Fake Slackers

Chapter 74: King vs. King

He Zhao took the mock exam. Out of habit, he glanced over the paper from start to finish and got a general sense of the difficulty before he started writing. He began drafting a solution in the blank space.

His mind was in disarray and his handwriting was unsteady too.

He sat on the first step of the flight of ascending stairs while Xie Yu sat in the corner of the bend in the stairwell. They sat face to face, one higher and one lower.

While drafting his answers, He Zhao remembered what he had said to Xie Yu under the alias 'Question King.'

None of it was very polite.

He Zhao was very distracted. His pen moved over the thin paper, writing down the square root of 2, then stopped. Ink gradually spread out from where the nib met paper, and as He Zhao stared at the spreading black ink blob, he thought about the most dastardly thing he had said. He said it aloud now: "...I'll give you a three-question head start."

Xie Yu still hadn't removed his hood. He had also lowered his head, so from He Zhao's position he could only see Xie Yu's nose and chin. His mouth was set in a thin line and he didn't seem to be in a good mood.

How could his mood possibly be good?

Xie Yu squeezed the pen in his hand. It actually seemed more likely that he would meet this idiot in a dream. Perhaps this really was a dream.

Xie Yu slowly exhaled on his question paper. "All right, give me the headstart. Then I'll give you a ten-question headstart."

He Zhao: "......"

The two last-places-in-the-year, who slept in class or played phone games, who dragged Class 3's average grades so far down that every subject teacher was a step away from jumping off a cliff, who never even knew which page of the textbook they were going through in class—were now sitting in the stairwell trashtalking each other.

In school, their most frequent conversation was, "Which question is the teacher going over?"
"Don't know."
"Do you know how to do this question?"
"Nope."
"Phew, you don't know, either. Did you finish copying the homework?"

Now, after the trash talk, even Xie Yu felt shocked.

He had looked through the Best of the College Exams He Zhao had brought, and all the mock papers looked about equally difficult, so he tore a set out at random. He glanced at the time, then tossed his phone to the floor.

Half an hour. They stopped writing around 11 a.m.

Since Xie Yu had still not seen He Zhao's answers, he remained suspicious. Even though an inexplicable notion was currently bubbling up in his mind.

He Zhao did two questions, emotions still in disarray.

He held his pen, knuckles jutting out. He stared at his terrible, shaky handwriting. Then, still dazed, he switched his pen to his left hand.

When Xie Yu finished writing, it was not yet 11 a.m. He glanced up and saw the idiot on the steps had also just stopped writing. He Zhao put his paper on his knee and looked at Xie Yu.

They stared at each other quietly for a while.

Xie Yu went to sit on the step too, taking the mock paper with him. He reached out for the paper on He Zhao's knee, but He Zhao held it in place with one hand, then caught hold of Xie Yu's hand with the other. He said quietly, "Can you... let me off this once?"

"Weren't you so sure of yourself?" Xie Yu said, pulling the paper out little by little from underneath He Zhao's hand. He got it halfway out, then couldn't pull it any further. He said, "Let go."