My IQ has been increasing year by year.

The Nokia on the table vibrated, followed by a phone ringing.

Chen Zhuo did not get up immediately.

He listened to the bell ring for three or four seconds before slowly opening his eyes, getting up from his chair, and walking to the table.

Two words were displayed on the screen:

Zhang Qiang.

Chen Zhuo picked up his phone, pressed the answer button, and put the phone to his ear.

He hadn't even had a chance to say "feed".

A tremendous sound burst forth from the receiver.

"Don't push! Someone spilled soup on my test paper!"

"What's the first class this afternoon? Is it Old Zhao's class?"

"Where's my lunchbox? It's gone from under the table!"

All sorts of sounds—the dragging of tables and chairs on the floor, the sound of stainless steel lunchboxes falling to the ground—mixed together like a boiling pot of porridge, rushing directly into Chen Zhuo's ears via radio waves.

Chen Zhuo decisively moved his phone away from his ear.

"Brother Zhuo! Can you hear me? Hey! Brother Zhuo!"

Zhang Qiang's voice broke through the cacophony, shouting at the top of his lungs, accompanied by the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs.

Chen Zhuo brought the phone back to his ear.

"I can hear you."

Chen Zhuo picked up the water glass on the table and turned to walk towards the sun.

"Are you in a farmers' market or at war?"

"War! Even worse than war!"

Zhang Qiang was panting heavily on the other end of the line.

"I'm having extra lessons! Sunday noon! Extra lessons!"

Zhang Qiang gritted his teeth and repeated the last two words.

Chen Zhuo sat down again in Yang's chair.

"It's normal for students to have extra classes on Sundays since they're in their final year of junior high."

Chen Zhuo took a sip of water, his tone indifferent.

"Normal my foot!"

Zhang Qiang was jumping up and down on the other side.

"You never even finished junior high! This year, Old Zhao went crazy and asked the principal to cancel Sunday afternoons off! We're having large classes every day!"

Chen Zhuo smiled.

He could picture Zhang Qiang looking frantic right now.

His hair must be a mess, and he's hiding in some unknown corner, trying to avoid being checked up on by the teacher while pouring out his grievances to his phone. "What are they talking about in those big lectures?" Chen Zhuo asked.

"What else can we talk about! It's the exam!"

Zhang Qiang let out a wail.

"Two math tests in the morning, only 40 minutes for lunch, and then a combined science test at 1:30 pm! Let me tell you, my brain is completely numb. I feel like my head is full of mush."

The sound of a lighter came from the other end of the phone.

"You still dare to smoke at school?"

Chen Zhuo raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't smoke! There were high school students smoking in the toilet next door, and the smell was so strong it made my throat feel nauseous."

Zhang Qiang coughed twice, lowering his voice slightly.

"I just wanted to find a secluded spot to call you; I've been holding back for so long."

Chen Zhuo switched hands to hold the phone.

The sunlight shone on his stomach, making it feel warm and cozy.

"Didn't you eat lunch?" Chen Zhuo asked.

The moment the topic of food came up, Zhang Qiang completely exploded on the other end of the line.

"I ate! But I'm still fuming! Do you remember that chubby lady in our school cafeteria whose hands trembled when serving food?"

"Remember."

Chen Zhuo looked at the leaves of the trees outside Yang.

"I was stir-frying shredded potatoes with meat, and with a flick of my wrist, all the meat fell back into the bowl."

"Yes! It was her! The dish for lunch today was braised beef with potatoes, and I waited in line for ages! When I finally got to the front, she scooped it up with a spoon and then, in mid-air, gave me a Parkinson's performance!"

"All that ended up in my lunchbox was potatoes; there wasn't a single piece of meat in sight!"

Zhang Qiang felt increasingly aggrieved as he spoke.

"I was sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, holding that box of braised beef with potatoes that was full of potatoes."

"Brother Zhuo, you don't understand that kind of despair. I just finished two sets of geometry proofs this morning, and my mind was already foggy. I looked at that old lady holding that big iron spoon, and guess what I saw?"

Chen Zhuo thought for a moment.

"What did you see?"

"I saw that the big iron spoon was an oval! I actually stared at that spoon and started calculating its focal length and eccentricity in my head!" Zhang Qiang shouted on the other end of the phone.

"I feel like I'm ruined! I'm beyond saving! Old Zhao's endless practice problems have damaged my brain!"

Chen Zhuo leaned back in his chair and couldn't help but chuckle softly.

Laughter came through the receiver.

Zhang Qiang refused to continue.

"You're still laughing? Don't you have any sympathy? We're brothers who grew up together, and I'm living a hellish life back home, and you can still laugh?"

Chen Zhuo stopped laughing.

He took a big gulp of water from his glass; the water was just the right temperature, and it warmed his stomach.

"It's pretty tragic."

Chen Zhuo said slowly.

"That's exactly right!"

Zhang Qiang regained some of his mental balance.

"You don't know, Lao Zhao is using you as a weapon every day to psychologically attack us."

"Using me as a weapon?"

"Yeah, if anyone dozed off during morning self-study, or if anyone hadn't finished their test, Old Zhao would stand on the platform and tap the desk with the blackboard eraser." Zhang Qiang began to imitate Old Zhao's unique tone with a bit of a local accent.

"Look at all of you good-for-nothings! Look at Chen Zhuo! He's in Huizhou now, at the best university in the country, researching world-class problems every day! And you? You can't even draw an auxiliary line properly, and you're still sleeping in there! Aren't you ashamed!" Zhang Qiang finished imitating and sighed.

"Brother Zhuo, you're a legend at school now, a god. Old Zhao puts you on the teacher's desk and burns incense for us every day. We're all teary-eyed from the smell of the incense."

Chen Zhuo looked at the water in the glass.

He neither refuted Lao Zhao's words nor followed Zhang Qiang's praise.

"If you can't draw auxiliary lines, it means you haven't fully grasped the properties of circles. Study the perpendicular bisector theorem and the inscribed angle theorem more often; there are only a few patterns," Chen Zhuo said casually.

"Stop, stop, stop!"

Zhang Qiang quickly interrupted him.

"I didn't call to ask you to explain math problems to me. My head hurts just hearing the word 'theorem' now."

A heavy sigh came from the other end of the phone.

"Sigh, you college students have it so good."

Zhang Qiang's tone was filled with deep envy.

"Once I went to Huizhou, I was far from the emperor's reach. I didn't have to run laps at 6:30 every morning, and I didn't have to be watched by Old Zhao. I could do whatever I wanted on weekends. It was so liberating."

Zhang Qiang paused for a moment, seemingly imagining Chen Zhuo's college life.

"What are you doing now? Didn't you go out this weekend?"

Chen Zhuo put his feet on the railing in Yang.

He leaned back slightly.

"I didn't go."

"Why aren't you going? Are you playing games in the dorm?" Zhang Qiang asked.

Chen Zhuo turned his head and looked at the sun outside.

He felt that, as a childhood friend, it was necessary to let Zhang Qiang experience what real university life was like at this time.

"I didn't play games."

Chen Zhuo's tone was very calm, without the slightest fluctuation.

"I just feel a bit annoyed."

"bother?"

Zhang Qiang was taken aback for a moment, then his tone became concerned.

"What's wrong? Is it because you can't get used to the food from Huizhou? Or is it because your foreign teacher is putting pressure on you and you can't keep up?" The more Zhang Qiang thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

"It's okay, Brother Zhuo, don't feel pressured. I've looked into him too. People online say he has a very scary temper, even scarier than Lao Zhao. You've already done a great job, really."

As Chen Zhuo listened to Zhang Qiang's mental imaginings, the corners of his mouth slowly curled up.

"It's not that we can't keep up with the pace."

Chen Zhuo drew out his words and sighed.

"The weather in Huizhou is just too nice today."

There was no sound on the other end of the phone.

Chen Zhuo continued speaking in that slow, leisurely tone.

"The sunlight on this side of the dormitory is just enough to fill the whole chair. I ate too much braised pork at lunchtime and I'm so full now that I'm sitting in the sun with a glass of water. I feel all limp and weak."

Chen Zhuo blew on a mouthful of water.

"I'm so tired, I don't even have the strength to get up and crawl back to bed, so I can only sit here. Isn't that annoying?"

Most afraid of the air suddenly quiet.

Chen Zhuo could even hear Zhang Qiang's increasingly heavy breathing coming through the receiver.

That's the sound of blood pressure skyrocketing.

A full five seconds passed.

"Chen Zhuo!"

Zhang Qiang gritted his teeth and growled in a low voice on the other end of the line.

"Are you even human? I can't even get a piece of meat or a leaf to eat here, and even a spoon looks oval. I have a two-and-a-half-hour combined science exam this afternoon! And you're complaining to me about being too sleepy because of the sun? Or because you ate too much meat?"

Chen Zhuo laughed silently.

"I'm just stating the facts."

"Screenshot!"

Zhang Qiang was so angry that he kept cursing.

"You heartless bastard! I was just worried you wouldn't be able to keep up! Let me tell you, the first thing I'll do after my high school entrance exam is buy a train ticket to Huizhou to see you. I won't do anything else, I'll just go to your school cafeteria and eat all the braised pork, leaving you not a single piece!"

"Okay, I'll wait for you to come and eat."

Chen Zhuo readily agreed.

Zhang Qiang snorted on the other end.

After venting their anger, the brothers brought their conversation back to the same topic.

"Seriously."

Zhang Qiang's tone became a little more serious.

"What have you been up to lately? Old Zhao keeps bragging about you researching world-class problems, but what exactly are you researching?"

Chen Zhuo stared at the ceiling.

A world-class problem?

That's true.

But he knew that if he talked to Zhang Qiang about topological manifolds, algebraic geometry, or the Hodge conjecture, it would be like talking to a brick wall.

Chen Zhuo pulled his feet back from the railing.

"Old Zhao is just bragging; he hasn't researched any major issues."

Chen Zhuo spoke the truth.

"I was busy for a while, and I've finished the most mentally taxing tasks. Now I'm doing all sorts of low-skill work every day." "Low-skill work?" Zhang Qiang asked, puzzled.

"What do you mean?"

"It's just taking a pen and looking at a stack of papers covered with writing."

Chen Zhuo described his daily routine in a private room in the old library.

"Read it line by line, cross out the useless parts, and mark them with a red X. No need to use your brain, just pure physical labor, mechanical repetition." Zhang Qiang was silent on the other end of the phone.

With the cognitive level of a junior high school student, his brain, filled with exam-oriented education, began to work frantically, trying to understand the meaning of Chen Zhuo's words.

Pick up a pen.

Looking at the paper.

Mark it with a red cross.

Purely manual labor.

Mechanical repetition.

As soon as a few keywords were combined in Zhang Qiang's mind, a picture instantly formed.

Holy crap.

Zhang Qiang lowered his voice, his tone filled with shock and sympathy.

"Chen Zhuo, is copying as punishment popular at your school too? Or is it...?"

Zhang Qiang gasped.

"Were you drafted by your teacher to be a helper? To grade homework or papers for the younger students?"

Chen Zhuo was taken aback.

Grading homework?

He glanced at the several drafts on the table, which were covered with a bunch of variables.

In a sense, eliminating useless variables is indeed similar to grading homework and finding mistakes.

Chen Zhuo did not explain.

Sometimes, misinterpreting is much easier than painstakingly explaining.

"More or less."

Chen Zhuo gave a vague reply.

This response completely confirmed Zhang Qiang's suspicions.

"I knew it!"

Zhang Qiang's tone changed instantly on the other end of the phone.

The slight imbalance caused by the braised pork and sunbathing vanished instantly.

Instead, there was deep sympathy.

"All crows are black! What's with the nation's top university, what's with the gifted program? Go there and you're just free labor for the teachers! Every day you're like an assembly line worker marking things with a red pen, your life is worse than mine!"

Zhang Qiang sighed, speaking with the air of someone who had been through it all.

"Brother Zhuo, you've suffered. That's how capitalists exploit the working class. You have a good temper, so they'll definitely only dote on you." Chen Zhuo held his water glass, listening to Zhang Qiang's imagined tragic story of being ruthlessly exploited by his unscrupulous tutor. He couldn't help but twitch his lips twice. "It's okay, I'm used to it."

Chen Zhuo continued speaking, following his lead.

"Don't try to tough it out. Your wrists will hurt from grading too many papers. Remember to shake your hands more often."

Zhang Qiang gave earnest advice.

"Alright, seeing how miserable you are, I feel better. After I finish my exams, I'll have my mom buy a roast chicken, wrap it in oil paper, and mail it to you to help you recover."

"Okay, I got it. Add less salt," Chen Zhuo said.

"They have quite a few requirements."

Zhang Qiang muttered something on the other end of the line.

Sudden.

A loud bang came from the background of the phone call.

It sounded like someone kicked the door open.

Immediately afterwards, a rough voice with a heavy regional accent rang out in the corridor.

"Why are you running around in the hallway instead of taking a nap at noon?! Are you trying to rebel?!"

Chen Zhuo recognized that voice all too well.

Old Zhao.

Zhang Qiang was clearly startled as well.

A flurry of noise came from the phone, as if Zhang Qiang had quickly hidden it inside his clothes.

The voice became muffled.

"Holy crap, Old Zhao's wandering around! He's heading towards the restrooms!"

Zhang Qiang's voice was urgent and panicked.

"I'm not going to talk to you anymore! I need to sneak back! I still have an English lesson to memorize this afternoon! Bye, bye, bye!"

The call was abruptly ended, leaving only a long busy tone on the receiver.

Chen Zhuo put his phone away.

I casually placed my phone on the window next to me.

Then he leaned back in his chair, picked up his water glass, and took a sip.

The sunlight outside slowly shifted, and the light climbed from his stomach to his chest.

A few boys occasionally passed by downstairs, loudly discussing which internet cafe they would go to play games at night.

Chen Zhuo closed his eyes.

Listen to the rustling sound of the wind blowing through the camphor tree leaves.

A gentle breeze was blowing.

In dormitory 215, only the clock on the wall made a slight sound.

Tick.

Tick.