06 - Fight after we talk

She thought that Luo Tang was just talking casually, but when Wei Ruxia stepped outside on Monday morning she saw Luo Tang leaning against the fence.

The early morning was full of dew and the glistening made people feel refreshed. In the sun, the boy's white shirt looked clean as new. He had his school bag slung across his straight shoulders and he was reading the comic book in his hand.

Seeing Wei Ruxia coming out, Luo Tang raised his eyes and looked at her. He put the comic book away, got up and turned to Wei Ruxia and said, "Let's go."

The sudden loss of a friend made Li Suhe's spirit was a little low. After the funeral, Li Suhe had Wei Zishan take her back to her home in the outer suburbs. After returning home to rest for a day, Li Suhe called Wei Ruxia, she sounded exhausted and apologetic.

Wei Ruxia knew that her grandma had been trying to reconcile her and Wei Zishan for a long time, she was probably exhausted physically and mentally. In order not to worry her, Wei Ruxia told her that everything was fine.

"Will you go to school with Luo Tang?" Li Suhe asked.

"Yeah." Wei Ruxia said, "The food prepared by the cook is delicious, dad likes it, too.”

Hearing her take the initiative to mention Wei Zishan, Li Suhe felt relieved. She told Wei Ruxia, "Then you and your father should get along well. Wait for the National Day holiday and you can come here to play."

When Wei Ruxia was first brought to Ancheng in June, she lived in her grandma's house for two months. Her house was in a small town on the outskirts of Ancheng. In June it was as beautiful as an ink painting when it rained.

Wei Ruxia nodded and agreed, "Okay, grandma."

Just as Wei Ruxia hung up, the math teacher, Liu Naiwen, entered the classroom holding a stack of test papers.

Seeing the test papers in his hand, the class suddenly complained.

"A test only two weeks after school starts!"

"There’s nothing to test, we haven’t even studied the first few pages of the textbook!"

Liu Naiwen was a 35-year-old short and thin middle-aged man with glasses and a hunchback. He looked very good natured and had a good sense of humour.

Hearing the students complaining one after another, Liu Naiwen put the papers down on the table, raised his eyebrows in amusement and said, "You don't want to take tests? Then don't take the college entrance exam. Go home. You can go back and inherit your family business. Go home and farm."

The class laughed. Liu Naiwen knocked on the desk with the blackboard eraser and said, "Okay, clean up your desks, let’s start the test. Don’t rush to doubt yourselves and think that you haven’t studied enough. You’ll know when the test is over. If you don’t feel confident, then you’ll know you haven’t studied enough."

Although the atmosphere in the classroom was very relaxed under Liu Naiwen’s influence, the math problems on the papers weren’t relaxing at all. After class was over, Hu Yinyin smashed her face on the desk and said, "I’m dead."

Behind her, Han Junsong was looking in a mirror and combing his freshly permed hair. After hearing Hu Yinyin's words, Han Junsong blurted out, "Didn’t you know you couldn’t do it before taking the test?"

Hu Yinyin stood up and chased Han Junsong for a beating.

Hu Yinyin was white, chubby and a little short, while Han Junsong was tanned, thin, and half a head taller than Hu Yinyin. The two chased each other around the classroom, the scene was a bit silly, and the class started laughing again.

Wei Ruxia couldn't laugh, the air-conditioning was on and the cool breeze filled the  classroom, but she was still restless, thinking about all the questions she left blank on the test.

The single-subject test was marked very quickly and the corrected papers were returned on Tuesday. After the math class rep, Li Yiting handed out the homework, he also brought back the test papers and passed them around.

Wherever Li Yiting went, wailing followed.

Everyone around her had received their marked tests, but Wei Ruxia had not. She looked up at Li Yiting, who handed the last paper in his hand to Han Junsong. Han Junsong was surprised to find that he’d actually scored 35 points in the test. Li Yiting pushed up his glasses and told Wei Ruxia the bad news.

"The teacher asked you to go to his office."

Wei Ruxia's heart sank with a ‘thump’.

Hu Yinyin also felt anxious for her. She put her test away and asked Li Yiting, "Old Liu isn’t in a bad mood, right?"

Li Yiting adjusted his glasses again. He was also quite clean looking and his facial features were very light. When he pushed up his glasses it made him appear very elite.

"Don’t worry, he was playing Peggle."

The teacher’s offices in Ancheng No. 1 High School were arranged by subject. The English teachers were grouped together, as were the math teachers. Each office was shared by four teachers.

The offices weren’t large, there were two desks by each of the two windows side by side. A teacher sat at one of the desks and on the others were computers and various books and teaching materials.

Of the four desks, Liu Naiwen’s was the most messy. When Wei Ruxia entered, there were only two teachers in the office. One teacher was immersed in lesson preparations while Liu Naiwen was playing Peggle. He had a glass on his desk with goji berries floating inside. The red goji berries looked vibrant in the transparent water that bubbled from time to time.

Wei Ruxia knocked on the door and the two teachers looked over at the same time, then when she greeted Liu Naiwen, the other teacher immediately went back to her work. Liu Naiwen asked her to come in.

Wei Ruxia sat on the chair next to Liu Naiwen's desk and watched as he spread her test paper across the desk. The ‘34’ on it made her feel like she was sitting on pins and needles.

She couldn’t even beat Han Junsong.

Seeing that Wei Ruxia was a little nervous, Liu Naiwen made his expression as kind as possible. He pushes her test paper forward and asked, "You can't keep up with the course? Is it my way of teaching? Or are you not used to it?"

There was nothing bad to be said about the strength of the teachers at Ancheng No. 1 High School, it definitely wasn’t a problem of the teacher’s teaching style.

"No." Wei Ruxia denied it, she said to Liu Naiwen, "When I was in my first year of high school, I studied a different textbook."

Liu Naiwen heard from Ke Wenzhen, the head teacher of her class, that Wei Ruxia had transferred down from the north, so he should take extra care with her. The textbooks were different and her foundational knowledge would be different. He had no choice but to re-teach Wei Ruxia the content and help her catch up with the current progress of the other students.

"I see." Liu Naiwen said clearly. He handed the test back to Wei Ruxia first, then looked about his desk and pulled out a math textbook for the first semester of high school from a pile of teaching plans.

"Then you need to work on building up a solid foundation. Go back and study this textbook in your own time. If you don't understand anything, just ask me or your classmates."

Wei Ruxia returned to the classroom with his textbook and her test paper. When she entered, she happened to see Luo Tang standing in front of the classroom windows that looked out into the corridor. A boy standing next to him was talking.

The next class was Chinese, but the Chinese teacher had something to do, so they had been assigned a self-study session.

Still thinking of the math teacher's words, Wei Ruxia didn't stop at the door, and went into the classroom. Luo Tang raised his eyes and glanced at her, and after speaking with the boy, he also turned back into the classroom.

As soon as Luo Tang stepped in the door, Han Junsong leaned over and asked, "Has Xu Lingzhou brought people in?"

The last time Luo Tang targeted Xu Lingzhou, he almost beat him to a pulp. Xu Lingzhuo wouldn’t dare to confront Luo Tang directly, instead he recruited some troops and called in the cavalry. He’d gathered more than 20 people and then asked Luo Tang and his friends to meet him at the Interstellar Internet Cafe just outside the school.

These kinds of group brawls would always get hormonal teenagers riled up and ready to go.

Compared with Han Junsong's uncontrollable excitement, Luo Tang was much calmer. He opened the comic book in his hand and answered casually, listening to Han Junsong chattering about his battle plan as well as the dialogue between the two girls in front of him.

"Our textbooks are different? Wah, maths is too difficult, I can't help you." It was too much for Hu Yinyin's head.

Wei Ruxia was more anxious than Hu Yinyin, but she didn't despair. She opened the textbook and started studying. Although the textbooks were quite different, the high school syllabus was clearly delineated and there were still similarities between the two.

Seeing Wei Ruxia reading the book calmly, not turning the page for a long time, Hu Yinyin leaned over and asked, "Can you understand it?"

Wei Ruxia stared at the numbers in the textbook and answered honestly, "Nope."

Hu Yinyin, "......"

Hu Yinyin was worried. Seeing that Wei Ruxia was in trouble, she spared no effort to help. She raised her eyes and locked onto the desk by the classroom window where Li Yiting was fiddling with his glasses. She had an idea.

"Hey, I heard that our class is about to change seats. Why don’t you talk to the teacher in advance and ask to move you to the window and sit at the same table as Li Yiting."

Li Yiting was a perfect student. Originally he was in the competitive class, but later felt that he wanted to try other subjects, so he moved to class 15.

As soon as Hu Yinyin spoke, the teenager who was reading his comics behind them paused as he turned the page.

Wei Ruxia thought that Hu Yinyin's plan wasn’t bad, but she would still have to wait for the seating arrangements to change. She needed to get used to the new material as soon as possible. She was only okay at learning mathematics and it took a long time for her to figure out the problems in the textbook.

She could figure it out, but the crux of it was that there were still things that she didn't fully understand.

More than half of the self-study session had passed and Wei Ruxia looked up from the textbook, her brain was numb. Hu Yinyin said that the ones sitting nearby were all the ones who didn’t study well, but people who’d been taught it once before were still better than her, who hadn't been taught the content in the first place.

Wei Ruxia took the textbook and decided to ask the students around her about the questions. Quietly in the self-study class, she whispered to those who sat nearby her and then the people next to them. She went through almost everyone, there was only one person left.

The distance between the two wasn’t far, and Wei Ruxia was about to ask when the back door was suddenly opened. Standing outside was the boy who had been talking to Luo Tang before, there were also a few others behind him.

As soon as they opened the door, more than half the students in the classroom turned their heads. Seeing the crowd, they then glanced at Luo Tang and went back to studying as usual.

"Luo’ge." The boy spoke to Luo Tang.

Luo Tang put the comic and looked up at Wei Ruxia, who was about to turn back to her desk. There was no emotion in his dark eyes.

"Why don't you ask me?"

His voice wasn’t too loud, just enough to be heard by the person in front of him.

Wei Ruxia stopped turning around and looked at him, wondering, "Aren't you going to go fight?"

There was the harsh sound of a chair scraping against the ground as Luo Tang stood up from his desk and walked behind Wei Ruxia.

He was very tall and in order for Wei Ruxia to hear his voice better, Luo Tang put one hand on the back of her chair and the other hand by her textbook.

His well-defined fingers rested on Wei Ruxia's textbook and Luo Tang's eyelashes lowered slightly as he met Wei Ruxia's light brown eyes.

"I’ll fight after. Which question can’t you do?"

The author has something to say:

Tangtang: I'll give you a lesson, don't switch your seat.
Wei Ruxia: ...

The author has no professional ethics at all, the whole article has no brains, no logic, the background is fantasy, and the setting is nonsense...
I hope everyone will love the elderly and be more tolerant to me, hm~

The above is the author's note, not mine. I think it was in response to some people saying that the maths being different is a bit silly and feeling that Luo Tang seems to have no reason to like Wei Ruxia. I disagree though, I mean I think there isn't much reason, since they just met, but high school crushes are like that. Someone new and attractive talks to you in passing and it's easy to have a crush. There doesn't need to be deep feelings or reason yet, they're 16, hormones always win, and we're only at chapter 6, reason and logic can come later. The maths thing is a bit silly.