712 Instances of Favoritism

They entered a “top-student marriage” as a marriage of convenience, and for three years, the aloof academic prodigy tutored his childhood friend, a struggling student, every day and made practice tests for her. Then, a hundred days before the college entrance exam, he received a divorce application. Her reason: she wanted to get into Peking University and didn’t want to date so young.

The academic prodigy tore up her application on the spot. “Then we’ll get into Peking University together and start dating together.”

She cried over her 29 in liberal arts; he gave up his guaranteed admission to Peking University and stayed up late doing practice problems with her, using his IMO gold medal prize money to buy her top-of-the-line music production software. At the hundred-day countdown rally, she accidentally thanked “the classmate who held me” instead of “the classmate who encouraged me,” and the whole school burst into teasing cheers. On the eve of the exam, he proposed on the sports field with an LED sign displaying 712 points: “712 = My wife, I love you.”

In the end, they received their Peking University acceptance letters side by side and got their marriage certificate right after graduation. From school uniforms to wedding dresses, they turned every formula into a song and every heartbeat into a promise for the future. The best kind of love, it turns out, is writing each other into the solution set of the same problem, never to part.