Chapter 27: 25

Hou Jun couldn’t understand. He was afraid that if he thought any further, he would think of something he wasn’t supposed to. He lowered his head and continued to do his homework.

Tan Kai had just entered the classroom, and also saw the pair of unique masks at the same table. “Hou ge, what’s up with those two?” 

Hou Jun shook his head, saying sternly, “Don’t ask me, I don’t know anything.”

Tan Kai, “…Aren’t I just casually asking you, what’s with your overreaction.”

 

 

The morning classes were mostly focused on review.

The math teacher combined the key points of knowledge and the new lesson material to review. The math teacher’s last name was Zhou, and it was said that he was classmates with Lao Meng, but the two of them didn’t look the same age at all. 

Teacher Zhou was well-kept and dressed stylishly, even wearing a dark grey waistcoat over his pressed shirt. “The concepts this question is testing in the first half, can you tell what it is, it’s content from your first year, you don’t recognise it anymore after it changed a little bit?”

 

“Your way of thinking is too rigid,” Mr. Zhou said. “You don’t know how to adapt.”

Xu Sheng realised that although he didn’t know how to solve this question, it did look very familiar.

The weather was already hot, and it was even hotter after wearing the mask for a long time. Xu Sheng pulled down the edge of the mask to breathe, then used his pen to poke Shao Zhan. “Didn’t you talk about this question last night?”

 

Shao Zhan had his phone in his hand, his finger tapped twice on the screen before his voice came through his mask. “The one where I taught it to you three times but you still didn’t understand.”

Shao Zhan added, “I didn’t think you’d actually remember it.”

“…” Xu Sheng said, “It’s a bit unreasonable to not remember it, I’m not that bad. Besides, studying isn’t something that can be done overnight.”

 

As Xu Sheng spoke, he shuffled over to Shao Zhan’s side. “What are you playing?” 

The game on Shao Zhan’s phone screen wasn’t a game that Xu Sheng usually played. There were grids and rows and columns.

“Pay attention in class.” Shao Zhan didn’t raise his head, he stretched out his hand and pushed on Xu Sheng’s forehead, shoving him back, and said, “Sudoku.”

Xu Sheng originally thought he could watch him play a round of some game and escape from the boredom of listening to class. When he heard the word ‘Sudoku’, all of his thoughts disappeared.

He really didn’t understand why someone would use the opportunity they had to play games in class to go and play Sudoku. 

Mr. Zhou was halfway through the question, and he really couldn’t overlook the students in the back wearing masks, especially the one who was playing on his phone. While the students had their heads down as they were writing down their answers, he asked, “Shao Zhan, Xu Sheng, what’s going on with the two of you, isn’t it stuffy with the masks on?”

Hou Jun was sitting in the front row, and answered for them “Teacher, the two of them don’t feel well.”

“Still playing phone games even though you’re not feeling well–” Mr. Zhou nodded his head and commented, “The body is weak but the mind is strong.”

Shao Zhan, “…” 

Mr. Zhou said again, “If you could take even a tenth of that perseverance and put it into your studies, then your exam scores wouldn’t be like that.” He continued, and couldn’t help but ask, “You really feel unwell?”

Shao Zhan really hadn’t been very sincere in pretending to be sick. Just like the feeling he gave when he entered the classroom, it was completely impossible to tell that he was pretending to be sick, rather he was pretending to be forced.

 

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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“Jbeut.” We Vtfcu gfwlcvfv tlw lc j ibk nblmf.

Vtjb Itjc mjwf ab tlr rfcrfr, fzlafv tlr Vevbxe ujwf, mjrejiis bqfcfv jcbatfg ujwf ab qea bc jlgr, atfc lc atf wlvvif bo atf delfa jcv raevlber jawbrqtfgf bo Jijrr Vfnfc, jcv atf defralbclcu ujhf bo Zg. Itbe, tf abbx j ygfjat. “… Jbeut.”

This ‘cough’ of Shao Zhan’s, was quickly followed up by Xu Sheng. His professionalism was even stronger than Shao Zhan’s. Not only did he cough, he even had motion.

Xu Sheng bent over slightly, lowered his head, his shoulders heaving with his coughs. “Cough, cough.” 

Shao Zhan, “Aren’t you overdoing it a bit.”

Xu Sheng, “Do you know what a forgettable performance is, this amount is just right.”

Due to Xu Sheng’s acting being ‘just right’, Mr. Zhou was deeply worried about the wellbeing of these two students.

After class, he went back to the teacher’s office, and sighed as he placed his file on the table, then said to Meng Guowei, “Lao Meng, your class’ Shao Zhan and Xu Sheng seem to be feeling quite unwell…” 

Meng Guowei hadn’t been back in his office for very long, he hadn’t even had the time to drink some water. He had gone over to Director Gu to receive a notice which said there was some new outbreak in the Eastern province or some such. He hadn’t had the time to look at it properly. “I just got back, later on each class’ representatives have to come to me to get this notice, the school just handed it out. I have to let the students know to take precautions, it’s gotten me tired enough-”

Meng Guowei spoke up to here, firmly taking the lid off his teacup and raising his head to take a sip, before turning his head around and asking, “Lao Zhou, what did you just say?”

Zhou Yuan frowned and replied, “I was just teaching your class, Shao Zhan and Xu Sheng were wearing masks, and it looks like they’ve caught a cold, and it seemed quite serious. Especially Shao Zhan, he was coughing until he couldn’t stand up straight.”

Meng Guowei, “Ah?” 

“I think I’ll have to arrange for them to go to the clinic after class.” Seeing the two of them wearing masks together, he had come to his own opinion. “I hope it’s not something contagious.”

That sentence about it not being contagious wasn’t spoken casually, there was indeed a lot of precedence. There was a lot of traffic in the school with people coming and going; if the sanitation wasn’t up to standard, everyone would catch something as long as one person did.

Zhou Yuan finished speaking and noticed that Meng Guowei had his cup in his hands, and that they had started trembling slightly. “Lao Meng, what’s up with you?”

Zhou Yuan’s gaze moved to the right a bit, and saw the notices for the second year students on Meng Guowei’s table, the ones that had just come from Director Gu’s office. 

Black letters on white paper, the first line was written large and bold:

–– Notice on strengthening the school’s hygiene and virus prevention:

 

Dear teachers and students:

You are reading story Beyond The Outline at novel35.com

Recently there have been two cases of a virus in the Eastern province that have been confirmed to be the N411 influenza virus, a virus which can transmit rapidly through the air. 

The initial symptoms, similar to those of the common cold, are fatigue, weak limbs, headache, fever, and cough. Due to the long incubation period and non-detection time, we hope all students pay close attention to their health.

The things that followed all had to do with tips on improving environmental sanitation, such as opening windows to improve ventilation.

This kind of notice frequently happened,once a month or so. The probability of a real outbreak on campus was one out of ten thousands, but it wouldn’t necessarily happen.

Meng Guowei didn’t take this too seriously at first, thinking that as long as he let the class representative hand out the notice, it would be fine. 

But as Zhou Yuan read this out, he was forced to face the warning seriously.

Zhou Yuan finished reading and could completely empathise with Meng Guowei’s nervousness. He quickly returned to his senses and comforted him. “Lao Meng, don’t be nervous. We can’t fully judge the current situation at the moment. Maybe the situation isn’t what we think it is. The chances of a normal cold are still rather high.”

Meng Guowei raised his hand and braced himself against the office table. “What you’ve said is right, I hope it’s like you say.”

Zhou Yuan continued to comfort him. “The eastern province is over 2000 kilometres from us, the infection source can’t spread that fast.” 

The next class was with Meng Guowei.

The bell rang for class and he sighed deeply before taking his materials to walk towards Class Seven. But the moment he put down his textbooks, he saw two students wearing masks at the same desk. Meng Guowei moved his gaze away and pretended he was calm. “Let’s open our textbooks up to page 68, yesterday we discussed up to…”

“Cough.”

This sound came from the student he took the most pride in, student ‘Shao Zhan’. 

Meng Guowei sighed deeply. “Now that we’ve discussed up to here, “Yuzhang…”

“…Cough.”

This sound came from the student who gave him the most headaches, student ‘Xu Sheng’.

Xu Sheng had already discussed this with Shao Zhan before class. Coughing three times signified their task to be complete. They would each choose their own time to cough, as long as it was separated. 

Thus Meng Guowei was filled with tens of thousands of worries about this class, and stopped in the middle of his sentence to say, “Xu Sheng.”

Shao Zhan raised his gaze.

 

“Open the window a little wider.” Meng Guowei paused to point at the window. “There’s too much chalk dust in the classroom, let’s ventilate a bit.”

Shao Zhan threw his phone under his table and got up to open the window. 

Only then did Meng Guowei feel like it was a little easier to breathe.

These days, Xu Sheng had developed a habit of taking notes in class. After all, he couldn’t do anything, and just sitting there made him bored, so taking notes was of some amusement.

He had always been using Shao Zhan’s textbooks. If some classmate came to borrow books, they would discover that study god’s class notes had suddenly turned into a wild scrawl that was at a level of incomprehensibility for most people.

Xu Sheng wrote halfway before he sensed Shao Zhan’s gaze. “What’s up?” 

“Nothing.” Shao Zhan wanted to ask where he was at with his practise problem, but finally turned a blind eye to it, letting him scribble chaotically over his own textbooks.

Cramming was impossible.

Practising handwriting was also impossible.

Meng Guowei was in a state of fright the entire lesson. Originally he had planned on having the class representative hand out the notice, but he was careful, as well as worried that it would give psychological pressure to the two wearing masks and cause unnecessary panic. 

So after he returned to his office, he fell into deep thought for a long time and cornered a student who was at the office to correct missed marks. “Go to Class Seven and call over Shao Zhan and Xu Sheng.”

Heading there, Xu Sheng really couldn’t guess why Lao Meng had called the two of them over.

It was Shao Zhan who passed along this phrase as he stood up. “You coughed with too much force.”

After coughing like that, how could he not be called over to answer a few questions? 

Xu Sheng followed behind Shao Zhan. The two mask wearers following each other attracted many gazes in the second year hallway. Some students even kept turning back to watch when they had walked a far enough distance.

Zhan Without a Sheng had new material added to its discussion.

In the office.

Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan had just sat down when Meng Guowei handed them two cups of hot water. “I heard the two of you, have some health issues?” 

Xu Sheng took the hot water and said cunningly, “I’m okay, just not too comfortable.”

He didn’t say where he was uncomfortable. The trick to faking illness was to be vague.

 

Meng Guowei, “Recently…have you been…easily tired?”

Xu Sheng’s hand went around to Shao Zhan’s back, lightly pinching his side. 

Shao Zhan said, “A little bit.”

Meng Guowei, “Weakness in all four limbs?”

In order to pretend he was sick, Xu Sheng was willing to admit to anything. “Correct.”

Meng Guowei paused for a second after each phrase. He tore at his heart and then asked, “Or, do you feel your head hurt and your forehead warm every once in a while?” 

Xu Sheng calculated to himself, headache and a warm forehead wasn’t a big problem.

He could admit.

Finally he said, “Yes.”

What the two of them didn’t know was, Meng Guowei’s world seemed to have been torn apart by lightning. This excellent teacher who had been in the profession for many years, and could handle all kinds of emergencies calmly, was filled with thunder from the heavens rolling inside. 

Meng Guowei thought: It’s over.

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