Busy

What was the best way to put an end to rumors that she was intellectually disabled? Getting high scores on tests.

The English papers they were taking were all out of 120 points, so a score of over 110 was already very high, enough to rank in the top ten in the class.

But the scores still did not carry the same weight as those on an official exam, because their seats had not been spaced apart.

Although teachers supervised them, they sat in their usual seats. Some students passed notes, and others copied from the person beside them. At most, the teachers would say something; there was no avoiding it.

Still, anyone who could score that high could not possibly be intellectually disabled, even if they had copied.

And so the rumors fell apart on their own.

Lin Er did not care much about any of that anymore. She was very busy now.

Magic really was a matter of perception. When she cast the Summoning Charm, if she thought too broadly about what she wanted, she would summon a lot of things of the same kind.

For example, money on the ground.

Could anyone imagine it? Even in their little town, she could collect a few yuan every day.

So many people lost money, and money really was easy to lose!

Of course, that was just one spell. Most of her time was taken up in the evenings.

Whenever she went home to bathe, she would also cast Scourgify on the snails her grandparents had just collected.

She also had to go to the little bamboo grove to work on her cave. These days, she blocked the entrance with straw before casting spells inside.

There was still noise, but it sounded much quieter outside. Overall, though, it sounded more like someone had put something in the water to blast fish.

The wall in the bamboo grove was going up faster than she was digging out the cave. Even if someone heard her and shone a flashlight around, they could not possibly see anything through the bamboo.

As for whether anyone would climb up to investigate, it was not worth the trouble. No one in their area had professional climbing equipment, nor did they have anyone skilled at it.

No one would be willing to take that risk just to catch someone blasting fish. After all, this was not the village fishpond, only a natural pool in the river.

Sometimes, when she was in the mood at night, she would also make a trip to the city.

There were few vehicles at that hour, and hardly any traffic on the roads at night, so she could race along on her broom.

A drive of twenty or thirty minutes took her only a little over ten.

She stopped outside the city, though, because who knew which corner inside might have a surveillance camera?

The Disillusionment Charm could make her blend in like a chameleon, but it could not erase her presence. Given how cameras worked at night, using the spell would make no difference.

But she had not come to buy anything anyway. She was only there to collect money. She would stand outside the city and wave her wand, then get back on her broom and race home.

Collecting money at night was less likely to cause problems. Because of the poor visibility, even if someone saw it, they would think their eyes were playing tricks on them.

At first, this cost-free venture was on her mind every night. Later, she grew impatient with washing the money, and magic could not distinguish large denominations from small ones.

Often, after bringing the money back and washing it, she found it was all one- or two-jiao notes. Most ridiculously, she once picked up a stack of one- and two-fen notes. The thick stack had excited her for a moment, but she was disappointed when she opened it.

They had almost no value either for spending or collecting, but she could not bear to throw them away. In the end, she dried them and put them all in a wooden box.

That box was specifically for storing the things she collected with her spell.

Some pitch-black jewelry, some bright yellow jewelry, some grayish jewelry that was not quite white, a pair of white jade bangles, a pair of green jade bangles, some copper coins, and now those assorted tiny-denomination notes and coins.

Much of the pitch-black jewelry had come from the deep pool. Lin Er boiled it in an unwanted clay pot to disinfect it, then tossed it into the little treasure chest.

She had money to spend at the moment and did not need those things yet.

Her other activities at night did not stop her from listening in class during the day, though she often wasted most of the time by letting her mind wander.

Her nickname had changed from the gang boss's sworn little sister to a poser: she did not pay attention in class, yet still had the nerve to seek out the teachers afterward, as if she were a good student.

At first, the teachers did not like her attitude in class either. Later, they asked her if she really could not concentrate during lessons.

She nodded very seriously, and after that, the teachers stopped brushing her off when she came to ask questions after class. Instead, they told her to come see them whenever she had time.

Lin Er did not know that her supposed intellectual disability had now been replaced with an inability to concentrate, possibly ADHD or a mental illness.

But she always did very well on classroom tests. She was not at the very top, but she could definitely be considered above average, especially in the three main subjects.

The history and biology teachers were very unhappy about this, and the teacher of ethics and citizenship shook his head and sighed whenever he saw her.

She really did put very little effort into history and biology. Whenever the teachers were lecturing, she always had the feeling that she already knew the material, so her mind easily wandered. But when it came to the tests, she did not know it.

The ethics and citizenship teacher was deeply concerned. He had once told her homeroom teacher that Lin Er's worldview, outlook on life, and values were already fixed, and so upright that they bordered on bizarre.

So even when she barely paid attention in class, or rather, when her mind wandered badly, her test scores were still not low. But it was obvious from her answers that she had made them all up herself.

Apart from the central idea, everything was miles away from the standard answers. To put it plainly, her answers were not at all formal in wording.

It was not that Lin Er had mastered the textbook, but that she had not listened in class at all. She wrote her answers based on her own understanding of the questions.

The only consolation for the homeroom teacher and the ethics and citizenship teacher was that her thinking and values really were sound. At least, when she saw those questions on a test, they really were sound.

The ethics and citizenship teacher spoke to her about it several times, but seeing that Lin Er really could not change, he gave up. Never mind; she always managed to pass, and it was a minor subject worth relatively few points.

Lin Er had tried memorizing the material too, but ethics and citizenship was different from Chinese. The texts and poems in Chinese class flowed off the tongue and were easy to memorize.

But she really struggled to memorize the formal language in ethics and citizenship. It felt entirely devoid of any beauty of expression, like memorizing official documents—or rather, it was official documents and laws.

Of course, she would not give up studying it altogether because of that. Even making up answers on a test required some knowledge, or at least an understanding of what the question was asking.

Otherwise, if she could pass just by scribbling anything down, what would that come to?

When Lin Er began taking weekly tests, her little pen pal was clearly studying too, and he was also very accommodating of the little things Lin Er wanted.

With just those few reference books, he really did seem to have started learning Chinese.

Lin Er went home and sent her little pen pal the tapes that came with her primary-school textbooks, along with the tape repeater she had once insisted on buying.

She sincerely hoped the other person would learn Chinese as soon as possible.