In fact, after the information is refreshed, they always want to attack me!

Chapter 36: 036 He/She is so innocent

(Let me add something more... How could those mediocre guys possibly compare to my dedication?)

As early as last week, Kikyo Kushida had already found out the swimming lesson schedules for other classes through her carefully cultivated network of contacts.

When she learned that the PE teacher would organize a freestyle swimming competition during class, she immediately realized that this was a golden opportunity.

So, while other students were leisurely enjoying their holidays, she spent the entire weekend alone in the pool, repeatedly practicing every detail of her strokes, breathing, and turns.

Her arms ached from the continuous training, but she simply shook off the water droplets and dived back into the water.

(It has to be perfect...)

Now that her secret efforts have been exposed, a strange sense of satisfaction welled up inside her.

It was as if an audience member had finally seen through the elaborate stage setup, and the shame of being seen through intertwined with a secret pleasure, causing her heart to beat slightly faster.

Those dark thoughts faded away, replaced by a subtle sense of exhilaration.

(Heh... Shimizu-kun's quite the smooth talker today, I'll refrain from cursing you too much tonight. As for that bitch... she won't be so lucky.)

Suddenly, the PE teacher's booming voice rang out from the poolside: "Girls, get ready! The 50-meter freestyle race is about to begin. The first place winner will receive 5,000 personal points!"

A few minutes later.

Kikyo Kushida stood at the edge of the swimming pool, her eyes subtly scanning the lane markings.

(Although swimming isn't really my strong suit... I haven't wasted these past two days of practice.)

(I only wanted to get some information about Horikita Suzune from Shimizu Akira... but we ended up chatting for so long without realizing it, and I felt quite relaxed talking to him.)

(But...since Shimizu-kun is so innocent.)

She narrowed her eyes slightly, a faint smile appearing at the corner of her mouth.

(Let's leave these things for next time.)

.......................

(Kushida is really naive.)

A few well-placed compliments were enough to make Kikyo Kushida lower her guard—she even unconsciously entered a state of self-indulgence.

Although it's unclear what she originally intended to get from me, the rhythm has clearly been disrupted.

(There's an art to praising someone...)

The key is to pinpoint the point that the other party cares about most.

For someone like Kikyo Kushida, the word "effort" seems to have a magical power.

Especially when Shimizu Akira accurately pointed out the fact that she had been secretly practicing over the weekend, the complex and pleasurable feeling of being seen through and acknowledged was more enjoyable than any flattery.

As for the statement "You were the only one in the class who practiced swimming in advance," it was a complete lie.

After all, he was neither an expert on human skin color nor did he have any special abilities, so how could he possibly see the changes in the skin color of all the students in the class at a glance? The truth is simple—he just knew in advance that Kikyo Kushida had gone to the swimming pool over the weekend—and this information was updated on Saturday of last week.

However, such white lies are harmless at all.

Just like when a waiter casually calls you "handsome guy" at a restaurant, even though you know it's just a polite greeting, it still makes you feel happy.

In the end, Horikita Suzune and Onodera tied for first place with an excellent time of 26 seconds.

Kikyo Kushida finished third with a time of 31 seconds.

As the swimming lesson drew to a close, Akira Shimizu noticed that Kushida frequently cast meaningful glances at Suzune Horikita.

Those eyes, which were always curved into crescents, were now dark and unfathomable. Although the corners of her mouth were upturned, there was an indescribable sense of incongruity about them.

(So ​​concerned about rankings?)

He pondered the clear water, its light and shadow.

(Looks like the door's going to be in trouble again tonight.)

......

Advanced Educational High Schools are no different from the vast majority of regular high schools in Japan.

The curriculum follows the traditional approach, including basic subjects such as Chinese, mathematics, English, social studies, and natural sciences, with each subject having a maximum score of 100 points.

After a week of adjustment, Akira Shimizu has fully grasped the pace of the math and English courses, and can even be said to be handling them with ease.

He can easily keep up with the teaching pace without needing to pay special attention.

On the one hand, it is due to the solid foundation laid during my education in China in my previous life; on the other hand, the teaching progress of Japanese high schools is indeed significantly different from that of China.

If we were to use the pace of education as an analogy, China's math curriculum is like a high-speed Shinkansen bullet train, while the teaching pace of Japanese high schools is more like a leisurely sightseeing train. In terms of the difficulty of the college entrance examination, China's is definitely more challenging.

After all, Japan's education system has been in place for quite some time since it implemented the "relaxed education" policy.

As for the current state of education in China, Shimizu Akira doesn't know much about it—at least in his memory, students lived a life that could be described as a "devil's schedule": they would rush to early morning self-study at six o'clock in the morning, still half asleep, and wouldn't be able to leave the evening self-study classroom until nine o'clock in the evening, dragging their tired bodies away.

In comparison, the daily schedule of Japanese high schools can be described as "paradise mode": classes begin leisurely at 8:30 in the morning, and students can leave the classroom with their backpacks before 4:00 in the afternoon.

Akira Shimizu is not criticizing this difference—after all, in Japan, the real competition often begins after school.

Those brightly lit cram schools are packed with students desperately trying to get into prestigious schools. This educational environment, which is "relaxed on the surface but high-pressure on the inside," is perhaps even more suffocating than the "exam papers" in China.

However, in a fully enclosed campus like a highly educated high school, students don't even have the opportunity to find tutoring classes—after all, it's isolated from the outside world, and even the most basic extracurricular tutoring channels are cut off.

But Akira Shimizu knew a universal truth: whether in China or Japan, as long as one had a solid grasp of the three core subjects of Japanese language, mathematics and English, it would be enough to maintain an above-average grade in the class.

These three subjects are like the "golden triangle" of education, jointly testing a student's most basic and important abilities and qualities—mathematics hones logical thinking, English tests memory and language talent, and Chinese cultivates both perceptual cognition and writing skills.

For Akira Shimizu, the only hurdle he could never overcome was the Japanese language class.

Even after a week had passed, those obscure and difficult classical grammar terms—"already formed" and "not yet formed"—still tangled in his thoughts like a mess of knots.

He had to admit that he had probably embarrassed the vast number of time travelers.

After all, in his previous life he had never even touched the grammar of Japanese. Now, trying to learn this knowledge was like asking a modern person to suddenly decipher oracle bone script—no matter how hard he tried, he would inevitably be completely confused.

Chapter 37: 037 Dressed like this! My child was only paying attention to the teacher during class!

If a student fails either the midterm or the final exam, they will have to drop out of school.

This is also one of the key hidden rules in advanced education institutions.

Before she left, the senior from Class D gave him some special advice:

"Even if we lose to other classes, or even if we live off the free monthly packages, the only thing we can do is not get expelled for poor grades—that would be too embarrassing."

Akira Shimizu certainly didn't want to leave in such an embarrassing way.

But this school is clearly not ordinary—what high school would force students to drop out just because they failed a single subject?

The only good news is that the midterm exams are still more than a month away.

Starting from scratch and intensively studying Mandarin, at least to the point of passing, should still be possible.

But three formidable obstacles stood before him: modern Japanese, classical Japanese, and classical Chinese.

Modern Japanese is manageable, but ancient Japanese is like a book written in heaven—although it is full of familiar Chinese characters, the combination of them is obscure and difficult to understand.

(It feels very similar to the classical Chinese I learned in my previous life... but because it's in Japanese, the difficulty has increased several times over!)

But what's even more challenging is that the same Chinese character may have more than a dozen readings in Old Japanese, and its meaning may even be completely changed due to the adhesion of grammatical particles.

It's like facing encrypted text, with the key hidden deep within time.

"My head hurts..."

After his afternoon Chinese language class, Shimizu Akira rubbed his temples as usual, pressing his fingertips against his throbbing nerves.

Unlike math or English—at least on the surface—Chinese language classes aren't as unapproachable. Even elementary school students can manage to understand some of it. But once they delve into the usage of each character and the rules of sound change in classical Chinese, their brains immediately feel as if they've been filled with lead, sinking into a heavy fog of confusion.

(They're all Chinese characters... so why do they look like a code when combined?)

Just as I was lost in thought, a faint voice suddenly drifted into my ear—

"Um... Shimizu-san, yesterday... thank you for speaking up for me..."

He turned his head and saw that his deskmate on his right, Sakura Airi, was looking down, her fingers unconsciously twisting the hem of her skirt.

Her voice was as light as a feather; if he hadn't had such keen hearing, he would have almost thought it was just the wind blowing by outside the window.

"It's nothing! I was just in a bad mood that day, and the other person was a troublesome guy who skipped class all the time."

Akira Shimizu waved his hand dismissively.

That wasn't entirely a perfunctory remark—it was true that I was in a bad mood that day, and it was also true that I disliked Haruki Yamauchi.

(After all, this guy is at least half responsible for Class D's "feat" of getting a zero on the exam; Chi Kuan-chi and several other male classmates were also corrupted by him...)

"..."

Sakura Airi remained silent for a long time.

Her gaze quietly swept over the almost brand-new Chinese textbook on the table of Qingshui Ming—the spine was sturdy, the pages were white, and there were very few creases, clearly indicating that it hadn't been turned much.

(As expected... he must be having a hard time learning Mandarin...)

She parted her lips slightly, as if she wanted to say something, but in the end she just bit her lower lip and swallowed her words.

"Oh, right!" Shimizu Akira lowered his voice earnestly, "Just to be absolutely sure—you really haven't confessed to Yamauchi Haruki, have you?"

"...No!"

This time, Sakura Airi's voice suddenly rose considerably, causing several students in the front row to turn around and look curiously.

She hurriedly covered her mouth, her ear tips instantly turning as red as if they were about to bleed.

Sakura Airi's gaze lingered briefly on Shimizu Akira's face before she quickly lowered her head like a startled animal.

Akira Shimizu raised an eyebrow, his gaze lingering for a moment on the tips of her slightly reddened ears.

(Looks like it really wasn't true...)

(However, to be fair, the other person really is the type who isn't good at talking to others.)

......

After school, Akira Shimizu finished his meal and went straight to find Suzune Horikita.

He had assumed that she was still upset about mentioning her brother during PE class and might not agree to go to the office with Ms. Chabashira Saeko.

To his surprise, despite the girl's icy expression, she silently followed in his footsteps.

When Akira Shimizu pushed open the office door, the expected Sae-sensei Chabashira was not there.

Instead, a young woman wearing a light pink silk blouse leaned casually against the desk.

The shirt was loosely tucked into high-waisted shorts, outlining a slender waistline.

The most eye-catching feature is her pair of long, slender legs—which appear even straighter and more shapely against the backdrop of shorts.

Her attire was far too casual, a far cry from the image of a teacher in people's minds—yet she was sitting upright in a teacher's office chair.

Typically, the standard attire for female teachers should be a well-tailored suit skirt paired with elegant black stockings, just like the meticulous and dignified Ms. Chabashira.

And this person in front of me...

This is practically the kind of negative example that would appear in a parent complaint letter—"How can you dress like this! My child was only looking at the teacher during class, and the drop in grades is all your fault!" The kind of "problem teacher" that would be the subject of a joint protest by students' mothers.

However, in highly developed high schools that implement a fully enclosed management system, it is almost impossible for parents to come to the school to observe at any time like in ordinary schools—after all, even the existence of a regular parent-teacher meeting system is a mystery.

Just as Shimizu Akira was lost in thought, the female teacher had already keenly noticed the commotion at the door.

She tilted her head slightly, a lazy smile playing on her lips: "Oh dear? You two lovely students, which teacher are you looking for?"

"Tea Pillar Teacher." Horikita Suzune announced her homeroom teacher stiffly, her tone clearly suppressing her dissatisfaction.

"Eh? Looking for Kosae?—" The female teacher lightly tapped her chin with her fingertip; this overly intimate form of address instantly made Shimizu Akira realize that the two had a close relationship. "She was just in the office~"

Seeing that the other party was about to invite them inside to wait, Horikita Suzune immediately and coldly declined: "No need."

Surprisingly, the young teacher walked into the hallway. Casually pointing to her face with her right index finger, she said, "Let me formally introduce myself. I'm Hoshinomiya Chie, the homeroom teacher of Class B. I've been inseparable from Kosae since high school! We still call each other 'Kosae' and 'Chie' to this day~"

Then, a teacher named Hoshinomiya Chie approached Horikita Suzune as if she had discovered something new, "Your temperament is similar to Kosae's, but why did she specifically call you over? It's very suspicious."

She blinked her curious eyes, lightly touching her lips with her index finger, "Could it be... that I've gotten into trouble?"

Seeing that Horikita Suzune remained silent, she suddenly clasped her hands together, revealing a sly smile: "Could it be—a love counseling session?"

Horikita Suzune's brow twitched almost imperceptibly.

Chapter 38: 038 Physiological needs were indeed what he understood them to mean.