Chapter 91 — Wei Zhao's Sensational Score
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
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?