Chapter 4

Li Lan hadn't got to sleep until one in the morning, but she woke the next day full of energy. Partly it was a young body with plenty in reserve. Partly she was worked up about having thought of a way to make money. Partly she couldn't help a certain excitement at being about to start middle school over again. And partly it was that she'd skimmed the study guides she'd sorted out the night before and found things were a good deal better than she'd feared, which gave her some confidence about the exam four months off.

She spent the morning packing, and at four in the afternoon she and Li Cheng set off for the bus station on the east side of town, loaded with bags. Zhao Xinxin was already waiting when they got there. Far fewer people went to school in the county town then than would a few years later, and apart from people heading out to find work, the three middle-schoolers had the bus to themselves.

The town and the county town were easily connected by a provincial road, and the bus took only half an hour. But the station at the other end was a fair way from where the girls lived, and you could either take a three-wheeler or walk. None of them was willing to part with the fare, so naturally they walked.

It was about half past five by the time they reached the flat. Li Lan dropped her bag on the sofa the moment she was through the door. "Oh, at last. That bag weighs a ton." Half an hour under a stack of books had left her back aching.

"Serves you right. Nobody told you to bring that many," said Li Cheng, thoroughly enjoying it.

She had watched Li Lan pack. On top of the books she'd taken home before the winter holiday, Li Lan had jammed in every study guide she'd dug off the bed, in a fit of nerves. With that lot in it, whose bag was going to be heavy if not hers?

"It's the last term, isn't it. I want to revise properly." Li Lan lay on the sofa with no intention of moving.

"True enough. Last term already." Li Cheng nodded, then turned to her with a slightly severe look. "But Li Lan, the exam's nearly here, so no novels for a while. Or at least leave them till after."

On the matter of what they called each other: there wasn't much between them in age, and they'd always been together, so the three of them simply used each other's names. Big sister, little sister and little brother came out only when somebody wanted a favour.

Li Lan had never had much sense of being the eldest either. She fought over things exactly as she always had, and if Li Cheng or Li Jingyu came out with "sis" for no reason, it would probably give her gooseflesh.

Back to the point. Li Cheng had her reasons. Ever since Li Lan discovered novels at the town's middle school there had been no stopping her. She managed two months when they first came to the county town, and after that she was renting novels daily from a bookshop next to the school. Up all night reading, asleep all day — and over three years her marks went down rather than up.

When she started, Li Lan had done badly in the entrance exam, but she'd had half a year of middle school in town behind her, and on that advantage her marks in the first year were quite good. Top ten in her class, even.

Then in the second year she started on novels, secretly took out a rental card with her living-expenses money, and that was the end of it. Her marks fell in a straight line through the second and third years. In the first year she'd been going to the county middle school's selection tests as one of the top ten; by the second and third she was only there to watch.

Which was why Li Cheng was being so serious about it. Li Lan's foundations weren't bad. It was the novels that had cost her, and with proper revision she might still get into high school.

Li Lan knew perfectly well why her sister was saying it. But the Li Lan of middle school had no self-control, and the one sitting here was another matter. This one wanted nothing but to study, wholeheartedly.

"Don't worry, I'm definitely not reading any more. I'll go and cancel the card in a bit," she said.

"Oh yes?" Li Cheng looked at her, unconvinced. Li Lan had said things like that before, and come back the same day with a book under her arm.

Once, she had actually cancelled the card at the bookshop by the school. Li Cheng had believed the reading was over — and inside a week Li Lan had a card at a different shop. Not even a week.

"Of course. Anyway, the novels are all rubbish now, and I want to get into a good high school," Li Lan promised.

Li Cheng decided to believe it for the moment. Perhaps Li Lan really did know the exam was coming and meant to work. "That's agreed, then. If you rent one more novel, I'm telling Mum," she said, threateningly.

She had always kept it from home before, afraid Chen Ying would hit her sister over it. This time she'd decided she wasn't covering for her any longer: one more novel and she would be straight on the phone.

Only after Li Lan had promised several times over did Li Cheng let it go, still half doubting.

"All right, I expect Li Lan knows the exam's coming and won't bother. It's nearly six — let's go and eat." Zhao Xinxin came out of her room with her things sorted, cutting across the sisters.

"Fine, I'll believe you this once. What are we having, though?" Li Cheng dropped the subject and turned to working out food with Zhao Xinxin. An hour and a half of travelling had left all three of them starving.

"You two go. I'm going to the bookshop to cancel the card," said Li Lan. She remembered there'd been a deposit on it. She had no idea how much, but every little counted.

"Right, we won't wait then. Shall we bring you something back?" Zhao Xinxin asked.

Li Lan patted the small stomach that hadn't eaten and still stuck out, sighed, and lied. "No need. I'm not hungry."

"Don't bother about her, she's on a diet. Let's have malatang," said Li Cheng, after a moment's thought.

The two of them settled on that and went off to the little place next door. Li Lan turned the bed over and, sure enough, found a rental card under the pillow — along with a novel she'd apparently taken out before the holiday and never returned.

Well. With form like that, no wonder Li Cheng didn't believe her. She didn't believe herself. In her last life, as she vaguely recalled, she had studied hard for two months for the exam and still kept a novel on the go, right up until a fortnight before.

Li Cheng had been so angry that time that she'd rung Chen Ying, actually dialled the number, and only a great deal of pleading and a long string of promises had stopped her saying anything.

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The county town the three of them went to school in was called Minhe. It was small, but it hadn't stood still: by the time Li Lan was reborn there was a high-speed rail station on the east side and a good many new buildings. The centre hadn't changed much, though, and on a scrap of memory and surroundings both strange and familiar, she found the bookshop without trouble.

Book returned and card cancelled, she went back to the flat. The other two weren't home from dinner yet, so she took a set of papers out of her bag — handed out before the holiday — and set about giving herself a mock exam. The study guides had looked passably familiar when she skimmed them, but she reckoned only a paper would tell her where she actually stood.

So when Li Cheng and Zhao Xinxin came back from eating, they were treated to the rare sight of Li Lan not reading a novel but working, properly, through questions.

The two of them exchanged a look and saw the same surprise in each other's faces. Zhao Xinxin gave Li Cheng another glance: see, she really does want to get into high school. She's actually studying.

There was some surprise in Li Cheng's eyes too. Perhaps this time the promise was worth something.

Seeing Li Lan, of all people, working at questions, the pair of them felt a certain fighting spirit rise. They didn't disturb her; they crept into their own rooms, got their books out, and started studying too.

Li Lan knew they were back, of course, but she was sitting an exam, so she said nothing.

Chinese first. Hm. The classical poetry was mostly gone. Comprehension she could do. Correcting faulty sentences, all right. Composition, no trouble at all.

Maths next. Hang on, was it this easy? Then why had she kept failing it last time round? Although — what was the formula for the area of a triangle? A trapezium? The surface area of a cone? And what were the congruence theorems?

English: nothing to it, easy, done. Physics: ah. She'd taken humanities last time round and had forgotten all of it. Chemistry: same as physics. Politics and history were open-book, so she could just about answer those.

Three hours later, having marked herself, Li Lan sat frowning at the papers in front of her. Right. This was bad.

She had celebrated far too early. She'd assumed that a postgraduate could hardly be defeated by a middle school entrance exam, and that confidence had collapsed entirely in the face of the physics paper. Defeated was exactly the word.

Six hundred marks, not counting the fifty for PE — and she could currently manage four hundred and something?

Maths was all right; the geometry and some of the formulas were hazy but she could answer the rest. The real disaster was physics and chemistry. Beyond a few things anyone would know, she had no recollection of either subject at all.

She pulled the physics and chemistry textbooks out and put them on the desk. At least middle school physics and chemistry only started in the second year, so there were two books to revise, and what was in them was as basic as it got.

She leafed through and found she could follow it, which was a small relief. Following it was fine. It was not being able to follow it that would have been humiliating — a disgrace to reborn protagonists everywhere.

Having worked out how few marks she'd scored, Li Lan started laying out a study plan. In four months she was going to get that figure above five hundred and fifty at the very least.

She remembered that in her last life she'd scored something in the four hundreds, not even five, and getting into a decent high school had taken an enormous amount of effort. Not this time.

No sooner said than done. She drew up a full revision plan: the classical poetry she'd forgotten in Chinese, the formulas in maths, the material for politics and history, and physics and chemistry from the beginning. English, on which she'd scored close to full marks in her mock, she ignored entirely.

In the end she looked with satisfaction at a complete strategy built around physics and chemistry, with Chinese, maths, politics and history in support, and nodded.

English could be the seasoning for when she got sick of studying. She gave the whole thing a name: Step One to Becoming a Top Student — Exam Strategy No. 1.

She had a plan for the system shop's points as well. She wasn't going to need any of those plant formulas for a while, so the lot could go into attributes. Working through those papers just now had felt harder than it should have.

As for making money, she had an idea there too, but the most important thing in front of her wasn't money — it was the exam in four months.

And there'd be a full two months of holiday afterwards, which was plenty. Knowing her parents as she did, if she came out of the exam with a good result and put Chen Ying and Li Quan — who cared about marks above everything — in a thoroughly good mood, whatever she wanted to do next would be a great deal easier.

She snickered out loud at her own plan, caught herself drifting off far too long, cut the daydream short, wiped away drool that wasn't there, and picked up her pen in high spirits to work out how to spend her attribute points.