Chapter 91 — Wei Zhao's Sensational Score

Wei Zhao hadn't expected his exam paper to end up in Gu Mengyao's hands; he simply assumed Shen Yushu, in a playful mood, had given him Gu Mengyao's paper and thought nothing more of it.

"Boss, whose paper are you grading?" Kang Xiaofeng turned his head and asked offhandedly.

"Uh... Gu Mengyao's..." Wei Zhao said, a little awkwardly.

"What? No way!" Kang Xiaofeng's eyes went wide. Staring at the name on the paper in Wei Zhao's hand, he froze. "For real? How did her paper end up with you? Aren't she and Shen Yushu supposed to be swapping papers to grade?"

"How should I know? This is the one Shen Yushu handed me." Wei Zhao shrugged.

"Must have been handed out by mistake." Kang Xiaofeng sighed. "Boss, you really are lucky. Gu Mengyao's exam paper—plenty of the guys in this class would give anything for a chance to get close to her, and it lands in your hands."

Wei Zhao smiled and offered no explanation... This was one thing he truly couldn't explain. Was he supposed to tell Kang Xiaofeng that Shen Yushu had done it on purpose? Then Kang Xiaofeng would surely ask why Shen Yushu would do such a thing deliberately, and by then the ambiguous, hard-to-define relationship between him and Gu Mengyao would inevitably come to light.

Wei Zhao graded Gu Mengyao's paper with genuine care. Though she was always sharp-tongued and fierce with him, he knew that most of the time she said one thing and meant another. Especially that night when she'd had Shen Yushu ask him to come along to dinner—that was when Wei Zhao saw that Gu Mengyao was fundamentally good-hearted, merely a bit willful and spoiled like a rich young lady.

Gu Mengyao's grades were good, but even her paper was bound to have mistakes. As Wei Zhao marked answers right or wrong, he also copied her incorrect problems onto the back of the paper, writing out detailed and correct solutions—even more thorough than what the teacher had explained from the podium.

What surprised Wei Zhao was that Gu Mengyao had actually solved the final bonus question, and her method matched the teacher's explanation exactly. So the girl did work hard in her day-to-day studies.

Yet Wei Zhao knew another solution. Whether the teacher had overlooked it or felt that for a bonus question, knowing the most basic method was enough, he never explained Wei Zhao's more efficient approach.

Of course, none of the students present raised any objection either. The bonus question was deliberately difficult and beyond the syllabus; those who could solve it were already very few, let alone solve it entirely correctly.

Wei Zhao wrote out the other solution he knew on the back of the paper as well, then flipped it to the front and calculated the score: one hundred and thirty-nine—a high score.

The questions on ordinary tests were always a bit harder than the real college entrance exam—that was the convention at these key high schools. Only in this way could the students' overall level be pushed higher, and only in this way could they feel the pressure and urgency day to day.

After going over the final bonus question, the homeroom teacher, Mr. Liu, told everyone to write the grader's name on the back of the paper, then pass the papers forward from the back of the room. This was meant to prevent anyone from grading carelessly or at random.

Gu Mengyao gave Wei Zhao a big fat zero. Seething, she scrawled her own name at the end of the paper. Hmph—that Wei Zhao, even if he saw it, wouldn't dare come looking for trouble with her.

When it came time to record the scores, Shen Yushu held up Wei Zhao's paper, stifled a giggle, and said to Mr. Liu: "Wei Zhao, zero points."

"Hm?" Mr. Liu was stunned. And not just Mr. Liu—even the other students down below, who had been listening carefully for their scores, were stunned too. In all his years of teaching, he had never heard of a zero score. Apart from exam cheating that voided the results, surely even wild guessing wouldn't produce a zero?

"Who graded this paper?" Mr. Liu frowned.

"Gu Mengyao," Shen Yushu said with a grin.

Mr. Liu nodded. He had a vague idea that this Wei Zhao had the school board director Gu Pengzhan behind him, and that Gu Mengyao was Gu Pengzhan's daughter. The two of them, in school, seemed to have no visible contact—but who knew why this Wei Zhao had come?

And the moment he arrived, he'd clashed fiercely with Zhong Yongliang, one of Gu Mengyao's suitors. The complications in all this were something Mr. Liu had no wish to meddle with. These young masters and princesses were the hardest of all to manage.

So when he heard that Gu Mengyao had graded the paper, Mr. Liu said nothing more.

Shen Yushu's voice wasn't loud, but the classroom was very quiet just then, so everyone heard her words and couldn't help casting Wei Zhao a look of sympathy. The boys were all thinking: Wei Zhao must have somehow provoked Miss Gu, and getting a zero from her was just terrible luck.

The girls, however, were somewhat disdainful. Wei Zhao was refined and gentle in appearance, with the air of a pretty boy from an idol drama, so they were a little displeased that Gu Mengyao had given him zero—yet none of them dared say anything to Gu Mengyao's face.

The most astonished of all was Wei Zhao himself. The moment he heard he had scored a zero, the look on his face was beyond description. Still, he had more or less guessed it: his paper had almost certainly been graded by Gu Mengyao, and with her involved, a miraculous result like this was hardly surprising.

Otherwise, even if he had deliberately gotten a few questions wrong, there was no way he'd have ended up with a zero. Watching Shen Yushu's face split into a wicked grin, Wei Zhao was left speechless. So what if it was a zero? Was that really something worth being happy about?

Kang Xiaofeng knew perfectly well that the paper Wei Zhao had graded was Gu Mengyao's. So when he now heard from Shen Yushu that Wei Zhao's paper had actually been graded by Gu Mengyao, his mouth dropped open into an "O" on the spot, exactly like the score on Wei Zhao's exam sheet.

There's something going on. There's definitely something going on. How could a coincidence like this ever happen? Kang Xiaofeng turned his head and fixed Wei Zhao with a look that demanded to get to the bottom of things. Sure, Gu Mengyao had given Wei Zhao a zero, but that only proved the point all the more. If there were nothing between the two of them, why would Gu Mengyao have gone out of her way to make things difficult for Wei Zhao?

Meeting Kang Xiaofeng's questioning gaze, Wei Zhao gave a bitter smile and spread his hands, as if to say he was entirely innocent.

Kang Xiaofeng, however, was somewhat puzzled now. Wei Zhao's expression showed that he was innocent, and although Kang Xiaofeng had earlier been convinced there was something going on between Wei Zhao and Gu Mengyao, thinking it over carefully now, there really didn't seem to be much possibility of it. Wei Zhao had only just transferred to the school a few days ago and hadn't even exchanged a single word with Gu Mengyao. How could there possibly be anything between the two of them?

Could it really be just a coincidence?

Kang Xiaofeng shook his head and turned back around. Although Wei Zhao's zero had given the whole class a good shock, it was only a shock for a single moment. After that, everyone turned their attention back to their own scores.