I have few friends, but many childhood sweethearts.

Chapter 23. Entrance Examination
DingTalk DingTalk —

Xu Qingfan reached out and turned off the alarm clock on the bedside table. His eyes were half-open and half-closed. He sat on the bed in a daze for several minutes before getting up and getting dressed.

The living room was empty; the parents were still asleep in their room. The transportation and wholesale of crayfish were easier to carry out at night, and Mr. and Mrs. Xu had been busy until almost dawn every night for the past two months before they came home to sleep.

It was hard work, but they were making tens of thousands of yuan every day, and they were both enjoying it, with no signs of fatigue on their faces.

Xu Qingfan tiptoed into the toilet to wash his face and brush his teeth. While urinating, he suddenly remembered the scene last month when he was still in kindergarten, when the female teacher helped the boys in the small class to urinate in the toilet.

It's a pity I arrived too late, otherwise I would have enjoyed the feeling of being in charge.

While washing his hands, Xu Qingfan smiled at himself in the mirror, his thick eyebrows and big eyes revealing a handsome face.

When he speaks, the missing front tooth makes a slight whistling sound.

Xu Qingfan grinned at the mirror; his left front tooth was long gone, and his right one had fallen out while he was brushing his teeth.

He vowed that from now on, he would always cut apples before eating them!

After spitting out two more mouthfuls of bloody saliva, Xu Qingfan put on his shoes and went to Xia Xiaoxiao's house.

Xia Xiaoxiao and her mother were having breakfast in the living room, with homemade steamed buns and milk tea.

"Good morning, Auntie." Xu Qingfan sat down in her seat and added some hot black tea and milk to her ceramic cup.

"Hahahaha, Xiao Fan, how come your right front tooth is gone too!" Xia Guofu was still sleeping when Lin Jing burst into laughter in a low voice.

Lin Jing reached out and pried open Xu Qingfan's mouth, carefully examining his missing front tooth. "So cute!"

She patted Xu Qingfan's head and took a small knife from the kitchen to cut the buns into small pieces for him.

"Hehe!" Xia Xiaoxiao covered her mouth and chuckled, but when she saw Xu Qingfan glaring at her, she put away her expression and pretended nothing had happened.

To avoid hurting his gums, Xu Qingfan tilted his head to the side and finished his breakfast.

Before leaving, Xia's mother carefully checked the stationery and admission tickets of her two children. "Go for it! Mom believes you're the best! Xiao Fan too!"

During the morning rush hour, the streets were bustling with pedestrians.

Fortunately, not many families could afford a car back in 02, so Xia's mother drove her electric scooter without any problems.

When we arrived at the Experimental Primary School, dozens of parents were already standing on both sides of the school gate, and several security guards were maintaining order on both sides to ensure that students could enter the school smoothly.

A teacher was stationed at the entrance to guide them. After handing the two students' admission tickets to the teacher, Xia's mother turned to them and said, "Mom is going to buy groceries to cook something delicious for you. Xiaoxiao and Xiaofan, you must behave well during the exam and listen to your teacher. You are not allowed to leave the school before I arrive, understand?"

"Okay, Mom, you go quickly."

"Don't worry, Auntie, I guarantee I'll complete the task!"

After saying goodbye to Xia's mother, the teacher led the two to the basketball court, where hundreds of students lined up in more than a dozen rows of varying lengths.

According to the exam room written on it, the teacher separated the two students and put them into two separate lines.

Lin Jing helped with the registration. Logically, since the two of them registered at the same time, they should have been assigned to the same examination room. Xu Qingfan had no idea why they weren't assigned to the same room.

Xu Qingfan looked around and saw several of his former kindergarten classmates. Lin Wanning was standing at the front of the line, more than ten meters away from him. He would have to find her after the Chinese exam.

After standing there for seven or eight minutes, the line grew longer and longer. Perhaps his group had finally gathered, because the teacher led them away first.

Xu Qingfan turned around and saw Xia Xiaoxiao looking at him as well. He made a thumbs-up gesture, and the little girl nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Go, Qingfan!" Lin Wanning had been searching through the crowd for a long time before finally noticing Xu Qingfan leaving. The little girl mustered her courage and shouted. Xu Qingfan nodded and smiled, waving casually, and the group quickly disappeared from the two girls' sight.

The teacher leading the group took them through a maze of turns and led them into a science laboratory of more than 50 square meters.

[There's a reason why it's expensive!] Xu Qingfan couldn't help but sigh as he looked at the electronic balance scale in the corner.

In their previous life, after being assigned to a chemistry major in college, even though they were from a prestigious 985 university, the balances used in lab classes were shared by the whole class, with only two balances available. However, there were more than thirty balances on the ground at this moment.

He wondered if the experimental equipment was purchased with some shady dealings or was genuinely expensive. He remembered an experiment in his freshman year that required an electric heater, which was small but quite useful, and crucially, its power wasn't high. Xu Qingfan thought to himself at the time, "Could I buy the same one to make a mini hot pot in my dorm?"

When I checked on Taobao, it was 788 yuan each. Oh well.

At 7:55, the pure white Chinese language test papers were handed out.

Xu Qingfan wrote his name on the pen and then began to flip through the pages from the back to the front.

These are very standard questions; I've done them all during my review. Wan Ning should have a good chance!
The exam lasted an hour and a half. After the bell rang at eight o'clock, he calmly picked up his pen and began to work on the questions.

Half an hour later, Xu Qingfan closed the pen cap and began to inspect it.

After all, it concerns tuition waivers and scholarships, so it wouldn't be good if we slipped up and lost to a six-year-old kid.

After carefully checking it three times, Xu Qingfan raised his hand.

The proctor approached with a puzzled look. "Do you need to use the restroom?"

"Teacher, I've finished writing. Can I hand in my paper early?" Xu Qingfan pointed to the test paper and then to the outside.

"No, you can't leave until 9:30 after you finish your test!" The teacher glanced at Xu Qingfan's test paper casually and found that his handwriting was not bad.

"All right."

The lab desks were made of rubber, so no ink would come out of the pen. Xu Qingfan didn't even have a last bit of doodling to amuse himself.

After a difficult hour, the bell finally rang.

However, when he was about to go find Lin Wanning and Xia Xiaoxiao, he tragically discovered that he had no idea where the examination room on their admission tickets corresponded to.

After a 15-minute break, the proctors ushered the students back into the classroom.

The math test was a bit difficult. The last fill-in-the-blank question asked: If it takes Grandpa Li 3 minutes to go up to the fourth floor, how many minutes will it take him to go up to the eighth floor?
Xu Qingfan counted on his fingers. To get to the fourth floor, there are three floors to go, and each floor takes one minute. If physical strength is not taken into account, it should take seven minutes to get to the eighth floor.

There was another question that was absolutely brilliant. The test paper had a bus drawn hastily, with a large rectangle as the body, four small squares inside the rectangle as windows, and two circles at the bottom as wheels. The question asked you which side the bus was driving from.

After finishing the other questions, Xu Qingfan came back to this one, but even after racking his brains, he couldn't figure out where the key point was.
"How am I supposed to know which way he's going!" he muttered under his breath, recalling the buses he usually saw.

[It has windows on both sides!!!]
"Students, please carefully check your names and admission tickets. There are ten minutes left in the exam." The invigilator's voice came from the podium.

"Classmates? A door! That's right, there's no door in this picture!" Xu Qingfan suddenly realized.

He mentally visualized a bus facing the side without doors, and shouted, "Left! Drive to the left!"

After filling in the last answer, he let out a long sigh of relief.

Damn it, at least my reputation is saved!

(End of this chapter)