Chapter 102: Chen Mo’s Weakness
On Friday, Chen Mo woke up bright and early.
He still hadn’t figured out who was leaving the footprints outside Su Yuqing’s window these past few days. The thought kept nagging at him, causing him to sleep lightly at night.
As a result, he woke up quite early.
However, by the time he got out of bed, showered, got dressed, and opened his bedroom door, Su Yuqing was already up.
She had been using her phone in her spare time the last couple of days to look up breakfast recipes.
She wanted to change things up for Chen Mo every day.
Today, she was planning to make him savory pancakes with preserved vegetables and eggs.
She had already let the dough rest last night, so she could just take it out this morning and start cooking right away.
When Chen Mo came out of his room, he was greeted by the rich aroma of pancakes, mingled with a faint sourness.
By the time he walked over, he saw that Su Yuqing had already finished making several of the preserved vegetable and egg pancakes.
She had laid them out separately, some with minced meat and some without.
"How many do you want? I’ve made four with meat and four without," Su Yuqing asked with a gentle smile when she saw Chen Mo was up.
Seeing her smile like that, completely at ease in her own little world and blissfully unaware of anything, Chen Mo immediately returned her gentle smile.
’Just let her stay in the dark. I’ll block any and all dangers for her.’
Looking at the half-full basin of dough, Chen Mo smiled and replied, "That’s plenty. I can’t eat any more than that. Let’s save the rest of the dough and make more for lunch."
"Okay."
Su Yuqing turned off the stove, tidied up and washed the cookware, and then came to the dining room.
Chen Mo had already poured them both some breakfast milk and was just waiting for Su Yuqing to join him for breakfast.
Of the eight savory pancakes, Chen Mo ate three with meat, while Yuqing only had one with meat.
And that was only because Chen Mo insisted.
’How can you grow if you don’t eat meat?’
After finishing their breakfast, the two left the house together and headed for school.
Today was the midterm exam, which was divided into four sessions.
The exams started at 7:30 AM. There were two sessions in the morning: Chinese and Math. Chinese was 2.5 hours long, and Math was 2 hours. They would be dismissed at 12:00 PM for lunch.
The afternoon exams started at 1:30 PM. There were two more sessions: English and Comprehensive Studies (Humanities for arts stream students, Sciences for science stream students). English was 2 hours, and Comprehensive Studies was 2.5 hours. School would be dismissed at 6:00 PM, and evening self-study was canceled.
When Chen Mo and Su Yuqing arrived at school, it was only seven o’clock.
However, nearly all the students were already there.
After all, the midterms were a pretty important exam.
Some wanted to use the little bit of time in the morning for some last-minute cramming and review.
Others just came to school to sleep, simply to avoid getting yelled at for being late.
Inside the classroom, the desks had been deliberately arranged into single-person rows.
This was to prevent cheating during the exam.
Not long after Chen Mo and Su Yuqing arrived, He Xiaoyun also came to the classroom.
The first thing she did upon entering was look at Chen Mo, a challenging smile on her face, as if to say, ’Don’t forget our bet, kid.’
Not to be outdone, Chen Mo patted his chest and smiled back.
Seeing his reaction, He Xiaoyun gave a subtle, composed nod before turning to the other students. "The midterm is a crucial exam to gauge your current level. No cheating is allowed. You must rely on your own abilities, understand? That way, the teachers can provide targeted, supplementary instruction for your weak areas afterward!"
The math teacher had just said something similar earlier. The students were noticing that all the teachers said pretty much the same thing to discourage cheating.
After giving her final words of advice, He Xiaoyun left the classroom.
It was now very close to 7:30.
Not long after the homeroom teacher left, the exam proctor walked in with the test papers.
A moment later, the bell to start the exam rang.
As the teacher handed out the test papers, Chen Mo faced his first Chinese exam in a long time.
Back in the day, he had done pretty well in his other subjects, but his Chinese scores were always rather limited.
Things like reading comprehension and essay writing in Chinese were definitely not his strong suits.
During the Gaokao back then, he had lost the most points in Chinese.
English, Math, and Comprehensive Science were no problem for him.
As for English, Chen Mo’s parents traveled frequently both domestically and abroad, and they had taught him fluent English from a young age. Even his accent was quite authentic.
So, while many people found English difficult, it was relatively easy for him to get a high score.
For someone like Chen Mo, who had a meticulous mind and would carefully verify his answers once or even several times after finishing an exam, getting a perfect score in Math and Comprehensive Science wasn’t that difficult.
But when it came to the Chinese exam’s essays, reading comprehension, classical Chinese, and so on...
...he found them rather convoluted.
He could handle classical Chinese with pure memorization and comprehension.
This was especially true since Chen Mo had thoroughly studied various memorization techniques (like the memory palace, rote memorization, associative memory, etc.), which gave him an extremely powerful memory.
However, the skills for Chinese essay writing and reading comprehension...
...even if he grasped them, Chen Mo found it hard to apply them perfectly.
The so-called perfect-score Gaokao essays, for instance, seemed absurd to him. ’How could anyone get a perfect score on an essay?’ He had never once managed it himself.
He could only rely on his neat handwriting to get a few bonus points for presentation.
In most cases, his essays were only ever average.
The two-and-a-half-hour Chinese exam that morning went relatively smoothly for Chen Mo, except for the final essay section, which was his weak point.
Even though he had lived two lives and had seen what other people’s perfect-score Gaokao essays looked like...
...he couldn’t perfectly replicate them when he wrote. And even if he could, he wasn’t the type to just copy someone else’s work.
He did the Chinese exam his own way, following his own style.
That included the essay portion of the test.
’As long as I have a clear conscience, the final score doesn’t matter.’
’Even if the essay is a bit lacking, as long as I nail the points in the other sections, my overall score won’t be too bad.’
When the first exam, Chinese, ended two and a half hours later, Chen Mo saw many of his classmates letting out huge sighs of relief.
Clearly, the Chinese exam was enough of a headache for them.
However, Chen Mo remembered that Su Yuqing’s Chinese was surprisingly good.
During the first semester of their senior year, he seemed to recall she had even written a perfect-score essay that earned high praise from the teacher.
Chen Mo noticed that Su Yuqing looked very relaxed after the Chinese exam. It was obvious that Chinese was well within her comfort zone.
The essay topic for this midterm’s Chinese exam was about "a sense of ease," asking students to discuss how to maintain a relaxed, natural, comfortable, and unhurried state of being under the high pressure of modern society.
This question focused on the psychological state of modern people.
Using the buzzword "a sense of ease," the prompt guided students to reflect on how to find inner peace and freedom in a fast-paced life.
Students could approach the topic from various angles, such as "a sense of ease" being a relief from excessive tension, an affirmation of self-worth, or a deep understanding of life, and discuss its importance in personal growth and social development.
This topic was right up Su Yuqing’s alley. Since she started living with Chen Mo, she couldn’t be more familiar with what "a sense of ease" felt like.