Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The first time I truly took notice of Qiao Shuheng was on the day the results for our first monthly exam in tenth grade were posted.

The hallway in front of the rankings wall on the first floor was packed tight. The September breeze still carried the summer heat, and the glass covering the rankings was fogged white from the breath of the crowd. I squeezed through the gaps in the throng, my eyes instinctively scanning the very top line.

First Place: Qiao Shuheng.

Second Place: Meng Wantang.

There was only a one-point difference in our total scores.

I stared at that single point, gritting my teeth so hard they nearly shattered.

The phrase I’ve hated most since I was a child is “just a bit short.”

Just a bit short of a perfect score; just a bit short of making the finals; just a bit short of taking first place. Others called it being excellent, but when it came out of my father’s mouth, it was reduced to a cold, “Second place is just the first loser.”

My father was a math teacher for the eleventh grade at our school, and he was notoriously strict. He had been a top student in his youth, but because his family was poor, he couldn’t attend the university he wanted most. Consequently, he projected all his unfulfilled obsessions onto me. He never asked if I was happy; he only asked if I was closer to first place than I was yesterday.

When my mother was still alive, she would always sneakily pull me away from my desk, press a segment of a tangerine into my hand, and say with a smile, “Wantang, first place is great, but there’s no shame in second. Life isn’t just about beating others.”

But my mother left us too early.

During the two years she was sick, the laughter in our home felt like it was being strangled away inch by inch. After she passed, my father acted as if he hadn’t heard a single thing she said-including her plea to “not push the child too hard”-except for five specific words. He took the phrase “from now on, you can only rely on yourself” and nailed it to my desk as his sole directive.

So, standing before the rankings wall after that first monthly exam, seeing that unfamiliar name sitting above mine, I had only one thought.

I was going to drag him down.

“If you stare at it any longer, is the score going to change?”

I turned around and saw a boy in a white school uniform standing behind me. He was tall with somewhat thin shoulders. His uniform was faded from washing, yet his cuffs were clean and without a single wrinkle. Most striking were his eyes-they were light in color, and when he looked at someone quietly, they held a sharp, almost chilling calmness.

I didn’t need to guess who he was.

Qiao Shuheng.

“You’re Qiao Shuheng?” I asked, staring him down.

He gave a curt nod, his expression as flat as if he were answering a question about whether he’d eaten yet.

“Next time, first place is mine,” I said.

He glanced at the rankings wall, then back at me. To my surprise, he let out a faint smile. “Okay.”

“What kind of reaction is that?”

“A normal one,” he said. “It’s a good thing that someone wants to beat me.”

I was instantly infuriated by him.

I hated that composure of his; it felt like he didn’t even consider me a threat. But what was even more infuriating was that from then on, Qiao Shuheng was like an immovable boulder, firmly lodged in the spot ahead of me.

During the second monthly exam, he beat me by two points.

During midterms, he was still first, and I was second.

By the second semester of tenth grade, our names were practically fixed at the very top of the grade rankings. The entire school knew that the Science Experimental Class had two monsters: one named Qiao Shuheng and the other named Meng Wantang.

Teachers used us as benchmarks, classmates used us as gossip fodder, and even the cafeteria ladies would smile while serving food and ask, “Who’s number one today?”

Between Qiao Shuheng and me, amidst this almost public rivalry, a strange set of rules began to form.

Whoever won got to make the loser bring them breakfast for a week.

The first time, I was the one who suggested it.

That day, I had finally beaten him by half a point on a physics unit test. My mood was so good I felt like I was flying. While he was handing back papers, I pressed a sticky note onto his desk.

“Soy milk and an egg pancake tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

After reading the note, he looked up and asked, “Is this a bet, or are you just bossing me around?”

“If you lose the bet, you accept the consequences.”

The next morning before early self-study, he actually placed soy milk and an egg pancake on the corner of my desk, along with an extra carton of warm milk.

I said, “Who told you to take the initiative and get this?”

But my hands were honest, quickly tucking the milk into my drawer.

He said indifferently, “You don’t eat sweets in the morning. Your hands shake when your blood sugar is low.”

I froze.

That was a physical quirk that had developed while my mother was still around. My hands would shake when I was nervous, and it was more obvious if I hadn’t eaten enough in the morning. Aside from my father and a few teachers I was close with, almost no one knew.

“How did you know?”

“During the last lab class, your hand shook three times while you were holding the burette.” He lowered his head to organize his papers, his tone as casual as if he were talking about the weather. “I saw it.”

After that day, I realized for the first time that Qiao Shuheng wasn’t completely indifferent to me.

He just didn’t say anything.

After the classes were split in eleventh grade, we were both selected for the Chemistry Competition Group.

The chemistry teacher was Teacher Zhou, a man who constantly preached that “only competition produces results.” During our first competition training session, he paired Qiao Shuheng and me together. Patting the lab bench, he said, “You two should stop hurting each other in the regular exam halls. Go to the Provincial Competition and hurt the others instead.”

The whole class burst into laughter.

I flipped through the lab manual without looking up. “Teacher Zhou, that’s assuming certain people don’t hold me back.”

Qiao Shuheng, who was preparing reagents nearby, simply replied, “How about you pay for the beaker you blew up last time first?”

I turned to glare at him. “That was a problem with the alcohol lamp!”
“Your hand is shaking.”

“Qiao Shuheng!”

He finally smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling into a faint, soft curve.

He didn’t smile often, so whenever he did, it felt like he was playing foul. That hint of amusement was always fleeting, yet it never failed to dissipate the anger I was trying so hard to bottle up.

Training for the Competition Group was far more grueling than regular classes.

Evening self-study ended at ten-thirty, but we had to stay in the lab building until eleven-thirty to work through problem sets. By the time we headed back to the dorms, the entire building was dark, with only the emergency lights flickering in the hallways. Qiao Shuheng and I would walk downstairs one after the other, our shadows stretching long against the floor.

In the beginning, we were purely rivals.

Whenever he finished a set of problems, I made sure to calculate my answers faster than him.

If my success rate in experiments improved slightly, he would manage to narrow his margin of error even further the next day.

I hated his stability-a level of strength that felt almost cruel.

But after spending so much time together, I had to admit that he wasn’t the cold-hearted academic god I had imagined.

He would toss me his own pair of gloves when I forgot mine.

When my face went pale after being scolded by my father in front of the teacher, he would silently carry the prepared reagents back to the lab bench for me.

When I skipped dinner to rush through problems, he would place the extra siumai the cafeteria lady gave him next to my scratch paper. His tone remained as indifferent as ever: “Eat before you try to snatch first place from me again.”

The first time I went to his house was on a rainy night.

We had been kept late for a Competition Group session, and by the time we left the lab building, it was pouring. There were almost no empty taxis at the school gate. As I stood under the awning, fretting over how to get home, Qiao Shuheng handed me a black umbrella from behind.

“What about you?” I asked.

“My house is close.”

“Liar.” I shot him a glance. “Your place is behind the old street. It’s at least a twenty-minute walk.”

He paused, seemingly surprised that I knew.

I hadn’t actually gone out of my way to find out. It was just that one weekend, while I was at the second-hand book market looking for competition materials, I happened to see him wearing an apron, clearing tables in front of a noodle shop. It was a windy day; he was bent over wiping a table, turning back to gesture toward the shop, signaling the person inside to turn down the heat on the stove.

I found out later that it was his mother’s noodle shop.

His mother had worked in a textile factory when she was young, but her ears had been damaged by the roar of the machinery. Her hearing had steadily declined over the years. Qiao Shuheng’s father had passed away early, leaving just the two of them to depend on each other. He attended classes during the day and helped out at the shop during evenings and weekends; during winter and summer breaks, he practically lived in the kitchen.

“Then let’s walk together,” I said, opening the umbrella. “You walk me to the intersection, and I’ll walk you back to the noodle shop.”

He looked at me for a few seconds, as if weighing the options, before finally stepping under the umbrella beside me.

The umbrella wasn’t large, so we stood very close. He smelled faintly of laundry detergent, mixed with the scent of rain and the lingering chill of lab reagents. Strangely, it felt grounding.

By the time we reached Laojiekou, the rain had intensified. An orange light glowed deep within the alleyway. Qiao Shuheng suddenly spoke: “Meng Wantang.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you particularly afraid of losing?”

My footsteps faltered.

Water droplets fell from the edge of the umbrella like a beaded curtain. I stared at the reflections shattered by the rain at my feet, not answering immediately.

After a moment, I whispered, “It’s not that I’m afraid of losing. It’s that I can’t afford to lose.”

He didn’t press for a reason.

He was silent for a few seconds before saying, “But every time you work on a problem, it looks like you’re fighting for your life.”

“Aren’t you the same?”

“It’s different.” He looked toward the noodle shop where the light was still on, his voice soft. “I know what I want. You… you look like you’re afraid of losing something.”

My chest suddenly tightened.

That was the first time someone had pierced through to the place I least wanted seen with a single sentence.

I was about to snap back with a stubborn retort, but he had already stepped out from under the umbrella.

“I’m here,” he said. “Go on home.”

I instinctively grabbed his backpack strap. “Qiao Shuheng.”

He turned around.

I struggled for a long time before finally squeezing out: “I’ll definitely beat you in the next monthly exam.”

He looked at me, his eyes holding a gentleness that seemed dampened by the rain.

“Okay,” he said. “Then remember to finish your dinner first.”

After getting home that night, I sat at my desk clutching my books, but I couldn’t process a single word. The rain continued to fall outside, and my mind was filled with that final look he gave me.

For the first time, I felt like this competition-which I had originally only cared about winning-was starting to feel a bit different.

What truly pushed us into the spotlight was something Teacher Zhou announced to the Competition Group during the first semester of our second year.

“For the Provincial Chemistry Winter Camp, the school only has one recommendation slot.”

The classroom went dead silent.

Almost everyone’s gaze fell on Qiao Shuheng and me at the same time.

Teacher Zhou paused intentionally, wearing a meaningful smile. “As for who ultimately goes, that will depend on your grades next semester and the internal school selection.”

Only one slot.

Which meant that this time, the loser would walk away with nothing.

I turned my head to look at Qiao Shuheng.

He was looking at me too, his expression calm.

Then, he pushed the competition handout toward my desk and said in a low voice:

“Meng Wantang, take this seriously.”

At that moment, I suddenly understood. The playful victories and defeats of the past were truly over.