A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 020 – Revision

Jiang Tian: Is the Door Locked?

Young people don’t learn from their mistakes.
Two days had passed, and the homework catch-up army with Gao Tianyang in lead only remembered that BBQ meal and those few barrels of beer. Other than the rare few who were still puzzled over who tattled to Yang Jing, most students of Class A had already shifted their focus to the weekly test.

In the past, actually, they would not have bothered so much about the weekly test. After all, all they saw every single day were tests. With a single major exam per week, anyone would be desensitized. Other than the ‘screw-off style streaming’ applicable only during midterms and finals, the atmosphere of exam preparation would not be too thick in Class A.
But the weekly test this time round was slightly special.

Firstly, this test entailed the chance to get a nomination for Tri-Quality Students of the City half a month later. Secondly, would be the new regulation pushed out by the school.

About the new regulation, this was what the form teacher, He Jin said: “In order to ensure that you can keep your calm when it comes to gaokao and face it with a normal attitude, we put in the system of having one major test per week. And yet, to our chagrin, aren’t you guys a little too unperturbed?”

“Especially the students in our class! The school leadership has already named and shamed, saying that some of our students are a little fake when it comes to putting in effort. What did they mean by fake? It’s when you only put in effort for midterms and finals, these two major exams give very pretty results, but when it comes to weeklies and monthlies there is not a care to be found, some people even fall to the level’s average for the level positions. To put it into words, it’s almost the 200th place”

Although she did not name anyone, her gaze already swept past a few people.

“Therefore, in order to maintain a healthy sense of reverence towards examinations without adding on to stress, the school has decided that from this weekly test onwards, your seats in exams will be determined by your level position. Our class has 45 seats, and 46th place will go to B class, and then the rest go Class 1-2-3-4-5-6 in order, all the way to Class 12. Your position in the last weekly test, will be the seat number you sit at. If you did well, go ahead to the front. If you screwed up, please head to the other classrooms.”

The new system was way too hardcore, 10+ students in Class A lost it on the spot.

The moment He Jin left, Gao Tianyang collapsed backwards right then and there, dying a heroic death on Sheng Wang’s desk.
He was the classic diligence for only midterms and finals type.

“Now I’m screwed, I’m totally screwed. With that dogshit score of mine last week, I’m definitely out of the first 100 places.”
“Shut up, 100th place is already good enough, I even scored 5 marks lesser than you!”
“I’m definitely beyond 150th place.”
“150th place definitely isn’t the worst, when Old Jin mentioned nearly 200th place, I made eye contact with her. My heart stopped beating on the spot.”

Gao Tianyang lifted his chin up with great difficulty, “All of you, get out of my freaking way, nobody’s got it as bad as me! I messed up an entire chunk when shading the answer sheet for English last time, and 30 marks went down the drain just like that. I thought I already moved on from that.”
“Don’t move on, move back.” Study rep, Song Sirui, antagonized him with zero mercy, “Even if you didn’t shade it wrongly, the 30 marks would probably go down the drain anyways.”
“Scram!” Gao Tianyang flared up at him.

He said to Sheng Wang in the midst of groans of despair, “Sheng-ge, those bastards are rubbing salt into my wounds, I probably need to go to Class 4 for my test, I need consolation.”
Sheng Wang leaned against his chair, and looked at Gao Tianyang in complete apathy.

“Sheng-ge, why are you looking at me like this?” Gao Tianyang was still fake crying.
“Because you are crying about your grades to the last place in class,” Sheng Wang faintly replied.

Gao Tianyang was stumped for two seconds with his ugly crying face, and finally realised — he nearly forgot, Sheng Wang should be the one who wants to cry the most in class. He only managed to study for a single day before the weekly test.
Despite his pretty decent grades for language and English, they still could not fill in the gap that was the three sciences, either way…….he was in deep trouble and that’s all he could say about it.

Jiang Tian just came back from the bathroom, his hands absentmindedly folding a long and narrow slip of paper.
His footsteps stopped right next to Sheng Wang’s desk. He shot a glance at Gao Tianyang’s body that flopped motionlessly on the table, knocked on Sheng Wang’s desk and said, “Old He’s looking for you.”
Gao Tianyang scrambled up from Sheng Wang’s desk in a startle, asking, “Old He? For what?”
Jiang Tian said, “Not you.”
“Oh.” Gao Tianyang turned back without any fuss, and sprawled over his own desk.

Sheng Wang was also a little uneasy. “What does she want from me?”
Jiang Tian said, “To go to the office for your results slip.”

Fuzhong will always calculate the class and level positions every exam, as to how and whether they were openly published, it was all up to the form teachers. He Jin had always been the gentle type, she would individually select out everyone’s result. A long slip of paper would contain their names, their scores for each subject, total score, position et cetera. If they wanted to know it, they could go claim it themselves, but they would not be able to know others.

Now with the new regulation in regards to the examination rooms, He Jin’s method no longer had any meaning, therefore she needed to give out the remaining result slips in her hands.
Which was the one Jiang Tian’s hand was currently holding.

He appeared to not particularly care about his results. As he spoke, he already made many folds on the slip.
The dangling of the whie thin slip of paper strongly stirred up Sheng Wang’s burning curiosity. He could not help but to ask, “Can I take a look at yours?”
Jiang Tian released his hand, the slip landed on his desk.

His index finger pushed at the end of the slip, all the way to Sheng Wang’s front, and then Sheng Wang saw a line of 1s:
1st in class, 1st in the level, exam seat #1.

Normally when people saw a result slip like this, they were either jealous or envious. Sheng Wang’s response however, was a little unusual. He was……a little reluctant to part with it.
When Jiang Tian whisked the result slip away, he acted like he was selling his children.

“Is there any problem?” Jiang Tian couldn’t stand the sight anymore.
“Nope,” Sheng Wang’s gaze was still stuck on the slip, “my grades in the past used to look like this too, I’m just reminiscing with yours.”
“……”

Sheng Wang finally shifted his gaze away from the result slip. He looked up to see Jiang Tian looking at him like he was some ‘flower of Langhuan’.

“Pass the pen.” Jiang Tian moved his index finger, motioning him to pass him the pen.
“Why?” Sheng Wang was a little puzzled, but he did it anyway.

Only to see this anger-causing creature strike out his name on the result slip with a generous stroke of the pen, and write down the characters ‘Sheng Wang’. Then, he pushed the slip along with the pen towards Sheng Wang, saying, “Please remember to get rid of the trash after you’re done reminiscing.”
After he spoke, he went back to his seat to study, both hands empty, leaving Sheng Wang in a stare-off against the paper.
Gao Tianyang accidentally listened to the entire exchange, and his shoulders quaked as he tried to stifle his laughter. As for Sheng Wang……the young master wanted to bite someone.

Therefore, only a few seconds passed before Jiang Tian received a beating from Canned via his WeChat screen.

The way they acted around each other had became a little strange—
In the morning, Jiang Tian would browse through the English newspaper as he waited for Sheng Wang to get ready for school, but he would never demonstrate any ‘forward initiative’ in front of Jiang Ou and Auntie Sun. When Sheng Wang went downstairs, he would be packing his schoolbag in his living room. Only when Jiang Ou said “wait for Xiao-Wang”, he then put down his schoolbag as if it was perfectly logical, and sat on the couch to use his phone.

When they entered the classroom, that constrained feeling would finally vanish into thin air.
They behaved the same way they would behave around classmates. When Sheng Wang ran out of pen ink he would borrow from Jiang Tian, Jiang Tian would tap on his shoulder to urge him to hurry up and pass the paper to the back. They did not talk particularly often, but it was not particularly little either. They would occasionally chat, but more often than not they annoyed each other.

Every lunch and dinner time, most students would reenact the tale of the hungry wolves. Gao Tianyang was forever the one who ran the fastest. He attempted to bring Sheng Wang along, but Sheng Wang would reject him, saying that he was frail and weak with no strength in his limbs, he could not wolf it up at all, he should go pursue this dream on his own.
In reality, Sheng Wang just felt that running was incredibly unflattering and it was too much effort, besides, he was too lazy to do so and he hated sweating, that’s all.

And thus the logical conclusion was that he and Jiang Tian became the only two who did not fight for canteen food, and could only accompany each other.
They would travel together for a while, pass through the Garden of Conduct and beneath the shade of the wutong trees outside the fences of the sports field. Sheng Wang would then head to Xi Le Convenience Store, Jiang Tian would head out of the west gate.

Sheng Wang was actually a little curious as to where he ate his lunch, but out of some unknown mentality, he did not voluntarily ask him. He did not ask, and with Jiang Tian’s personality, he did not say anything on his own either.
Therefore, they could only be considered as half a meal buddy.

Jiang Tian disappeared at night as usual, but he learned how to set his cover story up. He would send Sheng Wang a message before night self study ended, and Sheng Wang then go back by himself.
If he did not send the cover story, he would go home together with Sheng Wang. Sometimes, they would just fiddle around on their respective phones in the backseat of the car. Sometimes, they would chat a little.

And no matter the topic, no matter if they were done, they would stop the moment they step foot into the house.
The courtyard gate of White Horse Alley was like a boundary, they both had a silent understanding.

Gao Tianyang already roasted the parts he could see, saying, “Now I truly believe that you’re not familiar at all, seriously. The way the two of you behave is no different from splitting rent, you guys have an extra layer of being normal classmates at most.”
The infamous loudspeaker genuinely managed to keep his mouth sealed about this entire affair, probably out of fear of upsetting Jiang Tian.

But what Gao Tianyang did not know was that in somewhere he could not see, the volume of WeChat messages between Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian in a week had already exceeded the volume between his and Jiang Tian’s in a semester.

The night before the weekly test, Sheng Wang curled up in his seat before his study table, and revised through the questions he made a mistake on.
Only at that moment, then did he realise how many test papers and questions did he do in this week. Class A had progressed towards the material in the second semester of year two. He had to learn new content for each subject from the teachers in the day, and he also had to catch up on what he missed after finishing his homework at night. Other than the one time he drank, he did not manage to sleep before 2am on a single day.

First Young Master Sheng was petty, he could not stand to see other people in joy while he had to suffer. If the people around him had to go through such tortuous abuse too, he would feel much more balanced.

It was quite late into the night by the time he was done with the collection of questions he made a mistake on for mathematics and physics.
White Horse Alley was situated in a splendid residential spot, even though it was in the midst of the city centre, the criss-crossing of the narrow paths resulted in not much of noise passing through at all. At this timing, it was truly complete quietude.

Sheng Wang briefly checked his phone, the screen displayed 2.10am. Pen cap in his mouth, he turned around to covetously stare at the wall behind him.
Normally, at this time, the person next door should be sleeping already. He would hear a bunch of light shuffling noises that came from slippers, that would travel from the person’s study table to the bed, and peace and quiet would descend once more.
At this point, Sheng Wang would also be heading to bed, therefore he would not be jealous anyway.

Today however was different, he still had a corrections collection for chemistry to go through.

He stared at that wall for around half a minute, probably, and the familiar shuffling noise was heard once more.

See, he was indeed going to sleep.
He was the only night owl left in White Horse Alley.

Sheng Wang’s head crashed against his table, and secluded into himself for a while. The shuffling noise was heard again, this time from the be to the study table.

Hm? Sheng Wang blinked, and looked up in uncertainty. He kept an ear out and waited for a while, and did not discover any further movement. He finally ascertained that Jiang Tian was not asleep yet, there was a second living person in White Horse Alley at 2am.

Gratification flowed through his veins. He took out a piece of scratch paper, and started calculating for the corrections.
However, he only finished two pages before he heard more commotion from next door over.

Sheng Wang once again listened intently and stared at the wall. After listening while holding his breath for a while, he reckoned that the person was only searching for something through his bag. Therefore, he relaxed and continued going through his corrections.

This repeated for three to four cycles before he finally exploded.
Sheng Wang heavily jabbed at his phone screen, jabbing his way into WeChat’s app interface, tapped on topmost person and started typing —
What the hell are you walking back and forth for???

After he typed out the three question marks, Sheng Wang hesitated, and did not send the message. It was because he reread the message, and felt like he was like a pervert.
His forehead rested against the table as his two hands held his phone, and fell into deep thought. Two seconds later, he deleted that line, and retyped: Are you still not asleep yet? Auntie Sun placed a bowl of red grapes in the fridge, I’ll share some with you?

That’s not it, that’s too fake.
Sheng Wang deleted this line again, and started editing the message for the third time: You’re this hardworking today?

He silently read through a few times, and felt that it was passable. He was about to send the message before his phone suddenly vibrated.

Sheng Wang was startled. He stared at the phone, and there was unexpectedly a new message in the chat.
Jiang Tian: ?

Sheng Wang’s clumsy hands nearly sent the message. He deleted the typed out message in a fluster, and replied.
Canned: ???

The next second, Jiang Tian tossed him a screenshot. He cropped out the chat from his perspective, the top displayed ‘The other person is typing……”
Jiang Tian: It’s already a while, you’re still not done typing?

Sheng Wang swore ‘fuck’ internally, and felt embarrassed from feeling like his inner thoughts were being peeked upon or something for some inexplicable reason. However, since the other person already knew, he no longer needed his face. Anyways, he already lost his face a countless number of times in front of Jiang Tian.
The First Young Master decided to go straight to the main topic with a shut of his eyes and a kick of his legs.

Canned: What time are you sleeping
There was a crying little person kneeling down attached to the end of his sentence, his intention was obvious enough.

This time round, it was Jiang Tian’s turn to be ‘now typing……’, a moment later, there was a jump in the chat.
Jiang Tian: How much are you left with?
Canned: One corrections collection……
Jiang Tian: Which one?
Canned: Chemistry.
Jiang Tian: Is your door locked?

TO BE CONTINUED.