1 Chen Xie

"Surname Chen, full name Chen Xie. Nice to meet everyone," Chen Xie introduced himself to the class. He was a 16 year old boy who had transferred to Silvercross academy in the middle of the year because a student had unexpectedly died during a training excursion, resulting in an opening for a student on the academy's waitlist. Chen Xie decided that he must work hard and be extra nice to everyone as they would probably look down on him as he was not actually admitted to the academy but rather came in due to an accident. This time, he wouldn't sleep as much as he did in junior high, no matter how tempting it becomes.

As he introduced himself only the few students in the front rows politely nodded their heads towards him in acknowledgement. Most others just continued reading through their papers which were due today.

"Student Chen, please take the seat in front of student Sima in the 3rd row." Teacher Liu said after seeing her class's response. Something needs to be done about the haughtiness of these kids, she thought inwardly.

As he took his seat Chen Xie sighed inwardly. It was just as he thought, his classmates looked down upon him as he was a waitlist student. However, what no one knew was that Chen Xie actually had actually been a perfectly qualified candidate to enter Silver Cross academy, the reason he was put on the waitlist was due to the letter's of recommendation written by his junior high teachers. Every single one of them had stated something along the lines of, "Chen Xie is a smart student who likes to waste his potential. There were only 2 days in this school year that he did not nap for at least half of my class".

Yes, Chen Xie was a sleeper. It wasn't that he found his teacher's to be boring, it was just that they were really good teachers and their lectures would always contain the information on the powerpoint that they were projecting, so Chen Xie would just close his eyes and listen to them because he it was easier to focus that way. Thus, falling asleep was only natural when the lights were off. Ahem! The point is that he was not planning to continue doing this in high school. As a matter of fact, for the last two years of high school he really never closed his eyes once, a pity that there were no openings at Silver Cross until his third year. Thus, it was natural for the other students to look down on him even more as he had missed 2 full years of education at Silver Cross.

"Hey, classmate Chen. How do you do?" A student whispered behind him. It was Sima Jiuli. She was one of the smartest students amongst Silver Cross's third years. Despite ranking in the top 10 out of the class of nearly 800 third year students, she was known to have very few close friends due to her arrogance. Hence she almost always felt lonely. For this reason, seeing that there was someone else in the room that knew no one, she decided that she would take the initiative to befriend this person and do her best to control her attitude.

Having no idea about what his other classmates thought about her, Chen Xie turned around and replied, "I am doing great. How about you?"

"I guess I'm fine as well," Sima Jiuli's reply was followed by an awkward moment of them looking at each other's face. Crap, she thought, I don't even know how to start a conversation! Indeed, this was a classic example of having the will but not the ability. Conversation's are not always easy to start!

"Um… that's nice to hear?" Chen Xie said slightly perturbed. "Why do you guess that you are fine? Are you unsure of your, fine-ness?" He said awkwardly trying to continue the conversation.

"Oh, that… I just always say that," Sima Jiuli replied. "Okay, turn around and pay attention, we can talk later," she said while gesturing for Chen Xie to turn around with her hand.

Crap! That hand motion is the epitome of a snot-nosed arrogant brat! Sima Jiuli cursed inwardly. As an intelligent person, she was well aware of why everyone thought she was arrogant. It was just that she was unable to fix their perception of her so she eventually just started looking forward to leaving them after graduation and starting over with a new crowd to make friends. Such thoughts were not uncommon for people like her. She had only decided to start practicing controlling her attitude problems when she saw Chen Xie and realized he didn't know anything about her past.

However an event halfway through class made her reconsider if it was even worth it to befriend Chen Xie. Well, because he was SLEEPING!!!! He fell asleep on his first day after being a transfer student to the best academy in the Silver Cross nation after only 30 minutes! How could such a person be a good student? Better to avoid him, she thought.

However she almost instantly changed her mind. No! I need friends that are not all nerds. I need to be able to befriend all kinds of people, just because someone is bad at academics doesn't mean that they are a bad person, we can still be friends! She said to herself inwardly. I just can't let him cheat off of me to get through school!

Having no clue about what to do as he understood nothing that Teacher Liu was teaching, Chen Xie decided he might as well be sleeping. His old school didn't teach nearly as advanced material in their Foundational Chemistry class as Teacher Liu was teaching. It was only the start of the second semester! After a brief skim through the textbook, he realized that Teacher Liu was lecturing on the last chapter! His old teacher had barely made it to the middle chapter at this time! Hence, with all of the information going over his head, Chen Xie fell asleep out of boredom.

From the last seat in the back row, Xu Lei calmly watched Chen Xie as he fell asleep. At this moment Teacher Liu briefly glanced back towards Xu Lei as if to ask, "Should I call CHen Xie out for sleeping?" to which Xu Lei simply shook his head. Like this, Teacher Liu continued her lecture as if nothing was wrong much to the rest of the students confusion as almost everyone could see that Chen Xie was asleep with his face turned sideways and drool coming out of his mouth onto the desk.