“What’s all this racket? Do you think this is West Street or the vegetable market? Get back to your seats! Class is starting!”
Teacher Chen walked up to the podium and tossed his textbook onto the desk.
He forced himself to stay calm. To be honest, when he’d raised his voice just now, he hadn’t felt entirely confident. After so many years of simply drifting through life, suddenly standing tall and acting with authority still felt a little unfamiliar.
Fortunately, the students hadn’t reacted much, and that gave him a bit more confidence.
“Class begins!”
“Stand!”
“Good afternoon, Teacher…”
…
After school—
“We’ll wait for you at the school gate.”
“Okay. See you.”
Zhou Yuwei stopped outside the office.
“Permission to enter!”
“Come in.”
“Teacher Qi.”
She walked over to his desk.
Qi Donghai looked up at the girl.
“I heard you caused another scene as soon as you got back to class?”
“Teacher Qi, you’ve got the wrong idea. I’m the most well-behaved student there is. People bully me—I don’t bully other people.”
Although, in her own world, that statement was completely backwards.
“Hmm. If you’d said that before, I’d have believed you. Now…” He paused. “I’ll only believe half of it.”
Zhou Yuwei gave an awkward grin.
Whatever she said now probably wouldn’t help anyway. After all, her leave approval slip was still in his hands.
“It’s not impossible for me to approve your leave.”
…
There had to be a “but.”
Why did teachers always talk like this?
“But…”
Just as expected.
Zhou Yuwei raised an eyebrow and looked at him.
“Before every weekend this month, you must come to my house to take a practice exam. If I discover your grades have slipped, you’ll return to school immediately.”
The reason they had agreed to give her a month’s leave was twofold.
First, they couldn’t exactly stop a child from going home to take care of her parents.
Second, all the senior-year coursework had already been completed. Perhaps Zhou Yuwei truly did have her own review schedule.
Just as she’d said in the principal’s office:
“I have my own study rhythm, my own goals, and my own plan for reaching them. This is my study schedule for the month. Please read it together with Teacher Qi before deciding whether to approve my leave.”
After Principal Tan accepted the plan, he and Qi Donghai had studied it carefully.
Both of them had been genuinely surprised.
“This is your daily schedule?”
Every hour was meticulously planned, with review sessions for every subject organized in remarkable detail.
There was nothing they could criticize.
Qi Donghai, in particular, had initially been dissatisfied.
But when he noticed that the time she’d allocated to Political Science greatly exceeded the hours she’d assigned to Physics and Chemistry…
He nodded inwardly.
At least she knew her own weaknesses.
She understood that she wasn’t strong in politics and intended to make up for it through hard work.
He had to admit that with determination like this, how could she possibly fail to get into a good university?
His expression softened considerably.
Earlier, he’d truly been anxious.
He still remembered the principal asking her,
“With a schedule like this… how much time do you even have left to sleep?”
She had looked at both of them before replying,
“I’m not a genius. Ever since I was little, I’ve known that if I wanted to become outstanding, I’d have to work harder than everyone else.”
“My mother always reminded me to keep a low profile at school. She even hoped I’d remain completely ordinary, because only then could I live a peaceful, uneventful life.”
Her voice had caught in her throat.
“To avoid bringing trouble to my family, I demanded more from myself than from anyone else. I had to become better than everyone else, no matter the cost. Time passes quickly. If I don’t work hard now, there may never be another chance.”
That was what had convinced Principal Tan to approve her leave without hesitation.
“I can do that.”
Zhou Yuwei nodded.
For the sake of freedom, taking a weekly exam at his house was a small price to pay.
“These are the study materials I’ve prepared, along with the key points I’ve compiled.”
Qi Donghai pointed toward the stack of review materials piled nearly to her thigh.
“You need to read them several times and truly understand them.”
Heh…
She silently mourned her fate.
Then his next sentence nearly sent her straight to hell.
“These are only this week’s materials. After you come to my place next weekend for your test, I’ll adjust next week’s content accordingly.”
Zhou Yuwei…
Although her homeroom teacher maintained a perfectly calm expression, she could read the hidden meaning behind it.
If she didn’t improve her Political Science grades, next week’s materials would probably double.
“Thank you for thinking of me so much.”
“You know that, do you?”
He snorted.
“Raise your score. I’m not asking for full marks, but at least don’t fail so miserably next time. If you really do get into Peking University or Tsinghua University someday, how would it sound if people said that one of No. 1 High School’s outstanding students couldn’t even pass Political Science?”
Thinking back to this examination, she had simply gotten lucky.
Politics hadn’t been tested first.
That political science paper she’d handed in was still lying on the desk in his house.
On one hand, he couldn’t help wondering what on earth she’d learned to produce answers like that.
On the other…
What in the world was that handwriting?
It looked like chicken scratches.
Such a pretty young girl…
Yet she wrote like a dog dragging its paws through mud.
“And improve your handwriting. Sloppy writing costs marks.”
…
Zhou Yuwei walked out carrying the enormous pile of materials.
Liu Changyun could barely see her head behind it.
“So the homeroom teacher called you over just to shower you with love.”
His tone was overflowing with schadenfreude.
“Here. They’re all yours.”
She shoved the stack toward him.
“No, no, no.”
He hurriedly waved both hands.
“You’re the teacher’s favorite now. I wouldn’t dare steal that honor from you.”
What a joke.
If he carried all those books home, his old man would probably think he’d gone insane.
Or assume he was plotting some new disaster.
“As if.”
She pulled the stack back.
“This is our homeroom teacher’s affection for me. If you want some, ask him yourself. I’m only asking you to help carry them.”
The teacher had prepared all of this especially for her.
If he found out she’d handed everything to someone else without even looking back…
The coming storm would probably be even fiercer.
When she got home—
Zhou Yuwei carried the materials into her room and found her older sister, Zhou Yulan, sitting there sorting buttons one by one.
“What’s wrong? Business not going well?”
“Yuwei, you’re back?”
Zhou Yulan straightened the bag beside her.
“Business isn’t bad. It’s just that all the buttons get mixed together on the stall. Customers keep digging through them, and after I finally organize everything, it all becomes a mess again.”
“That’s easy to fix.”
Zhou Yuwei walked over and picked up a piece of cloth.
Rip!
She tore off a large section.
Zhou Yulan stared in horror.
“Yuwei! Mom just bought that fabric! She was planning to make you a new undershirt. Why did you tear it?”
Their mother wasn’t very good at sewing, so Zhou Yulan usually handled all the family’s clothes.
If only they owned a sewing machine, she’d finish much faster.
Zhou Yuwei’s undershirts were practically falling apart.
Actually, every member of the Zhou family wore tattered underwear.
Their outer clothing was still presentable—no holes, no patches—after all, they lived in the city.
But the clothes hidden underneath…
They had been patched and repatched for years.
Zhou Yuwei sat on the floor and poured all the buttons out of the bag.
“I hadn’t finished sorting those.”
“No rush.”
She selected one of each type of button and began sewing them onto the cloth.
“It’s a shame we don’t have black fabric. Black would look even better. You’ll just have to make do with this.”
“Why are you sewing the buttons onto the cloth?”
“This is called a sample board.”
“When customers come to the stall, you lay this cloth out for them to look at. They can point to whichever button they like, and then you simply take that style out of the corresponding small bag.”
She stood up again and fetched a pen.
After sewing each button onto the cloth, she wrote its name and number beneath it.
“‘Four-hole coconut shell button, size 3, No. 1.'”
She read it aloud.
“See? Isn’t that much simpler?”
“It’ll be easier for customers to choose, easier for you to find what they want, and everything stays organized. You won’t have to sort these buttons every single day.”
She pressed the cloth thoughtfully.
“It’s just a little too soft. Next time, we should find something stiffer.”
“No…”
“We need a red carpet.”
“When we start stocking more products and more varieties, we’ll sew everything onto the carpet. It’ll be just like Along the River During the Qingming Festival—spread out from one end to the other.”
“Oh, right.”
“I’ll even design the layout for you.”
“I guarantee it’ll be both attractive and stylish.”