Trimmed By Time Chapter 8

Nathan Song's thirty-seven points of bad luck seemed to extend to the set.

He couldn't get through his performance today. The director kept saying that he acted too "vigorously" and that he looked like he was pretending to be a model student.

During the fifth take, Nathan Song also became impatient. The director had watched him grow up, and he knew that he was not a good student. How could he play a model student? If we went to the provincial experimental school to find a model student, I was afraid that his hands and feet would be so stiff in front of the camera that we wouldn't know what to do.

The cameraman was good-tempered, however, and reminded him: "Lang Lang, don't be anxious. Think about the classmates you usually interact with and what they are like. Be natural and don't be too deliberate."

What are the students like in normal times? They write furiously with their heads down, almost touching the table, or write with awkward postures and force, causing the whole table to shake. Or the students who are called to the podium by the teacher to demonstrate their ideas for solving problems rub their pants with one hand and twist their faces unnaturally, blushing... Nathan Song rolled his eyes three hundred times in his heart. How many real top students are good-looking?

Then he thought of Liam Chen.

Their only contact was the time when Nathan Song went to his house to do homework. Nathan Song couldn't continue with his homework, so he looked up cautiously at the person opposite him, who was also holding a thick exercise book. However, Liam Chen's posture was very casual, his expression was calm, and he was proud and calm when he had an idea and wrote.

So many interpretations made Nathan Song suspect that he had contracted an actor's occupational disease, but apart from his own excessive imagination, Liam Chen was indeed casual and confident when doing his homework, neither cramped nor anxious. It didn't even seem like he was completing his homework, but rather that he was meeting a worthy opponent and breaking through.

You're really a freak for enjoying homework so much.

Nathan Song returned home from the filming site after an afternoon of filming. It was a rare occasion that his parents were there. The first thing Laura Zhang asked him when she saw him back was, "Langlang, is it okay for you to transfer to an international school next semester?"

Thomas Song usually indulged his wife, but he immediately retorted: "It's just nonsense. If there is a problem, it must be solved. You can't just think of running away."

Nathan Song didn't understand what was going on until he saw the report card on the coffee table. He had already gone to the filming set when the report card was issued, so it was sent directly to his father. He had been studying in an international school before, and his grades were always in the middle, occasionally even above, so Thomas Song and Laura Zhang didn't worry too much about their son's grades. Unexpectedly, after changing schools, Da La La was ranked last. Even if they didn't require their son to be excellent in his studies, the name at the bottom of the page was really a stimulus.

Nathan Song picked up the report card and looked at it carefully. In the morning, Lao Zhou asked him to go to the office to talk about physics. He thought that physics was his weak subject, and a score of more than 30 points was not unacceptable. Now that he looked at the total score, it was less than half of the top student. This made him feel a little uneasy. Among the second-generation stars who were close to him, his grades were relatively high. He thought he would sink after changing to another pond, but he didn't expect to sink to the bottom.

So Liam Chen, whose total score was more than twice his, suddenly became eye-catching.

Nathan Song now understood why this person had not cared about him before and was not curious about him. After all, no matter how great Leibniz was, Nathan Song had no interest in learning about his life.

To put it bluntly, there is no need to work together if we have different ideas.

This realization made Nathan Song feel a little uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because he failed to play the role of a good student on the set today. After realizing that he was very different from a good student, he was indeed a little depressed.

And unwilling.

Isn't it just that he can solve a few physics problems, so he can be so proud that he ignores him? Yes, he really ignores him. He doesn't join in the fun and talk to him. When he was caught and reprimanded today and saw his terrible grades, he didn't show any emotion at all. He didn't even look down on him, because he didn't even look at him.

Nathan Song was so excited that he said to Laura Zhang, "My dad is right. Why should I transfer schools? I'm busy with the film crew right now. You can wait for my next test. It's just physics. How difficult can it be?"

Thomas Song felt that it was the right decision to let his son go to the provincial experiment center, but Laura Zhang was worried that his son had taken the wrong medicine today.

At the dinner table, Laura Zhang suddenly asked, what kind of person is the guy with the best grades in your class, named Liam Chen?

When the school leaders gave Thomas Song the transcript, they specifically added that the physics exam was particularly difficult and the final question was at the level of a senior high school student, implying that there was no need to be too harsh on Nathan Song. Thomas Song was afraid that the teacher would give him special favoritism, so he casually pointed to the scores of the students in the first row and said that no matter how difficult the exam was, there were still excellent students. In the end, it was Nathan Song's own fault.

The leader was a little excited. "Oh, this is incomparable. Let's put it this way. Young Master Song was born to be an actor. As for the first place kid, I'm afraid he has physics in his DNA."

When Laura Zhang returned home and looked at her report card, she was also deeply impressed by this name.

Nathan Song concentrated on finishing a piece of sweet and sour pork ribs and answered nonchalantly: "Hey, he's just a nerd, a little over 1.6 meters tall, his glasses probably have an 800 degree reading angle, he has a face full of acne from doing too many questions, and he was reading on the way to the bathroom."

Laura Zhang then swallowed the idea of   "invite this classmate to your home to talk more with you", and instead said to Thomas Song: "You see, such a child is also very scary, and he still needs to develop in an all-round way. Don't put too much pressure on Lang Lang."

Nathan Song was happy for a while because of the negative image of Liam Chen that he fabricated out of thin air, until he sat at his desk and found himself unconsciously imitating Liam Chen's pen spinning, and his mood suddenly collapsed.

This man is the exact opposite of his nonsense.

After opening and closing the physics workbook, Nathan Song found that he really had a hard time writing. He was confused about even the basic formulas, let alone comprehensive applications. The word "frustrated" had not appeared in his life for a long time, but now because of Liam Chen, frustration seemed to come a little more frequently. It was strange, he never thought it was great to be able to study, but when he thought of Liam Chen sitting opposite him and turning the pen to write physics problems, he seemed to be very proud.

While Thomas Song and Laura Zhang were out for a walk, Nathan Song ran to the living room and looked through the dial records of the landline phone. He found the number that Liam Chen had dialed that afternoon and called it.

The voice on the other end of the phone was as steady as ever. "Hello."

The background noise from the TV was a bit loud, and Nathan Song thought he heard his own voice. Perhaps it was from a commercial he had filmed before? He was embarrassed to find that Liam Chen had also seen his commercial. It was not until the sound had passed that he spoke: "Hi Liam Chen, I'm Nathan Song."

"...Yeah." As expected, there was no ripple.

"Mr. Zhou said you have to help me. Can you tell me about the test paper after school tomorrow?"

Liam Chen was not unmoved. Both the caller and the content of the call were beyond his expectations. After a brief silence, he said, "Well, I have a competition class tomorrow afternoon. You can come to the competition tutoring classroom to see me after school."

Nathan Song rolled his eyes when he heard the word "competition class", but he still smiled and said, "Okay, Teacher Chen."

After Liam Chen hung up the phone, he took out his junior high school physics notes from the bottom of his box.

Nathan Song walked around two buildings before he found the classroom for the competition tutoring class. Everyone in the school now treated him as a normal person, and only a few girls who were probably his real fans would show excitement.

When passing by a classroom in the senior year, a senior student in the corridor ran up to him with a red face and said, "I, I really like you... I liked you when you played in "Turning Point" before, I..."

Nathan Song listened to her for a few sentences with more patience than usual before interrupting her. "Thank you. I have physics tutoring later. I'm leaving now."

The senior was stunned, "...Then, then you have to work hard!"

"OK."

Nathan Song thought that studying physics might not be such a boring thing.

When he arrived, the competition tutoring had already ended, and there were only a few people left in the classroom. Liam Chen and a boy stood side by side in front of the blackboard, with lively expressions on their faces. When they saw him coming in, they just nodded and made eye contact from a distance. The two continued to discuss the topic on the blackboard. While they were talking, the boy next to them picked up the chalk and wrote a few more lines on the blackboard. After throwing the chalk down in a cool manner, the two smiled at each other. Nathan Song, who was standing in the back row of the classroom, could also clearly see the admiration on Liam Chen's face.

The boy packed his bag and left. Liam Chen's voice was clearer than usual: "Goodbye, Senior Brother!"

Nathan Song walked to the first row and sat down, looking at Liam Chen who had regained his calm expression, and said, "It turns out that Marie Curie also admired Einstein."

"His name is Li Jue."

Nathan Song didn't expect Liam Chen to introduce him to that senior brother. He also remembered the admiration on Liam Chen's face, so he asked, "Is he very good?"

Liam Chen was silent for a while. He probably didn't think he would say the following words, especially in front of Nathan Song. "After I met him in the competition class, I actually felt that I probably wouldn't go down the path of physics in the future. Everyone thought that I was born to study physics. I always thought so. After meeting Li Jue, I realized that I was probably wrong before. After discussing the questions with Li Jue a few times, I realized that I had a ceiling. In the first training class test, there was a question that only the two of us could write. I was very proud at the time, but later when we discussed it, I found that my thinking was very difficult while he didn't have any effort at all. I was very confident in my ability to study physics before, but Li Jue is too powerful and too smart. I don't know how many Li Jues there will be after leaving this school. If I continue to go down, I will probably go to a research institute like my parents. But it's also very good to meet him. When discussing questions with him, I can only be convinced and admire him. You know, it's like the feeling of a low-ranked person in a martial arts novel who fights with a peerless master one day. What you just said, Li Jue can probably become Einstein, but I'm not Marie Curie."

After Nathan Song met Liam Chen, it was the first time he heard him speak such a long paragraph. His first thought was that his voice was nice. It turned out that someone with three times his physics score would also have such weakness and regret. Nathan Song himself had no passion for academic research, but he could feel Liam Chen's passion and the disappointment after discovering the gap between passion and talent. Nathan Song thought of several child stars who had filmed together in elementary school. At that time, everyone had the same starting point, but now two or three of them have become lost in the crowd. He even saw a boy who was recognized as having a lot of talent when he was a child on the set being scolded by the director, "If you can't act, go home."

Nathan Song and the child actor used to have a good relationship, but after the movie was not very successful, the child actor returned to a second-tier city.

's hometown, only occasionally in the inventory of child stars will flash back to the old videos. When they were acting together as children, Nathan Song was not as good as him, but later on, he was completely bleak.

Although Liam Chen's unconcealed pride when he twirled his pen while doing his physics homework and when he went to Lao Zhou's office to see the comparison of their scores was very annoying, and he currently looked cute, pitiful and easy to bully, Nathan Song felt that he would rather see the complacent and annoying Liam Chen.

Nathan Song was afraid that Liam Chen would be embarrassed for accidentally speaking out his heart, and he also understood that Liam Chen needed time to digest his emotions. After a decent silence, he said, "Li Jue has his own world, and you have yours. Anyway, in my world, you are the awesome Marie Curie."

In response to this sentence, which was not sure whether it was a comfort or not, Liam Chen looked at Nathan Song with a rare look of worry and asked him: "You are not really confused about Marie Curie's gender, are you?"

Nathan Song thought that Liam Chen, now that he was out of the control of Senior Brother Li, was really annoying.

It was also from this time that Nathan Song set a small goal for himself: to do something brilliant and awesome so that Liam Chen would look at him with the same eyes as he looked at Li Jue.

During the summer vacation of their senior year in high school, Nathan Song told Liam Chen, "You suddenly said a lot of your innermost thoughts to me that day, and I felt very strange. I found that I didn't like seeing you frustrated, and I felt that Li Jue was really a monster. Think about it, your score is three times mine, and there is still someone who can make you frustrated like this, doesn't this make me look even more stupid. And when you look at him, the expression on your face is very vivid, of course I am not convinced, how many people look at my face on TV, I want to make you look at me with that kind of eyes one day."

Nathan Song always felt that this was the beginning of his improper thoughts about Liam Chen. Although he might not have realized the reason for that awkward emotion at the time, he didn't mind going back to that day after sorting it out.

It was obviously a romantic conversation, but Liam Chen said, "I was really worried at that time. A high school boy who looked normal in intelligence seemed to be so stupid that he didn't know Marie Curie. I don't know if you know now that although Marie Curie also studied physics, her main field was chemistry." At the end of the conversation, his face was full of smiles.

Nathan Song looked at Liam Chen, thinking that he had finally gotten what he had hoped for, a look that was even dozens of times more beautiful, gentle and full of love. Then he said, I told you, if you act so naughty again, I will K!ss you.

But they were not together in the classroom of the competition tutoring class at that time, and facing the timid Liam Chen, Nathan Song could only roll their eyes silently in their hearts. Liam Chen assigned Nathan Song a typical test paper, and the two sat in the classroom in the late autumn afternoon and wrote furiously.

When the one-hour deadline set by Liam Chen came, Nathan Song looked up at Liam Chen, who was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. Liam Chen looked gentle and good-looking. Just by projecting the outline of his face on the wall, Nathan Song didn't understand why this man was frustrated in front of Li Jue? With a face that was better than half of the male stars of the same age he knew, there was no need to be frustrated about the lack of flexibility in solving the problem.

Liam Chen opened his eyes and asked, "Why are you looking at me?"

Nathan Song was of course embarrassed to say that he had examined you professionally and thought that studying acting would be a good option for you, and that your career prospects might be better than studying physics. He could only answer casually, "You wash your shirt very well, and it's especially white."

Liam Chen has already picked up his physics test paper: "Well, thank you, the test paper you just finished is also very white."