CHAPTER 424: CHAPTER 323: ZERO-SCORE PARTNERS

Mayu-chan mocked her lifelong rival and swaggered back to the classroom, sidling up to Taira Sakurako’s desk and asking very familiarly:

"Sakurako-chan, how did you cheat? Teach me, please!"

Thinking that this guy’s brain wasn’t quite right, Taira Sakurako frankly explained, considering that Mayu had just helped her out: "I didn’t cheat."

Mayu-chan didn’t believe it, waved her hand seriously, and said, "How could it be? Are you a robot? How could anyone solve those problems? The numbers are clearly over twenty!"

"Just... think about it, and then you’ll get it." Taira Sakurako didn’t know how to communicate with this amoeba.

"Ha! Think about it and get it~~" Mayu-chan imitated Taira Sakurako’s tone, pointed at her with her thumb, and turned to her buddies, saying, "Here comes a big talker!"

The buddies awkwardly laughed, trying to cover, saying, "Maybe Sakurako-chan is just really smart..."

"Are you saying I’m dumb? I want to see how many points you got on your test!" Mayu-chan frowned, snatched her buddy’s test sheet, looked down, and the glaring red ninety was particularly eye-catching. This guy only got one question wrong!

"Wow!" Mayu-chan looked up and asked, "How did you cheat then?"

"I didn’t cheat!" The buddy shook her head repeatedly, almost dying of anxiety. She didn’t want her hard work and success to be called cheating.

"Then how did you work it out?" Mayu-chan interrogated.

"Just, just... just thought and thought, and figured it out." The buddy said.

"Oh my gosh~ Thought and thought~ Figured it out~~" Mayu-chan mimicked her buddy, pouting unhappily, saying, "Of course I know that! Isn’t there any technique that can help a dummy solve the problem?"

"I have one!" Another buddy raised her hand: "I cut my eraser into fifty pieces with a pencil sharpener, to count with the eraser!"

Mayu-chan’s eyes lit up, directly praising her peer as a genius. She sat back in her seat, rummaging through her drawer, and pulled out a white eraser shaped like a little cat.

She held the pencil sharpener, poised over the little cat’s neck, ready to cut down, but yet feeling unable to go through with it. Eraser Cat-chan was her good buddy; they had spent many a boring class together, and she really didn’t want to turn Cat-chan into a pile of corpses with her own hands.

"Go for it!" The buddy cheered, "Cut Cat-chan to pieces, then you’ll pass exams in the future!"

Mayu-chan closed her eyes, her hand trembled as she held the knife, and she whimpered, "I don’t want to kill Cat-chan!"

But if she didn’t kill Cat-chan and scored zero again, she’d surely get scolded by Mom and Dad when she got home...

"You can do it!"

"To get high marks, you need to become a cold-blooded, emotionless arithmetic machine!"

"Cut, cut, cut, cut!!"

The buddies hyped her up, encouraging Mayu-chan to take a ruthless chop at the eraser.

Taira Sakurako couldn’t stand it anymore, she couldn’t help but remind them, "Uh... the eraser isn’t alive, it’s just shaped like a little cat."

"Of course, I know that." Mayu-chan looked with a "are you dumb?" expression: "But can you bear to see such a cute little cat die?"

"But it isn’t alive." Taira Sakurako repeated.

"I know, but it’s very cute." Mayu-chan said seriously.

"After a few days of rubbing, it’ll turn pitch black." Taira Sakurako reminded.

"That’s why I never use it to erase anything!" Mayu-chan said very proudly.

"An eraser not used for erasing? Then what do you do with it?" Taira Sakurako felt utterly confused.

"I play games with it, sing with it, play house, it plays the role of the cat mom..."

Mayu-chan’s words became more and more abstract, leaving Taira Sakurako bewildered, and making her feel like her peers were aliens, completely unable to comprehend their thought processes.

In a blink, the class bell rang, and the students returned to their seats. Mayu-chan put away the pencil sharpener; the little guy who had been hiding in the bathroom crying silently returned. His eyes were red, looking pitifully aggrieved.

The third period was foreign language learning activities. The original subject teacher was unavailable, so Teacher Suga substituted. Taira Sakurako narrowed her eyes, watching Fushimi Roku walk up to the podium looking sharp.

All the students stood up and greeted the teacher, and Taira Sakurako, following suit to fit in, did the same.

Fushimi Roku had long returned his English knowledge to the English teacher, but he still remembered the 26 English letters, faking an inquiry into how much the students had learned.

A star student raised his hand first, saying that last time they learned English songs, played letter matching games, and the teacher mentioned that the next class they would teach them to play role-playing games.

Before the education reform in 2011, Japanese elementary schools didn’t have foreign language classes. After the reform, the lower grades mainly had "foreign language teaching activities" centered around cultivating interest, typically once a week, without exam criteria.

The so-called role-playing games mostly set simple scenarios, such as in stores or schools, allowing students to play different roles, and use simple English dialogues to interact, like: "Hello! How are you?" "I’m fine, thank you, and you?"

Extremely simple.

But Fushimi Roku misunderstood, suspecting the former teacher had a strange hobby, teaching elementary students to play role-play, so he immediately declared that today they wouldn’t learn those weird things, but do a fun little game together instead.

Upon hearing they’d play, the kids cheered.

Fushimi Roku had plans of his own. He clapped his hands to indicate that this game needed pairs, letting students find their partners themselves—he had already observed before entering that the class had an even number of students, meaning no matter what Sakurako would be able to find someone to team up with.

Thus significantly increasing the odds of Taira Sakurako making new friends!

"Sakurako-chan, let’s team up!"

Mayu, being cunning, thought Taira Sakurako was the smartest, the only one in the class who scored full marks on the arithmetic test, teaming up with Taira Sakurako could surely boost their chances of winning!

Even though I don’t know the rules of the game or what we’re competing in, it’s never wrong to team up with smart people!

Taira Sakurako wasn’t keen on agreeing; she felt that the girl who scored nine seemed more normal. Mayu-chan only seemed human-like to her, and communicating with her was quite challenging.

However, the other party was a social terrorist, extremely outgoing, and without a word, grouped up with her. As the ultimate social anxiety sufferer, Taira Sakurako naturally couldn’t refuse and could only half-heartedly agree.

The students in the class were in a chaotic uproar, a few kids fighting tooth and nail to snatch partners. In the end, it was the fair and impartial Teacher Fushimi who stepped in, making them play tug-of-war with their target partner’s arms, with the winner claiming them.

The kid being pulled quite enjoyed it, feeling as if they were the center of attention, like a star admired by all.

The elementary students took over ten minutes to finally sort out their teams.

Fushimi Roku began to announce the game rules: two people per team, performing an English dialogue on stage, back-and-forth counts as one segment, and the team with the most segments wins.

Winners can receive a mysterious prize!

Taira Sakurako had no expectations for Fushimi Roku’s mysterious prize; he would likely just give the students a broken piece of chalk.

But the other classmates were enthusiastic; the energy of the kids seemed endless, and they immediately started preparing.

The girl who scored nine points earlier began writing dialogue, having learned some simple English vocabulary at an extracurricular class, and was teaching her partner how to read it.

Seeing this, Mayu-chan also bent over the desk, frantically writing. Taira Sakurako glanced over, seeing her write a dense bunch of: ’hi’.

hi?

hi!

hi...

hi~hi~hi~

"What are you writing?" Taira Sakurako couldn’t help but ask.

"It’s an English dialogue!" Mayu-chan explained, "This is pronounced ’hi’, simple, right? We’ll just say hi hi hi to each other on stage, and we’ll definitely win the championship!"

"Doesn’t that count as a conversation?" Taira Sakurako questioned skeptically.

"Really?"

Mayu-chan was stunned and raised her hand to ask the teacher. Fushimi Roku leaned over, glanced at the notebook, and then looked at Taira Sakurako with eyes that seemed to ask ’Is this idiot your new friend?’

"This doesn’t count," Teacher Fushimi added new rules, "It must have a definite meaning!"

"Huh?"

Mayu-chan was disappointed. She turned to ask Taira Sakurako for an eraser, planning to erase the ’hi’ on her notebook, but the latter had spent her first day at school thinking only about bringing tools and didn’t bring enough stationery, unable to help.

The other classmates refused to lend their erasers, so Mayu-chan had to wet her fingertip, vigorously rubbing the notebook to smudge the writing into a grayish blur, leaving her hands covered in pencil smudge.

"Can Sakurako-chan speak English?" Mayu asked.

Taira Sakurako really couldn’t; as a seasoned otaku, she’d probably never travel abroad in her lifetime, having no reason to learn a foreign language.

"Never learned." She said honestly.

"No worries, I have a way."

After speaking, Mayu-chan stealthily moved beside other classmates, copying their notebooks while eavesdropping on their pronunciation of English words, using Japanese phonetics to write down the word sounds.

Other classmates weren’t blind, and they avoided her one by one, some even reporting Mayu for cheating to Teacher Suga.

Mayu-chan ran around and pieced together some sentences with unclear meanings, turned back to teach Taira Sakurako how to pronounce them.

They crowded around the same desk, one speaking in a spoiled voice, the other softly and tenderly.

Seeing this scene, Fu Jian Luhxin felt especially gratified; although the new friend didn’t seem like a normal child, at least Sakurako had made a new friend her age.

The ten-minute preparation time ended, students went up in pairs to perform dialogue hesitantly and awkwardly. They had attended extracurricular classes to some extent, unlike other public school students who were still learning English songs; they had started learning English words.

As expected, Taira Sakurako and Mayu-chan came in last place because Mayu-chan had no idea what she was saying, muttering unclearly and pretending to speak English, leading to both of them being eliminated.

Although Taira Sakurako didn’t care for the ’mysterious prize’, she was still a bit disappointed, feeling like she was dragging behind... She was even a bit nervous, worried about being blamed by the protozoan, pursed her lips silently after stepping down.

Mayu-chan didn’t mind; she patted Taira Sakurako’s shoulder and laughed, "Now you’re zero too! From now on, we’re the zero partners!"

"Zero partners?" Taira Sakurako instinctively repeated the phrase, finding it quite silly.

"That’s right!" Mayu-chan gave a thumbs-up.

For some reason, Taira Sakurako suddenly felt relieved. She sat back in her seat, secretly observing Mayu-chan’s side profile, as Mayu-chan took out a pencil sharpener, hesitating over whether to sharpen her cat-chan.

At that moment, Taira Sakurako thought that maybe cat-chan was really alive and had been Mayu’s good friend.

"Thirteen plus seventeen equals thirty." She suddenly said.

"Eh? What?" Mayu didn’t react, the stage was still having an English dialogue, the classroom was noisy, and she didn’t hear clearly.

"I said, thirteen plus seventeen equals thirty."

Taira Sakurako softly repeated it, then turned and said, "So don’t sharpen cat-chan, I’ll give you notes in the future."