t elevate themselves, they would belittle others, using comparison to highlight their own composure.

Jiang Nian, being poor and having bad grades, with only his physique and looks, made him a target for everyone.

Xu Qianqian only thought of yesterday’s steamed chicken with lotus leaves and breakfast. Although she and Jiang Nian didn’t get along, she felt obligated since she had accepted his food. After all, they were childhood playmates.

Although her “toxic childhood friend” was a bit slow-witted, his heart wasn’t bad, and his cooking was quite good. Regardless, it wasn’t up to others to bully him.

In her opinion, Zhou Yuting was a green tea bitch, a genuine slut. Only a straight man like Jiang Nian would be reeled in by Zhou Yuting and played for a fool.

She had said similar things before, but Jiang Nian had always retorted. Today, she was just saying it one last time; she wouldn’t say it again in the future.

Unexpectedly, Jiang Nian turned around, his dark hair and bright eyes serious, and nodded gravely.

“Mm, I know.”

He knows?

Xu Qianqian was a bit stunned. When did he finally get it?

She hadn’t recovered from her shocked bewilderment even after entering the classroom and attending an evening self-study session. Had the Jiang family’s ancestral grave started emitting green smoke? Had the simp finally turned around?

In the brightly lit classroom, it was so quiet that only the rustling of turning pages and writing could be heard.

“Qianqian, what’s wrong?” Her deskmate, Song Xiyun, poked Xu Qianqian’s fair arm, which was cool and soft. “You’ve been distracted for almost a whole class. Is something wrong?”

“Ah?” Xu Qianqian snapped back to attention. “No, nothing.”

She shook her head, wondering what she was doing, actually wasting an entire evening self-study session because of Jiang Nian! Taking a deep breath, she lowered her head and started solving problems.

Jiang Nian was in the next class. The two classes were adjacent, but their academic levels were worlds apart.

Zhennan County High School students were divided into four levels: Key (key support), Parallel (regular classes), Olympiad, and Zero Class, in ascending order of academic standing.

The Key classes were all on the first and second floors, close to the teaching office on the first floor, making them easier to manage if they got noisy. The Olympiad and Zero Classes were mostly on the third and fourth floors, for the cream of the crop.

The Parallel classes, poor souls, were all relegated to the fifth and sixth floors.

Xu Qianqian’s class was the Olympiad Science class, and Jiang Nian’s class was the Parallel Science class. He was extremely lucky to be assigned to the third floor, very close to Xu Qianqian’s class.

His homeroom teacher said they were absorbing Spiritual Qi. Jiang Nian disagreed.

For convenience, the two classes almost always had the same teachers. The Olympiad class would finish a test, and then the teacher would go back to the Parallel class to explain it. Could they possibly have a good outcome?

Evening self-study passed silently. Jiang Nian buried himself in solving problems.

The rewards from the System were truly useful. After an afternoon of memorization, he had completely memorized the 3500 words for the college entrance exam, making English test papers basically effortless.