Jiang Ning pedaled steadily, his heart as calm as water. He was reminiscing about Xue Yuantong from his past life. How had she gone home this evening?
Back then, his heart had been entirely set on Shen Qing'e, and he had never paid attention to the girls in his class. Still, he vaguely remembered arriving very early the next morning—almost among the first to reach the classroom. He had seen Xue Yuantong with somewhat disheveled hair and a crumpled military training uniform, looking as though she had spent the entire night slumped over her desk.
Thinking of this, Jiang Ning gradually realized that if he hadn't called out to her tonight, she probably really would have stayed in the classroom all night long.
How utterly foolish and silly!
He couldn't help thinking of Xue Yuantong in her third year of high school. By then, she had grown up, shooting up to a height of one meter sixty. Her childish face had fully matured, and coupled with her rank as the top student in the entire city and her eccentric personality, countless people across the school adored her.
Someone like Jiang Ning, a mere background character, had absolutely no intersection with her.
Yet in the end, Xue Yuantong—who should have created miracles and lived a brilliant life—was diagnosed with leukemia on the eve of the college entrance examination.
A life ended right there, like a shooting star streaking across the night sky.
From that moment on, Jiang Ning knew what tragedy truly meant.
Xue Yuantong was practically the most exceptional girl Jiang Ning had encountered in his current life, not because of her family background, but purely because of her talent.
He suddenly chuckled and called out to the girl—still unblossomed, full of stubbornness, timidity, and pride:
"Xue Yuantong, want to catch some wind?"
"Catch the wind? How?" Xue Yuantong asked.
"I'll speed up," Jiang Ning said.
Xue Yuantong muttered to herself: how fast could a bicycle possibly go?
"Come on!"
"Hold on tight," Jiang Ning warned.
Xue Yuantong didn't think much of it. What a joke—was she the type of person to get scared?
Then, as Jiang Ning gradually accelerated, Xue Yuantong's expression shifted from disdain to astonishment, and finally turned to sheer terror.
When she finally came to her senses, she realized her arms were tightly wrapped around Jiang Ning's waist. She had long since forgotten about the strict boundaries between men and women; the wind roared wildly in her ears, and the scenery on both sides of the road blurred backward at lightning speed.
It was too fast. She felt as though she were flying just inches above the ground, her body rigid, her arms locked fiercely around Jiang Ning as the mountain bike shot forward like an arrow into the boundless darkness.
If there had been even a single small pebble on the road, the entire bike would have been sent flying. She wanted to survive, wanted to loudly tell Jiang Ning to stop, but she had completely forgotten how to open her mouth. In Xue Yuantong's mind, there was only overwhelming shock.
In this state of extreme velocity, her mind gradually emptied out, feeling as though she were in an endless freefall down a vast, deep valley.
Then, she noticed the bike's speed gradually slowing down.
Just moments ago, Jiang Ning had been cycling at over seventy miles per hour. In truth, he could have gone even faster, but he worried that Xue Yuantong might fall off behind him, and besides, this mountain bike might not have been able to handle it.
The mountain bike was a best-selling model from Giant, costing over two thousand yuan, but Jiang Junlong didn't maintain it well, so its performance was far from its peak condition.
As the speed returned to normal, Jiang Ning turned off the dam.
"We're here."
The words fell, and the bike stopped in front of the single-story brick house.
Xue Yuantong took a breath, loosened her death grip on Jiang Ning's arms, and trembled as she slid off the back seat.
She stared at Jiang Ning with lingering fear. Just a moment ago, she had genuinely thought she was going to die. Even now, her heart was hammering against her ribs, and her legs remained stiff.
Xue Yuantong took a deep breath, then let it out.
"How was it?" Jiang Ning asked her.
Xue Yuantong rubbed her face and said with a nonchalant air:
"Not bad. I didn't expect someone with your scrawny little limbs to ride so fast. It piqued my interest just a little bit."
"Great. I'll go even faster next time, guaranteed to satisfy you," Jiang Ning offered.
Xue Yuantong: *...You're going to scare the little life right out of me!*
"Wait here for me." Leaving those words behind, Xue Yuantong stepped inside her house. When she emerged, she was holding two large peaches.
"Here, peaches from my grandma's own tree. They're extra sweet."
"Also, thanks for taking me for a spin tonight." With that, she went back inside without looking back.
If someone does a kindness, it must be repaid—that was Xue Yuantong's code of conduct.
As for Jiang Ning, seeing Xue Yuantong clearly feeling weak yet putting up such a brave, composed front was a rare source of amusement.
***
September 2nd.
Jiang Ning went to school as usual. He had only pedaled a few hundred meters when he saw Xue Yuantong walking along the road. Her departure time for school seemed much later than usual.
"Get on," Jiang Ning called out.
"Fine. I was planning to run three kilometers today, but since you're inviting me, I suppose I won't run," Xue Yuantong said as she sluggishly shuffled onto the back seat.
"I boiled two eggs; I'll share one with you." Xue Yuantong never took a free ride.
"Ride slower today, there are people on the road," she cautioned—definitely not because she was scared, but simply to avoid hitting pedestrians.
"Don't worry," Jiang Ning said.
Xue Yuantong admired the morning scenery, couldn't help recalling the agony of walking to school over the past few days. Comparing the bitter past to the sweet present, she decided life was truly wonderful right now.
Then her mind drifted back to last night's scene. It had been too fast; she had never seen anyone ride a bike so fast it felt like flying. Because she had been so terrified at the time, she couldn't remember the exact speed, but even now, recalling it sent lingering shudders through her.
*Next time Jiang Ning wants to go speed-racing, I must figure out a way to refuse him, or I won't be able to survive his tossing around.*
Xue Yuantong thought to herself.
Watching Jiang Ning diligently pedaling ahead of her, she decided to look out for her junior partner.
"Jiang Ning, whenever there's something in your studies you don't understand, just ask me!"
"Alright."
"Huh? Why aren't you arguing back?" Xue Yuantong asked, puzzled. The two of them were both students in ordinary classes at No. 4 High School; logically speaking, her grades were on the same level as Jiang Ning's.
If it were anyone else, they probably would have retorted—after all, who was looking out for whom wasn't necessarily set in stone!
Jiang Ning thought to himself: *Because I know how formidable you were in my past life. No one in all of Yuzhou City could compare to you.*
So he said to Xue Yuantong: "You look like a kid with good grades."
"???" Why did those words sound a bit off to Xue Yuantong?
Yet Jiang Ning's tone was utterly sincere, which comforted Xue Yuantong quite a bit. At the same time, it made things a little less fun. How wonderful it would have been if Jiang Ning had doubted her, only for her to unleash her full potential during the monthly exams and crush the entire grade with absolute scores! At that point, she could have slammed her report card into Jiang Ning's face, fixing him with a gaze carrying three parts arrogance, three parts sympathy, and four parts casual indifference, and told him:
*I am destined to be a woman you can never imagine.*
Then Jiang Ning would kowtow in submission and worship her as a deity from that day forward.
"Hahaha." Thinking of that scene, Xue Yuantong let out a bright, cheerful laugh.
An old man on the river dam glanced over, shook his head helplessly, and even the little yellow dog following behind him slanted its eyes, exuding an air of utter disdain.
Xue Yuantong put her little poker face back on, feeling a slight sense of emptiness after her fantasy.
There was a reason she had chosen to attend No. 4 High School. She had originally attended junior high at Yuzhou No. 14 Middle School. During the first monthly exam of her first year, her grades had surged into the top ten of the entire grade.
Had she not concealed a portion of her strength, first place in the school would have belonged to her.
That math test had been exceptionally difficult, yet she had beaten the second-place student in math by nearly twenty points.
The math teacher was a refined woman nearing forty. In her first month of the semester, Xue Yuantong never once saw her wear the same outfit twice, which gave some indication of how vast her wardrobe must have been.
Because Xue Yuantong excelled at math, she naturally received encouragement from the math teacher, who praised her extravagantly in front of the entire class, nearly lifting her up to the heavens.
Not long after, the math teacher opened an extracurricular tutoring class, costing a thousand yuan per semester. Several students in the class enrolled.
Xue Yuantong did not join. Given her family's financial situation, one thousand yuan was a massive sum; her mother's monthly income wasn't much higher than that.
With the opening of the tutoring class, the math teacher's attitude toward her students shifted. She began making sarcastic remarks in class directed at those who hadn't signed up.
Because Xue Yuantong studied well, she received fewer sarcastic comments, but those students with poor math grades who also hadn't joined the tutoring class were frequently singled out for various forms of mockery and harsh criticism.
As for the students who had paid the tutoring fees and joined her classes, her attitude toward them was exceptionally warm and pleasant.
The math teacher held back secrets during regular classes, teaching certain classic problem types exclusively in her tutoring sessions.
In the end, driven to helplessness, over twenty students in the class enrolled in the tutoring sessions.
She was in charge of three classes, with a total of over seventy students participating. Across two semesters a year, her income reached over one hundred thousand yuan.
Xue Yuantong despised this behavior. *Aren't you running a tutoring class? Aren't you holding back secrets? This young lady won't join your tutoring class, and I'll still beat the students you taught into a pulp.*
Xue Yuantong achieved this without expending much effort, creating a massive, unbridgeable gap between her math scores and everyone else's. But what greeted her in return was even sharper criticism from the math teacher—all sorts of snide remarks and sarcasm. Once, when Xue Yuantong couldn't help talking back, the furious math teacher slapped her across the face.
That day, Xue Yuantong's eyes were red and she felt deeply miserable. When she returned home, her mother asked what had happened to her face, and she lied that she had accidentally tripped and fallen.
She had considered telling her mother the real reason.
But her mother was just an ordinary person; she couldn't help, and it would only cause her sleepless nights.
Her mother could never win against someone as vicious as that math teacher.
She had considered transferring schools. With her grades, as long as she was willing to reveal everything, any other junior high would gladly take her in.
Yet transferring would require notifying her mother, and in the end, Xue Yuantong gave up on the idea.
She had heard classmates in the tutoring sessions say that the math teacher's husband held some influence; otherwise, the school wouldn't have condoned such behavior.
Those students who paid for tutoring looked deeply depressed when they spoke of it. After all, not everyone was wealthy; many came from ordinary families, and spending a thousand yuan on tutoring was genuinely painful, but they had no choice other than to spend money to avoid trouble.
And so, Xue Yuantong decided to use her own methods to retaliate against the math teacher. She knew very well that if she took the high school entrance examination normally, her math score would inevitably benefit the math teacher as well.
The mere thought of it made her feel sick.
Therefore, in the math examination hall of the high school entrance exam, she did something bold she had never done before: she handed in a blank paper for her math test, throwing away all 150 points.
It was an act of sheer caprice. Xue Yuantong had calculated it beforehand: the total score for the entrance exam, including physical education and science experiments, added up to 925 points. Even without those 150 points, she could still achieve a decent score; while she might not make it into No. 2 High School, No. 4 High School was an absolute certainty.
She wanted to strike back at the math teacher with a zero score, and then, after the results came out, draw public attention and expose the math teacher's actions by revealing why she got a zero in math.
Yet this plan failed. Her entrance exam score didn't attract much attention, nor did anyone come to interview her. No one cared about a fallen prodigy; only her homeroom teacher had expressed a sense of regret upon learning her total score.
More prevalent were the cold sidelines and gloating amusement of her classmates—after all, someone who used to rank in the top ten of the grade had scored only a little over six hundred on the entrance exam, failing to even cross the threshold of No. 2 High School.
On that day, Xue Yuantong truly grew up.
If she had originally stepped into the experimental class of No. 2 High School with the top score in the entire city, she probably would have attracted a lot of attention. People would have asked her questions, reporters would have interviewed her, and at that time, she could have smoothly exposed the math teacher's conduct.
The title of the city's top scorer could also have earned her a handsome scholarship, easing the pressure on her mother.
What a pity. The Xue Yuantong who once handed in a blank paper in the examination hall had possessed only youthful defiance against authority, unyielding passion, and a whimsical idealism exclusive to youth.
As for the consequences caused by that decision, she had never considered them; she had only wanted to exact her revenge in her own way and draw a line under three years of grievances.
The missing 150 points undeniably caused her to miss out on many things.
Yet if she were to turn back now and be asked whether she regretted it—
Xue Yuantong pressed her lips together, her eyelashes fluttering lightly as she cast her gaze toward the vast expanse of the Huishui River.