The morning of the entrance exam arrived wrapped in soft fog and the smell of freshly watered sidewalks. Senzhou National University's gates stood open like the mouth of some ancient beast preparing to swallow another batch of hopefuls whole.
Lin Xie walked through them silently.
Her hair was tied back in a loose knot, her hoodie zipped up just enough to hide the edge of her borrowed ID. The testing kit was in her bag—standard pencils, eraser, backup pens, and a bottle of water she would not drink. Hydration meant bathroom breaks. Bathroom breaks meant lost time.
Around her, the courtyard buzzed with nervous energy.
Some students were flipping through flashcards. Others clung to friends, whispering last-minute facts like they were sacred spells. One girl sat on the bench rocking slightly, muttering something about quadratic equations and death.
Lin Xie ignored them all.
She walked with the mechanical calm of someone heading to a target, not a test.
Inside the building, the proctors handed out seating assignments. She received hers, looked at the number, and mentally mapped the hallway in seconds. Second floor. Room 2-B. Window side. Four exits. No surveillance in the stairwell corner. Fire alarm accessible within a five-meter dash.
Perfect.
As she took her assigned seat, a boy next to her offered a nervous smile.
"Good luck," he whispered.
She didn't respond. Just blinked at him once.
He turned forward quickly and did not speak again.
The room settled into silence as the proctor began his speech. Rules. Regulations. Time limits. No phones. No talking. Don't cheat unless you want to suffer the wrath of an overworked academic board.
Lin Xie tuned him out after the first thirty seconds.
She already knew the protocol. She'd memorized the layout of the test booklet from an online sample. She'd reverse-engineered its algorithm pattern during breakfast.
When the papers were passed down, she flipped it open with no hesitation and began.
First question. Easy.
Second. Insulting.
Third. Slightly better.
She moved through sections with clockwork efficiency, her mind folding and storing every prompt like a scanner on autopilot. Math, logic, reading comprehension—it was all there, neatly printed, filled with distractors and fluff and sentences that made emotional appeals.
She noticed those with interest.
So this was how students were evaluated. Not by accuracy under duress. Not by memory under drug influence. But by the ability to pretend they cared about a fictional farmer's moral dilemma over a basket of onions.
Fascinating.
By the time they called the halfway mark, she was already flipping through the last page.
Someone sneezed. Another groaned softly. One girl in the back looked like she was trying not to cry into her sleeve.
Lin Xie reviewed her answers once—not because she doubted them, but because she had time and habits were hard to kill.
Then she sat back. Folded her hands. Waited.
Ten minutes before time was called, she stood and approached the front desk.
The proctor looked up. "Done?"
"Yes."
He blinked. "Uh… You can't leave until—"
"I'm done."
A pause. Then a slow nod. He took her paper and glanced down at her name. "Lin… Xie?"
She nodded once.
"Alright, you may go."
She turned, walked out of the classroom with the same quiet finality she'd entered with. No ceremony. No anxiety. No noise.
As she stepped into the open air again, the fog had cleared. The sky was pale blue.
Mission complete.
Exam finished.
Now all that was left… was waiting.
Something she hated more than anything.
She didn't go straight back to the penthouse after the exam.
Instead, Lin Xie wandered.
The sun was higher now, filtering through the trees that lined the main avenue outside Senzhou National University. The air smelled like street food and mild desperation—probably from the students still inside, wrestling with word problems and poorly phrased essay prompts.
She'd finished in less than half the time.
And now, she had… time.
Which was annoying.
She walked aimlessly for a few blocks, ignoring her phone as it buzzed once—Shen Rui's number. She let it go unanswered. He would assume the best, because he always did. Because he didn't know what she was. Not really.
At a corner, she passed a group of students from the same exam. They were talking loudly, laughing over their mistakes.
"I put 74 on the last question," one guy said, voice strained with hope.
"Seventy-four?! I got 36. That can't be right."
"I thought it was 12," the girl beside him muttered.
"Wait. Was it not 98?"
A silence fell over the group.
Then, collective despair.
Lin Xie didn't even blink. She kept walking.
At another street, she spotted the restaurant again—the one she had tried to visit earlier in the week, before she remembered she had no money. Her expression twitched slightly at the memory.
She'd stood in front of the menu board for a solid three minutes, trying to understand why anyone would pay thirty yuan for soup. She hadn't even noticed the absence of her payment card until she reached the register.
Embarrassing.
Not because she couldn't pay.
But because she hadn't accounted for it. She hated that.
Today, though, she was prepared.
She reached into her jacket, pulled out the sleek black card Shen Rui had given her, and walked through the glass doors like a functioning member of society.
The hostess blinked at her.
"Table for one?"
She nodded.
The woman led her to a quiet corner table with a window view.
As she sat down and scanned the menu, she realized something odd: she didn't know what she liked.
She knew which dishes were nutritionally balanced. She knew how to extract energy from protein packs under extreme conditions. She knew how long the average human could survive on crackers and vitamin gum.
But she didn't know what tasted good.
She ordered randomly. One rice dish. One soup. Something with sauce that looked shiny.
When the food arrived, she stared at it for a moment.
Then picked up the spoon.
One bite.
Another.
It was… strange.
Soft. Warm. A little salty.
She chewed slowly. Her brain tried to categorize the flavors like variables in a code: sweet = serotonin? Umami = comfort? Spice = threat level?
She took another bite anyway.
Across the room, two girls were taking selfies over their drinks. At the booth beside her, a couple argued over whether to get dessert.
Lin Xie ate in silence.
Alone.
But not surveilled.
No cameras in the corners. No glass walls. No handlers recording her nutrient intake.
Just food.
For no reason.
It was almost unsettling.
She finished quietly, paid without looking at the receipt, and left.
Outside, the sun had warmed the pavement. She tilted her head up for a moment, letting the light hit her face.
Then she walked home. Not because she was tired.
But because she had no orders left to follow.
For now.
And that… was the strangest part of all.