Did someone like Zhang Chen, with grades like that, need tutoring?
Of course not!
But the damage caused by the original body was something he naturally wanted to undo as much as possible now.
In Nan Xingwan’s eyes, Zhang Chen was a delinquent who knew nothing and had terrible grades, but she had never once thought of giving up on Zhang Chen and had always wanted to pull him back on track.
Along the way, she had endured who-knows-how-many times of Zhang Chen biting the hand that fed him, and who-knows-how-many grievances.
Even just now, in the office, she had done everything she could to beg Old Deng to give her one more chance…
She was Nan Xingwan… among the Seven Great Sect Gates, a dazzling 985 star within the sect, the star who never bows her head!
(Within No. 7 Middle School’s territory, students had a new nickname for the top academic talents of their own sect… “stars.” That was because only those who could get into 985 or 211 universities would be hung on the campus’s Wall of Rising Stars, and then, as a rising star, only then would one qualify to hang a red ribbon unique to oneself on No. 7 Middle School’s old pagoda tree. And the name Nan Xingwan had signed on it was “the star who never bows her head.”)
If he went along with her wishes now and slowly made some changes, wouldn’t that be the best way to repay her?
But even thinking that, Zhang Chen wasn’t sure whether Nan Xingwan would agree.
There was already a rift between them, and expecting it to disappear completely all at once wasn’t realistic…
And when Nan Xingwan heard that Zhang Chen had actually taken the initiative to ask her to tutor him, she was momentarily stunned.
The truth was, that was exactly what she had been thinking!
Even if it was the last sliver of hope, she didn’t want Zhang Chen to just be expelled like this.
In the remaining time, she could help him improve even a little… even if it was just memorizing a few more formulas, it could add a few more points. Then, if his grades improved a little more, maybe the teacher would lighten the punishment on account of his progress, or give him another chance?
“Can you?”
Zhang Chen’s voice, asking again, pulled Nan Xingwan’s thoughts back.
“I was already thinking the same thing,” Nan Xingwan said calmly, her eyes looking straight ahead.
If Zhang Chen hadn’t insisted on fixing his hair, she might already have been at his place tutoring him by now…
It was just that in the past, whenever she showed up at his place under the guise of tutoring him, she had always been turned away at the door…
Although the bus ride from No. 7 Middle School to No. 1 Middle School was only about ten minutes, the round trip, including walking time, took at least half an hour.
For a top student like Nan Xingwan, half an hour was very precious…
“You agreed?” Zhang Chen said in pleasant surprise, his eyes lighting up as he raised an eyebrow and asked.
He had already quite liked Nan Xingwan as a character, and after interacting with her in person all the way from the office, he liked her even more.
Because in the original novel there was no storyline involving him, there naturally wouldn’t be any description of Nan Xingwan either.
Based on his impression of Nan Xingwan, Zhang Chen had thought she wouldn’t agree so easily… after all, the original body had hurt her so much.
At the very least, she would be a little tsundere and ask for something in return, right?
He hadn’t expected…
That on the matter of his impending expulsion, she would be so clear on her priorities…
Without setting a single condition, she had decided to lend him a hand first…
Zhang Chen knew that Nan Xingwan must still hold a lot of resentment toward him in her heart right now…
Nan Xingwan didn’t look at Zhang Chen. She just kept walking.
She didn’t answer either.
Seeing this, Zhang Chen chuckled softly, feeling a secret wave of delight in his heart, because this was exactly how Nan Xingwan reacted when she agreed.
“Let’s go, let’s go, we need to hurry back. A moment of spring night is worth a thousand in gold.”
“???”
“I’m talking about studying.”
…
Following his memory, Zhang Chen brought Nan Xingwan to the small single rented room he lived in, in the residential building near the wet market.
Nan Xingwan was familiar with this place too. It wasn’t her first time here.
Although it was a single room, it had everything you could need.
In the center of the room was a single bed. Beside the bed was a wardrobe, and next to the wardrobe was a window with a desk piled high with miscellaneous items.
Outside the window was a small balcony, just the right size for hanging clothes to dry. As soon as he walked in, Zhang Chen spotted his two pairs of underwear fluttering in the wind…
At the same time, the bed was a mess… not tissues or anything like that, but a comforter shaped like a pile of crap and sheets slept into total disarray…
As he walked into the room, Zhang Chen automatically switched into deep-cleaning mode. Every time Nan Xingwan was about to pass through a spot behind him, he would dash ahead and wipe it down to check for dust or anything…
But Nan Xingwan wasn’t blind, so naturally she still saw everything. She just pursed her lips at the chaotic state of Zhang Chen’s place.
She did know Zhang Chen, after all.
But she hadn’t expected his two pairs of underwear.
After catching a glimpse of the two pairs of underwear outside the window upon entering, her face grew hot and she averted her gaze, sitting up straight at the desk, afraid of seeing anything else that belonged to a boy his age, and not daring to look around anymore.
After finally tidying things up a bit, Nan Xingwan hadn’t been idle either. She cleaned up Zhang Chen’s messy desk for him, then pointed at his school bag and told him to show her his recent homework, including his monthly exam papers from this past month, and so on…
A perfectly reasonable and practical question, but in front of Zhang Chen it was like a problem from a new century.
Homework? He hadn’t done that in eight hundred years. How was he supposed to know anything about it?
He casually pulled out a workbook from the few books he had grabbed today and handed it to Nan Xingwan.
“I think I didn’t bring the exam papers,” Zhang Chen bluffed.
In reality, the monthly exam papers from this past month had long since been tossed to god-knows-where by the original body…
In that respect, the original body was quite like himself.
“You’ve only gotten to Unit 2?” Taking Zhang Chen’s workbook, Nan Xingwan immediately slipped into teaching mode.
She took off her hair tie and gathered her hair up while checking Zhang Chen’s homework situation.
When she saw that Zhang Chen had only done the exercises before Unit 2 in the workbook and hadn’t touched a single word in the other units, she couldn’t help frowning.
By all rights, it was already the second semester of sophomore year, so the high school material should have been mostly covered by now. By junior year, everyone would basically be in full review mode.
But Zhang Chen’s workbook was still stuck at Unit 2?
And this Unit 2… Nan Xingwan and her classmates had already covered it last semester!
“Uh…” Zhang Chen leaned in to look at his own workbook and thought about it carefully.
It seemed like it was just because he never did homework, so he’d left it there and never bothered with it…
“No, we’ve already gotten to… Unit 6.” Zhang Chen flipped further back and, sure enough, found traces of where he’d made a couple of marks.
“I… you know, I don’t do homework…”
Nan Xingwan: “…”
“Then how should we start? From Unit 2?” Nan Xingwan was sweating bullets. She had thought that Zhang Chen’s grades were bad, sure, but she hadn’t expected them to be this bad.
He hadn’t studied anything at all!
And the citywide joint exam was next week!
“With grades like this, how did you dare make a bet with the teacher? The exam is next week!” Nan Xingwan’s tone carried some urgency and reproach, but her hands moved faster right away. She grabbed Zhang Chen’s school bag, found the textbook, and prepared to start reviewing from the very first lesson with him.
With her hair only half tied up, Nan Xingwan tossed the hair tie aside, letting her hair fall loosely over her shoulders and giving off a faint jasmine scent.
Zhang Chen, seeing this, scratched his head with a forced smile, putting on the well-behaved look of a student being scolded, and didn’t talk back to Nan Xingwan.
“You haven’t taken any notes at all either?”
Zhang Chen: “…”
“I’ll bring my textbooks over tomorrow,” Nan Xingwan sighed.
“Okay,” Zhang Chen nodded.
“For now, let me tutor you in math and physics first. For Chinese, I’ll mark a few classical Chinese texts and poems we think might be on the exam, and you can memorize them.”
“Okay.”
“Where are your other textbooks? Bring them all over.”
Zhang Chen looked around, then dragged a large cardboard box out from under the bed. It was full of old textbooks.
“Do you have a notebook? Never mind, I’ll bring mine for you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Then let me teach you while we work through the problems. Look at this one… do you know which option to choose?”
Zhang Chen looked at the question, a very simple multiple-choice question on force balance in physics.
“Choose… A?”
“Wrong.”
“Then… B?”
“No, don’t guess. This question is about the interaction of forces. Choose C.”
As she spoke, Nan Xingwan drew diagrams beside him and explained the problem’s key points to Zhang Chen.
Her side profile was round and soft, and her eyelashes were long like little palm fans. The earnestness she showed while doing homework was enough to draw anyone watching in.
Zhang Chen lay on the desk, occasionally lifting his eyes to look at Nan Xingwan drawing diagrams. There was always a faint scent drifting at his nose, subtle but refreshing.
“Got it?” After finishing the diagram and explanation, Nan Xingwan asked, not noticing Zhang Chen’s gaze during the process.
Zhang Chen immediately put on an expression of sudden enlightenment: “Oh~”
Seeing that, Nan Xingwan said, “If you understand it, then let’s look at the next question.”
“Okay.”
Zhang Chen pressed his lips together and agreed. He had never been this serious during a class before, especially not one-on-one.
In a cramped little room, under a desk lamp, a young girl was seriously explaining problems to him…
This feeling… was very strange…
“What do you choose?”
“Choose… A.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t this the same interaction as the last question?” Zhang Chen said with an innocent look.
Nan Xingwan nodded happily. “Right. Then what about this one?”
“C.”
“Correct! And this one?”
“Still C.”
“Then you’ve learned it!”
“I’ve learned it already?” Zhang Chen lay on the desk, raised an eyebrow, and smiled, looking a little unsatisfied.
“Interaction of forces is just that simple. Just remember it. Let’s move on to the next one… acceleration, unbalanced forces…” Nan Xingwan said seriously.
“Okay.”
She kept using the same teaching method. Zhang Chen would first pretend not to understand, and then after Nan Xingwan explained the reasoning on the spot, he would act as if he had suddenly enlightened.
He almost always learned it after one explanation, which made Nan Xingwan feel a strong sense of accomplishment. Her already bright eyes sparkled even more after she smiled with happiness… now they looked even more like two stars…
And Zhang Chen was happy to see her so cheerful.
“As expected of Teacher Nan. You teach really well. Even a lousy student like me learns it in one go.”
“Not at all.” Nan Xingwan’s fair face flushed red, and she gave Zhang Chen a displeased look. “You’re not a lousy student; you just don’t study properly.”
“As long as you study seriously, won’t you learn it in one go too?”
Zhang Chen’s eyes darkened for a moment, then he gave a soft laugh and looked into Nan Xingwan’s eyes as he said seriously, “I’ll definitely study hard from now on.”
Nan Xingwan was stunned by Zhang Chen’s suddenly serious tone. That strange feeling from before rose up again.
For some reason, she felt like he was different today.
Blinking twice, Nan Xingwan turned her head away. “Let’s get through next week’s citywide joint exam first.”
“Okay.” Zhang Chen nodded solemnly.
Seeing Zhang Chen so serious, Nan Xingwan’s lips curled up almost imperceptibly as she continued tutoring him and explaining problems, feeling happy inside…