The eraser she’d used to cheat on the class placement exam was still clenched in her hand, but Qin Yibo’s name had already appeared at the bottom of the Math Olympiad class’s honor roll. Amid the waves of snickers in the classroom, the aloof figure who always sat in the front row suddenly turned around. The tip of his fountain pen slashed across her name on the notice board. “She’s my deskmate.”
The air in the Math Olympiad class was icy. While whispers of “cheating loser” nailed her to the pillar of shame, Zhou Huan’s notebook always landed squarely in the middle of her desk at the start of morning study. The boy’s long, clearly jointed fingers traced through L’Hôpital’s rule, which she could never understand. Ink spread across the draft paper like his lashes trembling whenever he frowned. “Dummy. Look here.”
Zhou Huan: “First place is mine, and so is last place.”
