57: Chapter 60 An Anonymous Icebreaking Game That Doesn't Follow the Rules

Fang Jiming walked back to the podium, rested his hands on the edge of the desk, and scanned the entire class.

"After everyone gets a piece of paper, write down the names of three classmates anonymously, followed by one of their strengths."

The classroom went silent for two seconds.

Zhao Dazhuang was the first to raise his hand.

"Teacher Fang, can we write our own names?"

"Do you think you have three strengths?"

Zhao Dazhuang thought for a moment and put his hand down.

A wave of stifled laughter rippled through the room.

The corners of Fang Jiming's mouth twitched, but he immediately returned to his lazy demeanor.

"The rules are simple: no signatures, no restrictions on who you write about, but it must be the truth."

"I'll be able to tell if you're lying."

"Five minutes. Hand them in when you're done."

Qian Duoduo tilted his head and chewed on his pen cap.

"What is Teacher Fang playing at now?"

Fang Jiming glanced at him.

"You don't pay attention in class, and now you're complaining about having to write a few words?"

Qian Duoduo was unconvinced.

"I'm not not paying attention; I'm just thinking."

"The direction of your thinking is usually about what to eat today. Write."

Qian Duoduo: (눈 ‸ 눈)

The rustling sound of writing filled the classroom.

Director Su Nianwei sat in the back row, her tablet on her lap, staring at Fang Jiming's back.

She had originally thought he would deal with the three girls directly—either by talking to them, criticizing them publicly, or calling their parents.

But he did nothing. He didn't even glance at Su Xiaoxiao, instead diving straight into something completely unexpected.

Director Su Nianwei's evaluation notes were stalled at the line criticizing the teacher's inaction; she neither deleted it nor continued writing.

She decided to wait and see.

Director Su Nianwei: ( ᴗ ̤ . ̫ ᴗ ̤ )

Five minutes later.

Fang Jiming spread the collected sticky notes across the podium, scanned them quickly, and pulled out a few.

"Alright, I'll read a few."

He picked up the first piece of paper.

"Wang Tiezhu, he never slacks off during cleaning duty."

Wang Tiezhu was sitting in the third row; his ears turned visibly red, though his face maintained that indifferent expression.

Fang Jiming picked up the second one.

"Lu Zihao, when someone was causing trouble at the school gate last time, he was the first to stand up."

Lu Zihao lay on his desk without looking up, but his fingers clenched into a fist under the desk.

The third one.

"Zhao Dazhuang, although he often skips class, he always lends his notes to others to copy when he returns."

Zhao Dazhuang scratched his head and chuckled.

Fang Jiming read seven or eight more, and the atmosphere in the classroom began to change bit by bit.

The change came slowly—so slowly that no one could pinpoint exactly when it started.

Then, Fang Jiming picked up another piece of paper.

His movements paused for a moment.

Director Su Nianwei noticed a change in his expression.

Fang Jiming read it out.

"Su Xiaoxiao, she mops the floor the cleanest during cleaning duty every day, not even missing the corners of the classroom."

In the corner, Su Xiaoxiao's body tensed up.

Fang Jiming picked up another one.

"Su Xiaoxiao, her handwriting is very beautiful and especially neat."

Su Xiaoxiao lowered her head even further, but her shoulders were trembling—a different kind of trembling than when she was being bullied by Xia Rui and the others earlier.

Fang Jiming looked up toward the corner, his tone still that same lazy, devil-may-care drawl.

"Su Xiaoxiao."

Su Xiaoxiao's shoulders moved, but she didn't dare to look up.

"Look up."

Su Xiaoxiao slowly raised her face.

Her eyes were rimmed with red, tears clinging to her eyelashes without falling, as she stubbornly held herself back from crying out loud.

Fang Jiming waved the sticky note in his hand toward her.

"See, you thought no one saw what you did."

"But someone did."

"And not just one person."

Su Xiaoxiao's tears fell.

Without a sound, they rolled quietly down her cheeks and dripped onto the workbook stained with shoe prints.

She lowered her head, turned the workbook to a clean page, and slowly covered the shoe print on the cover.

The classroom was so quiet that one could hear the wind outside the window.

Xia Rui sat in her seat, her fingernails digging into the edge of the desk, an unnatural expression surfacing beneath the carefully applied makeup on her face.

Liu Ya kept her head down, looking at her hands; her false eyelashes obscured her eyes.

The third girl turned her face toward the window; her phone had been placed face-down on the desk at some point, and she didn't look back again.

Fang Jiming gathered the remaining sticky notes and tossed them back into the podium drawer.

"Alright, let's continue with the lesson. Turn to page forty-seven."

He opened his book as if nothing had happened.

In the back row.

Director Su Nianwei stared at the line on her tablet screen criticizing the teacher's inaction.

Her finger hovered over the delete key for a long time.

Then, that line of text disappeared, character by character.

Director Su Nianwei moved the cursor to the blank space and typed three words, then stopped, deleted them, and typed again.

In the end, she wrote nothing.

She closed her tablet.

Director Su Nianwei: ( ˘ ᵕ ˘ )

At the front of the classroom, Fang Jiming opened the textbook, and the tip of his chalk drew the starting stroke of a parabola on the blackboard.

His back looked slouchy, as if he were a different person from the one who had just been reading the sticky notes.

Director Su Nianwei watched his back silently for a long time.

She remembered the taillights of that maybach in the heavy rain last night, the red light dragging out two long reflections in the pooled water.

She suddenly felt that something about this man, something more expensive than that car, didn't seem to be in a bank account.

Fang Jiming's phone vibrated in the podium drawer.

He didn't look at it.

But if he had, he would have seen a new message pop up on the System Panel.

"[Director Su Nianwei's favorability toward the host has changed, shifting from negative fifteen, high vigilance, to positive five, initial approval.]"

"[Reminder: Target Su Xiaoxiao has triggered a hidden side quest; there is an abnormal gap in this student's background file. It is recommended that the host investigate.]"

Fang Jiming did not see this message.

He wrote the last line of the parabola vertex coordinate formula on the blackboard, and the tip of the chalk broke off and fell to the floor.

He bent down to pick it up and continued writing.

Su Xiaoxiao cried for the entire class.

She didn't wail; the whole process was quiet, her shoulders heaving, her mouth tightly pressed shut to avoid making any sound.

Fang Jiming finished explaining the symmetry of quadratic function graphs on the podium, his peripheral vision sweeping over that corner three times.

He didn't stop any of the three times—he didn't walk over to hand her a tissue, didn't ask her what was wrong in front of everyone, and didn't even glance at her again.

When the bell rang for the end of class, Su Xiaoxiao wiped her face with her school uniform sleeve, lowered her head to pack her workbook into her bag, and then remained curled up in that same position, not moving.

Fang Jiming passed by her seat, carrying his thermos.

He didn't stop, but a clean tissue landed on the corner of her desk, the movement so casual that it looked like it had slipped from his hand.

Su Xiaoxiao's fingers touched the tissue, and she shrank back inward again.

Fang Jiming had already walked out of the classroom.

In the hallway, he almost bumped into someone.