Chapter 40: Let Them Copy or Not

He saved her phone number.

He would never admit that the only reason he asked for her number was because he was afraid she might block him again, leaving him no way to reach her.

Xie Xu replied with a string of ellipses.

Suddenly, Lu Yiqi remembered the real reason she wanted to talk to him.

Lu Yiqi: By the way, I need to tell you, we have a math test tomorrow. Make sure you review tonight.

“……”

He had no idea what reviewing meant.

He typed a single word on the screen: “Okay.”

The next day, the first thing Lu Yiqi said when she saw Xie Xu was, “Did you manage to review last night?”

Xie Xu blinked. What had he actually done after promising Lu Yiqi that he’d study? Oh, now he remembered—he’d launched his game and played until four in the morning.

With a perfectly straight face, he answered, “Yeah, I did.”

Hearing that he’d reviewed well, Lu Yiqi felt both relieved and disheartened. “Really? I couldn’t get anything into my head. I’m probably going to bomb the test again. Why do we have to take math, of all things?”

Xie Xu, having stayed up all night, was feeling a bit out of sorts. He yawned, “You’re not good at math?”

“I’m hopeless at it. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t learn it.”

Xie Xu made a noncommittal sound, “Should I slip you some notes during the test?”

“What for? I can’t do math, I can’t help you.”

“…I meant, I’d give you my answers to copy.”

???

Lu Yiqi tilted her head, “Forget it.”

You, who sleeps through every class—how much better could your math be than mine? Copying your answers would be no more reliable than guessing.

Xie Xu had no idea what Lu Yiqi was thinking. If he did, he’d probably be so angry he’d spit blood.

He tossed out, “Fine, don’t copy then,” and swung his leg over his bike. Lu Yiqi dutifully climbed onto the back seat.

The test began soon after. The math teacher told everyone to clear their desks, warned against cheating and whispering, then handed out the papers.

Just seeing the math questions made Lu Yiqi sleepy. She yawned twice, glanced stealthily at her desk mate, and saw that he hadn’t even looked at the exam—he was already sprawled across the desk, fast asleep.

Lu Yiqi sighed.

She had known it all along—her desk mate, who’d made such grand promises that morning, was just bluffing. He didn’t know the material any better than she did.

She turned her attention back to the test.

She finished the multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions she understood, stared blankly at the unsolved ones, picking whichever answer seemed most pleasing. For the big questions at the end, clinging to her habit of never leaving a question blank, she wrote the word “solution” under each one, then flipped back to the front to “check” her answers.

Her “checking” lasted less than a minute before her head grew fuzzy and she collapsed onto the desk.

Xie Xu, as if he had set an alarm, woke up exactly twenty minutes before the end of the test. Still groggy, he stared into space for two minutes before realizing he couldn’t find his pen.

Xie Xu: “……”

Instinctively, he turned to ask Lu Yiqi for a pen, only to see her sleeping even more soundly than he had.

His lips twitched slightly. He lowered his head and rummaged through the desk, finally finding his pen. By then, there were only fifteen minutes left in the exam.

At last, Xie Xu began to write, scribbling through the test at a leisurely pace. When he finished, he capped his pen and yawned.

The math teacher announced the end of the test just then.

Lu Yiqi was still sprawled across the desk, showing no signs of waking. Xie Xu raised his hand and tapped her desk.