Chapter 115: Scale and Frost

The 11:00 minibus pulled into the station right on time. Lin Chen dragged his left foot as he stepped aboard. The coin slot only accepted coins, so he handed over a twenty-cent paper bill. The driver waved it off. "Forget it. Just sit in the back." The cabin was thick with the smell of cheap tobacco and damp wool. He chose the last row by the window, hugged his backpack to his chest, and kept his left foot suspended in the air to avoid rubbing against the seat in front. As the vehicle started, the chassis vibrations traveled up through the seat frame into his pelvis, slicing the numbness in his left foot into fine, stinging fragments. A low fever made his temples throb. He closed his eyes and mentally dismantled the changes to the answer sheet. The filling area had shrunk by half a centimeter, which meant the lead of his 2B pencil had to be sharpened to a finer point, and his writing angle had to drop from forty-five degrees to thirty; otherwise, the edges would easily bleed over. The optical mark reader had zero tolerance for overflow. A single misread would wipe out twenty points on the science multiple-choice section. He couldn't afford to gamble.

At 12:40, the bus stopped at the school gate. Lin Chen stepped off, his pace noticeably dragging. The numbness in his left foot had already crept past his ankle, his calf muscles feeling as heavy as lead. He leaned against the base of the wall and shuffled to the teachers' office building, knocking on Old Chen's door. Old Chen was bent over his desk grading papers. He looked up, didn't ask about the admissions office, and simply pulled a fresh sample answer sheet from his drawer, sliding it across. "The academic affairs office revised the layout overnight. The filling boxes are narrower, and the scanner's sensitivity has been turned up. Take it back and practice. You have to adapt tonight." Old Chen paused, lowering his voice. "The fourth floor of Building Seven is the old teaching wing. The stairs are precast concrete slabs with cracks running through the middle. With your foot, don't run before the exam. Climb slowly, catch your breath before you step into the testing room. An absence counts as a zero. I've signed the deferred exam slip, but if Provincial Polytechnic decides to block you, don't blame the school for not leaving you a way out." Lin Chen took the sample sheet, his fingertips brushing the rough edge of the paper. "Thank you, Teacher Chen." He turned and left without another word. Old Chen's warning was a statement of fact, not a comfort.

Back in the dorm, his roommates had already gone to the cafeteria. Lin Chen closed the door and spread the sample sheet across his desk. He dug the twenty-cent pencil out of his pencil case and used a small knife to carefully sharpen the lead. Wood shavings fell onto a sheet of waste newspaper; he gathered them up to save for kindling. Once the tip was shaped, he tested it on scratch paper. First stroke: too much pressure, the lead snapped. Second stroke: wrong angle, the line came out faint. He adjusted his breathing, suspended his wrist, and used his fingertips to control the downward pressure. Thirty-degree angle, light touch on the paper, steady drag. The line finally landed inside the box, edges crisp, no burrs. He repeated the motion fifty times until muscle memory took over. The stinging in his left foot intensified, and the low fever made the edges of his vision blur. He unscrewed his thermos, poured out the last bit of warm water, mixed it with cold, soaked a towel, and pressed it against his left ankle. The water cooled quickly. He changed the towel once and propped his foot up. He opened his ledger and wrote: 13:20, sample sheet acquired. Filling angle calibrated to 30°. Left foot cooled with water. Balance: 0.2 yuan.

By dinner time, long queues had already formed at the cafeteria serving windows. Lin Chen didn't go. He fished out half a bag of compressed biscuits from under his bed, leftovers from running an errand for the old accountant the previous week. He broke off a piece, swallowed it dry, and washed it down with cold water. With something solid in his stomach, the hunger was suppressed. He opened his science error notebook and sorted the past three years of multiple-choice questions by topic. Physics electromagnetic fields, chemistry organic inference, biology genetic maps—next to every wrong answer were notes on "reason for point loss" and "correction parameters." He didn't need a sea of practice questions; he just needed to plug every leak. Outside, the sky darkened. Footsteps and laughter echoed in the hallway. The dorm was quiet enough to hear the scratch of pencil on paper. He simulated filling in the answers, checked them against the key, and recorded his time. The standard time for a science multiple-choice section was forty-five minutes. He had taken fifty-two. With the filling area reduced, even the slightest hand tremor would be magnified. He had to compress his time back to under forty-eight minutes before the exam.

At nine o'clock, the bell signaling the end of evening study rang. Lin Chen closed his error notebook, packed the sample sheet and pencil into his backpack, and headed to the washroom to get some hot water for a foot soak. He found only biting cold water running from the tap. The pipes had frozen. He stood there for a moment, then turned back to his dorm. Without hot water, he could only wrap his left foot in a dry towel to minimize friction. He lay down and stared at the ceiling. The low fever hadn't broken; instead, it made his body feel heavy. He pulled out his Nokia. The screen glowed with a pale blue light. No new messages. He flipped to the calendar. Wednesday's date was circled in red. 9:00 AM, the first mock exam begins. 9:00 AM, the deadline for Provincial Polytechnic's document verification. Two timelines intersected at the exact same coordinate. He closed his eyes and mentally mapped out the route: Building Seven, fourth floor, climbing the stairs would take eight minutes. The exam room had no heating, requiring him to arrive ten minutes early to acclimate to the temperature. Filling in the answers would need an extra three minutes of buffer. If the exam started sharply at nine, he had to be seated by 8:45. The document verification was at the county education bureau, one hundred and twenty kilometers from the school. The deferred exam slip was signed, but missing the verification window would void it. He had to complete the verification before nine, then rush back to the exam room. It was impossible. Unless... He opened his eyes. Unless the verification could be delegated, or the education bureau's window opened early. He sat up, took out his ledger, and flipped to a blank page. He wrote: Plan C: Feasibility of delegated verification. Education bureau early-shift window opening time. Exact location of the crack on the Building Seven stairs. The pen paused. He needed to confirm one thing: Wednesday morning's weather. If it rained, the dirt roads would turn to mud, and the minibus would be delayed. If it snowed, the stairs would ice over, doubling his climbing time. He couldn't rely on guesswork.

He walked to the window and pushed it open a crack. Night wind rushed in, carrying the dry chill of early winter. The distant streetlights cast a dim yellow glow, failing to reach much further. He pulled his hand back and closed the window. Returning to his desk, he tuned his Nokia to the weather forecast channel. Tomorrow daytime: cloudy turning overcast. Nighttime: temperature dropping to minus three degrees Celsius. Frost expected. Lin Chen's fingers tightened slightly. Frost meant slippery roads and longer braking distances for the minibus. The steps at the education bureau might be coated in a thin layer of ice. He had to add another variable to his ledger: anti-slip measures. He dug to the bottom of his backpack and pulled out a scrap of old bicycle inner tube and half a roll of adhesive tape. First thing tomorrow morning, he'd have to go to the repair shop and ask the boss for some sandpaper to roughen his shoe soles. Time, stamina, funds, weather. Every scale was tightening. He closed the ledger and lay down. His breathing gradually steadied. His left foot remained numb, but the gears in his mind had already engaged. Wednesday's scale had to be recalibrated. Outside, the wind swept through bare branches, producing a fine, rustling friction. Like a pencil gliding across an answer sheet—light, but irreversible.