It Was Done by Sun Xiaochuan

During the lunch break, Shen Nian rushed to the cafeteria as always.

You just had to rush for the cafeteria, otherwise it didn't feel right. No one could stand the thought of the five-spice chicken leg that was supposed to go into their own mouth ending up being eaten by someone else.

Shen Nian ordered an extra chicken leg and had it packed in a plastic bag. After finishing his meal, he went up to the classroom. When Xia Yanchun came back from lunch, he handed it right over to her.

It was still a little warm.

Sitting at her desk, Xia Yanchun ate the chicken leg clean right out of the plastic bag, then wiped the grease from her mouth with a wet wipe. She said with gratification, "Little brother has grown up. He even knows how to honor his big sister now."

"Hilarious," Shen Nian said, giving a fake smile.

The bell rang, and the whole school seemed to quiet down at that exact moment. You couldn't hear the sound of wheels rolling over the concrete ground, nor the rustling from the class next door. The only sound was the cold wind seeping through the unclosed window cracks, making the curtains sway with a soft swishing noise.

Shen Nian sat at his desk, leaning on the table and turning his head to look at Xia Yanchun, who was also looking his way. They stared at each other.

"Should we celebrate the first lunch break of the semester?"

Xia Yanchun blinked her almond eyes, looking thoroughly confused.

"Is that worth celebrating?"

"Don't you understand a sense of ceremony?"

"That's great. Then you should also record the first hand-holding, the first kiss, the first hug, and the first time sleeping together this semester. You'll have to give me a gift every day."

"Ahem, I was just joking. You really are something."

"When I try to have a real sense of ceremony, you're not happy about it."

Some people just liked celebrating all sorts of holidays, and Xia Yanchun certainly didn't mind partaking.

She liked the feeling of celebrating holidays for three hundred out of the three hundred and sixty-five days a year, but she didn't know if Shen Nian could handle that.

Why was it that Shen Nian had to celebrate for her, and not the other way around?

Shen Nian already got to celebrate holidays for her, what more could he want? He couldn't just have all the good things to himself.

Xia Yanchun hummed. Once she was comfortably leaning on her desk, she finally took out her little pillow.

The day she went home, she specifically threw it in the washing machine. After spinning, drying, and airing it out for a day, she could now use it directly as a cushion. It was incredibly comfortable and even a bit warm.

Since the weather was so cold right now and Shen Nian didn't have a pillow, resting on the desk would be cold and hard. Feeling a burst of kindness, Xia Yanchun took out her scarf, folded it into a small pillow, and got up to deliver it to Shen Nian's desk.

"You're welcome," Xia Yanchun said, her eyes curving into crescents.

"I'm not going to sleep later anyway, so what's there to thank..."

"Are you really so heartless as to trample on my good intentions?"

"...Did you really use that phrase correctly just now?" Shen Nian looked at her with one eye squinted, but he still took the scarf.

However, he didn't immediately lie down on it. Instead, he buried his face in it and took a deep sniff.

How could it be so fragrant? It smelled ridiculously good.

"You're a bit of a pervert."

"No, I'm smelling my girlfriend's scarf. May I ask how that is perverted?"

"It's perverted anyway. No smelling allowed."

"I'm going to smell it anyway. Sniff sniff."

"..."

Xia Yanchun had guessed it. This guy had a rebellious streak. The more she forbade him from smelling it, the more he would take huge sniffs. If she had actively offered it for him to smell, he might have even wondered if she was plotting some scheme.

Like putting a stink bomb inside for him to smell or something.

Although such things had indeed happened in the past, she had long outgrown that kind of sick humor.

She had a feeling that in the future, Shen Nian would pervertedly sniff the clothes she had just taken off. Just thinking about it gave her the chills.

Having sniffed to his heart's content, Shen Nian unfolded the scarf, tied it around his neck, and started flicking the two little fluffy balls on it back and forth.

"If you're not going to sleep later, what are you going to do?"

"Study. If I don't work hard, how am I going to beat you in the second mock exam?"

"A balance of work and rest is the best approach, you know."

"But I'm not working."

Shen Nian scratched his face foolishly. A big cheat was still a small cheat, and a small cheat wasn't really a cheat. This was all just his persistence and hard work.

"You sleep so little every day, I don't even know if there's something wrong with your body."

Xia Yanchun had already decided that once the college entrance exams were over, she was definitely going to drag Shen Nian to the hospital for a full body checkup.

Given Shen Nian's past habits of never refusing high-oil and high-sugar foods, drinking sugary beverages every day, and staying up late like crazy to play games whenever he had the time, she found it hard to believe that his body was healthy. Although he had been working hard to exercise during their senior year, some ailments couldn't be cured just by working out.

Whatever was wrong with his body needed to be treated quickly. High uric acid, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, kidney deficiency, or even being too long—everything needed to be checked out.

"What could possibly be wrong with my body? I'm super healthy."

"Just study then. Who could possibly out-study you? I'm going to sleep."

Xia Yanchun puffed out her cheeks, sat back in her own seat, and leaned on her desk.

A moment later, she hugged her little pillow and moved to the empty desk next to Shen Nian. Under his surprised gaze, she sat down, laid her head to rest, and didn't say a single word.

Shen Nian chuckled softly. Chunbao really was... look how cute she is.

He reached his hand around, gently stroking the girl's soft ear with his fingertips. "Do you still need me to coax you to sleep?"

"Ugh, don't touch me, I'm sleeping."

"...Alright, alright."

Shen Nian leaned over and kissed the girl on the cheek, then left her be.

He didn't need to rest, but Xia Yanchun did.

Lying quietly, drowsiness soon swept over her entire body. Feeling sleepy, Xia Yanchun yawned and secretly watched Shen Nian work on his practice problems.

Oh no, why was it that the more she looked, the less sleepy she felt?

Xia Yanchun turned her face away, refusing to look at him.

Students of the same level couldn't stand seeing each other grind so hard, terrified that they would accidentally be left in the dust. In the past, Xia Yanchun loved nothing more than seeing Shen Nian study seriously, but now it was the exact opposite.

People really were fickle, just like herself.

It was obvious that sworn enemies shouldn't lie in the same bed, yet now the sworn enemy had become the girlfriend.

It was all that pighead Shen Nian's fault.

...

Shen Nian grew bored of doing practice problems. He had grabbed a random workbook and flipped to a random page, but eighty percent of the questions inside were ones he had already done, without even a change in the numbers. It was completely dull.

He had accidentally overdone the sea-of-questions tactic.

Now it really was just persistence and hard work. You probably couldn't find many people like him who had almost completely exhausted the college entrance exams, mock exams, and major standardized tests from every province.

He should have written the speech for the hundred-day countdown rally himself.

He could have just said that if you finish Five Years of Gaokao, Three Years of Mock Exams and then do a thirty-page workbook every day, you could be as amazing as him.

It was true; Shen Nian had already tested it. If they didn't believe him, others could try it too. If you haven't even finished the Five-Three and can't manage a workbook a day, how do you know my method is wrong?

In the blink of an eye, it was already afternoon.

Seeing that the bell was about to ring, Shen Nian simply closed his book and took a little rest himself.

He called it resting, but in reality, he was just staring at the back of Xia Yanchun's head—looking at her ponytail, the tips of her hair, and her neck, staring intensely.

The wake-up bell rang, and Xia Yanchun opened her sleepy eyes.

"Ugh—"

She stretched, sat up groggily, turned to look at Shen Nian, and suddenly threw herself onto him, rubbing against him lazily.

Once she had rubbed herself awake, Xia Yanchun finally pulled out of his embrace. "Hehe, did you study the whole noon break?"

"I did."

"Real-ly?"

"Real-ly."

"Society is already so fiercely competitive, yet you are still grinding so hard. Are you trying to leave the rest of us with no way out?"

"I just want to improve..." Shen Nian simply did not want to be beneath others. What bad intentions could he possibly have?

He wanted to achieve great success, so pushing himself to the limit was inevitable. However, he only applied this intense pressure to himself. He could not be blamed for the hyper-competitiveness of society as a whole; rumor had it that it was Sun Xiaochuan 358 who made this society so overwhelmingly competitive.