A math class in the senior-year honors program.
The math teacher wrote equation after equation and function after function on the blackboard with a piece of chalk. Behind him, the students kept up a soft rustle of writing.
The sound was utterly pure. There were no whispers, no sneaky munching on snacks, and certainly no strange noises from students caught fidgeting.
The teacher taught, and the students wrote. The top students, handpicked from all the senior-year classes, showed through their perfect behavior exactly why they were the best—and why their grades were so excellent.
After writing the final equation, the math teacher turned around. Everywhere he looked, students were bent over their work. It was no exaggeration to say this was the finest group in the entire senior year at Third High School in X City. The school’s administrators had also devoted an especially large share of educational resources to these students: the best classroom, the finest teachers, the most scientific teaching methods, and the most intensive encouragement for the college entrance exams. In short, the school would spare no effort to help every one of them succeed.
Based on past graduation results, at least sixty percent of this class would get into top-tier universities. Of the rest, another twenty percent would make it into either a 985 or a 211 university. And even a place at one of the country’s very best universities wasn’t out of reach—some of them could still take a shot.
At least eighty percent of this class would go on to prestigious universities.
The math teacher gazed over the students with a sigh. As his eyes moved farther back, his attention settled on the rear of the classroom, where a girl sat with her arms folded and her eyes closed, utterly unlike the students around her, all bent over their notes.
It should have stood out as strange, but neither the students beside her nor the math teacher, who looked down on the whole class from the podium, thought anything of it.
Geniuses had privileges ordinary people didn’t. Besides, this genius might well know more than the math teacher lecturing at the front of the room.
Honestly, in his twenty years of teaching, the math teacher had seen students win international first prizes in mathematics, taught students accepted to Tsinghua and Peking University without entrance exams, and tutored prodigies who were now billionaires.
But the talent of the girl sitting at the back was something the math teacher had never seen before.
Ever since she started at the school, the girl had chosen the very last seat in the classroom. Every day, she either sat with her arms folded and her eyes closed, or muttered something mysterious under her breath. Taking notes, paying attention, following the lessons—none of that.
Sometimes she couldn’t even be bothered to take out her textbook and open it. Her desk would stay completely empty for the entire class.
And yet, this girl, who seemed to put no effort in at all, had never placed lower than first on a grade-level exam.
What was more, the girl didn’t keep her eyes closed the entire time. Every now and then, while a teacher was speaking, she would suddenly open them. At first, nobody thought much of it. But as time went on, the students and teachers gradually realized that she didn’t open her eyes at random.
She only opened them when a teacher got a problem wrong or misstated a point of knowledge. She wouldn’t say anything or correct them, either. At most, she’d open her eyes for five or six seconds, then close them again and go right back to sitting there serenely, doing who knew what.
After that, every teacher hated teaching in her class. Whenever the girl opened her eyes, the other students would turn on them with mocking, critical looks.
Fortunately, when senior year came, the girl made it into the honors program, as expected—the program reserved for only the best students.
The math teacher still remembered how, a few months ago, after the girl left, her homeroom teacher had taken several subject teachers who’d endured her bullying for a long time out for a banquet. Seven or eight teachers raised their glasses to one another, sniffling and wiping their tears as they said they never wanted to deal with a student like that again. Teaching her was like walking a tightrope; they were terrified that one slip of the tongue would get them laughed at by the other students. A whole group of teachers driven to this by one student—it was heartbreaking just to hear about.
But those teachers had it easy now. The teachers in the honors program were the ones suffering. In just three months, the girl had found mistakes made by teachers in Chinese, English, math, chemistry, physics, geography, history, and every other subject.
Almost every time the girl opened her eyes, the teachers had to endure the students’ scrutinizing stares.
After teaching so many classes of students, the math teacher had never encountered anyone so eccentric—and so gifted, with her talent seeming to match her eccentricity step for step.
Kids these days just keep getting more individualistic.
After silently grumbling to himself, the math teacher turned to a fresh page in the lesson notes he’d spent all night preparing (he’d spent the night checking and double-checking everything so the girl wouldn’t find a mistake).
“Next, we’ll start on trigonometric functions. There’s a saying about the reduction formulas for trigonometric functions: ‘Odd transformations change, even ones don’t; the sign depends on the quadrant…’”
The math teacher kept talking and turning pages, but his eyes kept sneaking glances at the girl in the last seat.
An entire night of preparation had paid off. He’d covered almost half the material in his notes, and the girl’s closed eyes hadn’t so much as twitched.
The math teacher felt a little more at ease.
