“You came to No. 1 High School to study, not to have fun and mess around! You’ve let your parents down this time. You’d better fix your performance, or you can forget about getting a good college education. Just look at the students from Class 20. Unlike you lot, only a few of them have prominent backgrounds to speak of, yet they somehow bested you all the same. Tell me, why aren’t you trying harder with your studies, huh?”

The form teacher of Class 19 gave his students a stern gaze, hoping that it would convey the urgency of their situation and inadvertently persuade them to correct their complacent attitude.

As things stood, Class 20 was on a roll, and it didn’t seem like they were stopping any time soon. It wouldn’t do good for Class 19 to fall behind in the forthcoming days.

…

Meng Yang was sauntering back into their classroom after having his lunch. He had just stepped inside when he noticed the strange atmosphere.

It was quiet, but not in the usual, serene way.

His classmates should be studying by now, but he found that only a handful of them were sitting at their desks.

The others were at the back of the classroom, crowding around a couple of their classmates.

In the middle stood Lu MingandYan Yu.

They stood fast in the face of their classmates’ furious and accusing glares.

“You guys need to tell us why you did it, and you have to tell us today!”

“Lu Ming, you know that we gave the exams our all. The whole class put in a lot of effort to give Teacher Xithe recognition she deserves, but what did you do? How can you betray your classmates like this?”

“The two of you have always done well in class, right? You even top the rankings now and then, so how come you botched the recent exams? Did you do it on purpose?”

Meng Yang narrowed his eyes at the commotion. He rapped against the nearest desk to call everybody’s attention. “What are you doing? Lunch break is over, why aren’t you on your desk doing test exercises?”

His classmates turned to him, their faces still filled with anger.

“Brother Yang, do you know why our class’ average score failed to surpass that of Class 19, despite our high scores?”

“Well, what else could it be?” Meng Yangsaid offhandedly. “I didn’t do very well, and that’s that. Sorry for pulling the average down, I’ll work harder in the future. You don’t have to worry. WithSister Tangaround, we’ll definitely make it next time.”

To his surprise, however, his words didn’t have the desired effect. His classmates still looked mad. Even those who were generally amiable and nice now sported scowls.

They shifted their eyes back to the two people they had been questioning.

Meng Yang began to understand that there was something he had missed about the situation. “What are you all standing around for?” he asked impatiently. “What’s with all the tension and the death glares? Just tell me what is going on!”

One of the girls fetched a piece of paper from her desk and scurried over to hand it to Meng Yang.

“Here, Brother Yang, take a look at this report. See, at the bottom are Lu MingandYan Yu. They had the worst scores in the exams, which pulled down our class average by a lot.”

At the reiteration of their sins, the glares directed at the two boys grew more fierce.

Meng Yang stared at the report for a moment, feeling confused. “Maybe they just found the exams difficult…”

But then he caught sight of their scores. The gap between the boys’ scores and that of their classmates was appalling. Meng Yang’s eyes glinted dangerously.

“I made some calculations this morning,” another student chimed in. “And I came up with estimates. Without a doubt, everyone’s scores have improved compared to the last exams. Even those who barely passed the tests still showed progress. Our class average should have gone up.”

“That’s right, we already came to a conclusion that our class average is higher than Class 19’s. But average scores that were posted didn’t match our computations.”

They had done the math themselves. Their total average should be about ten points higher than Class 19’s, but they ended up with the same average for some reason.

It just didn’t make sense.

Eventually, someone decided to check the report card for the entire class. That was when they found out that five people were missing from the list. The thing was, all five had participated in the exam, so why were they marked absent?

The class group chat naturally exploded because of the anomaly, and they had already made plans to file a complaint to the faculty once classes were over.

After all, they couldn’t simply write off the scores of five other students. They were confident that their results would have a significant impact on the class average.

These missing scores were likely the reason why they ended up in a tie with Class 19 when they should have ranked higher.

And then, by some fateful encounter, another classmate had managed to obtain a copy of the report cards of all the classes in their grade.