In front of the city library.
The blazing sun scorched the marble steps, and the shimmering heat waves slightly distorted the air.
Ethan tossed his backpack to Jack. "Yo Jack, you three go up and grab seats. I'm gonna hit the convenience store and grab some water. This weather's brutal—gotta stay hydrated."
Jack caught the backpack with one hand and made an OK gesture with the other, a mischievous smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Alright, grab me a bottle of that Arizona Iced Tea. Make sure it's cold."
The emphasis on "cold" was important, and anyone reading this probably understands why.
If Arizona Iced Tea is at room temperature, it's basically undrinkable. But when it's ice-cold? Divine.
"Sarah, Ashley, what do you guys want to drink?"
Ethan turned around and asked the two girls.
"I'll just have water! Thanks, Ethan!"
"Me too, water's fine. Thanks!"
Both girls said they wanted water.
Ethan nodded and said OK, then turned to Jack. "Look at Sarah and Ashley—they know to say thank you. You just take it for granted. Worthy of being my son, hahaha!"
After saying that, he quickly turned around and walked toward the convenience store across the street, not giving Jack a chance to react.
Jack processed what just happened and yelled, "Dude! You asshole, you're taking advantage of me again!"
Sarah and Ashley, standing next to him, covered their mouths and giggled.
Of course, if it were someone else, Ethan wouldn't have taken the initiative to go buy drinks. But these were his good friends from his previous life—there was no such thing as being a simp or whatever.
Buying water? It was just a small thing.
A few minutes later.
Ethan carried two bottles of water and two bottles of chilled Arizona Iced Tea in his hands and walked into the city library, heading up to the second floor.
Sunlight from the floor-to-ceiling windows cast clear geometric shadows on the floor, and the coolness of the air conditioning dispelled the heat from outside.
He found the others—they were right by the window.
He walked quietly over to the window and sat down.
Sarah was concentrating on a math problem, the tip of her pen scratching across scratch paper.
Ashley was wearing headphones, her slender fingers flipping through an English textbook—probably listening to practice audio. Neither of them had noticed him arrive.
He gently placed two bottles of water beside their hands. The condensation on the bottles left round wet marks on the table.
"Thank you, Ethan." Sarah glanced at Ethan and whispered her thanks.
Ashley smiled and thanked Ethan too, then continued listening to her English.
Turning to Jack's side, the guy was staring out the window in a daze.
Seeing Ethan hand over the chilled Arizona, his eyes suddenly lit up like a hungry wolf spotting meat. He grabbed it and chugged several gulps.
"That's the stuff!" He lowered his voice, wiped his mouth, and gave Ethan a thumbs up. "Dude, you're the man."
Then he randomly said, "I didn't bring anything. What am I supposed to do?"
Ethan was speechless. 'I gave you the backpack, and you didn't even take anything out of it?'
He reluctantly opened the backpack and pulled out the review materials.
Ethan took out a copy of "SAT Practice Problems" from his backpack and slapped it down in front of Jack. "Be a human being, child!"
"Damn..."
He neatly circled a few small problems with a black pen and pushed them in front of Jack. "You do these questions first. I'm gonna write you some harder ones to increase the difficulty level."
"That's it?"
"Give me something with a little more bite, yeah?"
"Bro can handle this easy."
After saying that, he picked up his pen and started scribbling away.
It looked pretty convincing, but even Ethan couldn't understand those chicken-scratch calculations—who the hell knew how this guy was working through it.
He shook his head, picked up a black pen, and held the tip over scratch paper, pausing.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, recalling the SAT papers from his previous life.
The pen tip finally fell, and he began writing on the paper. He had to write down several must-know physics and chemistry problems today.
Today, he absolutely had to make Jack gnaw on this bone. He'd let him work on it himself first without explaining anything.
He couldn't write the question exactly the same for Jack to practice—then he wouldn't be able to explain where it came from.
He could only change the question type slightly by altering text names and some values, as long as he didn't change the core problem type and solution approach.
The pen tip scratched across the paper, pausing from time to time before continuing.
Ethan looked up occasionally at Jack across from him, scratching his head in frustration, and a smile unconsciously appeared at the corners of his mouth.
As long as Jack knew how to solve this type of question, he'd be able to calculate the others step by step.
This guy definitely couldn't imagine right now that these questions would be "SAT dress rehearsals," and he'd cruise through the actual SAT in 21 days.
There were also many good universities in New York—NYU, Columbia, Cornell, Fordham... These prestigious schools flashed through his mind.
As for NYU, Jack shouldn't even think about it. Even if he got in, he probably wouldn't be able to keep up.
But other good schools—he could even aim for top 50.
It was still possible for Sarah and Ashley to get into NYU with their grades.
After thinking this through, he picked up the pen and continued writing.
Speaking of which, Ethan had rarely written by hand before being reborn.
Usually, the company's business was all done on computers, so the only time he'd write was when signing contracts—and even then it was just scribbling his name in a few quick strokes.
Therefore, after being reborn and coming back, the moment he picked up a pen, the awkward feeling made him almost unable to recognize his own handwriting—his fingers seemed to have forgotten their muscle memory, and the words he wrote were crooked and ugly.
After this period of writing and practicing, it felt much better.
Ethan's handwriting wasn't particularly good-looking. He looked down at what he'd written—horizontal and vertical lines, neat and clear, but lacking a bit of style.
It could only be described as decent.
Such writing was like the meaning of his life in his previous existence—well-ordered but lacking soul.
He remembered someone once saying, "Handwriting reflects the person. You must write with spirit."
In his previous life, he'd never really cared about this.
When he was a student, whenever he had free time, he and Jack either struggled through marathon gaming sessions at internet cafes or ran wild on the soccer field.
After graduation, forget about it—even sleeping was a luxury when running around making a living, let alone sitting down to practice handwriting.
But in this life, he wanted to practice his handwriting properly, including calligraphy.
The clean strokes of traditional script, the flowing cursive, the inky brush characters... These treasures of writing culture were worth savoring and polishing for the rest of his life.
"Yo Ethan, why are you spacing out?" Jack poked his arm with a pen cap.
Ethan then withdrew from his thoughts, his eyes falling on Jack's face. "Done already?"
He took the exercise book and glanced at it. The corners of his mouth twitched slightly—although the problem-solving steps were written messily, the results were actually correct.
"Then do these too! Increasing the difficulty." After saying that, he handed Jack the questions he'd been writing.
"Are you kidding me?"
"Ugh, this sucks!"
Jack suddenly deflated like a punctured balloon, his whole body collapsing onto the chair.
At the same time, he looked over at Sarah and Ashley beside him. "Sarah, Ashley! Ethan's trying to kill me!"
Sarah looked at Jack and smiled gently. "Jack, Ethan's doing this for your own good! Practice hard, get a good score, and we'll all go to New York together."
Ashley also looked over with a smile. "Yeah! Yeah! Come on, Jack! There aren't that many questions. You'll finish them soon. You got this!"
"Quit bitching. You can play all you want after the SATs. Right now, write these problems." Ethan tapped Jack's scratch paper with his pen.
Jack sighed and grabbed the pen resignedly...
There are 20 advance chapters ahead in my Patreon. If you are interested can check it out.
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