Once the sun came out, the inside of the bus began to heat up.
In a 2002 King Long bus, the air conditioning was always a beat slow to cool things down.
The driver up front had just turned off the heat, but the back hadn’t cooled down yet. Combined with the direct sunlight, the cabin was soon filled with the smell of baked leather.
The fog had dissipated, and the poplar trees lining the national highway looked dusty and gray.
The bus picked up speed, no longer braking in fits and starts.
As long as it wasn’t lurching, the bout of motion sickness slowly subsided.
A stir came from the back rows.
RRRIP. Someone had torn open a vacuum-sealed chicken leg.
This was immediately followed by the sharp scent of an orange peel.
The little fatty, Liu Kai, had come back to life.
As long as this guy wasn’t carsick, his mouth was never idle.
He was peeling an orange and stuffing it into his mouth.
"Hey, uh... Team Leader, catch."
Without looking back, Liu Kai reached a hand behind him, offering half an orange.
Chen Zhuo had been leaning against the window, trying to catch a nap, when the gesture prodded him awake.
He glanced at the slightly squashed half of the orange but didn’t seem to mind. He took it, broke off a segment, and popped it in his mouth.
The moment he bit through the skin, Chen Zhuo’s jaw twitched violently.
"...Fuck."
Chen Zhuo couldn’t help but curse, his face scrunching up.
’Is this an orange? It’s more like a lemon!’
"Sour, right?"
Liu Kai chuckled from the front, turning back to reveal a set of white teeth.
"My mom insisted I bring them. Said sour things calm your nerves. I just ate one, and my teeth are on edge."
"This is practically an act of revenge against society."
Hissing in a breath of cool air, Chen Zhuo still slowly ate the remaining segments.
It was sour, alright, but it really cut through the stuffiness.
After inhaling the bus’s strange smell for so long, the sharp, sour blast was actually quite refreshing.
With Liu Kai breaking the ice, the deathly quiet cabin finally came to life.
The two girls up front began to whisper to each other, letting out a few low laughs from time to time.
Li Hao and Zhang Wei stopped playing dead, too. They put their heads together to look at some magazine.
"Hey, have you guys heard?"
Zhao Chen was the group’s gossipmonger. He was leaning over his seatback, whispering mysteriously in Wang Yang’s ear.
"Over at Provincial Experimental School, they’ve got a freak this year."
"A freak how?"
Wang Yang closed his book and rubbed his temples, his face still a little pale.
"I heard he does geometry problems without drawing diagrams."
Zhao Chen gestured with his hands.
"He just visualizes it in his head, you know, in 3D, and writes down the steps directly. On the last joint exam, his test paper was as clean as a new sheet—he’d only written down the answer."
"That’s bullshit."
Li Hao, who had been resting with his eyes closed nearby, snorted.
"Not drawing diagrams is just for show. I don’t believe his scratch paper is blank, too."
"It’s true! And he’s related to a professor at the provincial university!" Zhao Chen said, getting agitated. "That’s a genetic advantage. We can’t compete with that."
This kind of baseless rumor spread fastest in the enclosed space of the bus.
The more they talked, the wilder the story became, as if every student from Provincial Experimental School had two heads.
Wang Yang was stunned as he listened. He was already feeling shaky, and now his confidence was completely gone. He instinctively reached for the problem set in his backpack.
"Alright, that’s enough."
A lazy voice came from the back row.
Chen Zhuo tossed the orange peel in his hand into a trash bag and wiped his hands.
"Zhao Chen, you should read less of that pulp-fiction crap."
Chen Zhuo pushed up his glasses, slid down in his seat, and found a comfortable position to slouch in.
"He’s not that amazing. I saw last year’s first-prize provincial exam paper. The steps were just a bit more concise. No diagrams? That’s just him being lazy, or he visualized the diagram and was afraid he’d forget it, so he rushed to write it down."
"As for being some professor’s relative..."
Chen Zhuo scoffed.
"The names on the test papers are covered up. What, are the graders supposed to have X-ray vision?"
"That’s true."
Liu Kai chimed in from the front.
"If he were really that incredible, he’d get a direct admission to Shuimu. Why would he be here competing with us for a provincial first-prize?"
"Exactly."
Everyone laughed.
Old Zhao, sitting at the front, had been antsy for a while and finally couldn’t sit still any longer.
He was a natural-born worrier.
As soon as the bus ride smoothed out, he started pacing in the aisle.
Hearing the students starting to spout nonsense, he felt it was time for a morale boost.
"Alright, stop goofing around."
Old Zhao grabbed the railing of the luggage rack with one hand, his body swaying with the bus’s movement.
"Don’t listen to those ridiculous rumors—about inside questions, about people with connections—it’s all bullshit!"
"Once you’re in the exam hall and the papers are handed out, nobody knows anybody! The graders look at your steps and your results, not who your father is!"
"What’s the first thing you do when you get the paper? Huh? What’s the first thing?"
Old Zhao stared at Zhao Chen.
"Write your name."
Zhao Chen shrank back.
"Right! Write your name! Fill in your exam number!"
Old Zhao was genuinely frantic, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth.
"In the last mock exam, some idiot filled in the wrong row for his exam number! A zero! That’s a zero, you hear me!"
"And the long-answer questions."
Old Zhao walked over to Wang Yang and knocked on his seatback.
"If you can’t solve it, don’t leave it blank! I’ve told you eight hundred times, don’t leave it blank!"
"Write ’Solution,’ copy down the conditions from the problem, list the formulas. As long as it’s relevant, you’ll get partial credit for your steps!
Those one or two points can sometimes be the difference between a gold medal and a silver one!"
"Alright, Old Zhao, sit down. You’re making me dizzy with all that swaying."
Old Zhou, in the front passenger seat, called back over his shoulder.
In one hand, Old Zhou held a stainless-steel thermos that was steaming.
In the other, he was holding the tea-leaf egg that Chen Jianguo had insisted on giving him that morning, its shell half-peeled.
"For the physics students, I just have one thing to say."
Old Zhou didn’t stand up. He just twisted around in his seat to look at the physics students in the back.
"If you really can’t figure it out, draw a diagram."
"Force-analysis diagrams, light-path diagrams, circuit diagrams. Don’t be stingy and cram them into a corner of your scratch paper.
Draw them big, draw them properly. As long as the diagram is correct and you understand the force relationships, the solution will naturally come to you."
"Also, don’t get intimidated by the length of the problem description.
The old guys who write these questions are devious. They love to spin tales about spaceships and particles. Strip away all that nonsense, and the underlying model is usually very simple."
At this point, Old Zhou paused. His gaze swept over Li Hao and Zhang Wei before finally landing on Chen Zhuo, who was in the very back row, looking out the window.
"Hey... the one in the back eating the orange."
Old Zhou suddenly called him out.
"Yeah."
Chen Zhuo answered from the last row.
"Don’t get too arrogant, you kid."
Old Zhou took a sip of water.
"The provincial graders are old, and their eyesight isn’t great. You need to fix that habit of yours—skipping steps and just writing the answer. Don’t write so little. A couple of extra lines won’t kill you."
"Got it."
Chen Zhuo replied lazily.
"I’ll be sure to write as verbosely as Wang Yang, spelling out every single step. I’ll even prove that 1+1=2 for them."
"Get lost!"
Wang Yang laughed as he cursed, turning and tossing the thick copy of *Olympiad Classics* he was holding at him.
"Who’s verbose? I’m just being meticulous!"
The cabin erupted in laughter.
Even Old Zhao, who had been tense the whole time, couldn’t help but let the corners of his mouth lift into a slight smile.
After the burst of liveliness, everyone started to feel a bit tired.
After all, they had woken up too early and had a long journey.
The sun warmed their bodies, making their eyelids heavy.
Wang Yang leaned back in his seat, the book in his hands long since closed.
He stared blankly out the window at the monotonous guardrails and utility poles.
The formulas, the theorems, and the things Old Zhao had just yelled were all simmering in his mind like a pot of porridge.
Chen Zhuo saw his expression and knew the kid was still overthinking things.
He sighed.
He fumbled in the side pocket of his backpack and pulled out a black D-777.
The device was cool to the touch, its chill invigorating.
"Brother Yang."
Chen Zhuo called out, leaning forward.
Wang Yang turned his head.
"What’s up?"
Chen Zhuo didn’t say anything, just untangled the headphone cord.
It was a Sony, with its signature asymmetrical cord—the right side was extra long, designed to be worn around the back of the neck.
Chen Zhuo passed over the long earbud marked with an ’R’.
"Stop thinking about problems. Take a break."
Wang Yang stared for a moment, looking at the delicate little earbud.
"What’s this?"
"Old Zhou’s private stash."
Chen Zhuo winked.
"I hear listening to this can clear your head."
Dubiously, Wang Yang took it and put it in his right ear.
Chen Zhuo leaned back into his seat and fitted the left earbud into his own ear.
He pressed Play.
First, there was a faint hiss of static.
Then, a string of crystal-like piano notes flowed out.
There were no lyrics, no restless drum beats.
Just a simple piano, the left hand chasing the right, like two people in a conversation, or perhaps one person murmuring to themselves.
Wang Yang’s furrowed brow slowly relaxed.
He didn’t know anything about Bach, nor did he know how famous this piece was.
He just felt the sound was very clean.
Like taking a sip of cool boiled water on a hot summer day—chilling him to the core.
"What piece is this? It’s pretty nice."
Wang Yang asked in a low voice.
"A lullaby."
Chen Zhuo said, eyes closed, just making something up.
"Listen and sleep. I’ll wake you when we get there."
Wang Yang didn’t say any more.
After a while, Chen Zhuo felt a slight tug on the headphone cord.
Wang Yang had fallen asleep, his head slumped to one side.
Chen Zhuo didn’t move, letting the cord remain taut.
The cabin was quiet, filled only with the monotonous hum of the engine and the occasional snore.
Liu Kai was sound asleep, with cookie crumbs clinging to the corner of his mouth.
Old Zhao was leaning back in his seat, his mouth slightly agape.
The sunlight shone on Chen Zhuo’s eyelids, turning his vision a translucent red.
In the headphones, Gould was still playing, tireless.

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