Chapter 107: Scale Marks and Gaps

Early the next morning, the academic affairs office was still closed. Lin Chen leaned against the radiator at the end of the corridor, his left foot raised, his right planted on the floor. His canvas bag sat by his feet, holding the diagnostic certificate from the county hospital and the application form Old Chen had signed. A thin layer of dust coated the radiator's surface. The smell of rust mixed with disinfectant stood out sharply in the early-winter cold. He lowered his head and checked his watch. 6:50. Ten minutes before the office opened. In those ten minutes, he needed to force down the swelling in his left foot.

He untied his shoelaces and rolled his sock up above the ankle. The skin had already turned a dark purplish color, veins standing out like cracks in a dried riverbed. With the pad of his thumb, he pressed downward along the muscle of his calf, keeping the pressure even and avoiding the most painful spot on the outer side of the fibula. Seven passes. The numbness ebbed a little, replaced by a dull pain like needle pricks. He pulled the sock back on and laced the shoe again. The laces could not be tied too tight, or the blood flow would be restricted and by afternoon the foot would go completely numb; but they could not be too loose either, or the heel would rub the wound raw when he walked and blood would seep through the gauze. He made a double knot and adjusted it until the fit was just right.

At seven o'clock, the iron gate rolled open. Director Li from academic affairs came out carrying a thermos cup, and when he saw Lin Chen, his steps paused for a moment. "You're here early."

"I'm registering for a special seat." Lin Chen handed over the papers.

Old Li took them, glanced over the diagnostic certificate, and his brows knotted into a deep frown. "An aisle seat? This is the first full mock exam of senior year. Exam discipline is strict. If you stand up in the middle, what if you disturb the others? The room is fully covered by surveillance, and the proctors can come in at any time."

"The certificate states it clearly. Compressive nerve injury. If I sit too long, I'll go into spasms." Lin Chen's voice remained even. "I guarantee I won't make any noise, and I won't move more than three meters from my seat. The office approved a similar case last year—Zhao Zhiqiang from Science Class Three, lumbar disc herniation, granted an aisle seat. The exam rules allow for reasonable medical accommodations."

Old Li looked at him for two seconds without speaking. He unscrewed the thermos and took a sip; tea stems floated on the surface. Then he rummaged through a drawer for the seating chart and circled a spot in the third row by the aisle with a red pen. "It's on record. But let me be blunt first. If the roving proctors find you getting up too often, the invigilator has the right to collect your paper on the spot. It will be treated as an absence and scored as zero. There is no appeal."

"Understood." Lin Chen took the receipt. The edges of the paper were a little rough; he carefully checked the serial number, the date, and the official stamp. No mistake. He tucked the receipt into his ledger, lining it up with the deferred-exam application and the guarantee letter already inside. One more source of variance removed.

When he stepped out of the office, the sunlight was harsh. He went down the stairs, each step like walking on broken glass. The dull pain in his left foot had already spread to his knee. He held on to the wall and made his way slowly down to the first floor. At the school shop, he bought the cheapest bottle of mineral water, twisted it open, and swallowed two painkillers with the cold water. He had bought the tablets on credit yesterday from Old Zhao at the village clinic: 2.5 yuan, entered in the ledger. In the ledger, cash balance: -1.9 yuan. He closed the book and headed for the senior-year building.

Chen Hao's seat was in the first row by the window. When Lin Chen stopped beside his desk, Chen Hao was bent over a science practice paper. His pen paused, and he looked up. "Lin Chen? Need something?"

"The internal supplementary test for Provincial Polytechnic." Lin Chen came straight to the point. "How do you get the qualification?"

Chen Hao set down his pen and leaned back slightly, a flicker of scrutiny in his eyes. "Why are you asking about that? You're going through the regular admissions channel with supplementary documents."

"One more path." Lin Chen's tone did not change.

Chen Hao was silent for a few seconds, then lowered his voice. "The internal supplementary test isn't publicly announced. The province gives each key high school in each city three recommendation slots. Our school got two. One went to a student in the competition class, and the other... went to the child of one of my dad's former leaders."

Lin Chen did not respond. Information asymmetry was like a wall: transparent, but you still bled when you hit it. He looked at the Five Years of Gaokao, Three Years of Mock Exams on Chen Hao's desk. Its cover was already curling at the edges, and inside were several handouts from prep institutes in the provincial capital. He could not afford those handouts, and he could not make sense of the distribution of question types printed on them. But he knew this much: rules were never truly a single solid slab. They only appeared hard to people who did not know they existed.

"Is there a third slot?"

"There is." Chen Hao pointed toward the countdown board above the blackboard. "But that's for 'exceptional recommendation.' The requirement is a second prize or above in a city-level or higher physics or informatics competition, or... a joint guarantee from the homeroom teacher, plus a rank within the top fifty in the year on the first mock exam. You can barely stay on your feet right now. How are you going to place in the top fifty?"

Lin Chen looked at Chen Hao. There was no anger in him, no jealousy. Only calculation. Competition certificate: none. Top fifty in the year: current ranking seventy-eight. Homeroom teacher's guarantee: Old Chen had already signed the deferred-exam application; asking him to sign another guarantee would carry too much risk. The rules were rigid, but execution had gaps.

"When is the recommendation form due?"

"Monday morning. Submit it to the school office." Chen Hao looked at him. "Lin Chen, stop pushing it. At 490, if you just take the exam normally, it's not impossible. But the internal supplementary test is not water you can wade into. Provincial Polytechnic's test is practical work and on-site programming. You can't grind your way into it by doing problem sets."

"Got it." Lin Chen turned and left.

The corridor was very quiet. Only the chant of the morning exercises drifted over from the distant field. He went back to the classroom, sat down, and opened his ledger. Under Variable: internal supplementary test, he crossed out Path: unknown and wrote: Path: exceptional recommendation. Conditions: top fifty in year / homeroom teacher guarantee. Deadline: Monday morning.

He needed to move his rank up twenty-eight places. Twenty-eight places meant at least forty points on the exam paper. There were only two days left before the mock exam. He could not wait.

He pulled out his notebook of corrected science mistakes and turned to the sections on physics experiments and chemistry inference. His pen moved quickly across the page, breaking down the steps and marking the common traps: reading error on a vernier caliper, judging the endpoint on a burette, critical conditions in force analysis. He split each problem into three parts: given conditions, hidden conditions, scoring points. His left hand braced on the desk, his right held the pen. Under the desk, his left foot twitched faintly; he pressed it hard against the floor, using pain to keep himself alert.

At noon, he did not go to the cafeteria. He took out the cold steamed bun he had bought that morning from his schoolbag and swallowed it with mineral water. During afternoon study hall, he raised his hand to ask about an analytic geometry problem. After the math teacher finished explaining it, he nodded, went back to his seat, and kept calculating. Beside 490 on the blackboard, another line of small characters had appeared: Margin for error: 0.

At dismissal in the evening, Lin Chen packed his schoolbag. Old Chen stood in the doorway, looking at him. "Your seat's been approved. But over at the school office, someone asked about the exceptional recommendation form."

Lin Chen's movements paused. "Who asked?"

"Teacher Zhou from the physics group." Old Chen looked at him. "He said that if you really want to try, go find him Monday morning at seven on the third floor of the lab building. But Lin Chen, Teacher Zhou runs the competition class. The threshold is high. You may not even get through the door. He only looks at two things: competition certificates, or whether you can derive the problem he gives you on the spot."

"I'll go," Lin Chen said.

"Your foot..."

"I can walk." Lin Chen slung the canvas bag over his shoulder.

He left the teaching building. The night wind was cold. He took out the ledger and turned to a fresh page. He wrote: Monday 07:00, Lab Building 302. Variable: Teacher Zhou. Cost: unknown. He closed the book and lifted his head to look at the sky. The clouds were thick. There were no stars. But he knew the scale marks were still there. Tolerance had already been compressed to zero. The next step could only be a hard push straight through.