A Young Woman's Heart

"Get to the point." Li Wanyan turned her head and gave him a cold glare. This incessant chatter was seriously affecting her studies.

"It's nothing, it's just that I suddenly realized today that a good girl was right beside me all along. Sigh, I wish I had met you sooner." Jun Ruohuan gently brushed his bangs aside and moved his face closer so that Li Wanyan could smell his breath.

Surprisingly, it didn't smell bad; it had a mixed smell of chewing gum and toothpaste.

"By the way, class monitor, why do you go to and from school with Mo Xueyao every day? Do you live at her house? Or are you just really close, so you walk together every day?"

In fact, most people knew that Li Wanyan was staying at Mo Xueyao's house; he was just asking a question he already knew the answer to—of course, he didn't know the reason why she was staying at her house either.

"Do you want to pursue Mo Xueyao?" Li Wanyan asked without looking up, her tone more sarcastic than inquiring.

"No, no, no, of course she's very beautiful and has a very exotic look, haha..." Jun Ruohuan paused, "But, I prefer a more traditional girl like you. Oh—I have a few math problems I don't know how to solve, could you teach me later?"

Li Wanyan frowned, about to agree, when she heard Mr. Xue's hearty laughter. Turning around, she saw him with his hand on Jun Ruohuan's shoulder, revealing a row of clean, white teeth: "What math problems don't you understand? You can just ask me!"

"Uh……"

Mr. Xue placed the schoolbag directly on Jun Ruohuan's desk and took out yesterday's math homework from it: "There were indeed a few difficult questions yesterday, but as long as you understand the logic, you can solve them easily. Many times, math problems are just playing word games. After simplifying and breaking down the problems, you will find that each one is as simple as an example problem."

"..." Jun Ruohuan's expression was somewhat unnatural.

"It must be these three questions, or perhaps they are questions from an earlier time?"

"Oh, right, those are the two dishes."

"OK, these two questions? Not bad. You did the hardest ones, so you shouldn't be unable to do these two. Come on, Jun Ruohuan, take out your workbook, and I'll check your answers."

“…Okay.” Now it was Jun Ruohuan’s turn to frown.

He took out his workbook, but all the word problems only had one answer written on them, without any steps.

It's very similar in style to the answer key at the end of an assignment.

Theoretically, the answer key should have been torn up by the teacher, but it's also possible that he obtained a copy through other channels.

Faced with Jun Ruohuan's smirk, Mr. Xue did not doubt his reaction at all, but said very seriously, "Although it is concise to write down the answer directly, you still need to show the process when solving problems. You are very talented and can write down the answer in one go. Let me see, oh—the answers to these questions are all correct. Did you encounter any difficulties? Do you find it more difficult to figure out the process? Come on, tell me how you think about it."

"I am... uh... about yesterday, I've kind of forgotten, haha, I don't have a very good memory."

"Then let's do a problem again." Seemingly getting into the swing of things, Mr. Xue flipped over Du Qicai's chair and pulled it to Jun Ruohuan's desk to sit down. "You read this problem over and tell me what steps you think it should take and what formulas you should use."

"...Three steps?"

"Did you combine some steps? Actually, the simplest and clearest steps are five. This question seems to only require one answer, but it actually goes in circles. We need to calculate first..." Mr. Xue took out a draft notebook from his bag and wrote down the steps in great detail.

He would patiently and thoroughly explain why he did it each step of the way.

"You see, this is actually a trap. It seems to be asking us to ask for this, but if you look closely, it's asking us to ask for the answer to this. But you can definitely avoid it; it's not difficult."

"Oh……"

"Haha, actually we have another way to do it, which is even simpler, but it requires a very deep understanding of the formula. It's like doing subtraction of 37 from 21. You can first subtract 37 from 20, and then add 1. The idea here is similar—it's a perfect analogy! Look, there's a variation of this formula that can be broken down..."

"I see." Jun Ruohuan was somewhat surprised. "It can be like this?"

"Yes, haha, isn't it interesting?"

At this moment, he seemed to have forgotten something...

……

Chapter Seventy-Five: Rheumatism in the Rainy Season

The street with the fruit shops is without power again.

It rained heavily all day, and the accompanying strong winds seemed to have snapped the power lines.

A dim incandescent light bulb hung from the ceiling, swaying with the wind blowing in.

It is connected to a battery used by electric vehicles, providing temporary power.

Light is indispensable for modern people.

The dim light of a candle is clearly far from sufficient in the face of an incandescent bulb.

"Ouch." The mother sighed unconsciously, swaying as she sat on an old wooden stool, one hand clenched into a fist, the other supporting her waist, and began to tap her thigh joints again and again. "Yaoyao, come here and give Mom a massage."

"What are you doing?" Mo Xueyao turned her head away in disgust. "Why do you have so many illnesses?"

"It hurts whenever it rains... isn't it because I'm tired? I worry about you all every day."

"Then don't worry so much."

"How can you and your father be so insensible? How can you not worry?"

"Tch—you're just overthinking it, okay?" Mo Xueyao rolled her eyes and reluctantly leaned closer. "Where does it hurt?"

"My legs hurt." The mother looked out the window at the incessant drizzle. "Sigh, it's always raining, the air is so damp."

"Let me do it." Li Wanyan pulled up a small stool and sat down next to Yang Xiaoyu. "Is it your calves or your thighs that are swollen?"

"Ah, Wanyan, then I'll leave it to you!" Mo Xueyao gave a thumbs up, not feeling embarrassed at all.

The mother shook her head helplessly and said to Li Wanyan, "Wanyan, you've suffered a lot. It must hurt."

"Okay, I'll give you a massage."

The rain continued to fall outside the shop, and the streets were pitch black without streetlights. Occasionally, you would see someone with dark skin walk by, which would startle you.

In this kind of weather, there's obviously no business going to happen.

But since we're living in the fruit shop anyway, it doesn't matter whether we close early or late.

My father just got home and is now taking his change of clothes to the public bathhouse.

In the south, there aren't many public bathhouses open in the summer, so he has to walk a bit further to get there. Plus, he often needs someone to scrub his back, and afterwards he wants to lie down and watch TV for a while... so taking a bath naturally takes him longer than others.

After all, he had been busy all day, so this was a rare moment of relaxation for him.

Everyone needs to relax.

Whether it's physical or mental.

"Yaoyao, look at yourself, and then look at Yanyan."

"I knocked on the door yesterday! I was the one who covered you with the blanket when you had a fever!"

"You keep bringing up such a small thing."

"What? Can't I say it?" Mo Xueyao pouted angrily and picked up Su Tang, who was lying on the ground.

It barely moved all day; it seems that the gloomy, rainy weather has made it a bit too lazy to move.

"Ah, yes, phew...that feels good, much better than Yao Yao's massage, just the right pressure." The mother asked with a smile, "Yan Yan used to get massages often, right?"

"Before... um."

"Oh, I wish my Yaoyao was half as good as you."

"It's as if I'm completely useless..." Mo Xueyao became even more unhappy.

After all, no one likes to be criticized by their closest relatives every day.

However, even Mo Xueyao's mother tends to use a supervisory approach to education, as if praising her even slightly would make her child too proud, so she has to constantly criticize her in order to help her better understand herself.

Although most of the time, it will only have the opposite effect.

Rheumatism is still a long way off for young Mo Xueyao.

It's normal that she can't understand her mother's pain.

She didn't even understand what "heavy humidity" meant. She clearly felt that the cool breeze was exceptionally refreshing, so what was wrong with her?

The incandescent light temporarily hung under the roof beam swayed more violently in the wind, and the dim yellow light it emitted flickered back and forth.

Li Wanyan's thoughts drifted into the distance, as if they had slipped into a rift in time, taking her back to the past.

……

The same rainy night.

It rained harder and harder.

The small rented room was extremely messy, dark, and damp.

Li Wanyan, who hadn't started elementary school yet, had her hair in pigtails. She squatted on the ground, holding a pair of slippers that were bigger than her head, and stared intently at the ground.

Finally, a cockroach scurried out of the shadows, and the slipper fell down just as quickly, like the Five Finger Mountain pressing down on Sun Wukong.

The difference is that Buddha spared the monkey's life, while the cockroach was completely flattened.

Her cute little round face was furrowed with brows, and her little mouth was pouting in disgust. She tore off a piece of waste newspaper, rolled up the cockroach inside, and threw it into the trash can by the door.

The incandescent light bulb in the house seems like it could break at any moment. It's not much brighter than three or four candles, and it's dim and gloomy, like the twilight under a streetlamp during a heavy rain.

The mother sat under the incandescent light bulb, sewing cross-stitch on a small folding table.

There are still some chess squares on the table that are almost worn away.

Cross-stitch is a side job.

I made it last night.

The orders came from small handicraft factories nearby.

Sometimes it's cross-stitch, sometimes it's knitting towels, and sometimes it's assembling pens or filling shampoo bottles...

There are all sorts of messy jobs.

Many of the products are counterfeit goods without even a brand name.

Cross-stitch, like this, is mostly found on carpets or in small handicraft shops on the roadside.

They earn very little.

A cross-stitch piece the size of a book only earns you one yuan once it's finished.

This will take at least two or three days.

Even back then, one dollar was only enough for the mother and daughter to eat for a day.

But when combined with the daytime work, it's just enough to barely make ends meet.

This part-time job covered the rent and utilities, allowing this small home, like a canoe on the ocean, to continue its 'voyage'.