novellhall Chapter 5: As long as you don't look up, there are huts everywhere.
Chapter 5: As long as you don't look up, there are huts everywhere.
After a crowded 30 minutes, the tram stopped at a wide intersection.
Ivan squeezed through the crowd, jumped off the platform, and took a deep breath of the relatively fresh air.
Before us stood a magnificent gate.
Two square stone pillars support a classical-style lintel, above which the school's name, "Sage University," is inlaid in bronze letters, the characters solemn and mottled with green rust.
Tall, neat red brick walls extend from both sides of the gateposts, their tops covered with ivy, meticulously trimmed.
Inside the wall are rows of carefully maintained green plants, with the canopies of oak and elm trees casting large patches of shade in the morning light, and the lawn trimmed like a green velvet carpet.
Several four-wheeled carriages were parked in the circular driveway at the entrance, their bodies gleaming and their brass fittings sparkling.
The driver, dressed in a neat uniform, respectfully opened the carriage door, and one by one, well-dressed students stepped out of the carriage.
Three-piece suits, shiny leather shoes, some carrying calfskin briefcases, and ties adorned with family crest-shaped tie clips.
Ivan glanced down at his pocket watch.
7:40.
The first class starts at eight o'clock.
He had no interest in looking at his impressive classmates or the beautiful scenery.
He put away his pocket watch and started running.
This was the fastest he had ever run in a long time.
The cold wind of a late autumn morning blew into the collar of my jacket, my schoolbag bounced on my back, and my faded leather shoes made a series of rapid clicks on the stone pavement.
He walked through the tree-lined avenue, around the fountain square, rushed up the steps of the teaching building, and pushed open the heavy oak door.
My heels slipped on the marble floor of the corridor as I ran all the way to the classroom door at the end of the second floor.
7:47.
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In the regular classroom, almost all forty students had arrived.
Professor Mons, who teaches chemistry, is known for his strictness and has a deep-seated aversion to tardiness.
It is said that a student in the previous class was three minutes late and was scolded by him in front of the whole class for a full ten minutes. Since then, no one has dared to enter the room when the bell rings.
The students sitting in the classroom were generally well-dressed.
Crisp, starched shirts, well-tailored vests, some people's cufflinks are silver, and some people's pens are from the Waterman boutique.
After all, most of the students who can study here these days are children of wealthy people.
When Evan ran into the classroom, panting, forty pairs of eyes turned to him at once.
Whispers spread like a gentle breeze from the front row to the back.
He couldn't hear the specifics, but he could catch fragments of a few words:
"That..." "French acne..." "You dare to come here..."
Someone nudged their deskmate with their elbow and gestured in his direction with their lip; the two exchanged a knowing look.
Ivan, panting heavily, pretended not to hear anything.
He walked straight to the corner of the last row of the classroom against the wall, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
The workload in pre-medical studies is very heavy.
The new medical reforms have just been implemented.
To apply to medical school in the future, you must achieve excellent grades in all subjects; failing even one subject could mean rejection.
The amount of homework and experiments in science and engineering is overwhelming, and every day is packed full.
Under such high pressure, serious pre-medical students generally don't have much real social interaction.
Even if there is interaction, it is mostly insincere, with politeness on the surface but rivalry behind the scenes.
After all, there are only so many professors, and if you take the recommendation letter spot, I won't have any left.
In this classroom, everyone is a potential competitor to each other.
As for poor students like Evan from the lower class, they weren't even recognized as competitors; he was just a joke.
After taking the textbook out of his bag and spreading it on the table, Evan's heavy breathing, emanating from his weak body, was particularly jarring in the quiet classroom.
Like a leaky bellows, it made a hissing sound.
A student in the front row with neatly parted hair turned around, frowned, and looked as if he had smelled something unclean.
Several people nearby whispered among themselves, glancing over every now and then with a subtle, undisguised smirk on their lips.
Previously, Evan couldn't stand these things; he was insecure and sensitive.
Those gazes were like needles piercing him, each one venomous.
He would lower his head, hunch his shoulders, and wish he could fold himself up and stuff himself into the desk drawer.
That's how he literally depressed himself to death.
But the current Ivan is different.
The 29-year-old soul on Earth is a successful small business owner.
After graduating from junior high school, he skipped a grade and entered the "university of life".
I've worked in real estate sales and handed out flyers at intersections under the scorching sun.
I've spent all day making sales calls in a cubicle, only to have them hang up on me, and I've accompanied clients to see properties late at night.
I've been cursed at by clients and had my deals stolen by colleagues.
When starting a business, I tried to borrow money everywhere but kept running into obstacles...
He is a genuine socially awkward person.
Social terrorists.
So-called "face" is nothing more than a shackle that makes others feel comfortable but makes oneself feel uncomfortable.
As long as you don't look up, you'll find thatched huts everywhere.
As long as I'm not embarrassed, it's others who are embarrassed.
He turned to today's chapter in his textbook, his breathing gradually calmed down, his gaze fixed on the pages, ignoring the snickers around him.
At eight o'clock sharp, a bald old man walked into the classroom.
He wore a pair of reading glasses with thin metal wire frames perched on his thin, hooked nose.
The white shirt was starched and crisp, with the top button fastened at the collar, and a dark gray wool vest was worn over it.
His steps were not fast, but each step was heavy, the sound of his leather shoes striking the floor echoing in the classroom.
The whispers in the classroom vanished instantly.
Professor Mons placed a stack of lecture notes on the podium, took off his glasses, wiped them, put them back on, and scanned the entire room from above the lenses.
His gaze was cold and sharp, like a scalpel with a sharpened edge.
"Let's review what we've learned before."
He picked up a piece of chalk, turned around, and wrote a few keywords on the blackboard. The sound of the chalk scraping against the blackboard was sharp and piercing, and several students involuntarily shrank their necks.
Mons put down the chalk, dusted off his hands, and faced the class.
Who can repeat and explain the core tenets of Dalton's atomic theory?
He paused for a moment, then added, "Don't just memorize the entries. Explain why they can explain the law of definite proportions and the law of multiple proportions."
The classroom was so quiet that you could hear a sparrow chirping in the tree outside the window.
The forty students instinctively lowered their heads.
Some people started flipping through their textbooks, some stared at their fingernails, and some suddenly became very interested in the wood grain on the table.
In two weeks, we will have an important sporting event for the school: the Sage University vs. Aletheia University rugby match.
As two of the top universities in the New World, this competition has garnered a great deal of attention.
The game was scheduled for November 19th, but as early as the beginning of November, students had already started forming cheering squads and making various slogans and commemorative badges.
Students from underprivileged backgrounds participate in various activities, hoping to become spectator volunteers, just to get a free ticket and meet more people.
Middle-class students, on the other hand, start looking for travel companions, ordering custom-made clothes, and planning routes.
This has led to recent restlessness, with only a very small number of students able to maintain their focus.
Professor Mons frowned, his two graying eyebrows knotting in displeasure: "Didn't any of you do your homework?"
silence.
"LeBon, come here."
In the middle of the classroom, a blond young man wearing a light blue shirt slowly stood up.
His shirt was made of good material, and a small gold-plated collar pin was pinned to his collar, but his face was full of embarrassment.
"Um... First, elements are composed of indivisible and indestructible atoms."
He licked his lips, his eyes darting around.
"Secondly, atoms of the same element can have different masses and properties..."
"Wrong." Mons' voice was like a pair of scissors, cleanly cutting off his words.
The blond youth opened his mouth, stammered out half a sentence, and then fell silent.
Mons then selected a few more people.
The second person who stood up got stuck on the third one, and the third person even stumbled over the first one, saying "non-renewable" instead of "indivisible".
The old man's face grew increasingly grim, and a storm began to brew in his eyes behind his glasses.
"Not a single one can recite it completely?" His voice wasn't loud, but every word seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth.
"Then everyone go and do the punishment copying. Copy each line twenty times, and hand it in next class."
A suppressed sigh echoed through the classroom.
At that moment, in the corner of the last row, a thin, bony hand slowly rose up.
"Teacher, I can."
Mons's gaze swept over forty heads and landed on the thin student in the last row wearing a patched jacket.
He raised his gray eyebrows slightly, his gaze sweeping from Evan's frayed collar to the front of his jacket with a missing button, completing the examination in about two seconds.
"Tell me about it."
Ivan stood up. The chair slid back with a short, sharp screech.
He didn't look at the textbook or his notes.
The intense focus he maintained for four hours, from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., had etched this information into his mind like nails.
"1: Elements are composed of indivisible and indestructible atoms."
"2: Atoms of the same element have completely identical mass and properties."
"3: Atoms of different elements have different masses and properties."
"4: Compounds are formed by the combination of different atoms in a simple integer ratio."
"5: Chemical reactions only rearrange atoms; they neither create nor destroy atoms."
He spoke at a moderate pace, enunciated clearly, and paused appropriately between each sentence.
Ivan didn't stop.
"It can explain the law of constant proportions because, within Dalton's framework, the proportion of different atoms in a compound is fixed, and the mass ratio of the constituent elements of the same compound remains unchanged no matter how it is prepared."
"It can explain the law of multiples because the same two elements can form multiples of different compounds, and the mass of a certain element in these compounds is a simple integer multiple of each other."
"For example, nitrogen and oxygen can form NO, N₂O, and NO₂, where the mass ratio of oxygen is a simple integer multiple."
……