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[Chapter 025] Lu YunFei: Mummy will sing you a lullaby~
“I’m here,” Lu YunFei replied enthusiastically.
“No need to report the time, be quiet.”
“Understood,” Lu YunFei answered.
Only as he watched the clock dial edge towards 1 o’clock, the sleepy Lu YunFei saw that Bian JinYuan was still on the sofa writing English. He couldn’t help but nag, “The time now in Beijing is 1am.”
Bian JinYuan: …
Bian JinYuan halted his pen as he sat in thought. Was it because he had always gone to bed before midnight that he had only discovered that this dummy Tmall Genie would always report the time?
He must have always been in such a deep sleep in this case.
Bian JinYuan looked at the Tmall Genie nearby and emphasized, “No need to report the time, be quiet.”
Lu YunFei thought, is this a matter of whether I’m quiet or not? This is a matter of lao ge ✢ you who ought to be sleeping! Look at what time it is now! If you still don’t head to bed, do you plan on hovering at the edges of death!
Lu YunFei thought of this and calmly replied, “It is 1am, time to sleep. Late sleep times will affect one’s body weight, lower immunity, rough skin, decreased memory et cetera. Taking care of yourself starts from going to bed at a proper bedtime!”
Bian JinYuan: …
Lu YunFei saw that he had lapsed into silence and decided to give it a push. And so he cleared his throat, and the Tmall Genie rang out two dings.
Bian JinYuan was confused. What was it doing? Re-activation?
Very soon, he got his answer.
Because Lu YunFei started singing:
Go to sleep, go to sleep, my dearest baby
Mummy’s arms are gently swaying you
Rocking your cot, quickly go to sleep
The night is quiet, it’s warm underneath the blanket
…
Bian JinYuan: …
Bian JinYuan never thought even in his dreams that someone would be the first to sing him a lullaby, and that this someone would actually be an artificial intelligence machine!
Isn’t this too damn intelligent! Where was the familiar dummy, this was too intelligent to the point where he was starting to suspect that it was looking at him with two eyes!
Bian JinYuan had previously heard the girls at the shop talk about big data from Taobao # , that Taobao eavesdrops on you everyday. Whatever you say, it would guess what you would like best. He now felt that he may not know if Taobao eavesdrops, but the Tmall Genie definitely eavesdrops! It just opens those two large black eyes to observe you. Once you don’t go to bed on time, it would nag you! It’s so shocking!
Bian JinYuan had reason to believe that if he continued to sleep late tomorrow, this Tmall Genie would start to promote sleep aid products. And that these products would be Tmall-exclusive!
Thus, Bian JinYuan stood up and headed towards the Tmall Genie, intending to unplug it. Let’s see how it surveils him after that.
Lu YunFei saw that he was walking towards him as he sang “a stalk of rose, a stalk of lily”. He was confused, but suddenly he felt that all he could see was pitch black, and in the next second, he opened his eyes and dumbfoundedly looked up. Lu YunFei froze, and then turned to switch on the bedside light. He looked at his room in shock. Fuck, he had returned to his body!
Lu YunFei didn’t know if he should laugh or cry, but he found that he was already laughing. As he laughed and laughed, Lu YunFei harrumphed. This Bian JinYuan actually dared to pull his plug before he could even finish singing his lullaby, was this how he treats his mother! Let’s see how he disciplines him tomorrow!
On the other side, Bian JinYuan who had his peace restored continued to busy himself with organising English grammar and sentence structures.
Lu YunFei met Bian JinYuan at the gymnasium the next day. After sleeping on it, he was no longer as angry as he was when he had just been unplugged. It was just that he still felt annoyed looking at Bian JinYuan, and so he blocked his shots numerous times while playing basketball.
Bian JinYuan thought nothing of it, and continued to look after Lu YunFei’s bag while he went running.
After Lu YunFei had spent twenty minutes running, he saw Bian JinYuan waiting at the tracks and knew that it was time to head back to the classroom. He walked over, and Bian JinYuan took out a bottle of mineral water from the bag and handed it to him.
Lu YunFei was surprised, “You even prepared this?”
Bian JinYuan didn’t say anything and carried his bag as he walked out of the field.
Lu YunFei looked at the mineral water in his hand. He decided to forgive Bian JinYuan for unplugging him the night before on account of this bottle.
He took a few sips from it and chased after Bian JinYuan to retrieve his school bag from him, and then walked the rest of the way to the classroom together.
Li YuanQing had already placed the baozi and soy milk on his desk and a note with the words written clearly: It’s your turn to bring breakfast starting tomorrow.
Lu YunFei was taken by surprise, how was it already his turn! He silently balled the note up and tossed it into the nearby dustbin.
“For you.”
Lu YunFei turned back to see that Bian JinYuan was looking at him, in his hands a very familiar-looking notebook.
“What’s this?” He took it and opened the book to peer at it curiously. When he did, he was taken aback.
This was a notebook with worksheet pages. Every worksheet page was filled to the brim with English grammar and English sentence structure examples.
Lu YunFei raised his head to look at Bian JinYuan, whose gaze was fixed on the notebook as he instructed, “Memorise these from now on, at least three pages everyday. You need to learn the meaning of every word as well as which are the pairings that usually appear in tests. The fourth page is a mock test. You can work on it after memorising, before handing it back to me for marking.”
Lu YunFei heard his spiel and looked back down at the notebook in his hands. He was so touched that it felt like his heart was bubbling over with emotions.
Bian JinYuan noticed his silence and thought that he felt burdened by this task. Uncharacteristically, he advised, “Three pages a day is a bit much, but these grammar and structures are unlike vocabulary, there’s no need to memorise spellings. All you have to do is to familiarise yourself with them. You’re pretty good at other subjects, so you can spend more time on English instead. After all, the potential for improvement in this subject is more than all your other subjects combined.”
“I know,” Lu YunFei said, “I don’t find that there’s too much to memorise. I just thought that, you’re pretty nice.”
Bian JinYuan smiled at this and shook his head, “It’s just basic courtesy.”
Lu YunFei thought that he was quite a stubborn guy.
He placed the book on the desk and studied the pages as he flipped through it, and realised that Bian JinYuan had only prepared 24 pages of worksheets. Judging by three pages per session, this was only a week’s worth.
So little?
Lu YunFei thought that it didn’t make sense.
Bian JinYuan seemed to read his confusion and explained, “You don’t have a firm grasp of your basics, and have forgotten grammar from middle school, so we’ll start off with memorising simple, often-tested ones. There will be more after you are done with this.”
Lu YunFei then understood why he was given a notebook that allowed assembling, it was to enable future additions to it.
He nodded, and then suddenly a thought struck. He re-looked at the cover of the notebook. Wait a minute, wasn’t this the same book that he saw last night?
That meant that Bian JinYuan had been relentlessly writing in this book all of last night? In order for him to write out the content for memorisation, he had stayed up past 1am?
Laden with complicated emotions, Lu YunFei turned to look at Bian JinYuan, “When did you compile this?”
“Yesterday,” Bian JinYuan said calmly as he took out the book that they were going to use for morning reading.
It really was the case! Lu YunFei felt that his deskmate was truly too kind!
“Then you would have spent a lot of time on it huh,” Lu YunFei probed.
Bian JinYuan raised his head to glance at him, “If I were you, I wouldn’t be worried about this right now.”
Lu YunFei: ??? What do you mean?
Soon, he heard the familiar tone of his English teacher, “For today’s English morning reading, we’ll do a spelling of English words.”
Lu YunFei: !!!
Bian JinYuan smiled at him, “This is what you should be concerned about right now.”
Lu YunFei had nothing to say to that. However he thought, didn’t he just go through a spelling memorisation test with Bian JinYuan yesterday? And he got full marks, so what was he afraid of?!
And so Lu YunFei pushed the notebook aside and confidently declared: Bring it on! This is the time for me to demonstrate my true strength!
Quack Notes
✢ Lǎo gē (老哥) is just a term Lu YunFei used to refer to Bian JinYuan in exasperation. Lao literally means ‘old’, and can be used in a number of situations as a prefix to denote a sort of familiarity, such as Laozi (in this chapter’s footnote). Ge, as I’m sure you’re familiar, means ‘older brother’. In this case, Lu YunFei is saying the equivalent of ‘bruh’ or ‘dude’.
# Taobao is an online shopping mall owned by the Alibaba group which is the equivalent of Amazon. Tmall is sort of like the premium version of Taobao, with verified sellers etc.