Chapter 131: Paper and Compensation

The tip of the pencil scraped across the answer sheet. A dry rustle. Like spring silkworms chewing leaves. Lin Chen's gaze locked onto the first multiple-choice question. A long prompt. Imagery analysis in modern Chinese reading. He marked the key terms fast. Elimination. B. Fill in the bubble. The movement flowed without a break.

The numbness in his left foot was spreading up into his calf. The tape had been wrapped too tight; blood was having trouble flowing back. Every ten minutes, he made a slight adjustment to how he sat and let his right leg take more of his weight. The proctor paced back and forth at the lectern. Leather shoes striking the terrazzo floor. Tap. Tap. Tap. Time was being cut into exact sections. 2:45. Modern reading finished. Shift to classical Chinese. Content words, function words, sentence translation. He silently recited the rules for segmentation. The pencil did not stop. Sweat seeped from his temples and dripped onto the edge of the paper, spreading into a small blot of ink. He didn't wipe it away. He kept writing.

3:10. The math paper came down. Lin Chen turned to the first page. The first eight multiple-choice questions. Basic problems. He worked them quickly. On the scratch paper, the formulas were lined up in neat order, like soldiers in formation. Question nine. Solid geometry. The auxiliary line required spatial imagination. He closed his eyes and built the model in his head. Three seconds. Opened them again. Wrote. The line went down. He wrote out the proof step by step. No skipped steps. No omissions. He knew the grading was done by steps. One more line meant one more point of safety.

3:45. The long problems reached functions and derivatives. Second part. Parameter discussion. Lin Chen's pencil stopped. The conditions were complicated. Too many cases. He drew in a deep breath and sketched a tree diagram on the scratch paper, splitting the parameter range into three parts. Differentiate each one separately. Determine monotonicity. Find extrema. Close the logical chain. He looked up at the wall clock. 4:05. Forty-five minutes left. He had to leave time to check the bubbles and the first parts of the final two problems.

Then the pain in his left foot turned suddenly sharp, like a red-hot needle driven into his ankle bone. The edge of the gauze had already rubbed raw, and the seepage had soaked through the tape, sticking to his skin. He stopped writing. Shifted all his weight onto his right leg. Let the left foot hang. Raised it slightly. Waited for the spasm to pass. Two inhales, one exhale. Heart rate down. The pain faded back into background noise. He kept writing. His finger joints had gone white from the force. Sweat had made the pencil slick. He switched it to his left hand. Awkward grip. Still enough to finish.

4:20. Final problem. Analytic geometry. Simultaneous equations. Vieta's formulas. Too much computation. Lin Chen did not force a full calculation. He used special values first to test the choices and eliminated two of them. Two remained. He substituted the conditions from the prompt and checked the symmetry. The answer surfaced. He wrote down the key steps, not the complete calculation. There was no time. He had to choose. Secure the basic points. Give up the full derivation. He had written that strategy three times already in his notebook of corrected mistakes. The college entrance exam was not a competition. It was a points game.

4:45. The bell rang for collection. The proctor started taking the papers. Lin Chen put down the pencil and pushed the answer sheet forward. Checked his admission number. Verified it. No mistake. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The burning in his lungs slowly subsided. The noise in the classroom flooded back in. Pages turning. Pencil cases being packed away. Low voices comparing answers. Someone sighed. Someone laughed. Lin Chen opened his eyes, sorted the test paper and scratch paper, slipped them into his bag, and pulled the zipper shut. The sound was light.

He stood. His left foot touched the ground. A violent stab of pain nearly made him stumble. He caught himself on the edge of the desk, his knuckles bluish with strain. When the dizziness passed, he edged out of his seat and walked out of Room 307. The corridor was packed. Some people were crying. Some were laughing. Someone was squatting in the corner smoking. Lin Chen kept to the wall, avoiding the crowd. Down the stairs. Forty-two steps. One hand on the railing, moving down one level at a time. All his weight on the right leg. The left hanging useless, like a piece of dead wood. Sweat had soaked through the back of his school uniform. The wind hit it and turned it cold.

He came out of the Experimental Building. The evening sun over the track stretched every shadow long. He went to the bike shed and wheeled out his old bicycle. The chain was rusty. The brakes were bad. He still hadn't replaced them. He mounted it, pushed off with his right foot, kept his left hovering over the pedal, and rode slowly out the school gate. The road back to town. Thirty li. The asphalt rose and dipped. Every pothole squeezed the wound in his left foot. Blood had seeped through the gauze and stained the edges red. He ignored it. Just kept his eyes on the road markers, calculating distance, calculating time, calculating margin.

6:20. He reached the town bus station. He locked the bike in its old spot and went into the waiting hall. Bought a bottle of mineral water. One compressed biscuit. Sat in the corner and ate slowly, drank slowly. Warmth returned to his stomach. Strength began to flow back. He opened the ledger, crossed out "First mock exam, afternoon session," and wrote: "Completed. Margin: zero."

His phone vibrated. A new text message. Sender: Provincial Polytechnic Admissions Office. "Verification result has been entered into the system. Please keep your phone available. Further arrangements will be communicated separately."

Lin Chen stared at the screen. He did not reply. He put the phone back in his pocket, closed the ledger, and leaned against the back of the chair. The fluorescent lights in the waiting hall were a dead white, shining on his dust-caked trouser legs and the worn tips of his shoes. He knew the first mock exam was only a scale mark, not the end point. The real test room was in June. The real margin had not even begun to be counted.

He closed his eyes and silently recited the next node in his head: June 7. Chinese. 9:00 sharp.

The bus had not arrived yet. But the road was already laid out. He took out the notebook of corrected mistakes and flipped to the last page. Blank space. He wrote: First mock exam, math. Missed boundary conditions in derivative classification. Minus three points. Fix before June. Physics. Steps jumped in the electromagnetism problem. Minus two points. Fix before June. Chemistry. Wrote the wrong instrument name in the experiment question. Minus one point. Fix before June.

Outside the window, night was falling. The mountains in the distance had blurred into one dark mass. The waiting-hall broadcast sounded off another muffled departure notice. He opened his eyes, tucked the notebook into his bag, and stood. His left foot touched down. The pain was still there, but his gait had steadied. He walked to the gate. Handed over the ticket. The turnstile gave a beep. He climbed the steps, found a window seat, and sat. The document pouch rested on his knees.

The bus doors shut. The engine roared. The vehicle pulled out of the station. The street outside began to slide backward. He closed his eyes and recalculated in silence. Not margin. Increment.

Tomorrow. Morning self-study. Six o'clock. Notebook of corrected mistakes. Third pass. Derivatives.

The bus picked up speed on the national highway. Wind poured in through the half-open window, carrying the dry heat of early summer. He did not know whether the verification result from Provincial Polytechnic would change his application form. He did not know whether the injury in his left foot would hold out until June. He did not know whether his homeroom teacher would call him out during class meeting for missing the first mock exam.

He only knew this: the scale was still there. The pen had not stopped.

He reached into his bag and touched the verification receipt stamped in red. The paper was rough. The red ink stood slightly raised.

He tucked it into the notebook of corrected mistakes and closed it.

The bus drove into the night. Ahead, the streetlights came on one by one, like a dashed line with no end. He watched those points of light. His breathing stayed even. His heartbeat fell into the rhythm of the wheels.

Tomorrow. Six o'clock.