CHAPTER 89: "IN... MY CONDITION?"

The doorbell rang promptly at 3:58 PM. Two minutes early.

Lu Qingyan, dressed in a soft hoodie and sweatpants, padded to the door and peeked through the peephole.

The teacher carried a small briefcase and wore a white shirt with round-frame glasses. He looked quite young and amiable, and resembled a college student.

But he clearly gave others an amusing feeling of obviously being quite young, but also appearing old-fashioned.

He was the type that seemed like he’d apologize to a vending machine for using it too forcefully.

"Hello, student," the man greeted with a gentle smile. "I am your private tutor. My surname is Jia. You may call me Teacher Jia."

Lu Qingyan blinked. So polite. So composed. So... slightly awkward.

Teacher Jia was secretly surprised when he entered Lu Qingyan’s house. The student not only lived in the central area of a high-end community, but the house was also decorated very beautifully. Moreover, all the facilities and such appeared high-tech and expensive. His movement of taking his shoes off suddenly became a little ill at ease.

The automated shoe cabinet opened with a hiss.

For a second, Teacher Jia forgot how to bend his knees.

"Here." Lu Qingyan, who had been watching his existential crisis unfold, handed him a pair of neatly lined-up guest slippers.

He hesitated, glancing down at his shoes.

He muttered a quiet thanks and switched shoes as if handling relics from a royal temple.

When Lu Qingyan was working on the homework, Teacher Jia asked her for her papers from the first section exam.

Soon enough, they were seated at the dining table-turned-study-station. Lu Qingyan worked on her assigned homework quietly while Teacher Jia sat beside her, flipping through her exam papers with the quiet intensity of someone trying to detect national corruption in a grocery receipt.

Teacher Jia taught the sciences, and was also pretty good at mathematics. He was very focused when analyzing Lu Qingyan’s exam papers.

Meanwhile, Lu Qingyan finished her homework with robotic efficiency, occasionally peeking at him to see if he had any other expressions besides "mildly disappointed."

When she placed her pen down, he finally looked up.

When Lu Qingyan finished her homework, he pushed up his glasses and said with a frown, "From today onward, do not do the homework assigned by your schoolteachers. Their pace is too fast for someone in your condition."

"In my... condition?" she echoed, mildly horrified.

Lu Qingyan watched as the teacher took out a practice test from his briefcase that he had previously prepared.

——200 Basic High School Mathematics Practice Problems.

Lu Qingyan’s hand that held the pen tightened slightly.

Lu Qingyan stared at it as though it had personally insulted her ancestors.

Her eye twitched.

Her soul twitched.

She flipped to the first page and saw the very first question:

Then, her gaze moved down to look at the first question.

1. If the inverse of a proposition is true, then the negation of this proposition...

A. must be false

B. must be true

C. might not necessarily be false

D. might not necessarily be true

Lu Qingyan: "..."

Lu Qingyan laid down her pen, "Teacher, aren’t these questions too...."

Teacher Jia wrinkled his brows and his expression turned a little displeased, "These questions are already the simplest. If you still find them difficult, then there’s really nothing I can do. Student, I know you might not have confidence in yourself, but you must have the courage to overcome difficulties. Just remember that Mathematics isn’t your enemy, it’s a ladder."

A ladder, to what? Hell?

Lu Qingyan wasn’t given the chance to say the word "simple."

When she heard what he said, she slowly withdrew the words in her mouth.

Then afterward, Lu Qingyan was forced to listen to this Teacher Jia for an hour as he tried to install her with various mathematical concepts. He already spoke slowly, and even liked to repeat sentences, so Lu Qingyan almost fell asleep listening to him.

Teacher Jia had a very particular teaching style: slow, repetitive, and fond of anecdotes involving obscure mathematicians no one asked about.

He cited Confucius at one point. ("As the sage said, ’Is it not a joy to study and repeatedly practice what one has learned?’")

It wasn’t easy to endure until the end of class. When Teacher Jia left, he assigned Lu Qingyan the 200 basic mathematics questions.

"Next class," Teacher Jia said as he packed his briefcase, "I will collect the completed packet. All 200 questions. Be thorough. Be honest."

Lu Qingyan struggled for a moment, but still obediently followed his request.

"Got it," Lu Qingyan mumbled, resigned.

***

By some miracle—or perhaps sheer willpower fueled by teenage indignation—Lu Qingyan completed all 200 questions. Her handwriting was neat. Her answers were thorough. And she even checked them twice.

But who would have imagined that during the next class on Wednesday, Teacher jia repeatedly shook his head after collecting and grading the assignment.

Lu Qingyan even thought she had done a bad job.

She leaned over and saw that all of her answers were correct and there were no mistakes.

But at this moment, Teacher Jia raised his head, his expression full of worry.

He even had an appearance of hating iron for not becoming steel as he sad, "Student, if you really don’t know, you can ask me. It’s okay even if you do it slowly, we can take it slow, but it’s not right of you to look up the answers online."

Lu Qingyan: ? ? ?

Do these questions even need to be looked up online??

With her searching skills, she would’ve already completed several questions after finding the answer to one.

Lu Qingyan: "Teacher, I really did this myself. I made progress in the last exam, would you like to take a look..."

Teacher Jia interrupted her words and fished out a practice test from his briefcase, "I hope that the next time you hand it to me, it will be a practice test that you had earnestly completed yourself."

Lu Qingyan caught a glimpse of the title.

——200 Basic High School Mathematics Practice Problems (2)

Lu Qingyan: "..."