Monday morning.
Lu Yuzhi stood at the podium, speaking at a measured pace.
Below, the room was dead silent.
No one dared to whisper, no one dared to play on their phones.
The young masters and young ladies whose parents had paid to sneak them into the class all looked as if they were facing a great enemy, nerves wound tight.
Shen Jinxin and Song Shiqian were also sitting up perfectly straight, the picture of diligence.
Only in a seat toward the back, Mu Suihe had her head down.
Her slender, pale fingers held a pencil, sketching a small figure in the blank space beside a calculus formula.
A round face, big ears, an upturned little nose.
She tilted her head to look at it, then added a little pig wearing glasses next to it.
The cartoon characters of this new world were all very cute—she’d watched quite a few since arriving.
And simple pencil sketches like this one, drawn with the soft scratch of graphite, she especially loved.
Lu Yuzhi’s gaze swept casually across the room. With the entire class sitting tall and proud, the one lowered head stood out sharply.
He called on the male student sitting in front of Mu Suihe. “This problem—how do you solve it?”
The curly-haired boy shot up on reflex, answering loudly and fluently.
The students around him shot him envious looks—they all wanted to be called on by Ninth Master.
After listening, Lu Yuzhi followed up with a deeper question.
The curly-haired boy opened his mouth, struggled for a long while, his neck turning red, but nothing came out.
Lu Yuzhi’s gaze passed over him and landed on the lowered head behind him.
“The student in the back—continue the answer.”
Mu Suihe didn’t move.
Lu Yuzhi repeated himself. “The young lady in the back, please answer.”
Everyone turned around in unison.
Meng Wantang, sitting behind Mu Suihe, reached out and poked her in the back with her pen cap.
Mu Suihe lifted her head, and the eyes of the entire classroom fell on her.
The man at the podium was already visibly displeased.
The whole room held its breath as Lu Yuzhi walked over to Mu Suihe’s seat, his tall figure completely enveloping her.
“Answer the question from just now.”
Mu Suihe tilted her face up to look at him, her almond eyes blinking, blank and innocent.
What question? She hadn’t been listening at all.
Even if she had, she probably couldn’t have answered it anyway.
She slowly rose to her feet, her fingers instinctively clutching the edge of her textbook.
Lu Yuzhi’s gaze traveled down from her face and landed on the open textbook.
In the blank space beside the formula was a drawing of a pig wearing glasses, with a speech bubble floating above its head containing a line of tiny writing: Advanced math is sooo hard.
He reached out and picked up her textbook, staring at the page for a good while.
For once, he was speechless.
A silence of having his worldview refreshed.
Mu Suihe snatched the textbook back from his hand, hugging it to her chest, the tips of her ears bright red.
She even glared up at him—not that it had any bite.
Then quickly dropped her lashes.
Lu Yuzhi froze, his hand still suspended in midair, frozen in the posture of holding a book.
It had been a very long time since anyone had dared to snatch something from his hands, or show him disrespect.
He slowly rubbed his empty fingertips together, looking down at this frail-seeming girl.
You really can’t judge a book by its cover—she actually dared to snap at him.
“Drawing pigs in my class.”
Hugging her textbook, Mu Suihe retorted in a small voice, “Professor, you’re wrong. That’s not a pig, that’s Peppa.”
Somewhere in the back, someone let out a snort of laughter first, and then the entire classroom lost it.
Roars of laughter.
Shen Jinxin didn’t laugh. She sat in the front row, her face turning green.
The Shen Family’s face had been thoroughly disgraced by this woman.
Lu Yuzhi swept a single glance across the room, and the whole class fell silent, stifling their laughter.
He withdrew his gaze and looked at the girl in front of him, who seemed to want to bury her head all the way into the floor.
She clutched her textbook tightly to her chest, terrified he would snatch it away.
“Sit down.”
He paused. “If I catch you again, you’ll stand at the back as punishment.”
Mu Suihe, as if granted a pardon, quickly sat back down, flipped her textbook to the next page, and pretended to listen attentively.
Lu Yuzhi turned and walked back to the podium.
Before long, out of the corner of his eye, he saw that little head begin to nod lower and lower.
Up again, down again, up again—until finally she collapsed completely onto the textbook, her cheek pillowed on her arm, lashes lowered.
Lu Yuzhi’s hand paused mid-page-turn.
He looked at the derivation he’d written across half the blackboard, and for once felt a flicker of doubt about himself.
Was his teaching really that bad?
When the bell rang, the tension that had gripped the classroom all period finally loosened. Several young masters and young ladies in the front rows let out long sighs and slumped back in their chairs.
Song Shiqian closed his notebook and rubbed his stiff neck.
At some point, rain had begun to fall outside.
A Gangjing summer downpour—hammering down so hard the outline of the building across the way was nearly invisible.
The corridor was packed with students who hadn’t brought umbrellas. Some called their drivers to come to the entrance of the teaching building; others complained that the weather forecast had been wrong again.
One by one, the young masters and young ladies were collected by their family butlers holding umbrellas.
Shen Jinxin was picked up by her driver under an umbrella. She glanced back at Mu Suihe with disdain. “Disgraceful thing. Find your own way home.”
The Shen Family’s car drove off.
Mu Suihe stood under the eaves, hugging her canvas bag, staring blankly at the curtain of rain.
The rain was heavy. She had no umbrella, and no one was coming for her.
She hugged the canvas bag tighter, leaned forward slightly, and tentatively reached out a hand to catch a bit of the rain.
Her fingertips got wet. She pulled them back and wiped them on her skirt.
She disliked the dampness of rainy days, just as she disliked the dark.
On the other side of the building, Jiang Lin hurried over with a black umbrella, holding it above Lu Yuzhi’s head.
Lu Yuzhi had only taken two steps when he caught sight of a slender figure standing under the eaves.
A white dress, a canvas bag hugged to her chest, slender pale ankles, the hem of her skirt swaying gently in the wind.
While the other young ladies were collected one by one by luxury cars, she stood alone under the eaves, like a poor little kitten.
He handed his lesson plans to Jiang Lin and reached out for the umbrella. “You go on ahead.”
Jiang Lin followed his gaze to the person under the eaves, asked nothing, and passed the umbrella over.
Lu Yuzhi, holding the large black umbrella, walked toward the main building.
The rain was heavy; his leather shoes splashed through the puddles.
At the bottom of the steps, he stopped.
Song Shiqian had appeared from who knows where, a baseball cap worn backwards, holding an umbrella, standing right in front of Mu Suihe.
He looked down at her, the peach-blossom eyes beneath the brim smiling, and tilted his chin toward her.
The wind scattered the words; Lu Yuzhi couldn’t hear them.
But he could see Mu Suihe lift her head, her eyes curving as she smiled.
The two walked side by side, passing right in front of him.
Song Shiqian tilted the umbrella toward her, leaving most of his own shoulder soaked.
Lu Yuzhi turned and walked off in the other direction, umbrella in hand.
He’d almost forgotten—she was a woman bent on climbing her way up.
The Shen Family had raised her like some stray cat or dog, so she’d gone and latched onto the Song Family—a nice high branch to climb.
Lu Yuzhi’s lips twitched faintly, thinking he really had too much free time on his hands.