Chapter 43-Part 4

However, when teacher Qiao reached the corner, he suddenly remembered something and said, “You two go back to the classroom first. I need to go to the office to get the report cards; everyone is probably anxious.”

After teacher Qiao left, Shen Zhi suddenly reached out and pulled Ji Ran aside.

Ji Ran looked around a bit nervously, but fortunately, it was class time, and there was no one around. She whispered, “What’s up?”

“Why were you looking at old Qiao like that just now?” Shen Zhi seemed a bit displeased.

Ji Ran was puzzled for a moment. How did she look at teacher Qiao?

“You looked at him with a very moved expression,” Shen Zhi reminded.

Ji Ran then understood what he meant by questioning her like this. Was he jealous?

“You’re being unreasonable,” Ji Ran said, looking at him and laughing, scolding him playfully.

But as she looked into his eyes, both of them suddenly fell silent. Ji Ran gazed at his handsome face; his features were the kind of deep and three-dimensional ones rarely found among high school students. His pitch-black eyes exuded an inexplicable sense of aloofness and coldness, giving off an overall vibe of a cold and indifferent young man.

Although he appeared icy, he was still incredibly attractive.

She knew he was good-looking, but at this moment, she found herself slightly stunned.

Especially when she heard her own heartbeat, gradually accelerating from its calm and steady rhythm, like drumbeats, echoing in her chest.

The cold wind blew into the corridor, hitting her cheeks with a chilling touch.

Strangely, it made her thoughts clearer. She wasn’t an inexperienced girl who knew nothing about the world; there were things she could understand after living through one lifetime.

Why did she get so angry when the teacher misunderstood him? Why did she become so furious when others wanted to humiliate him? She had seen his violent side and witnessed him risking his life to protect her.

At this moment, those tangled and unresolved threads seemed to be suddenly unraveled.

She liked him.

As these four words crossed her mind, the sweet yet slightly bitter feeling she had never experienced before surfaced.

A young girl who doesn’t know the taste of love.

But now, she knew.

When Ji Ran and Shen Zhi returned to the classroom, it was exactly the end of the second class. Although everyone was curious about what they had been doing for so long, no one dared to ask.

Fortunately, everyone had more important things to focus on today.

The first two classes in the morning were English lessons, and the English papers were the first to be distributed. Some were happy, and some were sad.

Wen Qianxia was quite pleased; she scored 128 in English this time, which was an exceptional performance. She looked back at Ji Ran and whispered, “Ranran, it seems like your English paper hasn’t been distributed. Why don’t you ask the English teacher?”

“No worries.” Ji Ran knew her English score: 148.

The person next to her scored 147 in English, just one point less than her. She scored five points higher than him in Chinese, but Shen Zhi’s comprehensive science was just too challenging. This was also the area where the two of them lost the most points.

A ten-minute break between classes was actually quite fast.

When teacher Qiao entered the classroom with his textbooks, the previously noisy classroom suddenly quieted down.

Seeing this, teacher Qiao smiled and said, “It seems everyone is really looking forward to the exam results.”

“Not really.”

“Teacher, can we save the math papers for last?”

“Oh no, I’m sure I did terribly in math this time.”

Listening to the complaints below, holding the report cards in his hand, teacher Qiao hesitated on how to announce the results.

In the end, he decided to start with the less shocking news.

“Don’t be too disheartened, although the math this time was indeed quite difficult, some students did score full marks. You can learn from these classmates who did well,” Teacher Qiao said.

He shouldn’t have said that, as soon as he did, other students became even more speechless.

This was simply laying bare the gap between them; the teacher’s words were too harsh, painfully clear.

Teacher Qiao cleared his throat and continued, “Actually, both students who scored full marks this time are in our class.”

When the students from Class 8 heard this, they all looked at each other, and many turned their gazes towards the few top-performing students in the class.

However, upon closer inspection, no one seemed like they scored full marks.

Even the student who ranked first in the class in the last monthly exam didn’t look confident because he was certain he had made a mistake in one of the fill-in-the-blank questions.

“Indeed, it’s Shen Zhi and Ji Ran from our class. They both scored 150 in math, tying for first place in the school and achieving the only perfect scores in math.”

As the words fell, the classroom became so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.

Teacher Qiao felt that he had come this far, so he might as well reveal everything, “Also, Shen Zhi scored a total of 710 points, ranking first in the grade, while Ji Ran scored 709 points, securing the second position with just one point difference.”

“This time, the top two students in the grade are both from our Class 8, showing that our classmates have tremendous potential…”

Bang.

A loud noise interrupted teacher Qiao’s words. Wen Qianxia’s water cup fell to the ground, and she stared wide-eyed at the class teacher on the podium, muttering, “Confucius has shown himself.”