"Are you there yet?"
"Don't be nervous. Your grades are excellent. You'll get in."
"Don't worry about the surgery money. Mom found a new part-time job. We'll scrape it together. Just go in and do the interview."
Zhang Yu stared at his mother's messages on the screen, pocketed his phone, and took a long breath. He closed his eyes and waited.
"Examinee 989 — Zhang Yu."
He stood and walked into the interview room.
Three interviewers sat behind the desk. He smiled his most practiced, polite smile. "Hello. I'm Zhang Yu, from Dongyang Middle School."
The examiner in the center studied him. "Why do you want to attend our school?"
"Your school's long history, deep heritage, rich teaching resources — you have cultivated countless outstanding talents for society..."
The examiner frowned and cut him off. "Spare me the pleasantries."
Zhang Yu told the truth: "I want to get into a top university. Songyang High has the highest college admission rate of any school I can apply to."
The examiner smiled slightly, flipping through his file. "Perfect scores across all subjects. First in the entire school? No wonder you were recommended."
"Your grades aren't the problem. But to enter Songyang High, in-school scores alone aren't nearly enough."
He thought for a moment and asked casually, "How many hours do you sleep a day?"
"Five."
"Five?" The examiner raised an eyebrow. "Our students average no more than two hours of sleep a night, starting in elementary school. Outstanding graduates basically never sleep at all."
"Five hours a day means three fewer hours of study than everyone else. Over nine years, that's almost ten thousand hours lost..."
Zhang Yu was stunned. He had thought himself diligent — but in the face of these people, his effort was a joke.
"I'll catch up," he said quickly.
The examiner on the left asked, "How much of the high school curriculum have you covered?"
Zhang Yu steadied himself, confident. "I've already self-studied the entire first year."
The man's brows drew together. "Only first year? Here we assume students have finished the entire high school curriculum before they walk in the door."
Zhang Yu's mouth went dry. Another fact he hadn't known. His one advantage, gone in an instant.
While he was still reeling, the center examiner asked the next question.
"To maximize learning efficiency and prevent premature romance, our school requires all incoming students to undergo sterilization surgery before enrollment, freeing the body for cultivation."
"Were you aware of this?"
Finally, a question he could answer. "My family is already preparing. I'll have the surgery before the semester starts. My hormone levels will be optimal for study."
The examiner gave a noncommittal nod. "That will be all. You may go."
Zhang Yu walked out of the room with a sinking feeling. His interview had been shorter than everyone else's.
Behind him, the center examiner shook his head: "Still unsterilized at the middle school level. This one's resolve is weak."
The female examiner beside him laughed. "He showed up knowing nothing — no test reports, no extracurricular scores. The quality of public middle school recommendations gets worse every year. If not for the support quota, he'd never have gotten in here at all."
The center examiner sighed. "I expected the poor to try harder. Perhaps I expected too much of them."
He dropped Zhang Yu's resume into the wastebasket, joining the hundreds of other backup applications.
---
Zhang Yu had a feeling the interview had not gone well — but there was no time to dwell. He went from interview to interview, school to school.
"Zhang Yu, we understand your family's financial situation may not cover the tuition. However, we offer favorable loans for underprivileged students. You'd only need to mortgage a few non-essential organs..."
"Don't worry, you came to the right place. We know you're male, and while this is a girls' school, we have no discrimination — once you complete gender reassignment surgery, you'll not only be admitted, you'll be considered a student of exceptional resolve, with a chance at the elite class studying the Primordial Yin Qi Refining Art..."