Although the invigilator, Teacher Chen, looked condescending and looked down on others, he was actually just an ordinary junior high school teacher.
He had so easily concluded that Guan Baiyu had cheated before and wanted to give Guan Baiyu zero points because he looked down on Guan Baiyu from the bottom of his heart and didn’t think Guan Baiyu would resist.
The students in this school had poor academic performance. In his opinion, for this kind of competitive exam, it didn’t matter whether they participated or not.
He didn’t expect Guan Baiyu to be so tough, unwilling to settle the matter, and even bringing up the Education Bureau.
It would be no good for them if things got too big.
The other invigilator, Teacher Wang, became anxious when she heard this. “Teacher Chen, let’s forget about this!”
Teacher Wang didn’t understand why Teacher Chen wouldn’t let this matter go.
If it were her, she would probably just remind the student and confiscate the paper ball – even if the students here cheated, they wouldn’t win prizes in the city. At most, their grades would be better than normal, which was really nothing.
The most important thing was that the male student in front of them was so adamant and didn’t look guilty at all. It was obvious that he didn’t cheat.
Thinking this, Teacher Wang smiled at Guan Baiyu.
“You still act so righteous when cheating? Do you think the Education Bureau is run by your family?” Teacher Chen glared at Guan Baiyu, but he looked a bit weak.
Guan Baiyu didn’t like to conflict with others, and usually hung out on his own without any sense of existence, but he liked to observe others, so he could always sense other people’s emotions keenly.
At this moment, he could tell that Teacher Chen was afraid.
Guan Baiyu looked at Teacher Chen seriously. “The Education Bureau is not run by my family, but it is not run by your family either! You are a teacher, but you framed me, a student. I will tell my…tell my dad to go to the Education Bureau to report you and your school!”
He originally wanted to say my brother, but finally changed it to my father.
Teacher Chen’s face turned even darker.
These country people were particularly good at making noise and scolding others. The Education Bureau was in the city, so this person’s family might not be able to find the place to make trouble, but even if they only went to his school to make trouble, he would be embarrassed and humiliated!
Teacher Chen couldn’t get off the stage and froze for a moment. Teacher Wang glanced at him, walked up to Guan Baiyu, and said gently, “Student, please show me your exam paper. Don’t worry, if you didn’t cheat, we will definitely not give you zero points! Teacher Chen, show me your note too.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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If it were twenty years later, in any school, a completely neglected child would not be able to take the first place in the grade unless his IQ was extraordinary and he was extremely self-disciplined.
At that time, parents valued education and would try their best to provide their children with the best learning conditions within their abilities. However, it was difficult for neglected children to obtain these conditions.
But now it was 1994, and this was also the countryside.
In their hometown, there were very, very few parents who valued their children’s education.
Children in junior high school were particularly susceptible to the influence of the surrounding environment. Parents who valued their children’s education and knew a little bit about education would never let their children attend a school where no classmates wanted to study. They would all basically find ways to send their children to schools in town.
People like Yan Jiangtao’s father who valued their children’s performance but didn’t understand education… they hadn’t read any books themselves. The so-called attention meant scolding the children and letting the children learn on their own. It didn’t make much difference whether they valued it or not.
Therefore, Guan Baiyu and other children in the school were on the same starting line.
Although Guan Baiyu usually had to do housework and didn’t have much time to study after school, other children also had to help cut the grass at home or take care of their younger siblings after school, and they also went out to play in groups.
What about at school? Other children didn’t like school and were not focused on studying, but Guan Baiyu liked school and wanted to be recognized for his studies, so he naturally studied more seriously than others.
With no family to accompany him and no entertainment activities, Guan Baiyu had nothing to do on regular days. He just read and studied.
In the end, he could even memorize all the parts of the textbook that did not need to be memorized at all.
Not only that, while other children wrote casually when completing their homework, he followed the standard printing in the textbook and wrote the characters very neatly, stroke by stroke.
He was so bored that he ended up making his handwriting look almost like print.
Later, when Guan Baiyu went to junior high school, an old teacher in his school found his handwriting interesting and gave him one of his notebooks and asked him to practice calligraphy according to his own handwriting. Guan Baiyu’s handwriting now was almost the same as that of that old teacher.
The old teacher’s family was very wealthy when he was young. They were capitalists who were overthrown when that teacher was young. He was not very good at mathematics, physics and chemistry, but his calligraphy was really good. After his grandmother passed away, and Guan Baiyu had nothing to do, he would take sharpened branches and practice writing on the ground. When doing homework, he also tried to imitate the writing of that old teacher.
His handwriting was very beautiful.
What about the words on the paper ball? There were some words so messily written that people other than the writer might not be able to recognize them at all.
In addition, it could be seen at a glance that most of the questions that Guan Baiyu had completed were correct, but the so-called “answers” on the paper ball… Teacher Wang was embarrassed to say that these things were answers.
If someone copied these answers, they would be lucky to get 30 points on a 100-point paper!
“Teacher Chen, the handwriting is completely different. This paper ball was not written by him. Someone else should have cheated,” Teacher Wang said to Teacher Chen softly, “Let him go back and continue the exam.”
Teacher Wang gave him a way to step down, so Teacher Chen snorted coldly and stepped down. “Because of the lack of evidence, I will let you go once, but I will keep an eye on you. Don’t think about cheating!”
“I won’t cheat,” Guan Baiyu said firmly, “I’m going to take the exam.”
He had to write an essay for the Chinese language exam, and he was afraid of not having enough time.
Teacher Chen did not stop Guan Baiyu from re-entering the classroom to continue the exam, but he followed Guan Baiyu in and stood next to Guan Baiyu’s desk, staring at Guan Baiyu as he worked on the questions.
Most students couldn’t stand being watched by the invigilator during an exam, and Guan Baiyu was also a little uncomfortable with it.
But he quickly thought that if he failed this exam because he was being stared at, wouldn’t that make those who loved him sad while his enemies were happy?
He had always told his brother that he was first in his year. If he failed the exam due to negligence this time… no way!
Guan Baiyu ignored Teacher Chen and worked on the questions seriously.
Questions on Chinese reading comprehension had always been Guan Baiyu’s weakness in the past. The teachers in their school rarely asked them to do such questions, and they didn’t teach them much in class – sometimes the teachers themselves often didn’t know what a certain sentence meant. They didn’t know how to find information if they didn’t understand, so they just left after class ended and passed the days by muddling through like this.
But in the past few days, Guan Baiyu unexpectedly did a lot of practice questions in this area. He also summarized many key passages based on the answers in the exercise book. As long as it was relevant, he noted it down. This way, he answered the questions very smoothly.
As for the final composition…
The final essay topic for this exam was “My xx”. They could write about relatives, friends, or something they owned…
Guan Baiyu was stunned and wrote the title without hesitation – My Brother.
When writing for exams, it was best to write something warm and positive.
In the past, he rarely experienced warmth from his relatives, and he never had anything precious.
But now he had a brother!
Guan Baiyu had countless things to write about at the same time, and he just felt that there were too few grids* in this exam paper.
And because he really wanted to write, he wrote exceptionally smoothly.
Teacher Chen’s face became even darker when he saw Guan Baiyu writing the composition smoothly in beautiful running script.
He had long known that Guan Baiyu definitely didn’t cheat, but he was still very dissatisfied with Guan Baiyu and didn’t want to see Guan Baiyu get good grades in the exam.
Fortunately, students in this kind of school, even if they read more books and got a better score in Chinese, their scores in math and other subjects would be lacking. In the end, when the total score was calculated, this person’s results would definitely not be very good.
Before the bell signaling the end of the exam rang, Guan Baiyu had finished the exam paper. When he handed in his exam paper, he breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the two invigilators seal the exam papers.
After going to the toilet, Guan Baiyu returned to his seat and sat down without moving anymore – in half an hour, it would be time for the math exam.
However, although he didn’t move around, someone came to him and asked him what happened when the teacher called him out during the exam. Some people felt bad for him, thinking that the invigilator had a bad temper and framed Guan Baiyu.
They had a total of four classes in the third year of junior high school, and there was only one advanced class. Guan Baiyu ranked first in the class every time there was an exam, which was equivalent to being first in the year.
There was no way he would copy answers from people whose grades were not as good as his, right?
And Yan Jiangtao… It was Yan Jiangtao who suddenly shouted that Guan Baiyu cheated. He clearly wanted to harm Guan Baiyu!
Everyone was talking to each other, but in the end it was Guan Baiyu who couldn’t get a word in and didn’t say anything.
He just didn’t want to say anything.
***
T/N: *Chinese writing paper is divided into grids/squares – you write one character per box vertically from right to left. Word count is limited by the number of boxes.
Some people are just so unfair
Thank you for the translation 🥰🥰
Thanks for the chapter 💕
Yan jingtao is a menace to the society with that kind of attitude sheesh. So proud of baiyu for standing up for himself!