Shift! The Side-Character Heroine

Meanwhile, it was the same old Sunday, Zhao Youyue was crazy enough to attend the night self–study session, after all she was having her final term exam in two days’ time. Even though she performed averagely in studies. But when it came to exams, she knew it was time to be serious and would seize every minute and every second, thus bringing the idiom “burning the midnight oil” to a whole new level.

In terms of exams, Zhao Youyue was not skilled in answering difficult questions, but she could handle the others like a piece of cake. At the very least, she would not lose marks on simple questions. She was not particularly weak in any subject, and so her results did not have a lot of ups and downs.

It was previously mentioned that she was not able to compose an essay that could astound the markers like Han Leng. However, with her neat handwriting, clean pages, along with the template of one main point, three sub-points and numerous historical figures with examples in her argumentative essay, she was able to nail the paper.

For this seventy-mark paper, Han Leng could normally score around 60 and 65 if he performed well. As for Zhao Youyue, her essays were never below the 58 mark tier, but also, she had never achieved anything higher than that. Even if there was a difference, it would be negligible. Perhaps her actual writing skills should earn only around 55 marks, but owing to her neat and tidy handwriting that gave a good impression for the marker, her actual score increased.

Mr. Qiu never asked Zhao Youyue to read her essay aloud, as there was nothing special about it and her writing skills were way too normal. Still, he would project her paper onto the screen as a good example for reference, encouraging the other students to look up to her neat and tidy works. This was the rare opportunity she could reflect her sense of presence to others.

Mr. Qiu also mentioned if Han Leng could improve his messy handwriting, and made his work neater and tidier in all ways, his essay actually had a sporting chance to achieve full marks.

Mr. Qiu could not help to grumble about Zhao Youyue’s essay. He complained to her not to use the same instances such as Han Xing, Si Maqian, Newton, Edison etc. over and over again, why couldn’t she have placed in some new names as her examples?

Zhao Youyue would pretend to accept Mr. Qiu’s advise, but when the exams came, she would still stick to her old writing style without changing a single thing. Anyhow, she was able to get a relatively high score with this style of writing, and it was not by some dumb luck. So what for wasting her brain capacity to learn new names just for… examples?

Zhao Youyue was really looking forward to obtain the power of the “Xu Jing’s possession”. Once “Xu Jing” became an iconic character, she would be able to allow Xu Jing to possess herself in real life. Moreover, she also wanted to gain the ability of Xu Jing’s addiction towards studying. This was mainly because she could only concentrate for a maximum of 20 minutes during class hours. Then, she would be staring blankly into thin air. She actually felt terrible for wasting time, at least playing with her phone was better than doing nothing. Unfortunately, she was not brave enough to use her phone in the open, as that was too difficult for her to handle…

Once she had the ability of the “Xu Jing’s possession”, such incidents would never happen again. When Zhao Youyue was in the manga world, she had experienced the seriousness Xu Jing could get when being involved in studying. She felt that Xu Jing’s obsession with studies paralleled the obsession with her phone. Without them, they would both feel very anxious and uncomfortable, just like a fish without its water.

If Zhao Youyue could remember precisely, the ending for “Pure Romance” would be released somewhat today. It all came down to the influence of “Pure Romance” whether “Xu Jing” could become an iconic character for the readers or not.

Before the night self-study session began, there were some extra time where students had finished their dinners and returned to their respective classrooms. Of course, some students would take this opportunity to freshen up themselves at their dormitory, so that they would feel energetic enough for the session later.

It was during this hour, a sudden bustling noise came from the classroom’s corridor had caught many student’s attention.

Currently, Zhao Youyue’s seating had been changed closer to the window, which was seated by the corridor of the classroom. She was not exactly seated by the window as Jiang Qing was in between. Her seating was originally at the inner side of the classroom, by the window. However, everyone’s seating would change by groups every two weeks.

Actually, her current sitting position was pretty dangerous as Mr. Qiu was a cunning person. He liked to observe the class from behind while passing by quietly. If Zhao Youyue took her phone out in the open, she was very likely to be caught red-handed by Mr. Qiu. Therefore, whenever her seat was the first group near the corridor’s window, she would be in great pain. She must pretend to be concentrating in the morning classes without playing her phone for two weeks. Even when she was in the second group, she would be highly vigilant about her surroundings. Only in the third or fourth group, she could use her phone freely as her humanoid radar could work perfectly, not to mention she had aid from her little angel, Jiang Qing.

Zhao Youyue had no interest in the ruckus happenings outside the classroom. She was taking the self-study session seriously, as she intended to revise everything from the last semester and redo all the questions she had answered wrongly. Those difficult questions would still be unanswerable, but at the very least she could answer those easy and moderate questions accurately. She only hoped she could achieve top 20 with this final exam results. Therefore, she played with her phone till she was satisfied with her leisure time before settling down for her night self-study session.

She came to study with her classmates in school mainly because of the learning atmosphere. She was also afraid that she could not control herself near mobile phones and ended up using them till she was asleep. When she woke up, she would feel regretful and worried that she would flunk her final term exam.

If she was studying together with her classmates in the classroom, with a cunning teacher like Mr. Qiu, he would definitely be observing everyone from the shadow. Out of fear and respect to Mr. Qiu, she could then force herself to concentrate on her revision.

Therefore, study was as if a mission impossible for Zhao Youyue. It was also why she yearned for the ability “to be addicted to study” after getting the power of “Xu Jing’s possession”. The D-day, was finally near.

Just when Zhao Youyue was too lazy to care about the fuss outside her classroom, her desk mate Jiang Qing tapped on her shoulder gently when she was playing with her phone. She sounded surprised when she said, “Jiang Chao is surrounded by a few boys from our class, and their leader is Xu Haitao, aren’t they supposed to be good friends?”

Only then Zhao Youyue put away her phone, and saw approximately four or five guys had surrounded Jiang Chao at the edge of the corridor. Their expressions were a mixture of anger and sorrow, and Xu Haitao looked as if he wanted to f*ck Jiang Chao’s ass. Jiang Chao kept grumbling, “I’m so stupid, how would I know that Su Li…” Just like Lady Xiang Lin [1], he had the face of a man who had nothing to live for.

Translation Note:

[1] Lady Xiang Lin (祥林嫂) is a character in Lu Xun’s novel “The New Year’s Sacrifice”. She was a querulous woman who always looked depressed, and her name is used by Chinese to refer to someone who behaves like her.