“It looks like classmate Zhang Chen studied very late last night.”
Teacher Jia was a middle-aged, somewhat overweight man, and also the homeroom teacher of the honors class next door.
He had a fleshy mole between his brows, and when he spoke, he gave off a lively, animated impression.
In class, his voice was loud and resonant. If he spotted a classmate dozing off, he would deliberately put on a startled act or suddenly go quiet, then look over with a slightly amused expression. He was a teacher with quite a sense of humor and personal charisma.
However, when it came to Zhang Chen, he had essentially long since left him to fend for himself, only occasionally stepping in.
This time, though, it was because after grading today’s homework, he discovered that Zhang Chen had not only turned it in, but done a very good job.
The two homework pages were filled with problem-solving notes and handwriting. One look was enough to tell that they had been done carefully.
In the past, he had basically never even seen Zhang Chen’s homework!
So when he was discussing the homework and saw Zhang Chen dozing off, he brought it up on the spot.
“Come on, stand up and wake yourself up. Tell us how you worked out question 9.” Jia Wei did not criticize Zhang Chen. Instead, he smiled and asked him to answer.
“Mm…” Zhang Chen frowned, slowly stood up, and scratched his hair.
Duan Chenxu, sitting beside him, was grinning so hard his mouth looked ready to split. He covered his face with a book and whispered, “Brother Chen? Do you know which page it is?”
That deadpan expression was just like Zhang Chen’s old high school deskmate’s. Zhang Chen couldn’t even be bothered to respond.
He quickly flipped through the homework workbook.
“You haven’t even opened the book yet?” Teacher Jia said with a theatrical expression.
That sent the class into another round of laughter.
Zhang Chen could only give an awkward smile or two before spotting question 9 in the book. It was just a problem about finding monotonicity and zeros from a derivative.
Generally, by the second half of sophomore year, teachers were already teaching junior year material, and this place was no exception.
The unit on derivatives that Teacher Jia was teaching now was a headache for any classmate who had not built a solid foundation in functions.
A problem that looked casually easy on homework could easily take up an entire evening self-study period.
The key thing was that in the end, you still might not be able to solve it!
Not only would you fail to finish homework for other subjects, but you would also waste an entire class period!
What’s more, derivatives were a notorious pain point on the college entrance exam. There was basically always a major derivatives question, and it usually had three subquestions!
Zhang Chen glanced at the problem and blurted out, “Differentiate it.”
“…”
Jia Wei said, “I know you differentiate it. I’m asking what your problem-solving thought process is.”
Zhang Chen frowned and looked at the problem again. For something this simple, he could work it out in his head. Did he really need to explain the process?
Then he saw the notes he had written next to the problem, which Nan Xingwan had told him to jot down last night.
Good thing he had those.
So Zhang Chen read aloud, “The derivative of f(x) is greater than zero, so it is monotonically increasing. Therefore, it is a monotonic increasing function, so the only answer is… A.”
Whoa…
The moment those fluent words came out, Duan Chenxu beside him stared wide-eyed, and the classmates in class immediately burst into jeers and applause…
What? Applause for this? Are you treating me like an idiot?
Zhang Chen’s tightly furrowed brows were full of confusion. How was this any different from treating him like a fool for amusement?
Teacher Jia nodded in satisfaction. “Very good. Zhang Chen’s homework yesterday was written extremely well, covered in notes. It seems he really did take it seriously.”
As he spoke, he walked over to Zhang Chen, took Zhang Chen’s book, and showed it to the classmates in class.
“Whoa…”
Zhang Chen: “…”
“So sometimes, classmates with good grades should also learn from classmates whose grades are a little weaker. Their attitude toward studying…”
While praising him, Jia Wei carried the book around the classroom for a lap, going all out to give Zhang Chen plenty of face.
It made it look as if seriously doing homework once was like winning some great prize, though the rarity was about the same…
But as he walked the lap, the breeze turned the pages, and the classmates saw that aside from yesterday’s two homework pages, every other page was blank…
At once, several classmates could no longer hold back their laughter.
“Teacher, why are all the pages in the front empty?”
“Yeah, why didn’t you write anything in the front?”
“The front wasn’t written on?” Teacher Jia asked in confusion. He turned the display side of the book toward himself and flipped forward. Sure enough, it was all blank…
In an instant, Teacher Jia narrowed his eyes and shot Zhang Chen a sidelong glance.
Zhang Chen immediately looked away, thinking, Don’t look at me. It’s not my fault. The original owner didn’t write anything…
At that moment, Su Yu in the front row raised a question. “Did you write it yourself?”
She thought Zhang Chen might have had Bai Xiruo do his homework for him. Otherwise, with Zhang Chen’s grades, how could he suddenly, against all odds, start doing homework and even do it well?
As soon as Su Yu started it, other classmates joined in with the teasing.
“Brother Chen, who helped you copy it?”
“You know in your heart whether you wrote it yourself. You can fool your brothers, but don’t fool yourself.”
They might not have dared to mess with Zhang Chen alone, but since it was Su Yu doing the teasing, the situation was different.
Teacher Jia walked up to Zhang Chen, returned the book to him, and raised an eyebrow. “Did you really write it yourself?”
As soon as he said that, the classmates in class held back their laughter and watched the show.
They all believed Zhang Chen could not possibly have written it himself. This homework was almost certainly fake.
But faced with the classmates’ ridicule and Teacher Jia’s question, Zhang Chen curled his lip and answered calmly:
“Of course I wrote it myself. Why would I copy something this simple?”
The classmates who had been waiting to see how Zhang Chen would answer were instantly choked by his inexplicably arrogant reply.
The classroom fell silent at once, as if everyone had been petrified…
After three seconds, everyone finally came back to their senses and realized what Zhang Chen had just said!
The whole class immediately erupted into excitement…
Even as a teacher, Jia Wei was a little slow to react, but unlike the students, he kept his composure and signaled for the classroom to quiet down.
Then he looked at Zhang Chen with great interest, his mouth twitching as if he wanted to speak but did not know where to start…
Even he was starting to lose confidence. Even the top student in his class would not be this arrogant.
Immediately, as the teacher, he waved Zhang Chen forward. “Then go up there and prove it to us!”
Zhang Chen shrugged. “How am I supposed to prove it?”
“Just go up first.”
Zhang Chen obediently stepped out of his seat and walked to the podium under everyone’s gaze.
He had often spoken before the entire school’s students and teachers in the past, so he did not feel nervous at all.
After seeing him step up to the podium, Jia Wei addressed the whole class:
“Do the last question on the second page. This problem was a real college entrance exam question from last year. It’s a bit difficult, so yesterday I said you could do it or skip it.”
Then Jia Wei turned back to Zhang Chen. “I checked too. Not many classmates in the class actually did it.”
“But Zhang Chen did, and he got it right. Now I’ll have Zhang Chen take my new book and redo it on the spot to see whether he can solve it.”
“If he can, then you should all understand this: you can’t judge people by appearance. After three days apart, people should be looked at with new eyes!”