He turned to look at his deskmate, “Classmate Bian, do you remember that I helped you yesterday?”
Bian JinYuan definitely remembered, otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed to be deskmates with Lu YunFei. As to why Lu YunFei was asking this question now…
Bian JinYuan turned to look at him, “What are you trying to say?”
Lu YunFei grabbed his arm, “Now is the time for you to show your gratitude.”
Bian JinYuan raised his brows.
Lu YunFei nodded determinedly, “A drop of water given in need, shall be repaid with a gushing spring. Gush your spring, classmate Bian.”
Bian JinYuan couldn’t help but sigh internally. He felt like he was starting to know why Lu YunFei’s English was so poor.
The English teacher walked about the classroom while reciting vocabulary for the spelling, “Undertake, deal with, engage#.”
Lu YunFei wrote on his book with his gel pen: undertake, wait, is the e before the r or is it the other way round? Lu YunFei raised his head and, while the English teacher had just walked past, quickly moved closer to Bian JinYuan to take a look.
Bian JinYuan had just finished writing a word when he saw his new deskmate poke his head over with gusto. He wordlessly shifted his book to show him.
Lu YunFei immediately gave him a thumbs up: What a good person! Good people will have a lifetime of peace!
He looked at Bian JinYuan’s word and made sure that he hadn’t written it incorrectly, and then he heard the English teacher continue with the spelling, “Explore, investigate, probe.”
What’s this, Lu YunFei didn’t remember ever memorising this word. He glanced at his deskmate. As expected, his deskmate had already written it out easily.
Lu YunFei looked at the other person’s beautiful handwriting and suppressed the urge to copy. He waited for the teacher to say the next word.
When the first row of students came to collect the English spellings, Bian JinYuan was surprised to find that Lu YunFei’s paper was half blank.
After the first row of students passed them, he asked, “Didn’t you look at mine just now?”
“Yea, I saw.”
“You didn’t copy?”
“I’m not stupid,” Lu YunFei leaned on the table and said calmly, “Getting full marks for spelling with my English grades, do you think it’s appropriate?”
Bian JinYuan didn’t think that it was inappropriate, “Then what about what you said before?”
“I just wanted to compare my answers with yours,” Lu YunFei scratched his head, “I always can’t differentiate which words have r or e in front, so I’d always second guess my answer. But you definitely can tell them apart, so I just wanted to make sure.”
“Then do you usually memorise vocabulary?”
“Of course I memorise,” Lu YunFei said honestly, “I not only memorise, I also write them out to test my memorisation! But it’s no use, there’s no retention. I forget them after three days.”
“You should consolidate your memorisation more.”
“You think I haven’t? I’ve been consolidating my revision almost thrice a day at this point,” Lu YunFei shook his head, “When it comes to you, you belong to the saying, those in the day don’t understand the night, those who are full don’t know the hunger of the starved.”
Bian JinYuan definitely didn’t understand. His memory had been frighteningly good since he was young. When other people lamented over their inability to memorise classic poems, he would already have memorised the entire poetry book. He was a natural born academic genius, but Lu YunFei was different. When facing English, Lu YunFei was a verified academic scum.
After morning reading and morning exercises were over, the first lesson was Li Li’s Mathematics class.
“Before we start the lesson, I’d like to say two things. First, National Day is around the corner. I know you’re all thinking about it, so I’ll give a heads up that the National Day holiday will start on Friday, and will last for three days until Sunday. Class will commence on Monday as usual. I hope you’re aware that as year twos, you shouldn’t constantly think of vacations. There isn’t much time left for you to revise and study.”
The class wailed in unison, “This National Day holiday doesn’t seem much different than if there were no vacation.”
“Sure,” Li Li said, “Then you can come back to class on Friday, we’ll treat it as if there were no holiday.”
The students exclaimed pitifully, “Don’t, let’s take the vacation. A day is still a day.”
Li Li smiled, “The second thing is, after the National Day holiday, the school will hold the autumn sports festival on 20th October. As the express class in the Science department, we also can’t lose to other classes in sports. So I hope that everyone eagerly participates in this festival to gain glory for your class. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“For this sports festival, the Sports representative will be in charge of nominating, supervising, organising, and assisting other class committees. That’s all. Next, everyone please take out your papers, we’ll go through the rest of the questions from yesterday.”
Lu YunFei fished out his paper from his bag, but saw that Bian JinYuan had taken out another paper. Lu YunFei peered at it; it wasn’t a paper from school. Had he bought other kinds of test papers as an exercise?
Lu YunFei had a sudden urge to compete, and also took out an extracurricular test paper to work on. When it came to science students, a student’s passion for studying couldn’t be shown, but grades would definitely show for it. At the feet of every successful science scholar laid stacks upon stacks of test paper carcasses.
Lu YunFei spied on Bian JinYuan’s progress while he furiously wrote. When the bell rang, Lu YunFei was disappointed to find that he had been slower than Bian JinYuan by two questions. What a lapse, what a mistake.
Bian JinYuan had also discovered that his deskmate seemed to be competing with him. He looked at Lu YunFei, and Lu YunFei righteously said, “what are you looking at? Can’t I work on exercises?”
Bian JinYuan didn’t say anything, but he did find him quite lively.
As the day ended, Lu YunFei realised that he had forgotten to probe Bian JinYuan. Wait till tomorrow then, he thought. Anyway Bian JinYuan was by his side and couldn’t run away.
However, what he didn’t expect was that he would see Bian JinYuan again very soon.
Lu YunFei looked at his surroundings. It was the same familiar room, familiar middle-aged lady, familiar little kid, as well as the familiar Bian JinYuan. The only unfamiliar thing was probably the middle aged man sitting across from them, who looked to be slightly balding from the top. He drank a cup of water while he spoke to the family of three.
“So that’s how things are, what do you think sister-in-law?”
Bian Jie held the glass cup, her face full of discomfort. As she prepared to reply, Bian JinYuan beside her spoke, “Second uncle, you know what our family situation is like. We’ve already credited this month’s 1,000 to your card. Now that you suddenly want us to come up with ten thousand yuan, where are we to get the money.”
“Xiao Yuan, you can’t say it like that. Repaying debts is only justifiable. Uncle is only asking you to repay another ten thousand.”
“Repaying debts is of course justifiable. But when small aunt (Bian Jie) borrowed the money, everyone was in agreement that the debt would be repaid after two years. This was written in the loan terms. After uncle (Bian Jie’s husband) passed away, when you told us to pay you back, we were considerate and agreed. Repaying 1,000 a month and completing the repayment in 20 months. You agreed to this. Now once again you’re asking us to pay you ten thousand yuan, how are we to do this? You can take a look at the house, apart from the three of us, if you see anything that looks to be worth ten thousand, you can take it.”
“Xiao Yuan, the adults are talking. You as a child shouldn’t interrupt,” Jiāng Jiàn said coldly.
Lu YunFei silently curled his lips. Tsk, this was obviously wrong. But, Bian JinYuan just said… small aunt? Lu YunFei looked at the woman holding the glass cup. Wasn’t this Bian JinYuan’s mother? Then why was Bian JinYuan staying here? Where were his parents?
As he wondered about it, he heard Jiang Jian ask Bian Jie, “Sister-in-law, what do you say?”
“I say you’re an idiot! Lu YunFei said silently.
Bian Jie naturally couldn’t say that. She looked at her husband’s younger brother, her voice gentle as always, “Ah Jian, it’s not that we don’t want to repay your ten thousand yuan, but you know the family situation that we’re in. When your eldest brother was alive, we spent all our money on his medical fees. Otherwise we wouldn’t have asked to borrow money from you. Currently, Xiao Yuan has to go to school and Shuang Shuang is about to enter kindergarten. My salary is only three thousand yuan. We’ve managed to repay you and Ah Fāng one thousand yuan every month because Xiao Yuan works part-time after school. It’s really not because we don’t want to repay our debt, but because our savings don’t even amount to ten thousand, how are we to repay this amount.”
Jiang Jian advised, “Didn’t I recommend a position to sister-a-law before? Now that you’re experiencing difficulties, then get Xiao Yuan to drop out of school and work at the position for a year, he’ll definitely earn much more than now.”
“That will not do!” Bian Jie’s tone raised.
That’s right! Lu YunFei agreed, get Bian JinYuan to drop out of school? There’s something wrong with your brain! With his grades, he’d probably be the top scholar of the college entrance exams, and his future would be something to look forward to! To advise someone to drop out of school at this time, this uncle didn’t have any good intentions! He’s rotten!
“Xiao Yuan can’t drop out of school. No matter what happens at home, he needs to go to school,” Bian Jie said determinedly.