72: Chapter 75 Wen Ruyan's Tutoring Plan: A Tsundere-Style Teaching Collaboration

The bell for the last period of the afternoon had just rung. Fang Jiming was leaning back in his eighty-thousand-yuan chair, lost in thought, his mind still replaying the conversation he'd had earlier that day in the academic affairs office with Auntie Zhao.

It was at this moment that Teacher Wen Ruyan pushed the door open and walked in.

She was wearing a beige trench coat today, the hem fluttering with each step she took, creating a gentle breeze. In her hand, she held a thick stack of A4 paper.

The edges of the paper were slightly crumpled, clearly from her having gripped them for some time.

She walked over to Fang Jiming's desk and slapped the stack of paper down onto the surface.

"Teacher Fang, the things you asked for."

Fang Jiming put down his red pen, shifted his gaze from the test papers, and let it fall onto the stack of paper.

He picked it up and flipped through it.

A full twelve pages.

Entirely handwritten.

The handwriting was neat, with every single stroke written with great care and force.

Fang Jiming raised his eyebrows, the curve of his mouth carrying a slightly provocative smirk.

"Teacher Wen, this output of yours is practically a deep root canal treatment for their atrophied vocabularies."

He flicked the pages with his finger, the paper emitting a crisp rustling sound.

Teacher Wen Ruyan pulled over an empty chair from nearby and sat down, arms crossed over her chest, her eyes clearly saying: 'Don't try that on me.'

"Don't flatter yourself. I'm just worried that your unorthodox teaching method will lead their last bit of Chinese Language foundation astray."

Fang Jiming didn't respond, lowering his head to earnestly study the plan.

The more he read, the slower he turned the pages.

Teacher Wen Ruyan had singled out the six students with the lowest grades in Chinese Language in Class 18, with each student occupying two pages.

On Qian Duoduo's page, it was written: "This student is extremely resistant to dry texts. It is suggested to use business case studies and celebrity biographies as a starting point for reading to first establish a reading habit."

On Zhao Dazhuang's page, it was written: "Strong game logic. You could try converting ancient poetry memorization into a level-clearing mode, where answering one line correctly unlocks the hint for the next."

Even for a student like Lin Xiaoxi who hardly ever spoke, Teacher Wen Ruyan had noted: "Visually sensitive. It is suggested to explain classical Chinese imagery using a combination of text and pictures."

Fang Jiming looked at these annotations, his hand holding the pen pausing for a moment.

He picked up his red pen and drew a circle in the blank space on Qian Duoduo's page.

"Teacher Wen, you even investigated what kind of business magazines Qian Duoduo likes to read. This was no small amount of work."

Teacher Wen Ruyan turned her head toward the window, watching the elongated shadow of the basketball hoop on the playground cast by the setting sun.

"Since I agreed to teach, I can't slack off. Even though their foundation is poor, it doesn't mean they aren't smart."

Fang Jiming twirled the red pen in his hand, the barrel flipping between his fingertips.

"This isn't just teaching, you're preparing to perform a complete system reboot on their brains."

He put down the plan, leaned forward slightly, and looked at Teacher Wen Ruyan's profile.

"Honestly, I thought you would just bring a generic set of test papers to fob me off."

Teacher Wen Ruyan turned her head to meet Fang Jiming's gaze, her eyes as level and straight as if they could be used to draw a straight line.

"Fang Jiming, do you think all teachers in the world are like Vice Principal Sun Yaozu, looking only at grades and not at the person?"

Fang Jiming shrugged, not denying it.

The office fell quiet.

Only the old exhaust fan overhead hummed.

Teacher Wen Ruyan lowered her eyes, looking at the cuffs of her trench coat.

"Back when I was in high school, I was actually a bona fide troubled girl."

Fang Jiming stopped twirling his pen and looked at her.

He really couldn't connect the female teacher in front of him, who even used a ruler to draw lines in her lesson plans, with a troubled girl.

Teacher Wen Ruyan's voice became very soft.

"Back then, my parents fought every day. The house was smashed up so badly you couldn't even find a whole bowl. I would skip class, go to internet cafes, and hang out with a bunch of people from the streets."

She paused for a moment, her fingers unconsciously picking at the edge of the desk.

"All the teachers gave up on me, thinking I was a pile of mud."

Fang Jiming listened quietly, not interrupting or teasing.

"Later, our class got a new Chinese Language teacher, an old lady who was about to retire."

Teacher Wen Ruyan's eyes were slightly red, and her voice trembled a little.

"She never scolded me, nor did she call my parents. She just kept me in the classroom after school every day and read a passage of a book to me."

"After she finished reading, she would let me leave, without asking anything."

"She read like that for a whole semester, and then I didn't want to skip class anymore. I wanted to hear her finish reading that book, 'Ordinary World'."

Teacher Wen Ruyan sniffled and rubbed the corner of her eye with her knuckles.

"She told me that words can pull a person out of the mud."

The office was extremely quiet.

Fang Jiming looked at Teacher Wen Ruyan, at her straight back and slightly red-rimmed eyes.

He didn't say any platitudes, nor did he express any sentiments.

"That old lady must be very proud to have taught a student like you."

Teacher Wen Ruyan was caught off guard by his sudden sincerity.

She stood up abruptly, the legs of the chair scraping against the floor with a harsh sound.

"Don't think that just because I told you this, it means I approve of your unorthodox teaching method. I'm just fulfilling the deal between us."

Fang Jiming watched her quickened speech, the corners of his mouth couldn't help but curl upward.

He leaned back against his chair, his gaze sweeping across her cheeks.

"Teacher Wen, you're blushing."

Teacher Wen Ruyan's movements froze, and she hurriedly and clumsily adjusted her collar, which wasn't even messy.

"The heater is too hot."

Fang Jiming glanced at the wall calendar.

"It's still summer, the school hasn't turned on the heating."

Teacher Wen Ruyan grabbed a teaching aid book from the desk, making a gesture as if to throw it at him.

"Fang Jiming, shut up."

She slapped the tutoring plan onto his face and turned to walk out.

Her high heels made a rapid clicking sound on the terrazzo floor.

When she reached the door, she stopped and looked back.

"Don't go out to eat tomorrow at noon; I cooked an extra portion of rice."

Fang Jiming took the plan off his face and raised an eyebrow.

"What do you call this?"

Teacher Wen Ruyan lifted her chin.

"Colleague concern."

Fang Jiming drew out his tone.

"Oh, 'packed-lunch-style' concern, received."

Teacher Wen Ruyan glared at him and pushed the door open to leave.

Less than two seconds after the door closed, Zhang Huifang's head poked out from behind the partition of the adjacent desk.

She had a gossipy look on her face, her eyes wide open.

"Mr. Fang, Sister Zhang is an experienced person; Teacher Wen Ruyan really treats you differently."

Fang Jiming tapped the plan against the desk to align the pages, not even looking up.

"Sister Zhang, if you keep talking, I'll increase the workload of derivative problems for your class tomorrow."

Zhang Huifang immediately pulled her head back, muttering something about how young people these days really don't know what's good for them.

Fang Jiming smiled and picked up the plan again.

He flipped to the last page.

In the bottom right corner of the paper, there was a tiny smiley face drawn with a black gel pen.

Next to the smiley face, five characters were written in very small print.

"Teacher Fang, keep it up."

Fang Jiming looked at the smiley face and rubbed his finger over it.

He folded the corner of that page, opened his own lesson plan book, and tucked the plan inside.

Right next to the sticky note Su Xiaoxiao had given him that said 'Thank you, Teacher Fang'.

[Teacher Wen Ruyan favorability +10, current favorability: 74]

The system's notification sound rang in his mind.

Fang Jiming picked up his thermos and took a sip of water.

The water was cold.