He casually pulled a martial arts novel Wang Dayong had left on the bookshelf and opened it on his lap.
He was waiting.
Time passed, one second at a time, as the wall clock ticked away.
About twenty minutes passed.
"RRRRRING—"
At the end of the hallway, the IC card public phone mounted on the whitewashed wall began to ring. The sound was shockingly loud, echoing through the empty corridor.
Chen Zhuo closed the martial arts novel and placed it on the table.
He stood up and, without any hurry, walked out of his dorm and over to the phone.
He reached out, picked up the receiver, and held it to his ear.
"Hello?"
Chen Zhuo’s voice was calm and gentle.
"Brother Zhuo!!!"
A roar that nearly cracked instantly erupted from the receiver.
Even though Chen Zhuo had already held the receiver half an inch away, his ear still rang from the blast.
"I can hear you. You nearly deafened me."
Chen Zhuo switched the receiver to his other hand and leaned against the wall with a smile.
The background noise on the other end was unbelievably chaotic.
There were announcements in various unintelligible languages, the clatter of plates and glasses, and the mixed laughter and cheers of a large crowd.
"Brother Zhuo! We’re in Spain! The awards ceremony just ended, and now we’re at the celebration banquet hosted by the organizing committee!"
Wang Huashao’s voice trembled with excitement, the words tumbling out one after another like machine-gun fire.
"Three golds and two silvers! First place in the team total score! Brother Zhuo, you have no idea, this gold medal is so damn heavy! My neck is sore from how it’s weighing me down! When they were raising the national flag just now, my eyes were swimming with tears. I didn’t even dare to blink, afraid they’d fall and I’d embarrass myself!"
"That’s great."
Chen Zhuo replied, his voice filled with genuine happiness.
"You didn’t embarrass our province. The prize money will be enough for you to buy a top-of-the-line computer when you get back."
"A computer my ass! I want to enshrine this gold medal in my family’s ancestral hall!"
Wang Huashao was crying and laughing on the other end of the line.
"Brother Zhuo, it’s hot as hell here! Even more humid than Jinling! And the food doesn’t agree with me at all, I’m about to puke. When I get back, I’m going to have a proper feast, the kind loaded with chili peppers!"
"Alright, alright."
Chen Zhuo listened to his incoherent rambling without interrupting, letting Wang Huashao vent his wild emotions.
The sound of someone snatching the receiver came from the other end.
"Don’t hog it, let me say a few words."
A familiar voice spoke up. Then, the background noise in the receiver lessened, as if the person had moved to a slightly quieter corner.
"Chen Zhuo."
It was Zhou Kai.
His voice wasn’t as hysterical as Wang Huashao’s; it sounded like he had already calmed down.
"Congratulations on the Best Experiment Award."
Chen Zhuo spoke first.
The other end of the line went quiet for a moment, followed by Zhou Kai’s low laugh, tinged with relief.
"You saw the news?" Zhou Kai asked.
"Just saw it on the cafeteria TV. You looked pretty sharp holding the certificate. Much more spirited than when Professor Wang chewed us out in the lab and left us all grimy and dejected."
Chen Zhuo teased.
Zhou Kai let out a long breath on the other end of the line.
"Chen Zhuo."
Zhou Kai paused. His tone became very serious, even carrying a hint of lingering fear mixed with relief.
"The final theoretical question this time was on non-ideal fluid boundaries in an electromagnetic field. The initial conditions given by the committee were extremely harsh. The whole model was a hopelessly tangled mess of continuity."
He recalled the scene in the examination hall, his speech unconsciously slowing.
"The prodigy from Russia everyone was betting on, and the two top students from the United States, they all got stuck grinding out an analytical solution with calculus. My palms were slick with cold sweat back then, because if you followed the traditional approach, there was no way to finish the calculations. There just wasn’t enough time."
Chen Zhuo listened quietly, not interrupting.
"But I didn’t follow that path."
Zhou Kai’s voice held a clean, decisive ruthlessness.
"I remembered what you told me on the phone last time. I gave up on pursuing a perfect functional solution. I directly sliced the fluid model into a discrete grid, used difference equations and matrix reduction, and forcibly split it apart."
"How did the grading go?" Chen Zhuo asked.
"It was controversial. I heard that during grading, a couple of old-school judges thought my method was too brutish and lacked the continuous elegance of physics. But in the end, the head judge made the final call. My approximate solution was the most precise one within the margin of error, and the logic was perfectly self-contained."
Zhou Kai laughed, a sound filled with unconcealable pride.
"That method of yours is really effective. Because of it, I saved almost half an hour on that question. I poured that entire half-hour into the later experimental section. This Best Experiment medal... a good half of the credit for it belongs to you."
"Don’t give me so much credit."
Chen Zhuo leaned against the wall, looking at the somewhat glaring sunlight outside the hallway.
"Even if there was a method, you were the one who used it. The fact you could calculate it and solve the problem is because your foundation is strong. If it were Wang Huashao, you could give him the whole method and he’d probably still be staring blankly."
"Anyway, thanks. I’ll treat you to a big meal when I get back."
Zhou Kai didn’t get sentimental. Their relationship didn’t require thanks to be repeated over and over.
Just then, the voice of the team leader came through the background noise of the call.
"Where’s He Gui? Where did He Gui go? Come take a picture with the chairman of the organizing committee! Where did the guy with the top overall score run off to hide?"
"Coming."
A low voice responded on the other end.
Immediately after, there was a rustle of fabric through the receiver, and the phone was passed to someone else.
"Captain."

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