Computer Room

After spending ages flipping through her books without finding the word "Prince," Lin Er gave up and decided to call him Little P in her head. But he hadn't been entirely honest: foreigners' names weren't like the ones in her English textbooks. They were long strings of words.

If the word wasn't a pseudonym, then it was one part of his name.

But she didn't care. Even if he wrote it out for her, she wouldn't understand it anyway.

The immediate problem was, who could tell her the English word for magic?!! She needed it urgently!!

But fretting wouldn't help. She hadn't yet evolved to the point where she dared ask her English teacher, so she would have to tag along with her younger cousin to an internet cafe over the weekend. She didn't have the money to pay for a computer herself.

[wizard]

[No] She didn't understand. Try another word.

[Magic]

[No] Another one!

For a long while, there was no response from the other side. Lin Er wrote a "?" and, perhaps having calmed himself down, he took his time sending back [Sleep].

After much searching, she discovered it meant sleep. Lin Er didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She had forgotten about the time difference, and had no idea what time it was for her foreign friend.

So she checked her vocabulary list and replied, [Good night]

When she turned her head, her deskmate was sitting far away, looking at her as if she were crazy.

Lin Er thought back. She hadn't done anything just now, had she? She lowered her head, and the magic book appeared before her eyes.

Oh, right. She had forgotten that, to everyone else, her magic book was just a blank black notebook.

So, in her deskmate's eyes, hadn't she just been frantically flipping through books, writing down words, and then laughing for no apparent reason?

Uh, that did look a little unhinged, didn't it?

Her current body had thoroughly enjoyed lunch, and once she relaxed, the carb crash hit. Lin Er felt the wand in her sleeve, then surrendered to the drowsiness and fell asleep with her head on her desk.

Being young was great. She had fallen asleep as soon as she put her head down, and the bell woke her up. It was hard to believe she had slept without dreaming despite all the noise in the classroom. Before, even a little light or sound could keep her awake.

Sure enough, that was the price of growing up. Even if she had known she would grow up to be an overworked wage slave with neurasthenia, she would still have looked forward to it.

However hard adulthood was, she would have financial freedom, and she wouldn't have had to spend her entire first year of middle school wearing her great-aunt's red-and-green performance outfit for seniors.

She had dealt with her classmates' jabs by pretending not to understand, and then she seemed to have really become unable to understand sarcasm, recognize mockery, or remember her classmates' faces.

She shook her head, and the warmth of her wand brought her thoughts back. Math class finally began that afternoon.

The gentle, quiet teacher wore glasses and spoke softly, the corners of her mouth turned up. She looked like a trainee teacher who hadn't yet been worn down by her students.

In fact, she had ten years of teaching experience and had graduated from university with a bachelor's degree at eighteen. She had originally applied to be an art teacher, but the school had no dedicated art or music positions, so she had started teaching first-year math.

The main thing was that both she and her husband were experienced math teachers. Lin Er would spend two years under her, and in the third year, the teacher would recommend her to her husband. Then her husband would discover he had been given a hopeless case.

She listened attentively in class and diligently did her homework afterward. Whenever she got a problem wrong, she made an effort to correct it—and scored 60 on her exams.

Yes, out of 150.

As for why she had been recommended, it was because her math grades had reached their all-time peak in her second year.

She had been assigned to the class on suspicion of being intellectually disabled. Of the three main subjects, her Chinese grade stayed between 80 and 100 for three years, which was actually rather reassuring to her homeroom teacher, who also taught Chinese.

Her English started high and went downhill, from nearly full marks to 60 points, until she ended up relying entirely on luck in exams.

Her math started low and climbed, then plummeted. She began at 60, stunned the teacher with a 149, and then functions arrived, and her scores started dropping a hundred points for every 140.

She even made the teacher doubt her own teaching abilities. Unwilling to give up, the teacher recommended her to her husband instead.

In the end, he couldn't salvage her grades either.

Memories she had once thought hazy were now as vivid as if they had happened yesterday.

Watching her classmates start to act up because of the teacher's gentle appearance, Lin Er waited for the show.

"Lin Er. Lin Er, tell us, what is the definition of a negative number?"

The class fell silent. Oh, this teacher probably hadn't heard any gossip about her in the teachers' office.

She might have heard that there were two students in the class who weren't very bright, but she hadn't connected them to this name. So the teacher, who liked to pick students at random from the class list to answer questions, had chosen one lucky student.

Lin Er stood up. Her deskmate gave her a sympathetic look, then shifted the underlined passage in her book over to the dividing line on their desk for her to see, thinking she was being discreet.

Lin Er picked up her book and read the passage aloud.

The teacher nodded, said, "Very good," and told her to sit down.

Lin Er sat down at last. That was close; she had nearly made a fool of herself.

What kind of question could the teacher ask in the first lesson? It could only be something from the textbook. Really, she was just calling on a student to get the class to pay attention to her lesson.

She hadn't said they couldn't look at their books or insisted they recite the answer from memory, so reading it aloud was perfectly normal. The fact that she had let Lin Er sit down as soon as she finished reading also showed that she had simply wanted to interact with the class and liven things up.

How could anyone judge the quality of an answer like that? As long as she read it confidently and her Mandarin was reasonably standard, that was enough.

And Lin Er now did both very well, so it was no surprise she had been praised.

It was still hot in September, and the classroom was crowded with more than sixty people. The breeze from the ceiling fan in the middle didn't reach the sides, and the heat was enough to make anyone irritable.

She didn't want to wear that gaudy performance outfit, and the thinnest thing she had at home was the old long-sleeved shirt she was wearing.

The cuffs had lost some of their elasticity in the wash, and the sleeves covered her fingertips when left down, but at least they looked presentable rolled up.

But it really was hot. Even while sweating, she had to force herself to say she wasn't afraid of the heat when people asked.

After four afternoon classes, it was time for dinner. Lin Er turned to look at Ying Yuecheng's seat. He had run off quickly; evidently, going without lunch had left him hungry.

She slowly tore off one of her meal tickets and went to the cafeteria for a serving of vegetables without a trace of oil. After eating, she didn't return to the classroom. Instead, the timetable reminded her to go to the computer room.

She couldn't wait until the weekend. If she didn't find out what the words on the other side had repeatedly written meant, she wouldn't be able to sleep tonight.

There was only one computer class a week in middle school, and she had forgotten all about it until the timetable reminded her. The computer room was tiny, with only enough computers for two students to share one during class, and it was kept locked at other times.

She still had one chance to cast a spell today, and the Unlocking Charm was perfect for this.

The computers in the room were very old, but fortunately, starting up a desktop hadn't changed much over the years.

She chose the one in the corner of the back row and waited a long time for it to start up. It was much slower than the classroom's multimedia system.

But she wasn't picky. As long as it worked, that was enough.

With the tool at hand, she immediately translated the words she had written down that afternoon. Looking at the translations for wizard and magic, she felt awful all over.

There was a hierarchy of prejudice among wizards. Although she didn't know whether the one on the other side shared those views, many pure-blood wizards looked down on Muggles in Harry Potter, which she had read before her rebirth.

Thinking back over their exchange that afternoon, he had asked if she was a wizard, and she had replied "NO." He had asked about magic, and she had replied "NO" again.

Although she knew she had meant that she didn't understand, he might not have understood it that way.

If he had understood her repeated answers to mean no, then that silence made sense: he didn't want to talk to a Muggle.