I was a top student in America.

The next morning, Li Ao woke up ten minutes before the alarm clock rang.

There was a noise coming from the living room; Grandma had gotten up.

He walked out of the room and saw the old lady hunched over wiping the stove, on which was a pot of mushroom soup, probably a cheap canned food she had bought from a supermarket nearing its expiration date.

"Grandma, let me do it."

Li Ao walked over, took the rag, wiped the stove a couple of times, and then ladled out the soup and put it on the table.

Grandma straightened up, glanced at him, and said nothing.

While eating breakfast, Li Ao noticed a piece of paper magnetically attached to the refrigerator door—last month's rent payment reminder.

Three hundred and fifty dollars, not a penny less.

In the blank space on the form, a ballpoint pen scrawled a row of expenses: electricity bills, medicine costs, church cleaning wages...

After adding and subtracting, there's a number that's circled in the end:

"-$307".

The monthly shortfall is over three hundred.

Even with the laundry job Grandma just found, which pays four dollars an hour and she works twenty hours a week, it's barely enough to cover the shortfall.

The premise is that the person cannot get sick or make any mistakes.

Li Ao lowered his head and finished his soup without saying a word.

Then, he quietly put the bowls and chopsticks into the sink, rinsed the handle, and looked back at his grandmother who was still slowly drinking soup at the table.

"Grandma, I'll go check out that gym job I mentioned yesterday after school."

"Go on," Grandma said without looking up. "Don't be late, and don't argue with people. Come back when you can't work anymore, don't force yourself."

"understood."

Before leaving, he glanced at the refrigerator one last time.

307.

He remembered that number.

Upon arriving at school, Li Ao, as usual, immersed himself in doing practice problems during the morning classes.

After memorizing vocabulary in English class, I flipped through math problems; in history class, I flipped through math problems as soon as the teacher turned around—just like the previous two days.

But he kept thinking about how to earn money to get through the winter.

Working part-time at a gym is barely a source of income, but it relies entirely on physical labor to earn time, which is not a long-term solution.

At that moment, he suddenly remembered the gossip Jamal had casually mentioned the night before:

Daryl, the defenseman in 12th grade, lost his athletic scholarship because his application essay was terrible.

This might be a business opportunity.

In his past life, he wrote at least eight hundred, if not a thousand, application essays for sports scholarships. He knew how to create a persona and how to hit the sore spots—he could do the whole packaging process with his eyes closed.

Back in Beijing, he used this skill to help many rich kids get into prestigious schools. At that time, the starting price for polishing a single article was two thousand yuan.

If this were moved to the South Side of Chicago in 2006, it would be a complete disaster for these athletes who couldn't even write a coach's recommendation letter.

Even if you only earn a few dozen dollars per article, as long as you gain fame, you won't have to worry about living expenses.

Of course, now is not the time to rush into opening.

I need to secure a stable job at the gym first, and once I have a steady income, then I can figure out how to break into that circle.

You have to eat one bite at a time.

……

After school, Li Ao did not take the school bus.

Instead, he walked straight to the public library on 61st Street.

The library has a small entrance, sandwiched between a closed dry cleaner and a grocery store selling cheap phone cases.

Two homeless men were sprawled on the steps, chugging beer. Li Ao stepped past their legs, and no one paid him any attention.

Pushing open the glass door, it was fairly quiet inside.

A few rows of old bookshelves, a dozen or so tables, with three or four people sitting here, including an old man dozing off and a young mother with her child who came to enjoy the warmth.

Li Ao went straight to the mathematics and physics section on the second floor.

He remembered seeing a set of blue competition books when he was teaching students in his previous life. He searched for them twice based on his memory, but couldn't find them.

Finally, they found a dusty copy of "AMC Questions and Answers" at the very bottom of the shelf. The cover was curled up, indicating that no one had touched it in a long time.

He flipped through the pages again and pulled out an old book with the title "Basic Methods of Mathematical Competitions" printed on the cover. Inside, someone had made annotations in pencil, the handwriting was terrible, but the organization was still quite clear. It must have been left by someone who had seriously studied for competitions.

The two books together should keep him occupied for a while.

He took the book to the front desk, took out his student ID, and borrowed it.

The librarian was an elderly Black woman wearing reading glasses. She glanced at the book titles and looked at him over the top of her glasses.

"A math competition?"

"Um."

The old lady didn't say anything more, scanned the barcode, and pushed the book over.

I picked up the book; it was still early outside.

He had planned to sit in the library and do some practice problems, but then thought better of it.

Since I promised Grandma I'd go to work at the gym, I should go early rather than late, to appear diligent and leave a good impression.

He left the library, turned around, and strolled along the street all the way to 65th Street.

The "Iron Box Gym" is hidden in the basement of a red brick building. There is no sign, just a "GYM" sprayed in red paint on the iron gate, along with a crooked arrow.

A beat-up pickup truck with peeling paint leaned against the door, its back bed crammed with several discarded tires.

Li Ao pushed open the door and entered. The smell of sweat and rust hit him, making him cough.

The space here is cramped, with rows of old equipment crammed full, and the walls covered with boxing posters and photos of bodybuilding competitions.

A radio in the corner was playing hip-hop music, though the volume wasn't very loud.

There weren't many people around at this time of afternoon; only two or three people were practicing.

Behind the counter sat a bald, burly man wearing a faded vest, looking down at a newspaper.

Li Ao walked over and said, "Hello, my name is Leo. Lisa from the church recommended me. She said they're looking for people to do odd jobs here."

The bald man raised his eyelids and glanced at him.

"Lisa said... You're that Chinese kid?"

"right."

"The job is simple: move equipment, wipe down fixtures, mop the floor, and help customers install barbell plates. It's six dollars an hour, paid in cash, no insurance or benefits. Being late once will result in an hour's pay deduction, and causing trouble will get you fired."

The bald man tossed the newspaper aside: "Go get to work. Ask me if you don't understand anything. Be here at four o'clock every afternoon from now on. Try it out for a week."

Li Ao nodded without saying anything more.

It costs six yuan per hour, two hours a day, and about three hundred and sixty yuan a month.

We're still a little short of money for winter, but it'll cover most of it.

We'll deal with the rest once we find clients who want their documents written.

It was getting dark when I left the gym.

He quickened his pace and walked back. As he passed the intersection of 63rd Street, a luxurious black Escalade slowly glided past, hugging the curb.

The car window was half open, and a deep rapping voice drifted out from inside.

Li Ao didn't look up, kept his pace, and continued walking along the sidewalk.

In the South District, don't look at what you shouldn't look at, and don't stop where you shouldn't stop.

When I returned to room 306, Grandma was already asleep.

On the dining table was a large bowl upside down, with half a bowl of warm leftover fried rice underneath.

He quickly ate and washed the dishes, then picked up his schoolbag and went inside.

I turned on the desk lamp, took out the two books I had borrowed that afternoon from my schoolbag, and stacked them on the table.

He opened the first book and started looking at the table of contents.

Counting principles, permutations and combinations, foundations of number theory, geometric transformations...

The table of contents lists twelve chapters, from basic to advanced, and its logic is much better than the pile of lousy textbooks that schools give out.

He first flipped to the first chapter and skimmed through a few example problems.

These are basic permutation and combination problems. The thought process is clear, and there is some overlap with what we learned in high school textbooks, but the questions are quite tricky.

He could see the solution to some problems immediately, and he needed to stop and think about some of them, but there were none that he was completely baffled by.

It seems I haven't completely forgotten the high school math I learned in my previous life.

He closed the example problems and opened the back to the exercises, starting with the pages with pencil annotations.

The previous owner drew a lot of arrows and question marks in the "Construction Method" section, probably because he was stuck for quite a while.

Following the annotations, Li Ao read on. Halfway through, he realized that the other person was stuck at the exact spot where he had just stopped.

He picked up a pen and casually drew a checkmark next to the big question mark.

The broken streetlights outside the window flickered a few times and then went out completely.

A message pops up on the panel.

[Focusing on studying... Intelligence +0.1]

Li Ao closed the book and rubbed his sore eyes.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be doing algebra during the day, working at the gym after school, and then studying math competition material in the evenings.

Time is tight, but it should be enough.

……