A Woman's Thoughts Were the Hardest to Read (3,700 words)

The feeble young master Dong Wenyu had almost failed to stand up carrying thirty-odd pounds of water;

Madam Class Monitor had carried twenty pounds of books under the blazing sun for over ten minutes with ease;

Who was stronger and who was weaker was obvious.

Everyone in the class had arrived, and the bell rang for the start of the lesson.

Feeling sleepy wasn't the most torturous thing. The real torture was feeling sleepy when your first lesson happened to be Old Liang's Chinese class.

"What's going on here? You get two days off and come back looking this listless? Everyone, take out your monthly exam papers. We're going over them this lesson."

Going over exam papers was even more boring than a regular lesson. And with Chinese... getting a low score was hard, but getting a high score was even harder.

The class's Chinese scores all fell within a fairly narrow range. The highest was 139, and the lowest was 116. The student with the highest score couldn't guarantee they'd come out on top next time, while the student with the lowest might well score over 130. Exactly how many points you got was down to fate...

In an honors class, pulling far ahead of everyone else through Chinese was impossible.

That was why most of the students didn't place that much importance on Chinese. As long as it didn't drag their overall scores down, that was enough.

Even Teacher Liang himself wasn't trying to cultivate students with outstanding Chinese scores. He just wanted to raise the class's overall standard.

Of the sixty students in the class, Chen Shi'an was undoubtedly the one who paid the most attention in Chinese lessons.

At this stage of his high school studies, Chinese was the only subject he could keep up with, and the only one in which he could understand the teacher's explanations.

He had a grounding in Chinese; he simply lacked familiarity with standardized exam-answering conventions. He could put off listening in his other classes for now, but he still needed to listen in Chinese.

Chen Shi'an took out the Chinese paper he'd completed for his placement assessment. It was the same one everyone else had taken for the monthly exam. As Teacher Liang went over it, he listened carefully with his pen in hand, revising his answers according to the standards Teacher Liang provided.

Lin Meng Qiu stole a glance at his paper.

His handwriting was genuinely good. This was the first time she'd seen a classmate write so beautifully;

His answers to the reading comprehension questions... were rather fresh. His reasoning was internally consistent and his supporting arguments clear. You couldn't say he was wrong, but it was genuinely difficult to know how to score him;

He'd even written his essay in classical Chinese... Many of the words and phrases were so obscure that she struggled to understand them, but judging by its structure and flow, it seemed to be an essay with considerable depth and literary flair.

It wasn't that writing in classical Chinese was forbidden, but none of her classmates, herself included, dared to attempt it lightly...

Chen Shi'an dared. Not only had he written in classical Chinese, he'd used traditional characters throughout. His answers to every other question were also entirely in traditional characters.

Had those traditional characters not formed words and sentences, allowing the cultural heritage ingrained in Chinese people's very genes to help Lin Meng Qiu read them without much trouble, she really wouldn't have recognized some of them on their own...

A sense of awe rose within her, and once again she saw this dropout from compulsory education in a new light.

At any rate, she felt that she could never have produced a paper like this without ever having attended school.

He shouldn't be taking the college entrance exam. He should be taking the imperial examinations instead...

The imperial examinations didn't have math, English, physics, biology, or chemistry, and those were often precisely the subjects that gave high school students the biggest headaches.

As though sensing something, Chen Shi'an followed her gaze and turned his head.

Lin Meng Qiu, however, turned away again without betraying a thing.

Chen Shi'an: "..."

The class monitor was such a turnoff. Why did she always like watching what he was doing?

Fortunately, there wasn't a second Chinese lesson that afternoon.

After class, Teacher Liang stepped down from the podium, came over to Chen Shi'an, and chatted with him briefly.

"How's it going, Shi'an? Keeping up all right?"

"Yes. You explain things very well, Teacher Liang."

"Heh heh."

Old Liang was delighted. Just look at all these little brats in his class-not one of them appreciated quality!

"I'll give you an assignment. Take that paper you completed and revise your answers into the proper format using what I covered, then hand it in to me."

"Teacher Liang, I've already finished revising it. Please take a look."

"That was fast!"

Teacher Liang took the paper he handed over and looked through it. After the revisions, Chen Shi'an's paper looked much more "orderly." Many of the revised answers still seemed a little off-topic and awkward, but that wasn't a major problem. More regular practice would take care of it.

"As for the essay... practice writing in modern Chinese more. Unless you can maintain the standard of this classical Chinese essay every time, in which case there's no harm in using classical Chinese... But you still need plenty of practice writing in modern Chinese, because some prompts really aren't suitable for classical Chinese. Having more skills at your disposal won't hurt."

"All right. Thank you, Teacher Liang."

After Teacher Liang left, the deputy class monitor, Qiu Yufu, walked toward the fourth group of desks.

Chen Shi'an noticed her. But seeing the girl glance first at him, then at Lin Meng Qiu beside him, he couldn't tell which of them she'd come to see.

"Chen Shi'an."

Qiu Yufu stopped beside his desk, then took out a form.

"We have students take turns on classroom duty every day, wiping the blackboard and cleaning the classroom. Since you've only just arrived, we haven't added you to the schedule yet. This is our current seating chart. Duty rotates according to where everyone sits. Have a look and sign your name in your seat, then I'll schedule you normally using the chart."

"All right, let me see."

Chen Shi'an took the seating chart from her. It was the latest version, with every classmate's name matched to their seat. He scanned it and committed it to memory. Now he wouldn't have to worry about not knowing who was who.

"Is there anything else besides wiping the blackboard and cleaning the classroom?"

"You have to take out the trash."

"All right."

Chen Shi'an picked up his pen and signed his name beside Lin Meng Qiu's on the seating chart.

Qiu Yufu took the chart back, but didn't leave right away. Instead, she leaned forward slightly to speak to Lin Meng Qiu, who was quietly working on problems beside him.

"Meng Qiu, in that case... will you still be doing duty with Yining and Mengxuan?"

Zheng Yining and Xie Mengxuan were the two girls sitting in front of Chen Shi'an. Usually, deskmates did classroom duty together, but since Lin Meng Qiu hadn't had a deskmate before, she'd always done it with those two.

Now that she had a deskmate, continuing to work with Zheng Yining and Xie Mengxuan while leaving Chen Shi'an on his own clearly wouldn't be very nice.

Qiu Yufu didn't dare decide for her, so she'd specifically come to ask her opinion.

Without raising her head, Lin Meng Qiu fell silent for a moment, then said softly, "Just sched-

ule it normally."

"OK."

Qiu Yufu left and walked to the blackboard at the back of the classroom, where she wrote the names of tomorrow's students on duty: [Chen Shi'an, Lin Meng Qiu]

Chen Shi'an turned to look.

"Class Monitor, I'm on duty with you tomorrow."

"Mm."

"Where do we take the trash?"

Lin Meng Qiu glanced at him. Remembering that he wasn't familiar with the school, and unable to think of how to describe the exact location of the waste collection area just then, she simply cut things short. "You'll find out tomorrow."

Fortunately, Chen Shi'an was equally economical. Once she said that, he stopped wondering where the waste collection area was.

Without responding, the young Taoist went about organizing his desk for the next lesson.

"It's near the north gate, on the right," Lin Meng Qiu suddenly added.

"..."

Chen Shi'an turned to look at her, feeling more convinced than ever that his master had been right when he'd said a woman's thoughts were the hardest to read.

The last two lessons that afternoon were physics and chemistry. Both were also devoted to going over the monthly exam papers.

Chen Shi'an tried listening, couldn't understand, and gave up.

There were too many gaps in his foundations right now. Even someone who learned as efficiently as he did couldn't raise his grades overnight.

Chen Shi'an drew up a simple study plan for himself.

He would first improve in the three main subjects: Chinese, math, and English. Together, they accounted for 450 points. Math in particular served as the foundation for physics, chemistry, and biology.

Chinese and English were straightforward. They mainly relied on memorization and practice, so he could simply study on his own and catch up during those lessons. Math, however, would require more time.

Of course, Chen Shi'an wasn't willing to spend extra time studying after class, nor did he think it necessary. He already spent more than enough hours studying each day.

Weren't there still physics, chemistry, and biology lessons? Wouldn't those be perfect for studying math...

The science teachers had nothing to say.

With the boy's foundations in such terrible shape, having him neither sleep nor cause trouble in class was already a blessing for his teachers. What did it matter if he studied math during their lessons?

And so, during physics, Chen Shi'an studied another chapter of Seventh-Grade Mathematics, Volume One, on top of the two he'd already completed on his own.

For the final lesson, chemistry, Chen Shi'an took out the seventh-grade math workbook Lin Meng Qiu had brought him and practiced the material from those three chapters.

Additional practice really was necessary.

The textbook exercises were fairly basic and lacked variety in their question formats. That very variety, however, was an important way to develop mathematical thinking.

Lin Meng Qiu had already completed all these workbooks back then, and her answers were written in them.

Those answers didn't interfere with Chen Shi'an. He could control himself well enough not to look at them... And after discovering the occasional mistake in Lin Meng Qiu's answers, he began treating those "answers" with skepticism too.

Lin Meng Qiu from five years ago... Judging by her handwriting, she'd changed quite a lot. Back then, her writing had a clumsy sort of innocence, every stroke painstakingly formed, nothing like the smooth, joined-up strokes she used now.

There were also plenty of places where she'd corrected mistakes, a stark contrast to that magnificent exam paper on which she'd scored 150. Was this the path she'd traveled to get here?

Unable to contain his curiosity, Chen Shi'an asked her.

"Class Monitor, how were your grades in seventh grade?"

"Average."

"What do you mean by average?"

"Top ten in the class."

"Oh-"

Chen Shi'an nodded, unaware that he'd just lost another point.

He worked his way through the workbook, reading and writing as he went. Aside from having more varied question formats, the problems weren't actually very difficult. Broken down, they were all just material from the textbook.

He was fairly slow at first, but once he gradually adjusted to the different formats, he began working very quickly.

Of course, there were also complex, difficult problems appropriate to this level that made him slow down and think.

For example, this one-

There was none of the blue handwriting Lin Meng Qiu normally used for her answers, only red handwriting from her later corrections.

This problem really was quite difficult. Clearly, she hadn't been able to solve it back then.

Beside the question, however, was a pencil drawing of a "crying bunny." It was tiny and adorable. The pencil lines had long since been rubbed faint, yet they still seemed to let Chen Shi'an glimpse, across the river of time, the girl struggling to solve the problem back then.

Seeing Chen Shi'an lean over with the workbook, Lin Meng Qiu instinctively straightened her back.

I thought you knew how to do everything. Finally found something you need to ask me about?

But when Chen Shi'an pushed the workbook in front of her and pointed at the little "crying bunny" cartoon, her expression froze.

"Class Monitor, did you draw this?"

The wretched Taoist wore an expression of wonder, as though he'd discovered a new continent.

His eyes "clearly" said, [Who would've thought a class monitor as aloof as you would draw something this cute?] [Ah, it's adorable.] [You must be a soft little bunny on the inside too, Class Monitor.]

Whether she was imagining it or the wretched Taoist really was thinking that, the girl's pretty face flushed crimson with embarrassment in that instant!

She was like a prickly little hedgehog whose soft belly had accidentally been discovered, watching him reach out a finger to tickle it!

She moved fast. Grabbing the eraser from her desk, she scrubbed twice and erased the penciled "crying bunny" cartoon completely...

"Hey, hey! Why did you erase it?"

Chen Shi'an came to his senses and tried to stop her, but the sweet, adorable "crying bunny" had already met a tragic end beneath Lin Meng Qiu's eraser...

"I didn't draw it."

"But you didn't have to..."

"I. Didn't. Draw. It."

"..."

Chen Shi'an didn't dare make another sound. He carefully retrieved the workbook from her.

He could only perform a rite for the little bunny's soul later...