Yukinoshita's Correction Method

Yukinoshita's Correction Method, by Slightly Cool and Warm

Synopsis:

Returning to his youth, Dong Yunshan discovered that the many worries that had once plagued him were actually so insignificant.

After being battered by society, he could handle everything on campus with ease, except...

"Exceptional people have an obligation to help pitiful people." Yukino Yukinoshita's icy gaze pinned Dong Yunshan in place. "I will correct your problems—welcome to my Service Club."

And so, many years later.

"Seeing you dressed like this has given me another new correction method." Yukino Yukinoshita expertly helped Dong Yunshan tie his tie. "So... come back early."

Volume One: First Meeting in First Year: Helping Others

When the bell rang, Dong Yunshan narrowed his eyes and felt around beside his pillow, picking up his phone and answering the call.

"'Lo?" He rubbed his eyes and yawned. "This is Dong Yunshan."

"Dong Yunshan," a woman's voice came from the phone. "Have you forgotten something very important?"

Having just woken up, Dong Yunshan was still a little muddled. "Such as?"

"Such as the fact that, as a student, you haven't attended class in a very long time!" the woman on the other end of the phone questioned him furiously. "Where are you right now?"

Dong Yunshan sat up in bed and looked around. "Let me think..."

"Hm?" The woman beside the bed handed him a cola. "Who is it?"

"My homeroom teacher." Dong Yunshan glanced at the caller ID, then turned his gaze to the languid woman beside him. "Where is this?"

"This is..." The woman casually gave an address. "How did I fall asleep?"

Dong Yunshan took a big gulp of cola. "Probably because you were too tired. When is your husband coming back?"

The woman looked at the time. "He should be back soon."

"Then I..." Just as Dong Yunshan was about to get out of bed, he heard a burst of urgent knocking. "Ms. Hiratsuka, I've got something urgent on my end. If I have time, I'll go to class. Talk to you later!"

The call was hung up.

Chiba Municipal Soubu High School's female Japanese teacher—Shizuka Hiratsuka—clutched her phone, her expression ugly.

When she had first been asked to look after Dong Yunshan, she had been fairly relaxed about it.

After all, according to her friend, Dong Yunshan was a good kid with excellent grades who enjoyed helping others.

But Shizuka Hiratsuka had not expected Dong Yunshan's grades to be this excellent.

Even without going to class, his grades stayed in the upper-middle range.

Nor had she expected Dong Yunshan to enjoy helping others this much.

Even if he did not attend class, he still went out to do good deeds.

High school had only just started when he was hit by a car while saving someone. After being discharged from the hospital, he had only attended a few days of class before chasing a thief and getting stabbed twice. After being discharged, he then got injured at a gym while helping someone block a barbell. After being discharged, he then stopped some thugs from extorting someone and got into a fight. After being discharged, he then...

The more good deeds he did, the more there were, and their scope kept growing wider.

Now he had even started helping married women whose husbands were not home.

And helped them until they were tired?!

Thinking of the address she had just heard and that urgent knocking, Shizuka Hiratsuka let out a deep sigh and slammed down on the accelerator.

The sports car sped along. Just as she arrived near the address, Shizuka Hiratsuka heard a middle-aged man roaring himself hoarse.

"I'll kill you!!!"

Shizuka Hiratsuka lowered the car window and looked toward the source of the voice. She saw a figure shoot out from the second-floor window of a detached house, his body wrapped in nothing but a pink bath towel rolling once across the lawn before he quickly stood after bleeding off the force.

"Don't be rash!" Dong Yunshan grabbed the bath towel to keep it from slipping and shouted at the furious face poking out of the window. "You like your wife, and I like your wife too! We're kindred spirits!"

Shizuka Hiratsuka: "...?" He was in the wrong, yet somehow he still sounded so righteous.

"Die!" the middle-aged man roared furiously, grabbing the window frame to jump out, only to be yanked back hard by the woman beside him.

Dong Yunshan turned his head and saw the red sports car. His face immediately took on the expression of someone saved as he sprinted over, jumping through the car window and into the car. "Teacher! You're a lifesaver! Go, go, go!"

"You little brat..." Shizuka Hiratsuka wanted to scold Dong Yunshan, but when she saw his face, most of her anger vanished.

With one casual sweep of his messy short black hair, the handsome face that would make another man's wife protect him was reflected in Shizuka Hiratsuka's eyes.

Paired with his eyes that always carried a smile, and the muscular lines honed by his frequent workouts...

Whoosh—!

Dong Yunshan suddenly raised his hand out the window and caught the spinning knife that was closing in on them.

Only then did Shizuka Hiratsuka snap back to her senses, flooring the accelerator and fleeing the scene.

"Ah... sorry you had to see that." Dong Yunshan scratched his messy black hair and fiddled with the sharp knife in his hand. "I didn't think her husband would be so impulsive. I'd originally thought there would be time to explain."

"Explain?" Once she felt they were far enough away, Shizuka Hiratsuka pulled over and stopped, turning to glare at Dong Yunshan. "Is this something that can be explained?"

Dong Yunshan blinked. "I feel like people can understand each other..."

"I can't understand what you just did!" Shizuka Hiratsuka caught sight of the sharp knife in his hand, and the anger in her heart burned even hotter. Her taut shirt began to demonstrate the inclusiveness of modern textile technology along with her rapid breathing. "There was no way that knife could have been thrown in here, so why did you still risk catching it!"

"Uh..." Dong Yunshan pointed at the red sports car. "But this is your beloved car. If the knife scratches the paint, you'll be upset."

"What if you get hurt?"

Dong Yunshan pressed a fingertip against the blade, then flicked his finger, and the sharp knife spun on his fingertip. "An attack at this level? I can handle it easily. There is no what-if."

"Whew—~" Shizuka Hiratsuka took a Seven Stars cigarette from her pocket, popped one out and held it between her lips, then lit it with a click from a hundred-yen lighter and took a deep drag. "Whew~~~ Leaving the knife aside for now, you and that lady..."

Shizuka Hiratsuka opened the car window to let the smoke out, then irritably raked a hand through her hair. "I can understand young people being full of energy and having trouble controlling themselves, but this... What exactly are you thinking?"

"Sensei, if you were given a chance to return to your youth..." Dong Yunshan set the knife down. "What would you do?"

"Fall..." Shizuka Hiratsuka, the older single female teacher, avoided his gaze. "Fall in love."

"Spending the simple time when happiness is easiest to obtain on the complicated thing most likely to break your heart..." Dong Yunshan raised one eyebrow. "Is that really a good idea?"

"Isn't it?"

"If you returned to your youth, you should enjoy your youth. Eat whatever you want, drink whatever you want, play whatever you want—do whatever you like." Dong Yunshan looked out the car window, the smile in his eyes shifting into a complicated melancholy. "That way, even if you work overtime until you drop dead from overwork one day, at least there'll be a few more scenes in your life flashing before your eyes that you won't regret."

"Enjoying youth in the present on the premise that your life could end at any moment?" Shizuka Hiratsuka vaguely understood a little of Dong Yunshan's thinking. "Like studying with the mindset that the exam is tomorrow."

"As expected of a teacher." Dong Yunshan turned his head, and a smile rippled in his eyes again, as if the sorrow from just now had never existed. "You put it much more concisely than I did."

"Can't you just have a proper, serious romance?"

Dong Yunshan chuckled. "My youth romantic comedy doesn't need romance."

"So you go and help someone else's wife?"

"It's about time." Dong Yunshan glanced at the time. "Please take me back, Sensei. My clothes and phone are still at her place."

"You still dare to go back?" Shizuka Hiratsuka glanced at the knife's edge. "Aren't you afraid her husband will kill you?"

"Kill me?" Dong Yunshan looked out the window. "He'll have to thank me."

Shizuka Hiratsuka pressed her lips together. How could something like that possibly...

"Thanks, brother!" The middle-aged man, who had been furious earlier, gripped Dong Yunshan's hand, his face full of gratitude.

Shizuka Hiratsuka: "..." It really was possible.

"It was what I should've done." Dong Yunshan pulled his hand free. "My clothes..."

"Here." The woman held Dong Yunshan's things. "Thanks for your trouble."

"It was no trouble at all." Dong Yunshan took the clothes and walked into the bathroom.

Shizuka Hiratsuka felt like her brain was running out of capacity. "Can someone tell me what's going on?"

The married couple exchanged a glance, then brought over a video camera.

"You'll understand once you watch this."

The screen showed the woman and Dong Yunshan chatting.

["Because you discovered your husband has an almost pathological love of netorare, you feel uneasy... This is easy to handle. In situations like this, you usually just need to let him experience it personally once, and the pain in his heart will destroy that preference. I have a friend who draws netorare doujinshi, and after his wife cheated on him, he only drew pure love..."]

After that came footage of the two of them arranging the fake aftermath, and finally Dong Yunshan, wearing only his underwear with a bath towel wrapped around him, lay down on the bed.

The woman waited on the sofa for her husband to come home and accidentally fell asleep.

Then Dong Yunshan was woken by the phone, the woman was woken by Dong Yunshan, the man came home, entered the bedroom...

"After going through that once, I realized I couldn't accept that feeling at all." The man held his wife's hand. "Good thing it was all fake. Later, I'm going to call the neighbors around here over to watch this recording too, to warn them not to be like me and get lost in fantasies they shouldn't have."

"Wait..." Shizuka Hiratsuka couldn't understand. "You're going to tell the neighbors too?"

The man scratched his head. "That's better than being misunderstood by others, right?"

To be fair, it was.

Dong Yunshan finished getting dressed and walked out of the bathroom. "We've disturbed you long enough too. Bye-bye."

The man said goodbye warmly. "Come by often when you have time~"

Dong Yunshan waved. "Then it's settled. I'll come over again when you're home sometime."

Shizuka Hiratsuka: "..." You're actually planning on staying in touch?

Back in the red sports car, Shizuka Hiratsuka held a cigarette between her lips. "Why take such a big risk to help them?"

"Because they needed help." Dong Yunshan paused, then added further, "And I have confidence in my physical abilities. This doesn't count as much of a risk."

"Why do you like helping people?"

"Because it feels awful when no one helps you."

Shizuka Hiratsuka's gaze softened. "You can't bear to see other people having a hard time?"

"Quite the opposite." Dong Yunshan lit Shizuka Hiratsuka's cigarette for her, then waved his hand to disperse the smoke drifting toward him. "I like seeing other people's terrible lives."

"You like it so much that you set up an odd-jobs shop, letting people whose lives have gotten so terrible they need help come to you on their own." Shizuka Hiratsuka exhaled smoke while looking Dong Yunshan up and down, the irritation in her eyes gradually turning into lively interest. "No matter what your original intention was, you have indeed helped others. No matter how confident you are in your physical abilities, danger is still danger."

Dong Yunshan vaguely sensed something bad. "So?"

"I won't stop you from helping others, but I can't watch you get caught in danger either." Not only did Shizuka Hiratsuka's eyes brighten, even the corners of her mouth began to rise; clearly, she had thought of something that made her happy. "You basically never come to class, so you must not have joined any club activities either, right?"

"I'm not interested in any clubs."

"Then start a club, young man!" Shizuka Hiratsuka patted Dong Yunshan on the shoulder. "There are plenty of students at school who need help, too. You can stay away from the dangers out in society and enjoy helping people at school instead. As for the club name... let's call it the Service Club."

"What kind of shady name is that...?"

"If you dare refuse, I'll tell your mother." Shizuka Hiratsuka's eyes narrowed dangerously, and her smile gained a few malicious edges. "Now, what sort of story should I make up?"

"It stopped being good the moment you decided to start making things up." Dong Yunshan took the cigarette that was about to burn down between Shizuka Hiratsuka's fingers and casually stubbed it out. "If this is the help you need, teacher, then as your student, of course I won't shirk my duty."

"What a good boy~" Shizuka Hiratsuka pinched Dong Yunshan's cheek and started the sports car. "Back to school."

Soubu High School was a municipal high school located in Chiba City, and it was the top key school in Chiba City in terms of deviation value.

On either side of the passage through the school buildings stood the classroom building and the special-purpose building. Their second floors were connected by corridors; from above, the layout looked a little like a capital I, or like a squared-off loop, with something of an H shape to it as well.

Dong Yunshan followed Shizuka Hiratsuka into the special building and stopped in front of a classroom.

Shizuka Hiratsuka took out a key and opened the door. "From now on, this will be your clubroom."

At the back of the classroom, desks, chairs, and other odds and ends were piled up in disarray. It looked more like a storage room than a classroom, and had clearly been left unused for quite some time.

"My clubroom..." Dong Yunshan stared thoughtfully at the pile of desks, chairs, and benches. "So that means I can arrange it however I want, right?"

"Within the limits allowed by school rules," Shizuka Hiratsuka added. "If you damage anything, you'll pay compensation at cost."

"No problem." Dong Yunshan looked through the labels on boxes of all sizes. "Please inform these clubs and classes, teacher, that if they don't come pick their things up within three working days, I'll be taking whatever I want to use."

"I'll handle all the paperwork too." Shizuka Hiratsuka slapped a hand onto Dong Yunshan's shoulder, her smiling face carrying an undisguised threat. "In exchange, as the president of the Service Club, you'd better not be absent from the clubroom when a client comes asking for help."

"Drawing a prison around me, huh." Feeling Shizuka Hiratsuka's slender fingers constantly tighten, Dong Yunshan smiled back. "Then in exchange, as the teacher who proposed the Service Club, you also have to make sure the Service Club truly has a reason to exist. If no one comes with requests, staying here would be a serious waste of my youth."

"I really don't know where someone so young got that sense of crisis about youth slipping away..."

"You wouldn't understand." Dong Yunshan sighed. "When you get to my age, you will."

A vein bulged on Shizuka Hiratsuka's forehead. "I'd like to!"