The First Place He Gave Me - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

From the day the words “only one spot” were uttered, the thin veil of reconciliation that had existed between Qiao Shuheng and me was violently torn open.

We still sat together as lab partners, still entered the Competition Group classroom one after the other, and still instinctively looked up at each other when our answers matched.

But the look in our eyes had changed.

It was sharper, yet more restrained.

After the second semester of our sophomore year began, the school arranged separate evening training sessions for the Competition Group. Teacher Zhou emphasized the importance of that single spot every day as if he were on stimulants, and our classmates began comparing us, both intentionally and unintentionally.

“Qiao Shuheng beat Meng Wantang by three points in the comprehensive science mock again.”

“But Meng Wantang is more stable in Chinese and English.”

“My bet is on Qiao Shuheng in the end. Boys have a natural advantage in competitions.”

“Not necessarily. When Meng Wantang goes all out, she’s pretty terrifying.”

Those words pricked my ears like fine needles every single day.

On the surface, I pretended not to care, but inside, I was becoming increasingly high-strung.

Especially because of my father.

Almost every day, he would ask, “Have you been slacking off again lately? A child from a family like Qiao Shuheng’s works hard because he has no way out. What right do you have to lose to him?”

I hated it most when he mentioned Qiao Shuheng in that tone.

It was as if he were evaluating a test question, a score, or some quantifiable “condition.” It felt as if, in his eyes, Qiao Shuheng the person was nothing more than a collection of labels: “average family background,” “deaf mother,” and “needs the scholarship.”

Yet, I found it difficult to even talk back.

Because I knew that a part of what my father said was the truth.

During that period, Qiao Shuheng was clearly pushing himself harder than ever.

He attended classes during the day and helped out at the noodle shop after finishing competition training at night. Once, while staying up until two in the morning to grind through practice problems, I went out to the balcony for some fresh air and saw that the lights were still on at that noodle shop in Laojiekou. From across the road, I watched from a distance as he bent over to move a crate of beer. His movements faltered for a moment, and he leaned against the doorframe, head down, coughing for a long time.

The next morning during self-study, he sat as straight as ever, as if nothing had happened.

I looked at the dark circles under his eyes and wanted to speak several times, but I swallowed my words every time.

I didn’t dare.

I was afraid that if I softened my heart for even a moment, I would lose.

The first time I was truly stung was an accident outside the office.

That afternoon, Teacher Zhou called Qiao Shuheng in. I happened to be heading there to hand in a paper, and as I reached the door, I heard Teacher Zhou’s voice from inside.

“Have you thought it through? If the school ultimately conducts a comprehensive evaluation based on family situation, competition potential, and university placement results, you have the advantage.”

My footsteps halted abruptly.

Qiao Shuheng was silent for a few seconds before saying in a low voice, “I need that spot.”

“Meng Wantang is also very strong.”

“I know.” His voice was soft but steady. “But this time, I can’t yield.”

Standing outside the door, my fingers slowly tightened around the edges of my test paper.

He couldn’t yield.

So that was what he was thinking too.

It turned out that all that apparent gentleness and quiet care amounted to nothing when faced with the only opportunity that mattered.

I didn’t listen any further and turned to leave.

During that night’s competition class, I didn’t say a single word to him.

He seemed to sense it. When he passed me a piece of scratch paper, I pushed it back untouched. When he called my name after school, I acted as if I hadn’t heard him.

Later, he blocked my path in the hallway. “What are you angry about?”

I let out a cold laugh. “What right do I have to be angry? Don’t you already feel that the spot should be yours?”

He frowned. “What did you hear?”

“Does it matter what I heard?” I stared at him. “Qiao Shuheng, I was naive before. I thought you would at least be more upfront about it.”

“When have I ever not been upfront?”

“Then stop pretending you don’t care about winning or losing while privately fighting for the spot with the teacher.”

The moment those words left my mouth, I actually felt a twinge of regret.

Because the expression on Qiao Shuheng’s face turned cold almost instantly.

He looked at me, and after a long while, he finally spoke slowly. “Is that how you see me?”

I knew I should have been tougher, but for some reason, being looked at by him like that made my heart feel as if it were being tugged by something.

I said nothing.

He didn’t explain further either. He simply took a step back and cleared the way.

“Fine,” he said. “Then we’ll each win on our own merits.”

From then on, we truly became the most textbook definition of rivals in everyone’s eyes.

Monthly exams, weekly tests, competition simulations, lab practicals.

He and I were like two parallel lines; neither was willing to bow their head first.

He remained consistently first, and I occasionally overtook him.

Because I failed to take first place twice, my father’s expression grew increasingly grim. The atmosphere at home became so tense it felt like it could snap at any moment.

The most serious incident occurred on the day of the school’s Hundred-Question Joint Exam.

I hadn’t slept much those few days and felt dizzy before even entering the exam hall. By the time I reached the final question, my hand was shaking so much I could barely hold the pen. After leaving the exam, I leaned against the stairwell to recover for a long time. Just as I was about to stand up, my vision suddenly went black.

Someone caught me.

I didn’t even have to look to know it was Qiao Shuheng.

“Let go,” I said with my eyes closed.

“Your face is as white as a sheet.” His voice was pressed very low. “Meng Wantang, before you try to compete with me, can you at least stay alive?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Right, it shouldn’t be my business.” He sounded like he was laughing out of sheer frustration. “But if you really faint here, the first thing people will suspect is that I drove you to it.”

I looked up at him, and my eyes suddenly felt hot.

It wasn’t out of a sense of grievance; I was just tired.

But I still pushed him away and gritted my teeth as I walked forward. “Qiao Shuheng, stop playing the good guy. Don’t you want to win more than anything?”

After I said that, I heard a brief, soft silence behind me.
Then he said, “I want to win.”

My footsteps faltered.

A second later, he added another sentence: “But I never wanted to see you lose to yourself like this.”

When I went home that night, I had my first-ever argument with my father.

He slammed my test paper onto the table and asked why I had gotten the simplest experimental design question wrong. I told him I felt dizzy, but he only responded coldly, “Is Qiao Shuheng not dizzy then? If others can do it, why can’t you?”

Standing by the dining table, I suddenly felt as if a lump of red-hot cotton was lodged in my throat.

“Because I’m not Qiao Shuheng,” I said.

My father froze for a moment, his expression turning even more unsightly. “You’re aware you’re not him? Then you should be even more determined to succeed!”

In the end, neither of us ate that meal.

I locked myself in my room and slumped over my desk for a long time until my phone screen lit up.

It was a text message from an unknown number.

There was only one line of text.

“Left side of the desk drawer, glucose. Remember to drink it. Don’t tell anyone.”

I sat bolt upright and reached into the desk drawer. Sure enough, I felt a vial of oral glucose solution tucked deep inside.

I stared at the small glass bottle for a long time before finally twisting it open and drinking it.

The next day when I went to school, I originally intended to pay Qiao Shuheng back for the money.

But before I had the chance to speak, I stumbled upon another scene.

During the lunch break, I went to the lab building to retrieve some competition problems I’d forgotten in my locker. As I reached the stairwell corner, I heard someone on the phone.

It was Qiao Shuheng.

His voice was very low, different from usual, carrying a raspy quality that betrayed suppressed urgency.

“I know. I’ll find a way to get the money.”

“The surgery has been moved up to April? Fine, I’ll go sign the papers that day.”

“It won’t affect anything. I can manage.”

I instinctively stopped in my tracks.

The words “cochlear implant” were what first drifted into my ears during that phone call.

It felt like someone had struck me over the head.

I finally understood why he had been running to the hospital so often lately, why the dark circles under his eyes were getting heavier, and why he had said he needed that spot when Teacher Zhou mentioned the “comprehensive evaluation” that day.

It wasn’t that he was greedy.

It turned out he truly had a battle to fight from which there was no turning back.

But before I could process it, Qiao Shuheng sensed something and whipped his head around.

The moment our eyes met, the emotions on his face vanished instantly.

“You heard?” he asked.

My throat felt parched. “Your mother is having surgery?”

He paused for two seconds before giving a low grunt of affirmation.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Would it have mattered?”

That sentence left me speechless, unable to utter a single word.

He was right. Even if he had said something, what could have been done?

My family couldn’t give him the surgery fees, the school couldn’t provide an extra spot, and I couldn’t possibly hand over the opportunity I wanted just because I knew about this.

He looked at me, his tone actually calming down. “Meng Wantang, don’t go easy on me because of this.”

“Who’s going easy on you?”

“Good,” he said. “If you really want to win, don’t be soft-hearted.”

I gripped the test paper in my hand, but it felt as if a hole had been torn open in my heart.

After that, the relationship between Qiao Shuheng and me entered a very strange state.

We still competed.

We still wrote out solutions side-by-side on the blackboard, neither of us willing to skip a single step.

We would still argue over a balancing coefficient until the bell rang at the end of class.

But those truly stinging words were suddenly never spoken again.

During one mock experiment, because I hadn’t slept well the night before, I mislabeled a bottle of reagent. While the whole group was in a frenzy, Qiao Shuheng threw his own logbook directly to me. “Redo it according to this.”

I looked up at him. “What about you?”

“I have it memorized.”

“Don’t think I’ll be grateful to you for this.”

He looked at me, his gaze as clear and indifferent as water. “I didn’t want your gratitude anyway.”

The most intense conflict occurred three days before the final on-campus selection.

To ensure fairness, the school arranged for Qiao Shuheng and me to do a full-scale simulation in the lecture hall. After the exam, my father-who had somehow heard that we had been staying late together recently-called Qiao Shuheng directly into his office.

By the time I rushed there, the door wasn’t fully closed.

My father’s voice drifted out from inside, sharp as a knife.

“I understand your family situation. But my daughter is not a tool for you to relieve your pressure.”

Qiao Shuheng didn’t make a sound.

“Stay away from her during her most critical time. You two are not from the same world.”

I stood outside the door, my hands and feet turning cold.

A second later, Qiao Shuheng’s voice rang out.

It was low, yet every word was distinct.

“Teacher, I never intended to hold her back.”

“Better not.”

“I will stay away from her.”

At that moment, my head buzzed.

I burst inside, losing control in front of my father for the first time.

“What right do you have to talk to him like that?”

My father was stunned, likely not expecting that I, who had always been the most obedient, would suddenly talk back.

“Meng Wantang, get out.”

“I’m not going out.” My eyes felt hot. “What right do you have to decide for me who will influence me? What right do you have to speak of someone else as if they’re a burden? Do you even know…”

I didn’t finish the rest of the sentence.

Because Qiao Shuheng shook his head at me.

It was a slight movement, as if he were advising me not to continue.

I bit my lip hard, turned around, and ran.

That night, Qiao Shuheng really didn’t come to the competition classroom.

On the desk, there was only a notebook he had left behind. On the first page, a sticky note was tucked inside.

“Finish the last three sets of problems. Don’t waste time being angry.”

I stared at that line of text, feeling a particularly absurd sense of sorrow for the first time.
The final school selection was held in mid-April.

That morning was overcast. The sycamores outside the competition building had just sprouted new leaves, and as the wind blew, fragmented light scattered across the ground. When I entered the examination hall, Qiao Shuheng had not yet arrived.

Teacher Zhou checked his watch several times, his expression growing increasingly grim.

Five minutes before the exam began, Qiao Shuheng finally pushed the door open and walked in.

His school uniform collar was crooked, sweat beaded on his forehead, and his face was terrifyingly pale.

I stood up instinctively. “What’s wrong?”

He glanced at me, seemingly surprised that I would be the one to speak first.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Traffic was bad.”

Liar.

He was never late.

Once the exam started, I could clearly sense that something was wrong with his state of mind.

Halfway through the experimental procedure questions, the veins on the back of his hand were bulging, yet he remained frighteningly steady. There was an equilibrium calculation in the middle; he listed the steps on his scratch paper very quickly. I caught a glimpse from the side and saw that his steps were correct.

But on the formal answer sheet, he had actually left the final part of that major question blank.

My heart skipped a beat.

By the time I finished the entire paper and looked up, Qiao Shuheng had already handed in his exam early and left.

Even Teacher Zhou was stunned.

In exams like this, he was always the last person to leave the room.

The results came out quickly.

I was first, and Qiao Shuheng was second.

By one point.

The whole class was congratulating me, saying I had finally pulled him down from the top spot.

But as I looked at the grade sheet, I felt a profound hollowness in my heart.

Teacher Zhou’s expression was very poor as he hurried out with his phone. I instinctively followed him and heard him speaking in a hushed voice in the hallway: “Yes, the student just rushed over… His mother is having surgery today, but he insisted on coming for the exam first…”

I couldn’t hear the rest of his words.

I felt as if I were nailed to the spot.

The next second, I rushed back into the classroom like a madwoman and grabbed the competition notes Qiao Shuheng had left on his desk.

A folded piece of paper fell out from the first page.

It was a recommendation letter addressed to Teacher Zhou.

The name on it wasn’t his; it was mine.

“Meng Wantang has strong pressure resistance and solid fundamental experimental skills. She is suitable to represent the school at the winter camp. If only one person can be chosen, please prioritize her. My personal situation will affect subsequent training time, making me unsuitable to be the sole representative.”

The handwriting was so neat it didn’t look like a suicide note, yet it made my heart ache more than anything else.

Tucked behind the paper was a hospital payment slip dated today.

In that moment, I almost forgot how to breathe.

So, he hadn’t come to compete.

So, his so-called “cannot yield” meant he couldn’t allow himself to drag down a competition that should have belonged to me.

So, even though he had clearly calculated all the answers, he still left that final point blank for me.

I clutched the notebook and rushed out of the school gates. My hands were shaking the entire taxi ride to the municipal hospital.

The hospital corridors were filled with the smell of disinfectant.

When I found the ENT surgical area, Qiao Shuheng was sitting on a bench, his back slightly hunched, as if months of exhaustion had suddenly collapsed onto his shoulders.

He saw me and was visibly startled.

“Why are you here?”

I slammed the recommendation letter into his arms, my voice trembling. “Qiao Shuheng, are you out of your mind?”

He looked down at the paper and fell silent.

My eyes instantly turned red.

“What gives you the right to decide for me? What gives you the right to give me first place? Do you think this is noble?”

He looked at me, and after a long silence, he whispered, “I wasn’t trying to be noble.”

“Then what were you thinking?”

“I wanted you to go.” His voice was soft, but he enunciated every word. “Meng Wantang, the winter camp is more important to you than it is to me.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you truly see it as your future,” he said. “As for me… as long as my mother’s surgery is finished, I still have the Gaokao. I have other paths.”

“But that’s something you’ve fought for for a whole year!”

“You’ve fought for a year, too.”

The corridor became so quiet that only the sound of breathing remained.

I stared at him intently, unable to suppress my tears.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“And if I told you, then what?” The corner of his mouth quirked up in a faint, bitter smile. “Let you take the exam while feeling guilty? Or make you feel like I was using my family matters to bind you?”

I was suddenly speechless.

Because if he really had told me earlier, I probably would have been a mess.

He looked at me for a long time before lowering his voice even further. “Wantang, I’m not letting you win.”

“I’m just giving you the part that I can earn back for myself later.”

“Don’t think of it as charity. You have the ability to beat me. It’s just that this time, I wanted your path to be a little smoother.”

My tears fell even harder.

“I don’t want that kind of ‘smoother.'”

He suddenly reached out, his fingertip gently touching a tear on my face.

“But I want it,” he said.

“I want to see you standing somewhere further ahead of me.”

At that moment, the string in my heart that had been pulled taut finally snapped completely.

I suddenly understood that I was never afraid of losing to Qiao Shuheng.

What I feared was that before I even had the chance to admit I liked him, he had already paved the way for my retreat in a place I couldn’t see.

The light in the operating room went out then.

The doctor walked out and said the surgery was a success.

Qiao Shuheng visibly relaxed, like a string that had been strained for too long finally going slack. I stood beside him, and for the first time, I didn’t compete with him or act stubborn. I just said very softly:

“Qiao Shuheng, you just wait.”

He turned his head to look at me.

With red eyes, I said word by word, “I’m going to the winter camp. I’m taking first place. But from now on, you are never allowed to yield again.”

He looked at me and, after a while, gave a low hum of agreement.

“Okay.”