Chapter 13

A few wisps of thin clouds swept across the azure sky. Outside the window, the artistically designed metal frames on the long corridor divided the sky into sections. The sky was clear, the air fresh, and a pleasant breeze was blowing.

On the clock hanging above the blackboard, the minute hand passed the Roman numeral six. Students began to trickle into the class one after another.

Shen Shuyu waited several times but still never heard Yu Mo’s voice come from the back of the classroom.

The hour hand clicked, pointing at seven. The bell for morning self-study rang on time.

A flurry of hurried footsteps burst into the quiet classroom. Yu Mo, out of breath from running, rushed to her seat.

“Holy crap, I thought you weren’t coming today!” Wei Lai’s desk was jolted by Yu Mo’s collision, and she sat up straight.

“I overslept.” Yu Mo tidied her wind-blown, messy hair. As she looked down, she noticed the medicine on her desk. “Hey, did you give this to me?”

“No. It was already here when I arrived this morning,” Wei Lai shook her head.

“Hm?” Yu Mo was puzzled. She reached out and opened the bag. She vaguely recognized a few items; they were all medicine prescribed by the doctor at the School Infirmary yesterday.

Yu Mo slapped her thigh. “I know. It’s probably the medicine I left at the School Infirmary yesterday that they sent over.”

“Oh, is that so… I thought someone knew you were injured and secretly left it for you, caring about you,” Wei Lai said, sounding a bit regretful.

“…”

Yu Mo was momentarily speechless. Seeing the Chinese homework Wei Lai had half-copied, she also took out her own blank exercise book and tugged at the model paper in Wei Lai’s hand. “I need to copy my homework too. Come on, together.”

Silence returned to the back corner of the classroom. Shen Shuyu’s long, slender fingers finally pinched the corner of a page and turned it.

Because it hadn’t been moved for so long, the originally stiff paper had softened from the accumulated heat of her hand, leaving a tiny mark on the lower right corner.

A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Shen Shuyu’s lips.

She precisely picked out Yu Mo’s voice, each word and sentence bringing her satisfaction.

A few plump sparrows landed on the tree outside the window, chirping noisily.

The thin clouds didn’t diminish the brilliant sunlight, brightening one’s heart.

Morning self-study and the break passed in a flurry of catching up on homework.

The bell for the first class rang. An old bald man, holding a glass teacup and with a textbook and triangular ruler tucked under his arm, slowly and leisurely walked into the class.

This class was the first math class of the semester.

Yu Mo still remembered this Old Man, a black-tea-scented Alpha. Back then, all of Yu Mo’s teachers had half given up on her, since her final exam scores were always above the class average anyway. Only he, on the path of making things difficult for Yu Mo, never tired and engaged in mutual torment with her until they graduated from Grade 12.

Later, however, Yu Mo was very grateful to him.

Without him, she wouldn’t have relied on her exceptionally high math scores to surpass other students with the same total score and squeeze into A University, which Shen Shuyu also attended, on the borderline.

Thinking back now, Yu Mo was still grateful to him.

It was her own lack of ambition, plunging headfirst into the illusion of love, unable to pull herself out.

“Hey, that student, what are you doing?” A piece of chalk traced a beautiful arc through the air, accurately hitting Yu Mo on the head and shattering her rose-tinted view of the Old Man.

“You finished the problems? Daydreaming here?” The Old Man’s crackling voice from her memory came crashing down. Yu Mo had originally wanted to ask her deskmate for help, but she only witnessed how Wei Lai quickly swapped the comic book hidden in her textbook for an exercise book, head lowered.

The Old Man glanced at Yu Mo, then knocked on the blackboard with his teaching stick. “Don’t bother looking for which problem. I’ve already written it for you. Here, come up to the board and solve it.”

“…”

Yu Mo helplessly closed her book, watching the Old Man lift his teacup to drink. She hadn’t even talked back to him once this time, and yet he’d called her up.

Had the Old Man in this life improved, or had she, after being by Shen Shuyu’s side for so long in her past life, forgotten how to talk back?

The Old Man sized up Yu Mo as she walked to the podium and reminded her, “If you answer correctly, go back and sit down. If not…”

Before the Old Man even finished, Yu Mo had helplessly picked up the chalk and continued, “Copy the formula fifty times and personally deliver it to your office.”

The Old Man glanced at Yu Mo and smiled. “You remember. Right, solve it.”

Yu Mo thought, I’ve been punished like this so many times, how could I forget?

She pinched the chalk in her hand and seriously read the problem written in the Old Man’s graceful, petite handwriting on the board.

Having been away from campus life for so long, even if her math had been good back then, she needed a slight buffer to load the data.

“What is she doing? Performing wall-gazing meditation?” Chen Aimei had long finished the problem. She poked her deskmate, who was still working with her head down.

“I don’t know, probably thinking about the solution,” her deskmate said, pulling her arm away slightly, not wanting Chen Aimei to interrupt her work again.

“True. After all, not everyone can solve it as quickly as I can. Ah, a bit boring.” Chen Aimei rested her chin on her hand, looking utterly bored, occasionally glancing at the Old Man standing to the side.

As usual, she kept looking for a chance to make eye contact with the Old Man, vainly expecting him to call her up to solve the problem.

Yu Mo figured out the problem in her mind. She took the white chalk and, below the graceful handwriting, boldly wrote a forceful and powerful “Solve” in big strokes. Each stroke was sharp and clean, pleasing to the eye.

“Whoa, Yu Mo has some skill,” Feng Ruoyu, sitting behind Chen Aimei, exclaimed.

Chen Aimei was extremely conceited. Unwilling to concede, she sniped, “It’s just some lousy handwriting. Nothing to brag about.”

Yu Mo looked at the solution process she had just written one line of. Her hand holding the chalk paused.

Hearing Chen Aimei’s young, shrill, and pretentious voice again after so long still instantly stirred up a wave of disgust in her heart.

Then Yu Mo’s hand moved faster, quickly and concisely solving the problem on the board.

She had originally wanted to hide her ability.

But now she’d changed her mind.

Chen Aimei looked over. Yu Mo’s solution steps only had four short lines, with one conversion step that seemed to happen like a magic trick. Chen Aimei looked at her own solution steps and was certain that Yu Mo was just pretending to know and had guessed it.

The Old Man had just glanced at Yu Mo’s solution when Chen Aimei eagerly raised her hand: “Teacher, aren’t Yu Mo’s intermediate steps wrong?”

“Are they wrong?” Yu Mo pretended to turn back and look at her own steps, then looked humbly and sincerely at Chen Aimei, who had taken the bait: “Then how did Chen Aimei solve it? Come up and show everyone.”

Chen Aimei hadn’t expected Yu Mo to proactively offer her an olive branch. As conceited as ever, she picked up her notebook. “Sure.”

Yu Mo proactively handed the chalk to Chen Aimei, watching her solution steps without blinking. Her assessment of Chen Aimei was quite accurate: a conceited pest who knew just enough to be dangerous but not enough to be competent. With a little brainwork, Yu Mo could easily embarrass her.

“Teacher, I’m done,” Chen Aimei said with a proud smile.

“Mm, go back to your seat.”

But the Old Man’s face didn’t show the approval Chen Aimei had expected.

This surprised her.

“You go down too,” the Old Man waved at Yu Mo, then added, looking at her, “Sit down and pay attention to the lesson.”

“Ah! Thank you, Teacher!” A mischievous, youthful grin leaped onto Yu Mo’s face.

The chalk dropped into the chalk box with a “click”. Yu Mo wiped the chalk dust off her hands as she walked back.

Her high ponytail swung left and right, full of youthful vitality.

Shen Shuyu watched from below, her gaze never moving away.

The clean white shirt sleeve, newly changed, showed no bloodstains. She lifted her arm naturally, as if unhindered by the wound.

Shen Shuyu felt slightly relieved. She looked down at the solution steps she had prepared for Yu Mo.

A wave of disappointment washed over her, and she silently put them away.

In her past life during this same class, Yu Mo had also been called up by the math teacher.

Yu Mo couldn’t solve the problem and stood on the podium, looking back at Shen Shuyu with eyes full of hope, wishing for a little help.

But the moment their eyes met, Shen Shuyu had chosen to ignore her.

In this life, the moment Yu Mo was called up, Shen Shuyu had written out the solution steps, wanting to make up for her past mistake.

But Yu Mo, with the chalk flying in her hand, solved the example problem in just a few strokes.

Effortlessly, and it was the optimal solution.

She didn’t need her to come to the rescue.

“Tap, tap.” The Old Man picked up red chalk and knocked on the blackboard, pulling Shen Shuyu’s thoughts back. “Everyone look up. Let’s look at these two students’ solutions together.”

“First, let’s talk about this student’s.” The Old Man placed his chalk on Yu Mo’s solution. Chen Aimei rested her chin on her hand disdainfully, ready to see the teacher criticize Yu Mo.

“A very perfect solution, especially this step. It’s thorough and uses what we will be learning in this lesson…”

The smile on Chen Aimei’s face instantly froze. If Yu Mo’s solution was perfect, then the dozen or so lines she had written on the board were redundant and imperfect.

“Now look at this student’s. These steps could actually be simplified into this one step here…”

Chen Aimei watched as the teacher circled a large part of her solution in red, using an arrow to point to Yu Mo’s simple single step. Her expression was unsightly.

Didn’t this mean she had served as someone else’s foil?

And she had volunteered for it…

Suddenly, Chen Aimei realized she had been tricked by Yu Mo into coming up!

Yu Mo got her wish, seeing Chen Aimei turn around with a face full of anger. She lightly rocked her chair back, balancing on its two back legs, and leaned loosely against the backrest, meeting Chen Aimei’s gaze with smug arrogance.

Yu Mo looked at Chen Aimei’s embarrassed little face. Chen Aimei really couldn’t take a blow—such a small humiliation and her face was already red with shame.

The sense of achievement in Yu Mo’s heart was slightly diminished.

Actually, she had long known Chen Aimei was a paper tiger. So why hadn’t she dared to confront her directly in her previous life?

Only giving her a slap when pushed too far was really letting her off too easily.

Yu Mo felt it wasn’t about the opponent’s strength, but about her own courage.

In the past, she was always afraid of causing trouble for Shen Shuyu, intimidated and cowering, losing her dignity and becoming a laughingstock.

A few clouds drifted into the sky framed by the window, shading some of the light on Yu Mo’s face. Her eyes lost focus for a moment, then suddenly brightened.

Yu Mo no longer had the shackles named “Shen Shuyu”.

And she would never voluntarily put those shackles on again.

From now on, she could do as she did today, making anyone who wanted to step on her pay the price.

How satisfying it felt to think about it.

Yu Mo raised the corners of her mouth and mouthed to Chen Aimei with a smile: “Thanks.”

Chen Aimei frowned at first. When she realized what Yu Mo had said, she angrily whipped her head back around.