Chapter Five: Make-up Exam

It was the first time Su Yuan had ever exposed her private parts in front of someone else. Although the organ had become unfamiliar to her, she still felt extremely uncomfortable, as if ants were gnawing at her body—numb and itchy at the same time.

Then her body shuddered as something touched her most sensitive spot. It turned out to be Doctor Li, using a gloved hand to gently part the two sides of that slit. Inside was pink and translucent, soft in texture and glossy in color, and one could faintly see an intact membrane.

Doctor Li was very experienced. With just one look, she determined that the girl had no abnormal conditions, and she quickly finished examining the private area. She then pressed the stethoscope against Su Yuan’s abdomen and began checking her internal organs.

“Ouch!!” the girl suddenly cried out. Doctor Li frowned slightly, moved the stethoscope back to the lower abdomen, and asked, “Does it hurt here?”

Su Yuan nodded pitifully.

“In that case, go get a B-ultrasound later. It’s not urgent. First, lift your clothes.”

Hearing this, Su Yuan complied, pulling her thin top all the way up to her chest. Doctor Li’s gaze fell on Su Yuan’s nearly flat chest. The reason it was described as “nearly” was that, with Su Yuan lying flat, one could vaguely see a slight rise where her breasts were, though it was far from obvious.

Doctor Li reached out and pressed lightly. Su Yuan immediately felt a swelling pain and said so truthfully. The vitality of grass was just like this—no matter how much stone pressed down on it, as long as it found even the smallest crack to sprout, it would grow uncontrollably.

Doctor Li nodded and wrote out a list of tests for Su Yuan: a urine test, B-ultrasound, four-item female immune panel, and six-item hormone panel. She didn’t order a chromosome test—apparently Doctor Li hadn’t considered that aspect.

Su Yuan hurried off to get everything done and returned after a long while with the test reports.

Doctor Li first looked over the lab results, which showed many values on the low side, then glanced at the ultrasound report. She already had a clear idea and concluded, “There’s no organic problem with your body. It’s just delayed development.”

Hearing this conclusion, Su Yuan was stunned. Her body… had no problems? For her, this result should have been a blessing in disguise, yet her heart was filled with an indescribable bitterness.

Seeing her blank expression, Doctor Li felt this wouldn’t do. How could such a young girl be so careless about herself? This condition needed to be taken seriously. With a stern tone, she said, “Although the organs themselves are fine, your uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, and mammary glands all show signs of delayed development. This must be taken seriously—don’t be careless. You also have mild anemia, and your estrogen levels are below normal. This can lead to a chain reaction.”

Su Yuan listened blankly to Doctor Li’s warnings. Then Doctor Li prescribed her some medication, including anti-androgens and oral estrogen.

Leaving the hospital, she walked back toward the school under the blazing sun.

This checkup had cost her several hundred yuan, and her mood became indescribably conflicted. Fortunately, Doctor Li knew she was a student and didn’t try to take advantage of her. Aside from necessary medications, most of her advice focused on diet therapy and exercise.

Even so, her wallet deflated noticeably. She used to joke with others that you never know how healthy you are until you get checked—once you do, you’re sick all over. And sure enough, after today’s examination, she’d been diagnosed with “delayed development,” involving several important organs, as well as a lack of “estrogen.” Who would have thought she would lack that?

In the past, she’d never imagined she could be deficient in such a thing. There was also mild anemia, which she truly hadn’t known about before. All in all, after leaving the hospital, Su Yuan felt as though she’d taken a walk through a laboratory. She used to wear the white coat and conduct experiments—this time, she’d played the role of a lab rat.

“Such is life,” she sighed to the sky.

Back at school, starving, Su Yuan first went to the fast-food place near the dorms to take care of lunch. While passing through the corridor, a dark figure blocked her path. Looking up, she realized it was Wang Ping, heading out to play basketball.

“What’s wrong? Sick?” Wang Ping asked in surprise when he saw the plastic bag with a red cross in Su Yuan’s hand.

She hadn’t expected to run into him. Seeing his concerned expression, Su Yuan could only nod helplessly. Casually rolling the bag up to avoid drawing attention, she understood clearly—this illness couldn’t be made public.

“You just lack exercise. A big man as frail as a little girl—men should be like me, showing off manly charm with strong biceps!” Wang Ping boasted, spinning the basketball. With his dark skin, anyone who didn’t know better might think he’d come from Africa.

To be honest, Su Yuan didn’t envy Wang Ping’s healthy complexion—he belonged to the category of excessive health. Compared to him, she preferred someone like Ji Yehao.

After saying goodbye to Wang Ping, she returned to Dorm 330. A stack of new books lay on the desk—probably textbooks Ji Yehao and the others had helped pick up.

She hesitated, then glanced at the plastic bag. In the end, she opened the medicine boxes and swallowed a few pills with warm water, treating it like a desperate attempt. Even she wasn’t sure what she was thinking as she took them. Perhaps she wasn’t thinking anything at all—just reflexively following the doctor’s instructions.

After hiding the medicine in her wardrobe, she spread out her books for a final review. The make-up exam was scheduled for 1:30 p.m., leaving less than half an hour. With some time left, she might as well cram a bit.

Strangely enough, this “serious illness” seemed to have sharpened her mind. As she worked through the calculus problems one by one, there were hardly any she couldn’t do. Feeling satisfied, Su Yuan attributed it all to last night’s all-nighter. But when she thought about the strange changes to her body, a shadow fell over her good mood again.

The make-up exam was held in classroom NA110 and lasted two hours. “N” stood for the northern campus area, and “A” was the building code. Su Yuan entered ten minutes early and found that quite a few students were taking the make-up exam—more than a third of the class.

“Looks like this course is a disaster zone,” she thought. Just then, stacks of stapled exam papers were handed out. After the invigilator checked the students’ ID cards, the exam began.

The format was fixed. The first section was multiple-choice, mostly testing basic concepts. Judging by the surrounding students—frowning, grinding their teeth, scratching their heads—it was clearly not easy.

“Strange… it’s not that hard?” Su Yuan’s eyes flickered in surprise. Had she oversimplified the questions and missed hidden traps? That was very possible. Still, after thinking it over, she decided to trust herself.

There weren’t many multiple-choice questions. She only hesitated slightly on the last two. Next came fill-in-the-blanks, true-or-false, calculations, and applications—all seemingly of medium difficulty. While others were still stuck on the fill-in-the-blanks, Su Yuan had already reached the final section: proofs.

There were two proof questions. The first asked to use limits to prove that if, as x approaches positive infinity, lim f(x) = A, then as x approaches 0 from the positive side, lim f(1/x) = A.

That wasn’t difficult.

The second asked to prove that the equation xe^x = 1 has exactly one real root in the interval (0, 1).

That didn’t seem difficult either. So Su Yuan, with her wild yet elegant scrawl, finished and handed in the paper.

After completing the exam, she knew her mind had truly opened up. Especially the second question—she remembered asking Ji Yehao about it before. Back then, she hadn’t really understood his explanation, only knowing that the zero-point theorem was involved. Now, she truly understood it.

Leaving the classroom, she couldn’t help but sigh deeply. “A late bloomer!!”