The gaokao countdown board had gone from 2XX days to 1XX, and the specialty-track students who had been away training and taking exams gradually returned to school. There were more people now, but the classroom never recovered its old liveliness. Some of the specialty-track students had already received qualification certificates and effectively had one foot in university, while others still had no idea what their future held. Zhou Lei had performed well and was lucky enough to earn reduced-score admission eligibility for Beijing Sport University, meaning he only needed a gaokao score above the second-tier undergraduate cutoff. Shen Qi received a qualification certificate from Zhejiang University of Media and Communications, which was said to be a very good arts school in Hangzhou. The girl in their class who had only switched to broadcasting and hosting in senior year also received a certificate from Sichuan University of Media and Communications. It was not an especially prestigious school, but she was quite satisfied. It was in Chengdu, close to home.
Of course, some students had not received anything at all and seemed able only to fall back on the regular entrance exam. When the specialty-track students first returned, news like this flew all over the grade. Within a few days, it naturally died down. The gaokao was right in front of them, and no one had much energy to care about anyone else’s results when they did not even know where they themselves were going.
In the end, Shao Wu still applied for autonomous admissions at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Renmin University, and Beijing Normal University. He did not pass Renmin’s preliminary screening, but he qualified to sit the exams for Beijing Foreign Studies and Beijing Normal. Han Huiyuan, meanwhile, qualified for Fudan.
The exams were all clustered at the end of March. On March 20, the school bought their train tickets. Shao Wu would travel with five science-track students under Teacher Zhang Han’s supervision to Beijing for the exams.
On the twenty-third, the day before departure, Yang Shuyi told Shao Wu, “Good luck on the exams.” At the time, Shao Wu was holding a thick stack of materials for one last round of review. There were mathematics problems, humanities and history knowledge, and questions from the previous year’s autonomous-admissions exams.
Shao Wu nodded hard. “Mm.”
In truth, he had no confidence. He would be competing against outstanding students from all over the country. Yongchuan No. 2 High School might be the best school in Yongchuan, but Yongchuan was only a district under Chongqing and not even part of the central urban area. There were so many elite high schools out there. In Sichuan and Chongqing alone, there were famous names like Chongqing’s No. 1, No. 3, and No. 8 High Schools, and Chengdu’s No. 4, No. 7, and No. 9. Only now did the disadvantage of coming from a smaller place seem to reveal itself all at once.
Shao Wu could only replay Yang Shuyi’s words in his head over and over: I’ve never been north. I want to go see it. He used them to encourage himself. If he could pass autonomous admissions and earn a reduced-score offer, then there would be a very good chance he could go to university in Beijing with Yang Shuyi.
They could see snow together, eat candied hawthorn together, fly kites together in the strong winds of early spring. His cousin had told him about all of those things.
Somehow, thinking about it made Shao Wu feel reluctant to leave Yang Shuyi. He silently cursed himself for being absurdly sentimental. Including travel time, he would only be gone for five days.
Maybe it was still the uneasiness in his heart. He was going to Beijing to sit two exams that would definitely be difficult and compete against so many outstanding students his age. His thoughts were a mess.
“What if I do badly?” Shao Wu asked quietly.
“It’s fine.” Yang Shuyi patted his shoulder. “It’s not the gaokao.”
“Is it really fine? I spent so long taking those classes. If I don’t pass, wouldn’t all that have been for nothing?”
Yang Shuyi’s voice was very gentle. “It wouldn’t be for nothing. Look how good your math scores are now.”
Shao Wu looked at Yang Shuyi with wide, earnest eyes. “Thank you.”
Yang Shuyi smiled at him. “Good luck.”
On March 24, the supervising teacher and students set out on their autonomous-admissions trip. The school chartered a minibus to take them to Chongqing. Once there, Teacher Zhang Han led the six students, Shao Wu included, to Chongqing North Railway Station, where they boarded a Z-series sleeper train for the nearly nineteen-hour journey to Beijing West.
The five science-track students began studying the moment they boarded, each holding a problem book full of competition-level questions. Zhang Han tried to reassure them with some helplessness. “Don’t make yourselves so nervous. Sleep if you want to sleep, or just stare into space for a while.”
But the science students all looked determined to study until the final minute before entering the examination room. Not one of them put down a book. Shao Wu had originally planned to listen to English songs on the train, but seeing them like that, he could not help pulling out his own prep materials and flipping through them again and again.
For a long stretch after leaving Chongqing, the train kept plunging into tunnels, and their phones had almost no signal. Their train had departed sometime after three in the afternoon. Only once dusk had settled outside did the tunnels become less frequent and the signal finally return.
Zhang Han had gone to buy dinner. Shao Wu yawned, feeling a little sleepy.
The science-track student in the berth opposite him, whose name was Li Yijun, suddenly put down his book too and lowered his voice. “I’m going to call my girlfriend. Don’t tell Teacher Zhang, okay?”
Another science-track student obviously already knew about the relationship. He craned his neck toward the corridor. “Hurry up. I’ll keep watch for you.”
“Thanks!” Li Yijun quickly unzipped his schoolbag and pulled out… a ball of socks. Then he peeled the socks away, revealing a phone wrapped inside.
Li Yijun gave Shao Wu an honest grin. “I was afraid I’d lose it.”
Shao Wu: “…Uh, yeah. Better be careful.”
A dozen seconds later, an absurdly syrupy voice emerged from Li Yijun’s burly body. “Ranran, did you miss me?”
The other four science students rolled their eyes at the same time. The one keeping watch muttered, “Bastard. Just showing off because he has a girlfriend.”
Shao Wu was silent for a moment. Suddenly, he really, really wanted to call Yang Shuyi.