Chapter 528: Rainy Days and Final Exams Are a Perfect Match (Part 2)

Chapter 528 -230: Rainy Days and Final Exams Are a Perfect Match (Part 2)

You can’t walk fast on a rainy day, but you’ll always get there eventually.

The gray-white silhouette of the science building appeared hazy in the drizzle.

On the path to the science building’s entrance, seniors hurried along under their umbrellas.

The colorful umbrellas formed a single, shifting patch of color.

Students closing their umbrellas crowded the area beneath the science building, but they didn’t linger, quickly heading toward their respective classroom buildings.

The air was a mixture of dampness from the rain and the palpable tension that came before an exam.

Shen Yuan and Li Zhi arrived at Room 305 in the science building. After leaving their umbrellas by the entrance, they walked inside.

6:12 AM. Less than two hours until the final joint exams.

The lights illuminated a few scattered, empty desks. Shen Yuan placed his backpack by the leg of his desk, while Li Zhi headed for a seat by the window.

Neither of them sat down right away, their gazes sweeping across the somewhat crowded classroom.

The minutes ticked by. Footsteps and low murmurs began to sound in the hallway, growing closer, before students from Class 15 began to pour silently through the door of Room 305.

Every face was etched with varying degrees of gravity. The handful of lively students who usually loved to talk and laugh seemed to have had their mute buttons pressed.

There was no chasing or roughhousing, no loud discussions. All that remained was the soft scrape of chairs, the rustle of turning pages, and the faint whir of zippers on pencil cases.

Ah Jie swayed in, his backpack stuffed to the brim. He shot a quick glance at Shen Yuan and Li Zhi’s seats, his lips parting as if to yell something.

But his gaze landed on a nearby classmate silently opening a notebook of corrected mistakes, and he forced the words back down.

He simply shot a huge eye-roll in Shen Yuan’s direction, then walked to his seat with slumped shoulders, silently sat down, and pulled out his literature textbook.

He began flipping through it—WHOOSH, WHOOSH—the sound jarring in the oppressive silence.

Yang Ze and Chen Mingyu came in one after the other, only exchanging a look that screamed ‘Ugh’ before silently taking their seats.

The air in the classroom felt as if it had solidified into an invisible sheet of glass, weighing heavily on everyone’s shoulders.

The rain suddenly grew heavier, drumming relentlessly against the windows and adding to the oppressive atmosphere.

The gloomy light from outside and the stark white fluorescent light within combined to create an immense pressure chamber.

In the vast classroom, the only sounds were the ever-quickening rustle of pages and the tightening of breaths.

The final joint exams, an invisible mountain, came crashing down before their very eyes amid the cold drizzle and stark white lights.

As a joint exam administered by several of the city’s top high schools, it was guaranteed to be even more difficult than the midterm.

If they bombed this, there was no point even thinking about the upcoming provincial joint exams for the top-tier magnet schools.

And as it happened, Jiyang Middle School was one of them.

‘Just… so inspiring.’

The usual sounds of morning reading were absent in the science building; everyone was silently poring over the books in their hands.

The classroom’s front door was pushed silently ajar. The literature teacher, Zhou Ruolan, appeared in the opening.

Sister Lan’s calm, concerned gaze swept over the students, all with their heads down for the final sprint.

She didn’t speak, only tiptoeing inside. Like a silent shadow, she moved slowly through the aisles between the rows of desks.

She could clearly feel the anxiety permeating the air, along with their do-or-die determination.

Not long after Sister Lan left for the classroom next door, the familiar figure of their head teacher, Old Zhou, also appeared at the front door.

He didn’t walk deep into the aisles as Zhou Ruolan had. Instead, he stopped quietly by the doorframe, his eyes, creased by time but still sharp, habitually sweeping across the room.

He stood with his hands behind his back, his posture ramrod straight, like a general inspecting his soldiers before battle.

Old Zhou made no sound, simply standing there, his very presence adding weight to the solemn, pre-exam atmosphere.

The tense air in the classroom seemed to grow even heavier under the silent patrol of the two teachers.

As the clock hands slid silently toward 8:00, a sharp, familiar electronic bell suddenly blared throughout the school.

The sound shattered the stagnant air, striking every student bent over their desk like an invisible hammer.

Many students flinched instinctively, jerking their heads up from their textbooks and notebooks, their dazed expressions tinged with a harried panic.

A faint stir spread through the room like a ripple.

As the last echoes of the bell reverberated through the hallway, the figure at the front door moved.

Old Zhou didn’t step into the classroom. He just raised his voice slightly, his gaze scanning quickly over every face, some panicked, others feigning composure.

“Class monitor, come distribute the admission tickets.”

The class monitor, Xu Ziqiong, quickly took the admission tickets and began to pass them out.

Li Zhi, of course, was the first to go up and get an admission ticket.

Xu Ziqiong watched her approach and pulled an admission ticket from the very bottom of the stack.

It was Shen Yuan’s.

Even though Shen Yuan’s grades were much better now, his student ID number hadn’t changed.

“Go ahead and take both.”

Li Zhi pinched the two thin slips of paper between her fingers and turned to walk down from the teacher’s platform. The two small cards fluttered gently between her fingers.

She reached Shen Yuan in just a few steps, the ends of her hair, which fell over her shoulder, swinging in a small arc from the movement.

“Here,”

She said, holding out her hand. The tip of her index finger tapped lightly on the edge of the admission ticket with Shen Yuan’s name on it.