Chapter 491: Qiao Mu Private High School

"And what would it take for you to get away from me?" The little man in the manuscript asked indifferently as he lifted the ball of puppy string out of the way.

"You like me a little." The lifted puppy ball of string said, "And I'll stay away from you."

A string of ellipses next to the villain in the draft and then, "Why should I like you?"

In the moonlight, the puppy in the draft suddenly moved as if animated, and it looked up, with silvery blue eyes: "Because the future you like me a lot."

The moment Bai Liu sat on the desk and met the silver-blue eyes, everything around him turned into lines and distorted instantly, Bai Liu could clearly hear the snap of a folded object being opened in his head, and countless memories came flooding back.

The floor beneath him sinks and reappears, the moon outside the window turns into the sun, the blackboard in front of him turns from black to yellow, and from a sleeping Mu Sicheng behind him, he is surrounded by a stirring, correspondent classmate, and the air is swelteringly hot.

Bai Liu turned her head slowly to look around, and then to the countdown in the top right corner of the board -

--[Three hundred days to the entrance exams.]

He went back to his first semester of his senior year when school had just started.

Bai Liu has a strange feeling that he is re-entering his memories from his own point of view, as the scenes around him become more and more concrete and Bai Liu's memories fade and recede.

The events that happened after he turned eighteen gradually became a blank in his mind.

Bai Liu's memories recede to the age of eighteen, his original calm gaze becoming cold and detached as his memories fade, becoming what a real eighteen year old Bai Liu would have been.

The class was whispering excitedly discussing, "Will anyone from this group of seniors who just went up the hill go to that Gaucho Lake?"

"They're all special achievers, they're so good, they're probably not interested in a place like Gaucho Lake, are they?"

"Not necessarily, right? What if I help someone else read the questions?"

Someone's voice amplified a little as he swept an impish glance over the back of Bai Liu, who was sitting in the front row, "What if one of these top-ranked special achievers has a friend who needs their help with this year's exam questions?"

The boy sitting next to this man followed his gaze and also looked at Bai Liu, who couldn't help but poof out a laugh and then waved his hand, "Forget it, some people don't even know how to do the original questions when they get them in the exam room."

"I'm Buming White Lu Yizhan and Fang Dian are both chasing him like a ghost." The man muttered in a disgruntled whisper, with a palpable look of malice and jealousy on his face, "And he's all lovey-dovey and pretentious, deserving?"

"Now that people have gone up the mountain, I don't see how he's going to keep up this dangling look all by himself when no one's coming to him."

Bai Liu sits impassively.

Qiao Mu Private High School is a place where the cult of achievement is very strong, and as a direct result of this, Lu Yizhan and Fang Dian, who are incredibly good at everything, are very popular within the school, and both the top students and the powerful students are very friendly to them and want to make friends with them.

But while these two seem to get along well, they are actually very good at keeping people at a distance.

Whenever they come to the class to see Bai Liu, they are approached by a number of people who try to talk to them, but they usually smile and politely decline and basically only interact with Bai Liu.

This leads to some of the repeatedly unsuccessful accosters getting annoyed, such as the student on his right rear flank.

This student, from an average family, came to the school more for social purposes than for study, and was keen to make friends with all sorts of powerful and privileged students, and was on good terms with Bao Kangle, a fellow student.

I think Lu Yizhan and Fang Dian were only with him out of pity, they were not from the same world. ......"

" Bai Liu --!!!" Fang Dian's voice came cheerfully from the front of the class as she poked through the door of class 17 with a big smile on her face and winked playfully at Bai Liu sitting by the window, "Mr. Lu and I escaped down the hill to look for you, come on out!"

The student who was still complaining choked violently as he looked incredulously at Fang Dian who appeared in front of the class as if he was seeing something that was completely beyond his comprehension.

Bai Liu gathered his things in a familiar manner and walked out in front of the student to his right and back in a trance, and walked up to Fang Dian with the same cold, indifferent look, "Let's go."

" Mr. Lu is waiting for us downstairs." Fang Dian said as she walked away, "I saw your class schedule and knew that you were going to have PE next class and could skip it, so I chose this time to come down."

"What did you come down here to see me for?" Bai Liu asked.

Fang Dian grinned broadly as she took Bai Liu by the shoulders, "It's because Mr. Lu and I have gone up the mountain, and I'm afraid you're not going to have fun down there alone, so I came down to play with you."

"That's not the reason, is it?" Bai Liu asks calmly and rhetorically.

"I came down to see you for that reason." Fang Dian rubbed his chin, "But Mr. Lu doesn't seem to be, he looks like he's got a lot on his mind."

It was a sunny day, with blue skies, green grass and high school boys and girls running around, laughing and exercising, so youthful and energetic that it should have been a relaxing scene.

" Lu Yizhan!" Fang Dian waved his hand.

Lu Yizhan, with deep circles under his eyes, a haggard face and a mouth so dry that it bursts open, clutching a pile of books, slowly turns his head, his eyes full of emptiness and trance, his body exuding a dusty aura that is about to enter the earth, and with an out-of-body expression he slowly gives an eep and answers Fang Dian's call.

"How long did he stay up?" Bai Liu asks.

"I don't know." Fang Dian spread her hands, "It must have been a week."

Lu Yizhan sat on the edge of the flower bed with a pile of heavy books and a sad face, and when he saw Bai Liu approaching, he sighed without saying anything: "Bai Liu, I saw the results of your first mock exam in senior high school."

"278."

Lu Yizhan, as if by chance, had a faint light in his eyes called expectation: "Did you scribble the wrong answer key?"

Bai Liu poured cold water on this light without hesitation: "No, I just can't do it."

Lu Yizhan rubbed a handful of his face as he took a deep breath, "...... I know, did you deliberately do a lot of questions wrong in order to hide your marks."

"What's wrong with me?" Bai Liu gave Lu Yizhan a breathless look, "Why would I do such a stupid thing?"

Lu Yizhan, who always does the stupid thing of hiding marks in exams: "......"

"I don't think so ......" Lu Yizhan was in a trance, "You're Bai Liu, how can you only get 278?"

"What's wrong with that." Even Fang Dian gave Lu Yizhan a strange look, "Bai Liu didn't study in his first and second year of high school, so he's already very good at 278, right?"

"But 278 is too low." Lu Yizhan scratches his hair with a sad face, then quickly, he rummages through the pile of books next to him and hands them to Bai Liu, one by one.

"These are my notes from my senior year and Fang Dian's senior year exams."

"This is a summary of the simple questions that make up 80 per cent of the questions in the GCSEs, you should have no problem getting marks for this part of the questions if you read it, I've put it together according to the syllabus for this year's exam."

"This is a summary of the question types for the medium difficulty questions, this part of the question is not forced, you can look at it if you have time, if you don't, forget it, but you can look at the questions that appear more frequently, in case you are lucky enough to hit it this year?"

"This is a common answer template for biology, biology is a subject that gives marks for big questions that are very word intensive, you must match the words to their mark giving criteria when you answer the questions or you will lose small marks when you mark the paper, it's not cost effective on a would be basis."

"Don't do the last one on genetics if you're short on time, they give a lot of little points that need attention, like what prevalence is among what population, partner x or partner y. It's not good to get it right."

"It's chemistry, the big inorganic salts question would be good for marks if you didn't come up with offbeat metal classes and reactions, just get familiar with the most common kinds of metal reactions and you'll be fine, at most you'll lose the three marks for the one that tells you to write some weird metal reactions to match the chemical formula."

"Just give up on the big organic questions properly, there are a lot of calculations and reasoning in here, and the exotherm of combustion is not very calculative and more time consuming."

"For maths conic curves work out the equation for the first question and get those two marks."

Lu Yizhan rambled on, pulling out all sorts of reference books and notebooks, neatly filled with exam points and notes, many of which had new watermarker handwriting, so it was obvious that they had only recently been compiled.

"Is this what you've been doing all night?" Bai Liu asked softly as he looked down at the thick notes.

Lu Yizhan sighed, "I didn't mean to stay up late to make this for you, so don't take it to heart."

"Mostly because I found out you got a 278." Lu Yizhan's eyes were sultry and full of bitterness, "I just lost sleep, I couldn't sleep, I felt bad inside, so I simply got up and gave you the exam points."

Bai Liu: "......"

It doesn't have to come to that.

"I think Buming Bai." Lu Yizhan looked at Bai Liu with despair and let out a long sigh, "You're so smart, you've been learning everything quickly since you were a kid, you can pass even the hardest horror games in one go, so why can't you do well in school?"

"I don't think the problem is that Bai Liu can't do it." Fang Dian presses her elbow into Lu Yizhan's shoulder as she ponders, "I feel like it's because he doesn't want to learn."

Lu Yizhan pressed on, "Bai Liu, why don't you want to learn?"

Bai Liu flipped through the notes Lu Yizhan had given him, and he looked up with little expression on his face: "I couldn't find the need to study in high school."

Lu Yizhan was stunned: "How can there be no need for that? If you get good grades, you can choose the university you like and the major you like, go to a good university and choose to do the job you like, and then live an ordinary and happy, normal life."

"I don't have a favorite college or major." Bai Liu lifted his eyes and he dragged his jaw scatteredly, "Nor do I have any aspirations for what you call an ordinary and happily normal life."

"So what do you like?" Lu Yizhan asks.

Bai Liu's answer was crisp and clear: "Money."

Lu Yizhan took a deep breath and tried to wrap Bai Liu around it: "If you study hard, you can go to a top university, get access to the most and fastest ways to earn money and specialise, and become the fastest person to get rich."

"But now there's a problem." Bai Liu raised his eyes absently, "It's true that this is a normal and legal route to rolling in money, but it's a route that's far too cost effective for me."

"I'm better at something that is less socially acceptable but brings me money thousands of times over than this long paid waiting path ......"

Lu Yizhan's heart skipped a beat and he snapped at Bai Liu, "That's enough!"

A rare look of anger appeared on his always gentle and helpless face as he stood up, "But such a channel comes at the cost of the injury and even death of millions of people, so you will choose this path even then?"

Bai Liu paused for a moment and averted his eyes, "That's none of my business."

Lu Yizhan's chest rose and fell twice quickly, the anger on his face faded to an indescribably sad expression and his voice dropped: "...... You just had to go this way against me, didn't you?"

Bai Liu's lips pursed as he opened his mouth as if to say something, but ultimately said nothing.

There was a moment of silence between the two men.

Lu Yizhan silently opened the plastic pocket he had put aside and handed it to Bai Liu: "A popsicle for you, eat it and go back to class."

"If you don't want them, I'll put these notes away for a while and put them back in the dorm."

After that, Lu Yizhan put his head down and gathered up the notes he had been working on all week and left without looking back to his dormitory.

Fang Dian looked at Bai Liu, who was not looking at Lu Yizhan. She seemed to be helpless, and reached out her index finger to nod Bai Liu's forehead: "You, just say it if you don't want to study.

"He's really worried about you."

"I don't think Lu Yizhan would have given up on me studying until we got to this point." Bai Liu lowered his eyes and said softly, "But I'm not really cut out for it, I don't like studying."

"Was that the reason just now?" Fang Dian asked tentatively, "Do you really think it's better to go down those avenues than to study?"

Bai Liu was quiet for a long time before he replied, "No."

"What's that about?" Fang Dian tore open a popsicle and handed it to Bai Liu, "No, here's half."

Bai Liu took it and he took a bite, his eyes dropping, "Studying itself is a boring thing, I don't know what I want out of life or what I want to study for, and forcing myself to do something I'm not good at just isn't worth it to me."

" The kind of life Lu Yizhan said ......" Bai Liu bit off a piece of ice and swallowed it, his heart flushed with a very shallow coldness from the ice he slid down, making his voice cold too, "I don't hate it."

"But I don't like it either."

Fang Dian asked softly, "And what kind of life do you like?"

Bai Liu's lips rested against the popsicle stick and he paused for a long time, long enough for his lips to freeze a layer of red before he spoke, "I don't know."

"Then think about it again." Fang Dian stroked Bai Liu's head, she was not worried about anything, she smiled as cheerful as ever, "You are only seventeen, you have plenty of time to figure out what you want your life to be, take your time."

"Is it okay if I only get 278?" Bai Liu gave Fang Dian a quick glance, "Is it okay if you fail in the college entrance exam?"

"Well, how can I put it, maybe it's not appropriate for me, the top of the grade, to say this to you." Fang Dian bit into her already finished ice-cream stick, she held her face in her hands and bit into it with a twist, but her eyes and tone were serious, "But I really don't think it's much to just take 278 on the GCSEs."

Bai Liu looked at Fang Dian: "Aren't you afraid that if I don't go to university and don't have a good job, I will start to go astray, fall down and become a social scum?"

"There are so many kids in this world, it's not like every kid has to get above 278 to be considered a good kid." Fang Dian turned her head over and winked at Bai Liu, "It's not like the kid who finishes last in the test is necessarily delinquent."

"Then everyone just needs to arrest the kid who comes last in the test and there will be no criminals in the world."

Fang Dian turned her head again and looked over at the high school students dashing across the playground with a smile in her voice.

"It's not like you can't live if you come last in the exams, people who come last in the exams still have the right and time to choose the life they like too."

"But then!" Fang Dian slapped Bai Liu on the back, sending him stumbling, and she smiled brightly, "I'd still advise you to study hard when you haven't figured out what kind of life you want in the future."

"Because when you meet a future you like and want to go for that future, you don't miss out on that future because you're not ready for it."

Fang Dian glanced at her watch and let out a wow, "It's already this hour, next class is maths, I have to get back to class."

"You've upset Mr. Lu, I don't think he'll come down to the mountain to see you these days." Fang Dian handed Bai Liu the popsicle stick she had finished eating and waved her hand as she ran up the hill, "I'm preparing for a physics competition, be a good boy and spend some time alone, talk to us if you need anything."

With that, she ran off in a huff, leaving Bai Liu sitting alone by the flowerbed, looking down at the two sticks in her hands.

The two sticks were given to him by Lu Yizhan and one by Fang Dian.

Both sticks won and it says one more.

Bai Liu looked at the two popsicles he was holding up in his hands and was just about to get up and leave when he noticed a book that Lu Yizhan hadn't had time to pack away because it was sitting where he was.

He paused for a moment, then took this notebook and flipped it open.

It is a very small book, opened up to contain lines and lines of chemical equations, seemingly to make it easier for Bai Liu to read and understand the shorthand, with one or two lines of concise notes next to each equation, all of which are equations Bai Liu has missed before, written in a small, fresh handwriting, which seems to have been worked on overnight.

Bai Liu stopped when he turned to the last page of the book, which had a scholar's prayer charm clipped to the inside of it.

It was a red paper charm that would be given away with a purchase at the stationery shop near them for ten dollars, and seemed like a cheap feudal superstitious ritual of no use other than self-psychological comfort.

Bai Liu unfolded this paper charm and inside was Lu Yizhan's elegant and powerful handwriting -

-- [I hope Bai Liu can study hard, get 400 marks and go do what he likes.

Bai Liu squeezed the paper talisman, he blinked slowly and clenched it slowly.

The playground is full of people, four classes are having PE at the same time, playing basketball, volleyball and table tennis, and these noisy and childish high school students are playing with each other in groups, laughing and talking in a way that can be heard from the flowerbeds on this side of Bai Liu.

There should have been Bai Liu alone in this, but he stood out just as much on the playground as he did outside it, whether he was in the middle of the crowd or not.

And it's one that should last for a while.

Bai Liu put his notebooks in his trouser pocket and, without looking at the group of high school students on the playground, turned around and prepared to go back to his dormitory - he remembered that Lu Yizhan had just put those notebooks back in his sophomore dormitory.

He was just about to walk away when he felt a tug on his trouser leg. Bai Liu turned back and his expression stilled as he looked down his tugged trouser leg.

In front of the flower bed, a ball of fluffy, puppy-sized thread appeared, like a random draft that had been scribbled in circles with a 2b pencil, which reached out with a little threadbare foot and tugged at Bai Liu's coat, looking up at him with what should have been a face, making a peculiar, muffled sound like that of an animal whose vocal cords had not yet formed.

"That popsicle you're holding, can I have one?"

Bai Liu stared at the dark mass of lines, caught in an eerie stasis.