Huayu: That year, I withdrew from the Super Boy competition.

About ten minutes later, Feng Tuo finally walked out of the classroom with his hands behind his back.

As soon as his footsteps disappeared at the end of the corridor, the atmosphere in the entire classroom visibly relaxed.

Some people turned their hushed recitations back to normal volume, while others moved the extracurricular books they had hidden under their desks out. Two boys in the last row had already started exchanging glances, preparing to slack off.

Wu Can immediately came back to life.

"Su Wei!"

He leaned in, his large body pressing down on the table so much that it tilted slightly toward Su Wei.

The chair leg screeched as it scraped against the ground.

"Tomorrow's Sunday, any plans? Want to come to an internet cafe with me? I found a really interesting website last week, it's really—really—interesting."

When he said it was "particularly interesting," his eyebrows almost flew off his face, and the corners of his mouth twitched upwards. If you were to screenshot that expression and post it online, the caption would only be three words: "You know what I mean."

Su Wei stared at him expressionlessly.

The two stared at each other for three seconds.

Fatty Wu felt a little guilty under his gaze, but he still stubbornly refused to look away.

Su Wei finally spoke, lowering her voice and speaking with a strong sense of disdain: "Fatty Wu, what's so interesting about that kind of thing? You're so childish."

"Su the Fox!"

Fatty Wu blushed and immediately became anxious.

"What are you pretending to be, some innocent high school boy? Which guy doesn't have a few of those websites bookmarked? And you call me childish, acting like you're so mature?"

Su Wei was too lazy to argue with him and turned to look out the window.

This means that the topic ends here.

Fatty Wu was left standing there, his mouth opening and closing repeatedly, until finally he could only awkwardly touch his nose.

But the fat guy's biggest advantage is that he's thick-skinned.

The awkwardness lasted only three seconds before he came over as if nothing had happened.

This time his expression was much more serious, his voice was lowered, and he looked mysterious.

"Alright, alright, let's not talk about that. I have something important to tell you."

Su Wei glanced at him sideways.

It's no wonder he didn't believe it; it's just that Fatty Wu has never done anything "serious."

"I heard from my uncle-in-law—"

Wu Can leaned his head forward another half inch.

"After this final exam, we'll have to take extra classes for a while. Apparently, we'll be learning all the senior year courses in one go, and then we'll have to do a full review in senior year. That means we only have about twenty days of summer vacation."

Su Wei paused for a moment while turning the pages, but didn't react much.

This is really not surprising, after all, he had already experienced this once in his previous life.

"By the way, are you confident about your final exams this time?"

Fatty Wu looked at him, and for once, he put away his playful smile.

"I heard that you patted your chest in front of Lao Feng to make sure you could participate in the competition. You said you couldn't fall behind in the exam, is that true?"

Su Wei's finger stopped on the textbook.

A beam of sunlight slanted in through the window, landing on the corner of the table and casting a small, bright patch of light on the edge of the textbook.

He stared at the patch of light and remained silent for two seconds.

Then a smile curved his lips.

"good."

He said calmly, "Although I'm not at school, I read books in my free time. It's not a big problem."

This is not bragging.

During those two months at the "Male Voice Academy," while others would fall asleep immediately after rehearsals, he would flip through a few pages of the review materials he had brought with him before going to bed.

While it's certainly not as efficient as doing practice problems every day at school, it's not like you're completely clueless.

The foundation is there; picking it up is much easier than starting from scratch.

Upon hearing this, Fatty Wu gave him a thumbs up: "Amazing!!"

His tone was seven parts sincerity and three parts admiration.

After all, someone who dares to say "it's not a big problem" after being absent for two months is either genuinely confident or just stubbornly refusing to admit it.

Based on his understanding of Su Wei—it's most likely the former.

From the day they met, they had never seen him worry about exams.

After being serious for less than a minute, Fatty Wu turned around and started rambling on to his classmate behind him about just how "wonderful" that website was.

A few suppressed laughs came from the back row, clearly indicating that they were all well-versed in this art.

Su Wei automatically blocked out his voice.

It was just an ordinary morning.

It was no different from the hundreds of mornings that had passed.

Su Wei lowered her head, took out a set of math papers, and started working on them.

…………

That evening, I went home after evening self-study.

Instead of going straight to her room as usual, Su Wei put her schoolbag on the sofa and sat down in the living room.

It's time to lay the cards on the table.

Zhou Qiao was sitting on the balcony reading a book. The electric kettle on the small table next to her was boiling water, and white steam was coming out of the spout in gushes, dispersing into a thin mist in the halo of the lamp.

Su Wei stood up, looked at her back, and pondered for a long while.

The reason he dared to reveal this hand is ultimately because he has good parents.

His parents graduated from a proper university in the 1980s.

College students in that era were different from those mass-produced students after the expansion of enrollment. Their qualifications were more valuable, and their thinking was relatively open-minded.

Besides academic books, the bookshelves at home are always filled with magazines like "Reader" and "Essays". The topics of conversation at the dinner table rarely revolve around grades and rankings; instead, they talk more about international news.

From childhood to adulthood, they have basically maintained a "big picture" approach towards Su Wei, while letting her handle the details.

As long as you don't cause trouble or go astray, you can do whatever you want.

It wasn't that they were blindly letting Su Wei run wild; it was mainly because Su Wei really didn't cause them much trouble.

Her grades are consistently among the top in the grade; she doesn't fight or cause trouble; and she's always the one who gets praised at parent-teacher conferences.

He was the "other people's child" that the neighbors were talking about.

"Mom, I have something to tell you."

"Say it."

Zhou Qiao didn't even look up, turning another page of the book in her hand.

The water boiled, and the kettle automatically switched off with a click.

Su Wei took a deep breath.

"I...may not go to a regular university like others in the future."

The sound of turning pages stopped.

Zhou Qiao looked up, still holding the book in her hand, her expression as if she had heard some unbelievable story.

She stared at Su Wei for a full three seconds before speaking, "What did you say?"

Su Wei poured out all the words she had rehearsed repeatedly on the way.

"That's right, I don't want to take the regular college entrance exam route, I want to go to an art school."

He paused, then added, "I want to study acting."

He himself felt a little guilty saying that.

In a top-tier high school like Shude High School, with over forty students in a class, only a handful choose the art exam route.

In the eyes of most parents, art exams are equivalent to "getting good grades without resorting to crooked methods".

Moreover, Su Wei's grades aren't bad, they're excellent.

In the eyes of traditional parents, a student with excellent grades who takes the initiative to say that he wants to apply to an art school is almost considered to be going against the grain.