My IQ Increases Year by Year

The last day of the training camp.

A faint smell of chalk dust hung in the air of the seminar room.

The blackboard hadn’t been completely erased.

In the upper right corner, half a tree diagram and a few lines of chalk writing remained from Coach Xu’s lecture on combinatorial mathematics the previous afternoon.

Around the conference table, the stiff, cliquey formality of the first day was long gone.

The cover of Zhang Bai’s notebook was badly curled as he flipped through a photocopied handout from yesterday.

It was densely covered in annotations and arrows in red and blue ink.

This was the evidence of his work over the past few days, painstakingly deconstructing high-dimensional solutions, reducing their complexity, and reassembling them into a logic he could understand.

Li Nanbai leaned back in his chair, squeezing an empty water bottle. The plastic clicked softly under his fingers.

Lin Yi had simply opened a thick exercise book and propped it over his face like a small tent, leaning back in his chair to catch up on sleep.

Zhou Kai had his head down, organizing the materials he had accumulated over the past few days.

He folded several loose sheets of scratch paper covered in matrices and equations, carefully tucked them inside a textbook, then packed his stationery into a clear pencil case one item at a time before zipping it shut.

Chen Zhuo sat in his seat.

His desk was empty.

He wasn’t flipping through handouts, nor was he packing his bag.

He just leaned back, relaxed, his gaze drifting past his desk to the half-erased tree diagram in the corner of the blackboard.

Listening to the occasional clicks from the plastic bottle beside him, he sat in silence, then shifted his position and reached up to rub his sore neck.

Footsteps echoed from the hallway.

The seminar room door swung open.

Coach Xu walked in. He wasn’t carrying his enormous thermos today, nor did he have a stack of exam papers tucked under his arm.

Everyone in the room instinctively sat up straight.

Lin Yi took the exercise book off his face and rubbed his eyes. Zhang Bai picked up his pen, ready to hear the coach’s plan for the day.

Coach Xu walked over to the window.

He reached out and pressed the power button on the standing air conditioner.

BEEP.

The low hum that had constantly filled the room fell silent.

The vents’ louvers slowly closed.

Then, Coach Xu gripped the window handle and gave it a hard push.

The two glass panes swung wide open.

A wave of heat from the parasol trees outside, accompanied by the incessant chirping of cicadas, instantly flooded the perpetually cool seminar room.

Coach Xu turned around and looked at the six people sitting around the table.

"No problems today."

Coach Xu dusted off his hands, his tone casual.

"Don’t bother with what’s on the blackboard either. Your brains are already full of everything they need to be. If you try to cram any more in, it’ll all turn to mush on exam day."

He waved his hand as if shooing them away.

"All of you, get out and get some fresh air. Go back to the guesthouse and sleep, or take a walk around the track. I don’t want anyone staying in this room."

The room was silent for two seconds.

Zhang Bai’s grip on his pen loosened. He let out a long breath, and his shoulders slumped.

Mo Xiaoyu stared at the error-correction worksheet in front of her for a moment, stunned, then haphazardly shoved it into her schoolbag.

It was as if Coach Xu’s words had snipped the string that had been pulled taut in their minds.

Everyone began to silently pack their bags.

Chen Zhuo picked up the backpack at his feet and slung it over his shoulder.

The six of them, bags on their backs, walked out of the administration building.

The sun was blazing outside.

The asphalt was scorching hot, feeling a bit soft under their feet.

Stepping out from the air-conditioned building, the heatwave hit them in the face, making the air feel thick and sticky even to breathe.

They followed the tree-lined path forward.

They walked aimlessly, with no destination in mind.

"So... is that it?"

Li Nanbai, walking at the back, wiped the sweat from his forehead and asked, a note of disbelief in his voice.

"We fly to Shanghai tomorrow, and the exam is the day after," Zhou Kai added. "The real battle is still ahead."

Mo Xiaoyu sighed.

"I get a headache just hearing the words ’geometry’ and ’algebra’ now."

Chen Zhuo walked at the very front.

He looked at the small shop next to the sports field.

"Wait here a sec."

Chen Zhuo stopped and spoke to the others behind him, then turned and walked into the small shop.

A short while later, he pushed open the shop’s glass door and came back out.

He was holding a plastic bag.

He walked over to the shade of a tree and opened the bag.

Inside were several frosty old-fashioned ice pops and mung bean popsicles.

Chen Zhuo casually took out a mung bean popsicle and tossed it to Zhou Kai, then grabbed an old-fashioned ice pop and handed it to Mo Xiaoyu.

"Take your pick. These are the only two kinds. It’s all they had left in the freezer."

He held the plastic bag open for Zhang Bai and Li Nanbai.

Zhang Bai took a mung bean popsicle, and Li Nanbai took an old-fashioned one.

Lin Yi came over, snatched a mung bean popsicle, tore off the wrapper, and took a huge bite.

Chen Zhuo took the last old-fashioned ice pop for himself, crumpled the plastic bag into a ball, and accurately tossed it into a trash can about two meters away.

The group walked over to the steps of the bleachers at the edge of the sports field.

They found a spot on the steps shaded by a large tree, laid down a piece of scrap paper, and sat down.

In the distance, the red rubber track shimmered under the sun.

Chen Zhuo took a bite of the old-fashioned ice pop in his hand.

It was hard and had a familiar sweet taste that sent a chill from his mouth all the way down to his stomach.

"Is Shanghai even hotter than here?"

Mo Xiaoyu asked casually, taking small bites of her popsicle as she stared at the track ahead.

"Not this kind of heat."

Zhang Bai pushed up the glasses on his nose.

"I checked the weather forecast. It’s the plum rain season over there right now. It rains every day, and the humidity is really high. It’s the kind of heat that feels like you’re stuck in a steam basket."