A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 004 – A Small Target

Let’s Set You a Small Target.

This had to be the longest ever exam in history.
There was still 30 minutes before it was over, after twirling his pen around his pointer finger for two rounds, Sheng Wang settled it on the table. This was just a minor movement, and somehow he still attracted many looks——curious ones, nosey ones, sympathetic ones, and even just casual glances.

At the age of being teens, rumours always spread quickly, there were no secrets between young people, every little thing could become common knowledge.
With one night, it was common knowledge that the hot transfer student in the top class, Class A, was in deep trouble for his five subjects, his scores probably trailed towards single digits, it was the tragedy of the century! Even the invigilator, a teacher from another class, could not help but look at him more than normal.

The bell rang right at the last second, the invigilator clapped: “Alright time’s up, put down your pens. Ay, the boy sitting near the window in the first column, quit writing. It’s all Class A students here, is this ten to twenty seconds really that important to you? Spare the students in the other classes, please.”
Muffled laughter came from the people, that student released his pen, his face flushing red, and rubbed at the sweat coming out of his palms.
“What are you so nervous for, isn’t it just the last question. The newbie is even calmer than you are.” The student behind him gave him a kick in his butt, and made a casual joke along the way. Everyone looked at Sheng Wang again.

Teasing like this could not be said to be good natured, but neither was it bad natured. This was only because he was a stranger, his words subconsciously alienated the newbie from the main group when his words were analysed. It was the inevitable beginning that came with every school transferral, Sheng Wang was used to it, and even played along with a laugh: “That’s right.”
Nobody expected that reply, and went dumbfounded.

“Don’t be loquacious, last student in every group, collect the papers from the back to the front.” After the invigilator finished, a chorus of chairs moving could be heard.

Jiang Tian held on to his script and stood up, two finger tips knocked with a ‘du’ on Sheng Wang’s table, indicating him to hand in his script.
Sheng Wang shot him a look, just as he was about to stuff his script at him, Gao Tianyang turned behind in the chaos and asked: “Are you okay?”
“Kinda.” Sheng Wang said.

“Wow you can still smile.” Gao Tianyang gave him a thumbs up: “Your mental fortitude is good, if I end up in a situation like yours, I would probably just shut down.”
Going off topic was nothing, at least the pen was constantly moving. Having to suffer through two hours despite knowing nothing at all, that was the real torture.

Quite a few students tried to peek, wanting to see exactly how blank Sheng Wang’s paper was. A sense of curiosity was normal, and Gao Tianyang was no exception.
However, no one succeeded, as there was an impatient true · stone-faced top student standing in the way.
Before they could catch anything, Jiang Tian already whisked the paper away. As Sheng Wang was about to speak, his hand suddenly emptied. By the time he raised his head and looked over, Jiang Tian was already knocking on Gao Tianyang’s desk.
“Take it take it take it.” Gao Tianyang withered, and handed in his paper gloomily.

He finally endured through one subject.
Sheng Wang extended his arms and stretched his body. He then stood up with his cup.
“What are you doing, student?” The invigilator looked at him in confusion.
Sheng Wang was even more confused than him: “I’m getting some water from the back?”

After he spoke he scanned around the classroom.

He suddenly realised that everyone stayed put in their seats, he was the only one prepared to take a break.
The invigilator placed the collected scripts at the left of the teacher’s desk, and next, he took the leather packet on the right and said: “We’re not done yet, there’s still another paper, did you forget?”
……
Huh?????
Sheng Wang collapsed back into his seat, the invigilator started giving out the new paper after he opened the packet.

Gao Tianyang leaned backwards, his back touching his table, and said: “Oh right, was it that you didn’t know? We have two papers for math, the main paper comes first, and is collected after two hours. Next, we have an additional question, which takes another half an hour. Of course, the main paper will be given five minutes before the formal exam.”
He did not get any reply when he was done talking, a look behind, and he saw Student Sheng slouching in his chair, his head turned up, his expression already vexed.

“Let me ask just this, how many marks are your maths worth?” Sheng Wang’s tone already showed that he no longer had any vested interest in living.
“For the science students, 200 marks, the total for gaokao is only 480 marks, go ahead and process this weightage with your soul.”
“……”

After he looked up for a few seconds, someone pressed a finger against the top of his head.
Jiang Tian’s voice appeared again: “Get up from the edge of my desk. Take the paper.”
It felt bizzare to have the top of his head touched by someone. The hairs stood up at Sheng Wang’s neck, he shot upright as if he was a corpse that suddenly sprung up. He took his own paper, and tossed the last copy behind him.

With the weirdo in the form of mathematics that laid the foundation for him, the tests ahead of him were no longer a big deal anymore. In the blink of an eye, it was already nine at night.

“Jiang Tian, Teacher Wu wants you to go to the office.” After the scripts were collected, a girl sitting next to the window passed the message.

Sheng Wang turned around and looked, and witnessed the pestilence, wanting to leave right there and then initially, furrow his brows after he heard the message: “Now?”
“Yeah. He came over the moment the bell rang and said that.” The girl pointed at the corner of the window, “He wants you to go the moment you finished the tests.”
Jiang Tian looked like he was rushing for time, he did not look particularly pleased, and yet he dumped his bag and went.

The school had coaches at night, and sent day-students back to all over the city, all they needed was to tap their student cards. The pickup time was adjusted according to school ending times for year ones and to threes, on days like this with exams, the bus was similarly adjusted to pick them up at 9.20pm, the students would be left with plenty of time by the time they were done with handing their scripts, packing their bags, and walking to the carpark.

“I’ll be leaving with the school bus, how about you?” Gao Tianyang asked.
Sheng Wang was refilling his cup at the back of the class: “I’m waiting for someone.”
“Sure, I’ll see ya tomorrow then.” He used an ‘er’ sound that he learned from god knows where, and left with his bag. In the end, he was barely gone before he came right back, and said: “Bro, go make a trip to the office in front, Old He is looking for you, I ran into them the moment I left.”

“Which Old He?” Sheng Wang took a sip of water, and asked.
“The homeroom teacher, if not which Old He.” Gao Tianyang said: “Oh right, you haven’t actually got the chance to meet him ever since you arrived. He had something going on and wasn’t in school yesterday, and today he was sent to another class to invigilate, figures that he was finally free now.”

Gao Tianyang left the moment he passed the message. Sheng Wang put down his cup, sent a voice message to Uncle Xiao-Chen who came to fetch him, and finally made his way to the office.

There was a giant office for the year twos, all the main teaching staff were in there, as a teacher usually did not teach only only class, with the exception of Class A. Big Mouth Xu already showed him the way, the main subject teachers for Class A did not take on any other classes, therefore they had their own five-person office to themselves.

Sheng Wang walked straight ahead, following the corridor.
Mingli Block was the territory of the year twos in Fuzhong, with four floors in total, and a few classes on every floor, other than the top floor. The top floor only had Class A, the staff office for Class A, a toilet, and two suspicious looking rooms. There was no signage in front of the suspicious room, and it had been locked for the past two days. Sheng Wang could not tell what its purpose was.

He discovered that there was someone in the corridor as he nearly reached the office. The lamps were not switched on in the two suspicious looking rooms, a swarth of darkness covered the entrance, and two people stood there, talking to each other while their backs faced the corridor railing.
A look was enough to tell him that the one whose back was facing him had to be Jiang Tian, the other one had to logically be Teacher Wu.

Sheng Wang did not have the habit of intruding in other people’s private business, but after all he was rather near, he could not help but to catch some words.
“Sure, that’s what we’ll be doing for the exams, I’ll give Dean Xu a call tomorrow.” This was Teacher Wu speaking.
“En.” Jiang Tian’s reply was very simple.
“Then your dad——”
Jiang Tian cut Teacher Wu off just as he opened his mouth: “My matter has nothing to do with him.”

As he said that, his voice abruptly turned frosty, emanating an indescribable sense of how completely fed up he sounded. Even Sheng Wang, who had beef with him, did not hear such a bad tone from him.
Teacher Wu did not speak anymore, and patted his shoulder.
“Is there anything else teacher?” Jiang Tian was very straight forward with his question.
“No more, just these.”
“I’ll go first then.”

He was about to turn around and go after he finished saying what he said stiffly, when he made eye contact with Sheng Wang. In that moment, Sheng Wang felt a rare and subtle trace of guilt.
One only needs to think for a second to realise that a conversation like this was not meant to be eavesdropped on.
Sheng Wang said almost immediately: “He the Elderly got me to come to the office.”

Jiang Tian’s pitch-black pupils stared at Sheng Wang, not showing any signs of whether he bought into his words or not. He stood there for a few seconds, before expressionlessly lifting his legs. When he passed by Sheng Wang, he suddenly lowered his head, placed a hand on Sheng Wang’s shoulders and said indifferently: “Teacher He is barely thirty this year, not at the point of being called He the Elderly yet.”
He left without looking back after he spoke.

Sheng Wang stopped on the spot for a moment, and by the time he turned back to look there was already nobody at all in the corridor. He “tsked” internally, lifted his foot and stepped into the office. The homeroom teacher’s seat was the first one, there was a name place card on the table, the words “He Jin” written on it.
Just as Jiang Tian said, the homeroom teacher looked like someone who’s barely thirty, a goose egg shaped face was adorned with a pair of spectacles, the skin was very pale, and had curly hair that draped across the shoulders. Just a little effort into dressing up and looking good would be no hard matter at all. The only flaw was the thinness that added a little sickliness.
That’s right, Teacher He was a female teacher, in charge of teaching Class A physics.

Sheng Wang recalled the mistake he made earlier on with ‘He the Elderly”, and touched his nose with his pointer finger. This was all that idiot Gao Tianyang’s fault, he seriously called a homeroom teacher like this “Old He” what was he even thinking.

“You’re here?” He Jin’s eyes crescented behind her glasses, gentle and cordial.
Sheng Wang also smiled back at her: “Is there something the teacher needs me for?”
“Not much really, it’s just that I wasn’t in school to welcome the new student yesterday, I feel a little bad about that.” She said to Sheng Wang: “And there is also the matter of your progress on academic content.”

She used her chin to point behind her, and said: “We’ve already heard from Old Xu, you are a book behind for every subject, it’s my fault for not being in school yesterday, if not I could have helped to file an appeal, you wouldn’t have needed to force yourself for today’s weekly test.”
Sheng Wang was all smiles on the outside but internally he spat out blood, saying to himself why didn’t you say so earlier!

He Jin was able to detect the emotional turmoil behind his smile. She was amused, and continued: “It was a little hard for you to endure through the 10+ hours today, wasn’t it?”
Sheng Wang humbly said: “It wasn’t just a little.”
The other teachers were also amused, including Teacher Wu who was speaking to Jiang Tian earlier on: “It’s okay, we know about your situation, we won’t be treating your results for real this time round, five marks ten marks are both normal, don’t feel stressed out.”
“Hold on, I don’t care about the rest, but it would be too much if he got five to ten marks for language wouldn’t it?”
“It’s a bit much for English too.”

The teachers joked around clamorously, the atmosphere in the office lightened up for quite a bit. He Jin took a look at Sheng Wang, as if she was observing if he was nervous, and in the end she concluded that this student was truly unshakable.
She thus decided that she would not bother beating around the bush anymore, and headed straight to the point: “We won’t treat your results seriously this time, but the large gap in progress is an actual problem, and not a small one either. Class A’s syllabus is done very quickly, we have to finish all the content for high school within the first half of the semester, and cannot stop to wait for you. Therefore……you will likely have to think of a solution on your own, and catch up on what you have missed while following the rest of the class in learning new content.”

This was all within Sheng Wang’s expectations, he nodded.

He Jin continued: “Make good use of your spare time, you will definitely run into difficulty, but just grind your teeth and it will pass. During summer break, you have much more free time, our nightly self study only lasts until 8pm, and the night before exams we would not even have night self study, we would give you a holiday.”

It was the first time Sheng Wang heard that break being called a holiday, and let out a hollow laugh.
The other few teachers laughed along again. He Jin waved her hand and said: “Don’t sound so hollow. Okay let’s continue with proper matters. This time round we won’t take your results seriously, but next week will be yet another weekly test, can I see some progress from you?”
“Of course you can.”

He Jin made eye contact with the other teachers, and said: “We roughly estimated how much you can catch up within a week, let’s set you a small target.”
Sheng Wang was straightforward with his answer: “Sure, how much?”

“The total marks for physics and chemistry, these two subjects, is 120, we hope that you can hit above 50 after a week. Setting aside the annex question, the total for maths is 160, you should try to get 70. We won’t set anything for language and English, we’ll see how it goes.”
As He Jin kept talking, she noticed that the expression on this new student’s face was a little odd, and asked: “Are you okay, is this a little too hard?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
Sheng Wang let out a “hm”, and said: “Nothing, let’s keep the target like this for now.”

The teachers were bewildered for an entire day, in the end during night self study on the next day when the weekly tests were marked, the new student who just got the teaching material the day before got the following scores:
Chemistry and physics scored a 62 and 68 respectively, an 83 for maths, and his language and English were both a good chunk better than Class A’s average.

TO BE CONTINUED.