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[Chapter 023] Lu YunFei wailed out, “Too ashamed to meet others!”
Bian JinYuan saw that he was silent and knew that at crucial moments like this, it was still better to depend on English as a weapon. He handed a hamburger over to Lu YunFei, “Eat, if you eat the hamburger then you won’t need to write the essay.”
Lu YunFei looked at him in disdain, “You still want to write essays after eating hamburgers, are you insane?”
“So how do you say hamburger in English?”
Lu YunFei almost spat out blood, “hamburger, h-a-m-b-u-r-g-e-r, it’s not like I don’t know any English words okay?!”
“Wow you’re so excellent~”
Lu YunFei: … Why did he feel that the sentence sounded very sarcastic? Was it his hallucination? It was definitely his hallucination!
Even though Lu YunFei bought Shuang Shuang a bunch of snacks and even a sundae, Shuang Shuang was still young and couldn’t finish them, and so Lu YunFei and Bian JinYuan wound up eating most of them. Lu YunFei packed the remaining food into the bag, “Shuang Shuang can have the leftovers at home.”
Shuang Shuang nodded, and once again looked at his gege.
Bian JinYuan felt that it was quite strange for Lu YunFei to treat Shuang Shuang so well even though it was their first time meeting. But he quickly thought that Lu YunFei was different from him, he had an outgoing personality and found it easy to be familiar with other people. Otherwise he wouldn’t have run over to let him test him on spelling during the holidays.
He made an “Mmm” sound, taking it as an agreement.
Shuang Shuang was elated. He reached out to press the Pikachu which came with his kid’s meal, heard the Pikachu emit “Pika pika” sounds, and smiled at his gege and Lu YunFei, thinking that today was such a good day.
After returning to the cake shop, Lu YunFei wasn’t in a hurry to leave. He ordered a drink and bread and started to write his papers.
The speed with which he wrote papers was very fast, with the exception of English, where the options ABCD all look like the right answers. Lu YunFei pondered for half a day before relying on his gut feeling to select the answers.
At 7.30pm, Bian JinYuan still hadn’t gotten off work. Lu YunFei sat restlessly as he watched him, and finally decided to head home. He had initially wanted to help Bian JinYuan look after Shuang Shuang, but it was now almost 8pm, and Bian JinYuan had not yet gotten off work. He had to go possess the Tmall Genie at 9pm; if he were still on the road at 9pm, Lu YunFei was uncertain as to what would happen. It would be best if nothing untoward happened, but it would be dangerous if he were to faint.
And so Lu YunFei walked over to Bian JinYuan and said, “Are you getting off work soon? I have to head home.”
Bian JinYuan usually ended work at 8pm. He looked at his phone, “I still have half an hour more to go.”
Lu YunFei thought about it and thought that there still wasn’t enough time even if he got off work at 8pm, “Then I’ll head home first. There’s not a lot of customers right now, so you can pay more attention to Shuang Shuang.”
It was then that Bian JinYuan realised that this was the reason why Lu YunFei had continued staying on in the shop.
He said in embarrassment, “Thank you for today. Actually you could have told me earlier, then you wouldn’t have had to stay on till now.”
“It’s no problem, Shuang Shuang is quite cute,” Lu YunFei replied casually, “I have something on at home, Otherwise I could have had dinner with you both.”
Bian JinYuan replied gently, “Then be careful going home.”
“You too. Oh right, didn’t I ask you to save me a slice of strawberry cake? Did you save it?”
Bian JinYuan helped him to retrieve it, placed it in a cake box, and handed it to him.
Lu YunFei took it and thanked him. As he turned to leave, he heard Bian JinYuan say, “Wait a moment.”
Lu YunFei turned his head cautiously.
Bian JinYuan said calmly, “You worked on your English paper today right? Hand me your English paper.”
Lu YunFei felt a jolt of lightning from out of the blue. His eyes widened in fright.
“What do you want my English paper for?”
“I want to check your current level.”
“I mean,” Lu YunFei asked in shock, “Are you really intending to become my teacher?”
“You’ve already called me teacher numerous times. If I don’t lift a finger, I’d be letting down your label of ‘teacher’.”
Lu YunFei felt that his emotions were a tangled mess. He had always thought that with Bian JinYuan’s character, the fact that he was willing to monitor his spelling memorisation was already a feat. He had never been a greedy person, so he’d never thought about anything more. Now that Bian JinYuan seemed to hold the notion that he wanted to help him, this was really… unbelievable.
“Paper,” Bian JinYuan said calmly.
Lu YunFei tried his best to press down on his fright, and shook his head.
Bian JinYuan raised his brows, “Rebelling against the teacher?”
Lu YunFei wailed out, “Too ashamed to meet others!”
He knew very well his standard of English. If he handed his English paper over to Bian JinYuan, it would be full of red. A failing grade! Too embarrassing!
“How about another paper my dear? Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics are all okay my dear~” Lu YunFei helped himself to sell Amway ♦︎ .
Bian JinYuan was exasperated, “Either you hand this paper to me now, or when school starts the day after tomorrow, I’ll get you to pick a paper to work on.”
“Are there any other options?” Lu YunFei struggled in his death throes.
“Yes, both.”
Lu YunFei: …
Bian JinYuan asked considerately, “You do know what both means right?”
“What if I said I don’t?”
“Then it’s simple, I’ll translate it for you. It means to choose all options. I recommend you to pick this choice my dear.”
Lu YunFei: …
Bian JinYuan spread his hands out and looked at him, “Choose.”
Lu YunFei looked back at him. He wracked his head as he pondered the choices, and finally hit the cashier table, “I choose option B, which is for you to pick a paper for me to do after the holidays.”
A later death is preferable to an early death. There’s still tomorrow for him to try to salvage and prepare for it.
Bian JinYuan agreeably expressed, “Sure.”
“Then I’m going off.”
“Go home to revise properly oh.”
Oh oh oh, oh you big-headed demon, do you think that you’re goose goose goose, singing to the sky # !
Lu YunFei left the cake shop unhappily. At the thought of Bian JinYuan’s intention to give him a mock exam, he could only feel despair. A mock test at his level? He had no level at all okay!
Despair. His current feeling was despair.
Quack Notes
♦︎ The internet meaning of ‘selling Amway’ is to promote something that you believe strongly in. The phrase has its roots in the MLM company Amway, but somehow it managed to evolve in meaning in the gaming, cosplay, and anime/manga community to mean ‘promoting something enthusiastically’.
# This was lost in translation, but basically Lu YunFei quoted a classic poem 咏鹅 (yǒng é, Ode to the Goose) by Tang poet 骆宾王 (Luò BīnWáng), whom apparently wrote it when he was a mere seven years old. The poem starts with “goose, goose, goose (é, é, é)”, and I guess ‘e’ (pronounced ‘uh’) sounds similar to ‘oh’ if you stretch it a bit. This poem is one of those few that I still remember from having to memorise it in school as a child, it’s that much of a trauma classic! At seven years old, I only knew how to mimic the sounds of classical poems without learning the meanings of the words. What kind of Tang dynasty genius poet was he!?