BTO CH31

The unified joint art exam was a professional provincial-level examination, serving as a qualifying test for art students. Only by passing this exam could candidates qualify to apply for art academies or take school-specific art exams organized by those institutions. The art students in the studio, all dreaming of various art academies, were fighting to achieve their ideal scores on the joint exam.

They had to constantly practice the mandatory subjects, stacking up piles of used drawing paper taller than they were.

What did ‘first in the entire city’ actually mean?

It was virtually no different from a regular academic student casually scoring the highest mark in the province on the college entrance exam.

Let alone first in the city, if a student even cracked the top fifty, the art studio they attended would be thoroughly investigated by prospective students, leading to a massive influx of people flocking there to learn the following year.

When recruiting students each year, art studios would also use promotional slogans like: “Last year, we produced [X] students in the top [Y], with a passing rate controlled at [Z]%.”

After Kang Kai finished speaking, the classmate nearly dropped the fan brush in his hand. A thousand words ultimately boiled down to a single expletive: “Holy shit?!”

Kang Kai shook his head, using a tone that suggested he had seen it all: “You’re still too young. Silently repeat the phrase ‘There’s always someone better, and there’s always a higher mountain’ twice in your heart.”

The classmate: “He’s really that amazing?”

Kang Kai didn’t elaborate, only saying: “What did I just tell you to silently repeat? Anyway, there are some people in this world you just have to yield to.”

Truth be told, before meeting Xu Sheng, Kang Kai had never encountered that kind of person either—or rather, not a person, but a demon. Though their family studio was small, his mother was no ordinary figure. She had previously taught at the Academy of Fine Arts and had stepped down due to poor health for a period. After being discharged from the hospital, she opened her own studio.

Under Mother Kang’s tutelage by words and deeds, Kang Kai considered himself somewhat artistically gifted. That was, until a woman knocked on their studio door carrying a pile of gifts: “Hello, I’m really sorry to bother you… I’m usually busy with work, and I don’t feel at ease leaving him alone at home.”

After some polite pleasantries, the woman tactfully explained her purpose for coming.

The first time he met Xu Sheng, he had only one impression: This guy looks way too flashy.

Xu Sheng’s appearance easily created a sense of distance, but his personality was entirely the opposite, boasting an exceptionally high emotional intelligence that left no trace. In the winter, he wore a black sweater that accentuated his pale skin. With a hint of a smile in his eyes, he executed a very smooth greeting: “Hello, older sister.” Then he looked at Kang Kai: “Is this your younger brother?”

That single sentence won over his mother. She couldn’t wait for Xu Sheng to come to the studio every day, laughing until she trembled: “What ‘older sister’? Oh my, at my age… just call me Aunt Kang.”

Of course, none of that was the main point.

The main point was that within the three short months Xu Sheng stayed at the studio, Kang Kai’s worldview shattered completely.

It was a sketch class. His mother sat at the front, posing as a model flipping through a book: “Sketching time is thirty minutes. I will collect the papers in thirty minutes, and I will grade them on the spot.”

However, mixed into the stack of papers handed in at the end was a thin sheet, clearly ripped carelessly from a notebook. In the top left corner, a few words were written with arrogant flair. The first large character was “Solution,” and the complete content was: Solution: I don’t know how to do this problem.

Aside from that line of text, a fully composed sketch was drawn on the paper. The strokes were made with an ordinary gel pen, impossible to utilize the traditional charcoal or pencil techniques of side-strokes and point-strokes to handle the solidity and void of the sketch. Yet, it still captured the woman’s dynamic posture vividly, the lines decisive.

The clothing folds were casually drawn with a couple strokes at the joints, effectively conveying a sense of volume.

“…” Kang Kai watched his mother freeze halfway through grading, stunned for a long time. “Who drew this?”

A long while later, sitting in the very back row of the studio—half-slumped over his desk because he didn’t want to do his homework—a teenager stirred. Pinching a black gel pen between his fingers, he raised his hand: “My homework was too boring, so I just drew something casually.”

Aunt Kang was silent in astonishment for two seconds before asking, “Have you studied this before?”

“No,” Xu Sheng sat up, putting down his pen, unfazed. “Is it supposed to be hard?”

Aunt Kang: “…”

Kang Kai, who had leaned in to look at the drawing: “…………”

At first, he had tried to treat Xu Sheng as his lifelong rival. But before long, he couldn’t even catch a whiff of the guy’s exhaust fumes.

From then on, in Kang Kai’s heart, the name ‘Xu Sheng’ was basically synonymous with having heaven-defying cheat codes.

There was a long row of sinks in the studio, the faucets close together for students to wash their painting tools after class. The tiles were speckled with colorful, unwashed paint stains.

After the heaven-defying, cheat-code-wielding Xu Sheng washed his hands, Kang Kai was already waiting for him at the studio door. Squatting by the planter near the entrance, he patted his pant leg when he saw Xu Sheng emerge: “Heading to the bus stop? I’ll walk you.”

Xu Sheng: “It’s only a few steps. If you have this much free time, you’d be better off going back and fixing that portrait of yours.”

“Fuck,” Kang Kai said. “We haven’t seen each other in so long, and all you know how to do is mock me.”

Xu Sheng chuckled, stopping the jokes.

After walking a distance, Kang Kai finally spoke: “I went to the warehouse last time and saw the drawing paper had been moved. Did you go back?”

“Right around the start of the term,” Xu Sheng took two seconds to recall which day Kang Kai meant by “last time.” He said, “Yeah, I went once. Just took a look.”

That warehouse belonged to Kang Kai’s friend. It had been abandoned for years and was of no use, so it was later lent to Xu Sheng to store his old painting supplies. The moment everything was sealed away under lock and key, Kang Kai, as a bystander, felt awful watching it happen. Xu Sheng had silently hung the key around his neck and never brought the matter up again.

Kang Kai: “I wanted to keep in touch with you more often, but you didn’t reply to my messages.”

Xu Sheng: “It’s fine. We can still keep in touch in the future.”

Kang Kai thought to himself that Sixth High was famous for having too many rules, impossibly rigid: “Doesn’t Linjiang Sixth High have a ton of rules?”

“There are quite a few. Adding up all the school rules, there are probably over five hundred,” Xu Sheng paused, then added, “But when have I ever followed the rules?”

…

What ideological awareness!

Kang Kai truly felt that his brother was fucking incredible.

After marveling internally, Kang Kai remembered that Xu Sheng hadn’t said that back in the studio; he had claimed he didn’t reply to messages because the school was too strict.

“No, wait, earlier you said… why do your stories keep changing?”

Xu Sheng: “I was lying to you earlier.”

Kang Kai: “Fuck!”

Buses arrived every fifteen minutes. When the two reached the bus stop, the Route 2 bus was just slowly pulling in.

“You can stop here,” Xu Sheng said.

Kang Kai didn’t reply. After a long moment, he suddenly called out: “Sheng-ge.”

Xu Sheng turned around.

Kang Kai didn’t know if he should bring this up again. Ever since Xu Sheng said he wouldn’t paint anymore, this topic had invisibly become sensitive. Finally, he said, “I really think that if you took the joint exams, getting into Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts or Central Academy of Fine Arts wouldn’t be a problem at all.”

The sky was gradually darkening. The headlights of the slowly approaching bus shone directly over, the scattered light obscuring Xu Sheng’s features, making it impossible to read his expression. Finally, he said, “I’m leaving.”

When Xu Sheng arrived home, he found the house empty. Looking down at WeChat, he finally saw the message Xu Yaping had sent half an hour ago.

—Mom went to the company, something urgent came up.

—You barely ate two bites of dinner. If you’re hungry, order something else to eat.

Xu Yaping was busy with work. She was an HR manager at a private company. When she had Xu Sheng years ago, she lost her job and stayed home for a year. When she returned, she found society had changed rapidly. After much struggle, she found a job and climbed step-by-step to her current position.

To support the family, she lived a tiring life under high-pressure work.

Anyone who saw her would praise her: It hasn’t been easy.

Xu Sheng couldn’t ignore these two messages. Sighing, he replied with a single sentence: Got it.

Xu Sheng padded back to his room in his slippers.

His phone chimed twice again.

This time, the flashing icon in the notification bar was a group chat message.

The official Class 7 Sophomore Year group chat had an extremely official name: A Loving Family.

One look and you could tell Hou Jun chose that name.

All the students and teachers in the official group were present. Normally, no one spoke. The reason this dead group had resurrected was because Tan Kai was cautiously tagging Meng Guowei in the group, fishing for news about the monthly exams.

Tan Kai: Teacher Meng, around when will the monthly exam scores be out?

Meng Guowei: Very soon!

Hou Jun’s appearance was also very swift, clearly having coordinated with Tan Kai beforehand.

Hou Jun: How soon is very soon?

Meng Guowei: Don’t worry, everyone! We are hurrying to grade the papers, aiming to have the monthly exam papers discussed when you come in on Monday.

Xu Sheng thought to himself: …There’s really no need to be that fast.

Naturally, the people in the class group were desperate for the scores to come out as late as possible. Hearing this news, they all felt deeply disappointed.

Hou Jun: Okay Teacher. You’ve worked hard, Teacher! Actually, compared to the scores, we care more about your health, Teacher.

Tan Kai followed closely, singing a duet: Yeah, don’t exhaust yourselves! It’s completely fine if the scores come out a bit later.

Xu Sheng silently gave these two a thumbs-up in his heart. Exiting the group chat, he opened another.

Just looking at Shao Zhan’s profile picture, he could practically visualize Shao Zhan’s face.

Xu Sheng recalled how he had performed under the name ‘Xu Sheng’ in the exam room, and the more he recalled, the guiltier he felt.

S: Did you check the group chat? S: Next Monday… do you want to take a day off?

Shao Zhan received the message just as he finished a set of practice papers.

Leaning back in his chair, Shao Zhan, taking a rare break from his various test papers, signaled him to continue: And then.

S: And then I’ll first check the specific scores and the reactions of Old Meng and the others, before figuring out a countermeasure.

Shao Zhan: You’re going to die either way, does it matter which day you pick?

S: …

The elderly residents downstairs in the apartment building loved listening to opera. The elderly had poor hearing, so the TV volume was always turned up very high. The warbling sounds from the old-fashioned TV continuously drifted up. Most of the buildings in Nanping District were old. The area was starkly different from the city center; there weren’t many middle schools, and information was relatively closed off.

Two bedrooms and one living room. The apartment was empty, with only Shao Zhan inside.

The spot in the living room where a picture frame used to sit was now empty, leaving only a rectangular faded mark.

Shao Zhan went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, preparing to do another set of papers, when his phone chimed again.

S: As compensation, I’ll bring you breakfast next week? What do you want to eat? S: Or anything else. Either way, consider it I owe you one. S: Whatever you want is fine.

Whatever, you, want, is fine.

Fuck.

Only after the last sentence was sent did Xu Sheng realize it sounded highly ambiguous.

Two seconds later, he quickly un-sent it.

Meng Guowei saying they were hurrying to grade the papers wasn’t a lie.

The teachers at Sixth High didn’t take the weekend off; they worked overtime to grade the exams. If they were fast, they could have the report cards and the average scores for each class tallied up by the weekend.

When he replied to the class group chat, he was in the office. Several stacks of test papers were piled in front of him. To ensure grading fairness, the section on the side showing the student ID and name was sealed. They didn’t know which candidate’s paper they were currently grading… though there were exceptions.

Having graded papers up to this point, Meng Guowei took off his glasses and raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, trying to relieve his eye fatigue.

“Teacher Meng,” the Chinese teacher from the neighboring class happened to finish grading the stack of papers beside her and couldn’t help but ask, “have you graded Shao Zhan’s paper yet?”

Meng Guowei put his glasses back on and said, “I haven’t graded it. It should be with you, right?”

Shao Zhan’s handwriting was beautiful, and his exam scores were high. Any subject teacher could recognize his paper just by grading it, without needing to see the name. Of course, besides Shao Zhan, there was another one who was particularly easy to recognize: Xu Sheng, whose handwriting was too atrocious to look at.

The neighboring Chinese teacher thought this was strange. There were only two teachers grading the Chinese exams. She flipped through the stack she had just finished from beginning to end, confirmed she definitely hadn’t graded it, and guessed: “Is the number of test papers complete? Did you confirm they were all collected? You really don’t have it there?”

Meng Guowei hadn’t finished grading yet, but there weren’t many papers left. He flipped through them roughly; none of the handwriting on any of the papers looked like Shao Zhan’s: “I don’t have it here either.”

The neighboring Chinese teacher wanted to say something more, but Meng Guowei was very relaxed. He waved his hand, completely unconcerned, and not worried in the slightest about his class’s student Shao Zhan. He had even thought ahead about how to celebrate student Shao Zhan bravely capturing first place again: “It’s fine, I’m not worried about Shao Zhan’s score at all. He’s definitely first place again. When I finish tallying the scores, I’ll pick out his paper, and you can take it to make a few more copies! Also, for our monthly exam grade ranking poster, we can just fill his name into the first-place spot in advance.”