The wind surged in from outside, bringing with it a delicate fragrance of osmanthus.

At this moment, the classroom was already filled with the sound of students reading aloud as they began their morning self-study. No one noticed them. After an awkward minute of holding their arms, Song Ziqi turned around without warning and said:

“Siyue, a new restaurant has opened at the school gate. Shall we go for lunch—”

Then he saw this shocking scene, his mouth forming a big O-shape. After his gaze darted back and forth between the two, he mumbled, 'I'll just go eat by myself then.' He then covered his mouth and turned back around.

Ding Xian almost simultaneously flung Zhou Siyue's hand away, like throwing a hot potato.

"Bang—" With a sound, the young man's hand was flung onto the desktop.

Zhou Siyue let out a muffled groan of pain, his brows tightly furrowed, gritting his teeth and sucking in air, "You!"

Ding Xian turned her body back, sat up straight with her head slightly bowed, and placed the doll back on his desk. She earnestly and quietly explained to him: “I'm sorry, I was just too excited. Because it's the first time someone has given me a gift, I didn't control my emotions well. This, why don't you think about it again?”

A girl's heart is delicate; a single sentence can cause the plot to take a sharp turn.

On one hand, Ding Xian felt that her earlier reaction was too excited and feared Zhou Siyue would misunderstand. On the other hand, Zhou Siyue seemed to have had second thoughts, perhaps wanting to take it back and give it to Deng Wanwan.

Zhou Siyue completely didn't understand the thoughts of young girls, and even less did he understand why he should reconsider a simple broken doll that he had already given away.

So, he frowned, rubbing his hand while kicking Song Ziqi's stool. As soon as Song Ziqi turned his head, a doll hit his face, accompanied by the Young Master Zhou's impatient voice: "It's for you."

...

Song Ziqi fumbled to catch the doll, looking at Zhou Siyue, then at Ding Xian, with a confused expression.

However, both of them began to lower their heads and read, neither speaking.

Outside the classroom, osmanthus flowers bloomed profusely on the branches. The autumn wind swept in with their fragrance, carrying a hint of chill. The delicate and charming osmanthus flowers, alas, also did not understand a young girl's thoughts.

There was still over half a month until the placement test.

Ding Xian lay on her desk, sighing, her eyebrows almost drooping into a dejected figure eight. Her chin rested on a freshly completed math test paper, and she stared helplessly at the bright red ninety-nine points.

In 2003, the full score for test papers was 120, so 99 was just a passing grade.

Ding Xian was a bit imbalanced in her subjects, with math being her weaker point. She performed normally in the middle school entrance exam math and didn't fall behind. But after just one summer of playing, her mind had turned into a mess. She heard that the placement test for the Elite Class was extremely difficult, and even Xu Ke only scored a little over a hundred.

Ding Xian glanced sideways.

The seat beside her was empty. Zhou Siyue had been called to the office by a teacher. On the empty desk, a half-finished math test paper was held down by a pen.

Ding Xian froze.

'Wait a minute—'

"Senior One Mathematics Olympiad Simulation Test (1)"

She stared wide-eyed, scanning down problem by problem.

From the third problem onwards, she couldn't understand it with her current limited math knowledge. Moreover, many were topics she hadn't learned. Jiang Chen hadn't lied to her.

He had indeed finished learning Senior One math.

"What are you looking at?" Kong Shadi returned from somewhere, throwing herself onto Ding Xian, smiling as she embraced her and pressed Ding Xian's head against her soft chest.

Kong Shadi was very well-developed; her chest was already impressive in Senior One. When running during PE class, her chest would sway with her steps, making Ding Xian, who ran beside her, appear like a moving plank.

Ding Xian rescued her head from Kong Shadi's embrace, rested it back on the desk, and sighed: "Why do people have to learn math, anyway? Are we going to be solving equations with functions just to buy groceries in the future?"

Kong Shadi sat back in her seat, casually resting her chin on Ding Xian's desk. She glanced at Zhou Siyue's seat and said: "I don't know, but I heard from Song Ziqi that the person next to you is going to participate in a competition."

Ding Xian was startled: "What competition?"

Kong Shadi: "Math, of course. He got a perfect score in the middle school entrance exam, so of course, he'd be noticed. Do you know Xu Ke from Senior Three? He also got a perfect score in math and was encouraged by teachers to join competitions as soon as he entered. But Xu Ke was quite unlucky; he participated twice in a row and didn't get a good ranking."

Just as she was speaking, Zhou Siyue returned, pulling a stool to sit beside Ding Xian.

Kong Shadi wisely turned around.

Seeing him return, Song Ziqi slung an arm over him, "So, what's the verdict?"

Zhou Siyue picked up his pen and looked down at the test paper on the desk, casually writing an answer. He twirled the pen in his hand and said nonchalantly, "What is there to say?"

Song Ziqi glanced at his paper, "So, are you going or not?"

Zhou Siyue continued to look down at the paper, slowly writing a few problems. He raised an eyebrow, "I don't know."

Song Ziqi hissed, "What are you hesitating for? It's such a great opportunity, others want to go but can't. You might even make it to the national team, get direct admission to Tsinghua and Peking Universities, and win some awards, how glorious is that?" After speaking, he glanced at Ding Xian, and lightly raised his chin: "You think so, Little Monster?"

The sudden call-out made Ding Xian, who had been lowering her head, spaced out. She let out an "Ah," looked up, and belatedly nodded, "Ah, yes, it's pretty good."

Zhou Siyue chuckled at the test paper, not responding.

'Laugh my ass off.'

Ding Xian silently replied in her heart.

Comparing oneself to others really is infuriating.

Others were hesitating between Tsinghua University and Peking University, while she could only stare at this 99-point paper, not knowing where she went wrong, with a head full of question marks.

'You pervert.'

She silently added another line in her heart.

The problems on the test paper suddenly transformed into Zhou Siyue's mocking, handsome face. Ding Xian gritted her teeth and jabbed down fiercely. 'Why is he so annoying!'

"Tear—"

A large tear was ripped across the test paper.

Zhou Siyue looked up at the sound, casually glanced her way, understood what happened, and smiled, raising an eyebrow slightly: "Weak in one subject? Your weakness here is quite a disadvantage. Whether you study arts or sciences in the future, you can't escape math."

Ding Xian angrily retorted: "At least arts stream math is simpler."

Zhou Siyue shook his head and chuckled: "This paper is also simple, yet you still scored like this. The situation is grim."

Ding Xian suddenly became like a wilted blade of grass, completely lacking the strength to talk back. What he said was true; her situation was indeed grim.

Ding Xian carefully pieced the torn paper back together, then pulled out tape from her pencil case, biting it open with her mouth. As she taped, she said resignedly: "I'm just a salted fish; I don't have grand ambitions, nor have I ever thought of going to Tsinghua and Peking Universities. My goal is just to get into an ordinary provincial first-tier university."

Zhou Siyue raised an eyebrow in surprise, probably not expecting such a strong-willed girl to suddenly soften. He was a bit caught off guard and, after a pause, said, "Go to an ordinary university in another province?"

Ding Xian nodded while taping the paper: "I want to go to Hangzhou."

The further from here, the better.

When Ding Xian said this, her eyes sparkled. It was clear she truly loved Hangzhou.

"Have you seen the West Lake? Have you seen the Leifeng Pagoda? Do you know the Broken Bridge?"

Zhou Siyue stared at her with a sneer, his arms crossed over his chest, and said indifferently, "You've watched too much Lady White Snake!"

The conversation ended, and the Young Master Zhou no longer bothered with her.

Ding Xian pondered over the test paper by herself. The last major problem was almost entirely wrong. She started over, recalculating on scratch paper, when suddenly a sentence reached her ears:

"Actually, the scenery at Beijing's Tiananmen Square is also pretty good."

Ding Xian's hand, writing the problem, paused. She slowly raised her head and turned her face, "Huh?"

It hadn't been two months since they moved. These famous scenic spots were usually crowded with people, and with so many things happening at home, Ye Wanxian wouldn't easily let her go out.

Zhou Siyue flipped through the test paper and said semi-jokingly, "Go see Chairman Mao's portrait; let him show you the way."

Ding Xian mumbled softly, "I can't even understand the lessons, so what way can he show me?"

Zhou Siyue: "There's a living person sitting right next to you, and you don't know to ask?"

Ding Xian scoffed, "You don't even listen in class, if I ask you, would you even know what I'm talking about?"

Zhou Siyue casually pulled a notebook from the desk and lightly tapped it on her head. The force wasn't heavy; it was very natural: "Even when not listening in class, I'm still better than you."

Ding Xian glared at him with wide eyes, yet she didn't feel repulsed at all. Surprisingly, she even found it a little sweet.

Some boys from other classes, who were familiar with Zhou Siyue, passed by the back door. Seeing him playfully bickering with a girl, they whistled and jokingly added fuel to the fire in the hallway.

Ding Xian looked over, and the boys' ambiguous gazes lingered on them.

She quickly turned around, pretending to lower her head and flip through her textbook.

Zhou Siyue leaned back lazily in his chair, not bothering to respond.

In high school, male and female deskmates were always easily teased, especially Zhou Siyue. Ding Xian suddenly wondered if he had been teased like this when he had other deskmates before.

Or was she special?

Just as she was thinking, Zhou Siyue's voice came from beside her: "Bring the test paper over."

Huh?

What test paper?

A bewildered Ding Xian watched as those long hands pulled the freshly taped test paper from in front of her, placed it between their two desks, and flattened it. He flipped through it, front and back, pinpointing the general locations of mistakes, and used his pen to circle them, marking the incorrect problems for her.

Then, he wrote down the calculation steps in a blank space on the side.

"Because the least common multiple of 2, 3, and 5 is 30, and the number of cuboids penetrated by a diagonal of a cube with side length 30, formed by 2, 3, and 5, is a positive integer, therefore, the number of small cuboids penetrated by a diagonal of a cube with side length 90, formed by 2, 3, and 5, should be a multiple of 3. Look at the options yourself and find the multiple of 3...

And for this problem, connect AD, BC, and CD, erase other auxiliary lines for the x-axis and y-axis. Quadrilateral ABCD is the intuitive diagram; you can just calculate it directly..."

Many, many years later, Ding Xian could still recall the scene from that day.

The spirited young man, who snatched the test paper from her hand and explained the math problems he was best at, while outside the window, light yellow autumn leaves fell and wild geese flew south.

The little budding affection in her heart, accompanied by the weather outside the window, stepped into another season.

She suddenly understood what she was being awkward about.

She just envied Deng Wanwan's unreserved affection.

She hoped that one day, she could also be a little braver.