While everybody was napping at their desks in the afternoon, Song Yu Meng was frantically copying Su Xiao Xiao’s maths homework while cursing Yi Ran in a low voice.
“This damned Crazy Yi, what the hell’s wrong with you???”
She turned her head to glare at Yi Ran on the other side of the classroom, and seeing that she was sprawled out on her desk, sleeping soundly with her head on a pile of books, Song Yu Meng felt even more enraged!
Why did she have to work so hard to copy homework when Crazy Yi could sleep so peacefully!!! She hadn’t touched her maths homework in hundreds of years[1].
Suddenly, she stopped writing.
Wait, why did she have to listen to Crazy Yi so obediently???
Looking at the exercise book, she pondered the situation.
Forget it! There was only the last answer left to copy anyway, she’d be done with it all once that’s finished!
Once Song Yu Meng finished copying the last answer, the bell signifying the end of the break period rang, but all the students were still resting on the table, reluctant to wake up.
She shook out her aching hand and saw Yi Ran continuing to laze with her head on the table, so Song Yu Meng took the exercise book and stomped over.
She grabbed Yi Ran’s wrist and pulled her up from the table harshly before walking out of the classroom. The rest of the students were still asleep and Song Yu Meng didn’t want to disturb them.
Yi Ran was in a deep slumber when the bell woke her up. She was still half asleep when Song Yu Meng dragged her out of the classroom, and Yi Ran sleepily glanced at the hand pulling on her wrist. She was too dazed to react to getting pulled to the neighbouring classroom.
Song Yu Meng immediately flung Yi Ran’s hand away from herself.
Rubbing her eyes, Yi Ran asked lazily: “Seriously, you’re not taking a nap when it’s time to rest, what’s wrong with you?”
“You still have the audacity to ask what’s wrong with me???” Song Yu Meng pointed to herself before turning the finger to Yi Ran. “You’re clearly the crazy one, forcing me to finish the maths homework. If not would I be insane enough to pull you here?”
“Oh, then where’s the homework? Is it done?”
“Clearly? Would this lady still give you the chance to tattle on me??” Song Yu Meng said proudly.
“Let me check it then.” Yi Ran calmly stretched out her left hand.
“Take it.” Song Yu Meng rolled her eyes and handed the book over to Yi Ran.
Yi Ran blinked twice, clearing the fuzziness from her eyes as she meticulously inspected the exercise book with a growing frown.
Song Yu Meng stood by the side playing with her hair while observing Yi Ran’s expression. Seeing her deep frown, she suddenly grew worried that Yi Ran would figure out she copied the answers.
Both pages were filled with plenty of mathematical workings that were correct at each step. Yi Ran clearly knew the standard of Song Yu Meng’s knowledge in maths. She didn’t even pay attention in maths class yesterday, so aside from being copied, how else could this have come about?
Yi Ran closed the book and exposed her without any mercy: “Spit it out Miss Song, whose homework did you copy?”
Her face flushed but Song Yu Meng still acted like she was insulted by the question: “Stop talking rubbish! This lady clearly did it herself!”
Yi Ran glanced at her flushed face and smiled, opening the book and pointing to a question. “Tell me how this question is supposed to be solved then.”
“……” Song Yu Meng pressed her lips together and went to look at the book, “this question, uh, first, first you…”
“First you, what?” Yi Ran flicked her forehead and laughed: “So much for denying you copied the answers.”
Song Yu Meng’s face turned even redder, almost like a fully ripe red apple. She folded her arms and looked away, unwilling to acknowledge this annoying Crazy Yi.
Alright, it was actually because she didn’t know what else to fight back with.
Yi Ran saw her defiant look and sighed. “Wait for me here.”
She turned and left the classroom. Song Yu Meng was still wondering what she went to do when Yi Ran returned with a red pen and a notepad.
“What are you still standing there for, come here and I’ll explain it to you.” Yi Ran knocked on the table with her red pen.
Song Yu Meng pursed her lips and walked over unwillingly, lowering her head to see the workings Yi Ran was writing.
Yi Ran stood in front of the table with her upper body bent over, one hand pressing down on the notepad, the other scribbling the formulas with the red pen. “For this sort of trigonometry question, you just need to use the sum and difference angle formula, then the double angle formula[2] to simplify, got it?”
Even though Song Yu Meng looked like she was listening and looking intently, in all honesty, she was already lost.
Sum and difference? Double angle formula? What are those???
Yi Ran finished explaining and saw that she was still gazing blankly at the workings, so she gently knocked the red pen on Song Yu Meng’s head.
“Aiya!” Song Yu Meng grumbled. “Crazy Yi, what did you hit me for? If you want a fight, just say it!”
“Stop acting.” Yi Ran smiled. “Hey, tell me something, you can’t possibly not know about the sum and difference angle formulas and the double angle formula, right?”
Song Yu Meng stared hostilely at Yi Ran, unable to find a good comeback. She indeed did not know about those formulas.
Yi Ran’s gaze was brimming with laughter as she wrote all the formulas for trigonometric functions on the notepad, paying particular attention to label the names of each function and when to use them.
Tearing off the sheet of paper, Yi Ran folded it and stuck it in the middle of Song Yu Meng’s exercise book and handed it back to her, saying: “Take it. I wrote down all the formulas for you. If you can’t remember them, just take a look at the paper.”
Song Yu Meng looked at Yi Ran in astonishment before taking the book and the paper.
“Did you understand my explanation just now? If you didn’t, I’ll explain it to you again.” Yi Ran continued.
“Whatever, you might want to explain but this lady might not want to listen!” Song Yu Meng’s arrogance came back again, “and stop being so nice to me, or I’ll start thinking you’re up to no good!”
Up to no good? Yi Ran chuckled, “are you even worth me scheming over you? Please, I’m the maths class rep, I’m supposed to take responsibility for you.”
When Yi Ran said “take responsibility”, Song Yu Meng’s face inexplicably reddened and she raged: “Who the hell are you to care! Who wants you to take responsibility[3] for me?! As long as it’s my business, you’re not to care from now on! Got it?”
“Okay okay, I won’t care about you.” Yi Ran shrugged, then said, “but let me tell you this. These kinds of trigonometry questions are important. Putting aside the upcoming test, there will always be one question like this every year for Gaokao[4]. It can only be to your advantage to learn how to solve it.”
Song Yu Meng threw her hands up in the air exaggeratedly: “Cheh! As if you could predict the questions, Tang Seng doesn’t even do that.”
Yi Ran folded her arms and stayed silent, her amusement clear to see in her eyes.
Song Yu Meng felt a bit embarrassed under her stare, picking up her book and walking away. When she reached the door, she turned back and looked at Yi Ran with an undecipherable expression.
Seeing Yi Ran with a smirk, Song Yu Meng turned tail and left the room. She walked slowly back to the classroom with an odd feeling in her heart.
What was Crazy Yi smiling at???
……
The third period of the afternoon was the weekly class committee meeting. Usually, the students would self-revise or attend the class meeting, but today, Tang Xiang Ping decided to use the period to re-select the class committee.
“Students, let’s vote for the new class committee during this period.” Tang Xiang Ping stood on the platform. “We’ll leave the subject representatives as they are. This time, we’re selecting the class representatives, class president, secretary and such.”
The rules for the election were simple. Whoever wanted to take on a role would go up and give a speech[5]. If there were many people fighting for a role, the rest of the class would vote for their choice.
After selecting the other roles, only the class president role was left.
There were around 10 people who wanted to take on the role as class president, including Xu Yuan.
The other classmates gave their speeches, and when it was Xu Yuan’s turn, the whole class clapped loudly.
Even though the class was a science class, it was evenly split with the same number of females and males. Most of the guys liked Xu Yuan, and there were some girls who hated her, but most of the girls were pretty ambivalent.
“Cheh, that’s the white lotus who’s the best actor in the whole of First Middle School.” Song Yu Meng folded her arms and leaned against the wall, rolling her eyes. Because everybody else was clapping, nobody heard her.
Xu Yuan saw how Song Yu Meng was acting and she smiled, bowing 90 degrees before starting her speech.
Xu Yuan had a pleasant voice, like the gently flowing water in a creek, and she looked especially pure and innocent. It was easy for people to get protective over her, and that was also the reason why Xu Yuan was being chased by many boys.
Liu Luo Yang stared at Xu Yuan the whole time she was speaking, and Xu Yuan also glanced in his direction a few times, resulting in Liu Luo Yang thinking: Could it be that Xu Yuan also likes me?
On the other hand, Song Yu Meng was freaking out internally. Why does this green tea lady[6] keep looking at her Liu Luo Yang gege? She must be trying to seduce him again!!!
Yi Ran was bored out of her mind, staring outside the window. Glancing at Tang Xiang Ping to see if her distraction was noticed, she suddenly saw Song Yu Meng clenching her fists and grinding her teeth in anger.
From far away, Yi Ran rolled her eyes and it was coincidentally seen by Tang Xiang Ping. Thinking that Yi Ran was rolling her eyes at herself, she gave Yi Ran a warning look.
“……” Yi Ran hurriedly turned around and sat up straight, speechless.
Tang Seng can’t possibly think I was rolling my eyes at her, can she? What bad luck.
After Xu Yuan finished her speech, another round of applause sounded, with Liu Luo Yang clapping particularly loudly.
The bell rang at that moment and Tang Xiang Ping said: “Make use of the break time to discuss who you’re going to vote for. We’ll tally the votes in the next period.”
Yi Ran sighed in relief as Tang Xiang Ping walked away, thinking to herself: Thank god Tang Seng didn’t scold me. But before her heart rate could go back to normal, she saw Song Yu Meng angrily making her way over to her.
Yi Ran’s first reaction was, nothing good is going to come of this.
[1] 几百年 – Literally hundreds of years lol
[2] 先用和差角公式展开，再用二倍角公式化简就行了 – I’m clearly as terrible a student as Song Yu Meng, I have no idea what these formulas are. I hope I translated them accurately enough, thanks Google.
[3] 负责 – Literally means to take responsibility for. It’s also used in a romantic context, to say you’ll take responsibility for someone. You usually see the guy saying he’ll take responsibility after his girlfriend gets pregnant or something, or in those “you’re the first person I slept with, you’ll need to take responsibility for me!” scenes.
[4] 高考 – you’ll be familiar with this term if you read modern Chinese novels, it’s the university entrance exam that’s super important to all students. Students rather commit suicide than do badly on this exam, that’s how big a deal it is.
[5] 自我演讲 – Kind of like a “vote for me for class president, here’s what I’ll do for you guys, I have these great ideas for how we can make our class better!” sort of speech.
[6] 绿茶女 – The term is supposed to be green tea bitch, but the author used 女 instead of 婊, so I changed it to green tea lady. Almost the same as “white lotus”, basically someone who looks pure on the outside, but does underhanded things and seduces guys.