Find your faith

Chapter 93: Another home, Another hell

Xingqiu's POV
The wall clock in my room was ticking, but I know the time. My bedtime of 11pm was up, but I knew I had to push on. After all, I had a Chemistry and Physics WA to prepare which would hopefully boost my morale before the EOYs start. They say "your grades don't define you," but it felt like my parents didn't take my A Math failure too well...
Flashback
Xingqiu's father: 5/30, only?
Xingqiu nods solemnly
Xingqiu's father: Young man, explain what's going on.

Xingqiu: Not like it's because I didn't study...

Xingqiu's father: I SAID EXPLAIN WHAT'S GOING ON!

Xingqiu: I've been under this manipulative teacher I've been mentioning and he's making me go through rigorous regimes to keep my grades up. Not only that, I've been stressing myself out to do well because of the exchange.

Xingqiu's father: It's not an excuse, I expect better. And don't blame it on your teacher, give me your phone now.
Present day
As I did the physics calculations on my calculator, the flashbacks returned, firming my resolve to do better in A Math. After all, I had two more WAs for the term—Chemistry and Physics. If I do well for both, maybe people would suspect I fumbled because A Math was hard. Which was true. We've all seen how it took Chloe half a year to even pass.

Even then, those thoughts were frivolous. All I could focus on was the pen scratching on my paper as I toggled between the physics practices I got from the school bookshop and my calculator. After all, I chose physics because of the math, so I'm hoping maybe the math in my physics would boost both my overall and my morale up! At that moment, I could only hear the hum of the aircon—not the influx of notifications from either lower or upper secondary friend group, not the footsteps that usually haunted me. It was once again me and my physics. If I had physics, I didn't have to care about anything else.

Alright, I have finished all the questions for Pressure. Ningguang always makes jokes about how it's basically doing what we learnt in lower secondary science, and I never really bothered to correct her because she was right, it was very calculation based. After all, she had a point—I always did better in the physics chapters that need calculations, not ones that needed to write about concepts on 10 lines. Why do these exist? These were probably Crystal's kind of stuff. Flashbacks about sharing about what I have learnt in physics replayed in my head as I marked the questions. Oh, close to full marks for that topic in our topical Physics TYS*? It was a relief, so I was taking out the answer booklet and copying it down into the book. I decided to check the time.

11.45pm. Heh, not bad considering this is the start of many all-nighters.

As quietly as I could, I packed my stationery and necessary materials into my bag before changing into pajamas because I'm not a psycho. Then I went to brush my teeth and do some skincare to overcome stereotypes that only females can do skincare, and then removed my glasses. Walking out of my toilet, I turned off all the lights and felt my way to my bed, where I brought eh pillow down and tucked myself in. I mean, about 5 hours of sleep won't hurt me too much, right?
*TYS refers to a series of practices that O Level students do before their O Levels