I Write a Love Letter on the Answer Sheet of the Top Student in My Grade

Jiang Yanchi has a secret: before the high school entrance exams, he deliberately lost forty points and hid himself in forty-seventh place in his grade.

He had planned to keep that secret for three years. During the placement exam at the start of the school year, he handed in his paper twenty minutes early. As he passed Shen Zhixia, he glanced at her answer sheet. She had left out one solution to the final problem on page three. After hesitating for half a second, he pulled a sheet of scratch paper from her desk and wrote a line. He left no name, only the character "Jiang."

Shen Zhixia stared at those words for ten seconds. Then she looked up and called to Jiang Yanchi, who had already reached the classroom door.

"Stop right there."

Those were the first words they exchanged. Only later did Jiang Yanchi learn that Shen Zhixia had remembered him for far longer than that line had remained on the scratch paper.

Later still, the whole school found out: the top two students in the grade were setting each other tricky problems. Someone spotted a line on the back of Shen Zhixia's answer sheet, in handwriting that wasn't hers. It read, "It's okay if you can't solve this one. I'll wait for you."

Shen Zhixia wrote beneath it, "It's too soon to say who's waiting for whom."

Later still, she slipped that answer sheet into a folder and never turned it in.

Two top students, one hiding their brilliance, the other making no secret of it. It all began with one "Jiang" on a sheet of scratch paper and ended with two lines on an answer sheet. Sweetness, guaranteed. Thrills, guaranteed. Happy ending.