Chapter 106: Threshold

The static hiss of the radio was still echoing at the street corner. Lin Chen stood outside the newsstand, unconsciously rubbing the rough cover of his ledger with his fingers. Hard quota. Baseline. No supplementary documents accepted. Those nine words were like three rusty nails, prying back open the logic he had only just managed to close. He lowered his head to check the time. 11:42. There were two hours and eighteen minutes left until two in the afternoon. He needed to eat, needed to catch a bus, needed to carve this new variable into his mind.

He turned and went into the noodle shop across the street. Plastic stools, a paint-chipped wooden table, a faded price list pasted on the wall. He ordered a bowl of plain noodles and added a spoonful of the free chopped scallions. The soup was scalding hot, and he ate quickly. Once his stomach had some warmth in it, his mind began to rearrange itself. The provincial admissions office had already stamped his papers. The fact that his documents had been accepted could not be changed. But the notice on the radio was a bottom-level rule of the provincial student-status system. If he missed Wednesday morning's mock exam, the system would record a zero. A zero would fall below the baseline, and Provincial Polytechnic's file system would automatically trigger a return. The guarantee letter would become void. The deferred-exam application would become void. He had to sit the mock exam. He had to take it. And he had to clear the line.

He pulled out a pen and crossed out the old phrase on the back of the ledger: "dual-track parallel." Then he wrote again: Core objective: sit the mock exam on Wednesday morning. Bottom line: total score ≥ baseline. Secondary objective: make sure Provincial Polytechnic's verification process is not interrupted by an absence. Cash remaining: 3.2 yuan.

What was the baseline? He did not know. But in previous years at County No. 1 High School, the independent-admissions baseline had usually been around 65 percent of the total mock-exam score. Full score was 750. Sixty-five percent was 487.5. His average over the last three mock exams had been 462. He was short by 25 points. Under normal conditions, 25 points could be made up through method points on the final big problems in physics and math. But his current condition was this: his left foot had gone numb, long walks triggered compensatory pain severe enough to warp his gait, and if he sat in an exam room for three and a half hours, his right leg and lumbar spine would collapse before his brain did.

He emptied the bowl, paid, and walked out of the noodle shop. The coach station was around the corner. He took a step, and when his left foot touched the ground, the numbness had already turned into a hollow heaviness. He adjusted his center of gravity and shifted his canvas bag onto his right shoulder. The bus arrived, and he squeezed on through the rear door, standing near the back. The carriage smelled of sweat and damp leather. He closed his eyes and began breaking down Wednesday morning in his head.

07:30 County No. 1 High School mock exam begins. 11:00 Exam ends. 11:15 Leave the exam room. 11:30 Arrive at the county coach station. 12:00 Depart for the provincial capital. 14:00 Provincial Polytechnic verification window closes.

The timing meshed too tightly. It would take twenty minutes to walk from the exam room to the coach station. At his current pace, he could only manage sixty steps a minute. Twenty minutes meant twelve hundred steps. Just enough. But only on the condition that, when the exam ended, he could stand up immediately, and that the long period of sitting had not brought the circulation in his lower body to a complete halt. He opened his eyes and watched the streets outside the bus window slide backward. The city's tall buildings gradually gave way to squat houses and farmland. The rank smell of wet soil after the rain crept back into his nose. He put a hand into his pocket and touched the copy of Fundamentals of Electronic Information Experiments. The corners of the book were already curled. He needed to secure the method points on the big physics problems in the science section. He could not leave the second question in analytic geometry blank. In Chinese and English, he had to keep the losses on objective questions within fifteen points. Those missing twenty-five points had to be scraped out of the cracks.

At 1:40 in the afternoon, the coach arrived at the southern county station. He got off, and when his left foot came down on the gravel road, a sharp stab of pain shot from his ankle into his calf. He stopped, gripped the iron pole of the station sign, and took a deep breath. Cold sweat soaked through his undershirt. He did not rub the injury; he simply waited for the pain to pass. Three minutes later, he started walking again. There were still four kilometers to the school. He could not take a ride. The fare would be two yuan. Two yuan was the money to photocopy the key pages tomorrow. So he chose to walk.

His pace was slow, but steady. His left leg was like a wooden stick filled with lead, dragged forward only by the strength in his right leg and lower back. Every step produced a faint grinding sound in the meniscus of his knee. There was no complaint in his mind, only data: step frequency, transfer angle of his center of gravity, breathing rate. He treated pain as a parameter that needed managing, not as a source of emotion. When he passed the construction noticeboard at the entrance to town, he stopped and added another line to the ledger: Road conditions for Wednesday: construction on the national highway still ongoing. Probability of delay for the first morning coach: 30%. Contingency plan: leave school at 11:40 and walk to the coach station.

At 3:20, he pushed open the back door of Senior Year Class 7 at County No. 1 High School. The classroom was empty. Only the chalk marks the duty student had failed to wipe clean remained on the blackboard. He went to his seat and set down the canvas bag. From the desk drawer he pulled out the last three mock exams and spread them open. Red-pen corrections crowded every page. He took out a sheet of scratch paper and began recalculating his score.

Chinese: 102. Most of the lost points were in the essay and in punctuating breaks in classical Chinese. Mathematics: 98. The second question in analytic geometry was blank, and on the third derivative question he had only earned method points. English: 115. Three mistakes in the cloze test. Science: 147. He had omitted units in the physics experiment question, stalled on the chemistry inference problem, and written the biology long-answer question in an imprecise way. Total: 462.

He stared at the total score and tapped the tip of his pen on the paper three times. The baseline of 487.5 was like a sluice gate suspended over his head. He needed to make up 25.5 points. Raise the Chinese essay by 5 points. Take the full 6 points on the second analytic geometry question. Add 7 points each from the physics experiment and chemistry inference problems in science. Gain another 2 points through more standardized phrasing in the biology long answer. Twenty-seven points in all. Just enough to clear the line. But all of that rested on one premise: normal performance. Could his foot support him through three and a half hours of sitting?

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. His homeroom teacher, Old Chen, came in with lesson plans tucked under his arm. When he saw Lin Chen, he froze for a second. "Lin Chen? Weren't you at the provincial admissions office turning in your papers? Why are you back at this hour?"

"The documents have been accepted," Lin Chen said, rising to his feet, his voice steady. "Now I'm waiting on the transcript supplement."

Old Chen walked closer. His gaze dropped to Lin Chen's faintly trembling right leg, then to the cold sweat on his forehead. "What happened to your foot? It's swollen like that and you're still running all over the place?"

"An old injury. It won't affect the exam."

Old Chen sighed and set the lesson plans on the lectern. "Are you sure you're taking Wednesday's mock exam? The academic affairs office just sent out a notice. This mock exam's scores will be linked directly to the provincial system. If you're absent, you'll be marked as a zero. There won't be any make-up opportunity. In your condition, if you force yourself through it and do badly, you'll only drag down your file."

"I have to take it," Lin Chen said, looking at him. "What's the baseline?"

Old Chen was silent for two seconds. "The province just issued a new directive. This year's independent-admissions baseline has been raised to 490. Fifteen points higher than last year."

1. That was 2.5 points higher even than the 487.5 Lin Chen had calculated. The scale marks in his head began jumping again. 2.5 points. On an exam paper, that might be the option on a multiple-choice question, or the balancing coefficient in a chemistry equation. But in reality, it meant he could not afford a single mistake.

"Understood," Lin Chen said.

Old Chen looked at him, his expression complicated. "In your condition, it already takes effort just to stand straight. How are you going to sit the exam?"

"I'll apply for a special seat in the exam room." Lin Chen pulled a sheet of paper from his canvas bag and handed it over. "This is the diagnostic certificate from the county hospital. I'll apply for an aisle seat and permission to stand up during the exam to relieve the pain. The academic affairs office has approved requests like this before."

Old Chen took the paper and looked it over, but did not sign it immediately. "Lin Chen, I'm not trying to stop you. But 490 isn't a gap you can fill with willpower alone. On the physics long problem in science, you only got method points last time. If you run out of time this round, you may not even get those."

"I'll adjust the order I answer the questions," Lin Chen said. "I'll do the physics experiment and chemistry inference first to lock in the basic points. In math, I'll give up the third part of the final problem and save the time for analytic geometry. I'll outline the Chinese essay ten minutes early. For the English cloze test, I'll rely on feel and not get bogged down."

Old Chen stared at him for a long time. In the end, he signed the diagnostic certificate and stamped it with his personal seal. "Go register it with academic affairs this afternoon. I'll have your seat adjusted. But let me say this first: if you can't hold on in the exam room, raise your hand and turn in your paper. Don't try to carry it by brute force."

"Understood."

After Old Chen left, the classroom fell quiet again. Lin Chen returned to his seat and tucked the diagnostic certificate into the ledger. He opened Fundamentals of Electronic Information Experiments, and his eyes settled on the circuit diagrams in Chapter One. Resistors, capacitors, inductors. Series circuits, parallel circuits, voltage division. When current meets resistance, it looks for the path of least resistance. People do the same.

He closed the book and took an old tin box from the drawer. Inside were a half stick of chalk and an eraser. In the blank corner of the blackboard, he wrote two digits: 490 Then he began drawing from memory the circuit diagrams for physics experiment questions. His left hand braced on the desk, his right hand holding the chalk. The numbness in his left foot had already spread to his knee, but he did not stop. The chalk scratched softly across the board. Chalk dust fell onto his fingertips, and he blew it away gently.

Outside the window, the sky gradually darkened. The red light on the distant radio tower switched on. Tomorrow was Saturday, and the school would still have regular classes. He needed to register with academic affairs, needed to go back over the science-section mistakes, needed to confirm the exact location of Wednesday's exam room. Margin for error had already been compressed to the limit. But the scale was still there.

He turned to pack his schoolbag, ready to leave. Just as he reached the door, a few seniors were gathered in front of the bulletin board at the far end of the corridor, talking.

"Did you hear? Chen Hao from our school is on Provincial Polytechnic's verification list." "Chen Hao? He only scored 450 on the mock exam. How did he get in?" "He's going through the competition recommendation channel. It doesn't count against the regular admissions quota. And... I heard Provincial Polytechnic set up an internal supplementary test in the provincial capital this year. If you get the qualification for that test, the baseline can drop to 460."

Lin Chen stopped in his tracks.

460.

He stood in the shadows, listening as the voices of those students gradually faded away. In the ledger inside his head, a new page had turned. Supplementary-test qualification. Internal channel. A baseline of 460. Rules were never truly an iron plate. They only appeared hard to the people who did not know they existed.

He pulled out the ledger and, beside 490, lightly drew an arrow. Pointing toward a blank space. Variable: internal supplementary test. Path: unknown. Cost: to be calculated.

He pulled the zipper shut on his canvas bag and stepped into the night. The pain in his left foot was still there, but his breathing had already evened out. Tomorrow, he would go to academic affairs first. Then he would go find Chen Hao.