Upon hearing this, Chen Zhuo shifted his posture slightly, his calm gaze fixed on the old man on the stage.
’Interesting.’
"Out there, you are all prodigies."
Xue Boyong’s voice echoed in the classroom.
"But in my eyes, you’re just a bunch of eleven, twelve, fourteen, fifteen-year-old kids."
"The Youth Class has no rigid rules. I don’t require you to get perfect scores in every subject."
As soon as he said this, a faint stir went through the classroom.
These top students, who had been expected to be number one their whole lives, showed looks of confusion for the first time.
Xue Boyong didn’t pause.
"You can go kick a ball on the field, go catch bugs in the woods, take apart a radio, or even do nothing at all for an entire afternoon but sit by the lake and space out."
"For the next few years, I have only one task for you."
"Find something you are truly passionate about, something you’d be willing to do for the rest of your life."
"Whether that’s physics, math, computer science, or researching history in the library."
"As long as you find it, even if you only score a sixty—a bare pass—in your other subjects, you’ll still be a great student in my book."
In the back row, Chu Ge let out a long breath, leaned back, and slumped against his chair.
"This old guy, I like his style,"
Chu Ge muttered under his breath.
Wang Dayong grinned as well.
At that moment, the shoulders of most of the new students visibly relaxed.
No high pressure, no intimidation.
It was an extremely gentle and remarkably tolerant opening speech.
However.
Chen Zhuo, sitting nearby, noticed something was off about Lu Jia.
Lu Jia wasn’t trembling, nor was he clenching his teeth.
He just sat there in a daze, as if he’d suddenly frozen up.
For others, hearing "you don’t need perfect scores" and "find your passion" was a form of liberation.
But Lu Jia’s eyes revealed a kind of unguarded bewilderment.
His parents had drilled it into him since childhood: a perfect score is everything, first place is the only measure of worth.
Only by getting every question right could he earn his parents’ smiles.
Now, the teacher was telling him he didn’t need a perfect score.
’Then how am I supposed to be measured?’
’Without the measuring stick of grades, how can I prove I’m useful? How can I face my family?’
’Passion...’
’What is that?’
Lu Jia’s eyes were glazed over, his fingers unconsciously tightening around his pen.
Xue Boyong picked up his thermos, took a sip of water, and cleared his throat.
"Now for some actual business."
The classroom fell silent again.
"Tomorrow at two in the afternoon, there will be a placement test."
The moment Xue Boyong finished speaking, the air seemed to freeze for a second.
Lu Jia stirred slightly, his pen hand hovering in mid-air, ready to take notes.
A test.
The word was all too familiar to him.
A test meant scores, and scores meant rankings.
He felt a small sense of security return.
"Don’t be nervous," Xue Boyong said with a wave of his hand. "This test won’t cover the curriculum, nor will it be part of your final grade."
"There’s only one question on the paper."
Xue Boyong looked down at the dozens of pairs of eyes below.
"Write down what you believe is the most beautiful formula—any formula will do—and explain in your own words why it’s beautiful."
Silence.
A dead silence.
In the back row, Chu Ge scratched his head.
"What the hell kind of test is this?"
A few students in the front rows exchanged bewildered glances.
Lu Jia stared at the empty blackboard in front of him, the bewilderment in his eyes slowly turning into a helpless panic.
’The most beautiful formula?’
’What is beauty?’
’Euler’s identity? Maxwell’s equations? Or Newton’s second law?’
’Which one is the standard answer?’
’Which one will get me a perfect score?’
’The teacher said it won’t be graded.’
’How could it not be graded? This has to be a hidden screening.’
’There must be a rubric.’
’If I write the wrong one, will I be judged as having no talent?’
In Lu Jia’s mind, all sorts of complex equations and geometric figures intertwined, creating a tangled mess.
He lowered his head, subconsciously wanting to write down the teacher’s exact words so he could go back and analyze them, word by word.
He brought the tip of his pen down on the clean, lined paper.
But his mind couldn’t make sense of anything. He didn’t know what to write, and the pressure from his hand unconsciously increased.
SNAP.
With a sharp crack, the lead of the mechanical pencil had snapped under the excessive force.
The broken-off piece of lead skittered across the paper, leaving a short, dark mark.
Lu Jia froze for a moment.
He stared at the broken pencil tip, and the panic of having lost his coordinate system peaked in that instant.
He put down the pencil, unzipped the backpack beside him, and started looking for a refill.
The backpack was stuffed with new books and various notebooks. The more flustered he became, the clumsier his movements grew.
He fumbled around inside, his pencil case CLATTERING, but he couldn’t find the small box of replacement lead.
A small, rectangular plastic box slid over from the side.
It stopped noiselessly beside Lu Jia’s hand.
It was a case of mechanical pencil lead refills.
Lu Jia stopped his frantic search.
He picked up the refill case, slid open the plastic lid, and tipped out a thin piece of lead.
He tried to insert the lead into the tip of the pencil, but his mind was so consumed by the helplessness of having no standard answer that his attention wasn’t on his hands. He tried twice but couldn’t line it up with the opening.
The lead fell onto the desk.
Lu Jia stared down at the thin piece of lead, his eyes filled with helplessness.
A hand reached over.
The hand didn’t touch the pencil in Lu Jia’s grasp, nor did it try to help him load the lead.
It simply came to rest, steady and firm, on the notebook in front of Lu Jia.

Comments

Loading...