Chapter 246: National Competition ③
Nie Qiu looked at Li Kai, somewhat confused, as if she hadn’t heard what Li Kai said, and let out a questioning monosyllable, “Ah?”
“I said, Ai Si Yuan is good-looking, don’t like him.” Li Kai frowned and said to Nie Qiu, “Your mathematics competition will go from the city to the province, and then to the national level, which will definitely take more than a month. Although classes will still be held as usual, you will be together during the competition time.”
Nie Qiu chuckled, “Li Kai, what are you thinking about?” She had certainly heard Li Kai’s first sentence, but she almost suspected she was hallucinating.
Li Kai felt a bit uncomfortable. The high-intensity study life of the past month had made him realize, had made him understand, that the Senior High School Entrance Examination was really coming. After the Senior High School Entrance Examination, it meant that many classmates would go their separate ways. This naturally included him and Nie Qiu. Their grades were too far apart. He knew that Nie Qiu would definitely be able to get into Provincial First High School. Provincial First High School was a provincial key school. It could be said that as long as one studied at Provincial First High School, eighty percent of students could get into university. It was not unreasonable for people to call it stepping into university. If he wanted to study at Provincial First High School, he definitely wouldn’t be able to get in through exams, but he could afford to pay. However… he didn’t want to rely on money or family connections to study anymore.
During this period, he had regretted deeply more than once, why didn’t he study hard, why didn’t he study seriously before? If… if he hadn’t been so casual in Junior High School like he was in elementary school, he definitely, definitely could have gotten as good grades as Ai Si Yuan. But in this world, there are no ifs, no such thing as time turning back, and no medicine for regret.
Ai Si Yuan…
To be honest, after the last match, he knew that Ai Si Yuan had a good impression of Nie Qiu. It might not be romantic love, but there was a sense of mutual appreciation, like Bo Ya and Zi Qi in the story. It was an appreciation between kindred spirits.
He had an elder sister at home, so he naturally knew that during campus life, between classmates, between good friends, or even between lovers, once separated, they would drift further and further apart with time. He had also heard Li Mingxue talk about the difference between dating because one wanted to date and dating because one liked someone.
He was afraid, afraid that if he and Nie Qiu separated, what if someone else liked Nie Qiu, what if someone else pursued Nie Qiu? In all the time they had been together, he had never heard Nie Qiu say she liked him.
However, he couldn’t say it, couldn’t express his worries. He just said, don’t like anyone else. He would work hard to become the person she liked.
“I said, Nie Qiu, I like you.” Li Kai looked at the Teacher walking into the classroom, and said to Nie Qiu beside him with a blushing face, “You can’t like anyone else, do you hear me?”
“I don’t even know if I can participate in the provincial competition! Maybe I’ll be eliminated when I participate in the city competition?” Nie Qiu said with a smile, “It’s only one day, not over a month!”
There are hundreds or thousands of middle schools in City A. Each middle school sends two students to take the exam. In one city, there are nearly two thousand people. Five people are selected from City A, and then they compete with people from other districts to select the best few in the province, and then participate in competitions in various provinces and regions. The students selected by each school are naturally not bad, and they are naturally top performers.
“The teacher is here, listen carefully!” Li Kai let go of Nie Qiu’s hand, took out the book and notebook for this class, and looked at the blackboard.
Nie Qiu didn’t say anything more.
The city competition was very simple and was held on a Sunday. City A Advanced High School is a very representative provincial and municipal key middle school in City A, so holding the exam at City A Advanced High School greatly facilitated Ai Si Yuan and Nie Qiu. They didn’t need to prepare specifically where to go, and there wasn’t much tension.
Perhaps because of this, Nie Qiu and Ai Si Yuan passed the city competition without any suspense, and then came the provincial competition, where the five people selected from each city competed. In the end, Nie Qiu and Ai Si Yuan once again took the lead, and the representatives for the province were determined to be Ai Si Yuan and Nie Qiu from City A Advanced High School, along with two students from City B Third High School, and one student from City C Fifteenth High School.
Because the National Competition was set to be held in a studio at City A Television Station, even though it was in the same city, it was not in the same district, but in City A’s Central District. Therefore, the day before the competition, two teachers took Nie Qiu and Ai Si Yuan to the Central District.
Since there were participants from various provinces, the organizers had arranged hotels. Around three or four in the afternoon, after the car arrived in the Central District, they were taken to the hotel by the organizers and settled in. The hotel’s lunch service had already ended, so the four of them had to find a small restaurant near the hotel and eat a passable meal.
Among the accompanying teachers, there was one male teacher and one female teacher. Nie Qiu and the female teacher shared a room, while Ai Si Yuan and a male teacher shared another room.
Staying near them were three other students representing the same province, also accompanied by teachers. Since they were all competing for the same province, they were all of similar age and loved to study, so they had common topics. During dinner, as they chatted, the students got along quite well.
“Nie Qiu, I heard that tomorrow’s competition program is live broadcast. Do you know what live broadcast is? It means we’ll be on television!” a girl sat next to Nie Qiu, her small face showing excitement and a hint of nervousness.
Nie Qiu took a bite of the hotel’s not-so-special dish and asked, “Is there any difference from usual?”
The girl blinked and asked, “We’re on TV! We’re on TV, just like stars. Nie Qiu, aren’t you nervous at all?”
“What difference does it make whether I’m nervous or not?” Nie Qiu knew the girl in front of her was nervous, so she put down her chopsticks and didn’t look at the three boys at the same table. “Since you can represent our province in this competition, it means you are good. You are not inferior to others, so why be nervous?”
The girl heard this, thought for a moment, and nodded, “That’s true.” But even so, she still felt nervous.
Ai Si Yuan put a chopstickful of beef into Nie Qiu’s bowl and said with a bitter smile, “Nie Qiu, you’re the only one who can be so relaxed right now.”
The other two boys also nodded at Nie Qiu, “As soon as we think about being filmed, we feel like we can’t concentrate on answering questions.”
Nie Qiu thought for a moment, “How about you imagine the audience as cabbages and radishes, or imagine the cameras as blackboards?”
Seeing Nie Qiu’s joking expression, the three boys were speechless.
Mathematics League, Mathematics League, so it’s normal for there to be more boys, but Nie Qiu was still a bit surprised to see that ninety percent of the contestants were boys.
Five people from each province participated. There are twenty-three provinces, four municipalities directly under the central government, five autonomous regions, and two special administrative regions in the country, so there are more than one hundred and seventy participants in total. Therefore, this competition is divided into three stages. The first stage is the exam, which is to do the test paper. In the large classroom, there are more than ten surveillance cameras monitoring the scene. The invigilator stands on the lectern, and walking in the aisles of the examination classroom are several cameramen.
Whenever a cameraman walked up to a candidate, that candidate would subconsciously become nervous. Nie Qiu didn’t feel much, always feeling that it was no different from when she was giving a speech and the school’s recording camera was capturing it.
Doing the test paper eliminates fifty percent of the students, meaning that after this round, there will be about eighty to ninety students left.
