After Becoming the Love-Brained Female Lead’s Best Friend - Chapter 3

The Monday morning reading period was for Chinese.

For the first half of the morning reading period, the Chinese teacher did not appear, so the students chatted one by one like wild horses that had slipped their reins. Ye Wanyin watched helplessly as a boy by the front door and a boy by the back door sat on their desks and shouted at each other in rough voices while chatting.

Fang Shu did not join them. Fang Shu was lowering her head and fiddling with her phone. From Ye Wanyin’s side, she could only see Fang Shu’s fingers sometimes tapping quickly across the screen and sometimes slowly typing.

It looked like she was playing a game while chatting with someone.

Ye Wanyin had already organized the basic questions for every subject in her notebook. All that was left was to get Fang Shu to try doing them.

She had just pushed the notebook a little toward Fang Shu when the back of her hand was slapped. Fang Shu pushed her arm and the notebook back together. Her gaze also drew an invisible line across the desk between them, almost openly saying that this was a boundary line, and studying and questions were forbidden from crossing it.

Ye Wanyin: “…”

“You’re really loud, aren’t you?! Even if you added up the morning reading voices from all the classes next door, they still wouldn’t be as loud as you! If your voices are any softer than this when you recite later, don’t blame me for slapping you one by one!”

At the back door of the classroom, a young female teacher wearing a T-shirt and long pants suddenly walked in.

The classroom suddenly became like someone had pressed the pause button, and everyone turned into quails one by one. Those sitting on desks hurriedly jumped down. Those chatting quickly grabbed the books on their desks and stared at them without blinking, as if admiring scenery. Only a few rebellious ones still dared to meet the teacher’s eyes.

The teacher held a book and slapped their heads one by one with it. Her already-loud voice came out through the microphone, deafening.

“You’re still looking? Do you have any idea how many points you scored on this monthly exam?!”

“I do. I know I got thirty-three points.”

“You actually know that? On other people’s full-mark papers, that’s the most they would lose. And you still dare to score only that many points?!”

If she were not worried that hitting him a few more times might make these already foolish students even more foolish, the teacher really wanted to let him experience what it meant to play whack-a-mole.

The teacher walked up to the podium, picked up the blackboard eraser, and smacked it heavily on the desk, signaling for them to be quiet.

“Your Chinese teacher is sick today. For morning reading, review Epang Palace Ode. She’ll randomly pick people to recite it later.”

Ye Wanyin realized: Oh, so this was the homeroom teacher.

In the quiet classroom, a few slow recitation voices began to sound. The homeroom teacher’s brows shot up.

“Is this how loud you are when you chat in the morning?!”

The reciting voices suddenly grew louder.

The homeroom teacher swept a barely satisfied yet still critical gaze around the classroom. When she reached a certain row, she suddenly stopped.

“Fang Shu, why don’t you go suck blood with the mosquitoes tonight? I think you’d definitely get along with them.”

Fang Shu: “…”

Fang Shu silently raised her voice a little. The homeroom teacher listened beside her for a while, then finally went off to torment someone else with a barely passing expression.

Sitting beside her, Ye Wanyin could not help curling the corners of her lips. She leaned a little closer, then borrowed the lively recitation sounds around them to ask Fang Shu, “Can you memorize it?”

Fang Shu did not really want to bother with her. “I can read it.”

Ye Wanyin deeply suspected that this system might be secondhand. The so-called best-friend relationship it had fabricated was as flimsy as paper.

Oh, no. Paper might even have stronger adhesion than this.

But this was only the beginning, and Ye Wanyin had not yet given up.

“First understand the meanings of the unfamiliar words in the text. Once you roughly know what each sentence means, memorizing it will be easier.”

Fang Shu watched the direction of the homeroom teacher out of the corner of her eye while muttering, “No need. I’m not memorizing it.”

“What if the Chinese teacher calls on you later?”

“I can stand for the whole class.”

“…”

After morning reading, those who had not eaten went off to eat. Once most people had returned to the classroom, the noisiest and rowdiest ones started shouting at each other across the crowd again. The whole classroom instantly returned to the chaotic scene from early morning. Even after the class bell had been ringing for a minute, it still did not quiet down.

“Class has already started and you’re still making noise! I walked all the way here, and the students in other classes couldn’t even hear their teachers talking. They could only hear you all chatting!”

Along with the clicking of high heels, the homeroom teacher walked in from outside with lesson preparation materials tucked under her arm and a triangular ruler in her hand. After her gaze swept around the room intimidatingly, she pulled a fountain pen from the podium drawer.

“Where’s Ye Wanyin? Is she not here today either?”

Bathed in the attention of the entire class, Ye Wanyin awkwardly raised her hand.

The math teacher looked at her with some suspicion and pushed up her glasses.

“You’re Ye Wanyin?”

Ye Wanyin said awkwardly, “Yes.”

Fortunately, after looking her up and down a few more times, the homeroom teacher seemed to believe her identity. Then she reminded Ye Wanyin a few times not to skip class casually in the future and not to learn from certain students in the class, and so on.

When she mentioned “certain students,” Ye Wanyin clearly saw their homeroom teacher’s gaze fall beside her, as well as on a certain student by the window.

Ye Wanyin was quite calm, but for some reason, a boy over there turned bright red. Originally, when the teacher’s gaze glanced that way, it had not landed on anyone specific. But with his face turning red, he had exposed himself.

A piece of chalk flew over with a whoosh and accurately hit the boy on the head. The homeroom teacher said irritably, “So you actually know how to feel embarrassed?”

Ye Wanyin sat up straight. She had not expected that Fang Shu’s type was actually like this.

After the small pre-class disturbance passed, the homeroom teacher began formally teaching. Probably because she knew exactly what kind of students she was facing, the math teacher explained the knowledge points in great detail, the kind of detail where she wished she could break down even one plus one and explain it piece by piece.

Fang Shu was zoning out.

Ye Wanyin poked her a few times under the desk. Fang Shu’s eyes turned to look at her. Then she glanced at the homeroom teacher lecturing seriously on the podium, as well as the row of textbooks standing in front of her that could hide a person if propped upright. Suddenly, she stretched out two fingers.

Ye Wanyin: “…?”

She watched as Fang Shu’s two fingers slowly but firmly fished her phone out from the desk cubby, placed it under the open math textbook in front of her, tugged at the corner of the textbook with one finger, and began playing on her phone.

Ye Wanyin: “???”

That wasn’t what I was reminding you about!!!

“Fang Shu, answer this question.”

Fang Shu stood up. She had not even looked at the question.

“C.”

“Good. Come stand here. First, use your brain to remember this: next time you go out, remember to bring your eyes.”

“…”

Fang Shu was dragged to the podium and had no choice but to put down her phone. Ye Wanyin watched as the homeroom teacher half-forcibly straightened Fang Shu’s head and made her stare at the blackboard. Although it was not very kind, Ye Wanyin felt inexplicably refreshed.

After class, Fang Shu visibly wilted. Ye Wanyin had already quickly glanced over the homework assigned by the homeroom teacher. After understanding what kind of questions they were, she asked Fang Shu, “Can you see if you’re able to solve them?”

Fang Shu pulled her phone out from under the textbook. “No. I have something to do outside.”

Ye Wanyin was slightly stunned. “Break is only ten minutes.”

Fang Shu: “Just pretend I’m constipated.”

Ye Wanyin: “…”

The next class was also math. After the bell rang, the homeroom teacher walked into the classroom in a fairly good mood, holding a freshly brewed cup of goji berry and red date tea. Her eyes habitually swept around the classroom, and she immediately saw a certain empty seat.

The homeroom teacher’s smile froze. She called on Ye Wanyin.

“Where did Fang Shu go?”

Ye Wanyin looked at the empty seat beside her. “…She went to the bathroom.”

The homeroom teacher said “oh” and let her sit down. Then she returned to the podium and continued explaining the questions, as if she had not taken this little matter to heart—if Fang Shu had not returned after more than half the class had passed.

The homeroom teacher folded her arms and looked down at the person standing at the door.

“Go on. How many times did you fall into the toilet?”

Fang Shu: “…”

Things like this happened several times every week, so the students below were already used to it. Some even had time to secretly chat with the people beside them while the homeroom teacher interrogated Fang Shu.

The homeroom teacher raised her hand, picked up the blackboard eraser, and slapped it against the podium a few times. Only then did the classroom quiet down again.

Seeing Fang Shu’s face that seemed to say, I’m mute, I don’t know how to speak, the homeroom teacher turned around.

“You don’t need to go back to your seat for this class. Perfect timing. Come up and solve a question, and let’s see how well you listened last class.”

On the right side of the blackboard was the question the homeroom teacher had just written. Fang Shu held a piece of chalk and stood in front of the question for one minute. Her expression was serious, and she seemed to be thinking hard. In the end, she showed an enlightened expression and wrote steadily beneath the question—

Solution:

Ye Wanyin thought she was about to start solving it. She even felt faintly expectant. She put down the problem she was halfway through and looked up at Fang Shu seriously.

Two minutes later, Ye Wanyin realized something was wrong.

Had Fang Shu fallen asleep?

Half a minute later, Ye Wanyin confirmed that she had not fallen asleep, because Fang Shu raised her hand again and added a number beside the word “Solution.” After writing it, she even casually shook out her arm. Only after resting for a moment did she raise her hand to continue writing.

After making sure she had copied down all the parts of the question that contained numbers, Fang Shu turned her head to look at the knowledge points on the left side. Half guessing and half bluffing, she inserted several formulas.

In the end, after adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, she got an answer.

Then she turned around confidently and walked down from the podium.

Ye Wanyin: “…”

Was this the confidence of an underachiever?

The homeroom teacher was still checking other students’ homework. After finishing her explanation, she looked up and saw that there was no one on the podium.

She walked up to the podium, looked at Fang Shu’s solution process, and called her to stand.

“You’re quite good at cobbling together an answer. I think if we swapped your head and feet, then switched your arms and legs around, the result could still be counted as a person.”

The students below all laughed. Fang Shu still wore that world-weary face of hers, lacking only the words “don’t touch me” carved onto her face.

The homeroom teacher slapped the triangular ruler against the blackboard a few times.

“All right, quiet. Fang Shu, listen carefully. You’ll come up and do it again later.”

“Ring, ring, ring—”

Ye Wanyin crossed out several unsuitable questions in her notebook and rewrote them. Seeing Fang Shu return, she was just about to ask whether she understood the question from earlier when a voice came from the podium.

“The homeroom teacher said everyone has to go downstairs for exercises. Leaders will be checking these next few days, so no one is allowed to stay in the classroom.”

Ye Wanyin had no choice but to temporarily press down her question and follow the crowd downstairs together with Fang Shu.