Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Lu Jiayu was terrible at composition. His essays were always below forty.

I analyzed them. He always strayed off topic and loved sitting on the fence.

I taught him, “If you want your essay to look expensive, don’t pair basics with basics. If the idea is basic, the argument cannot be basic. If the writing technique is basic, then the quoted lines cannot be basic.”

He half understood. “Oh.”

I pointed to a paragraph and had him try. “Unafraid of adversity, growing toward the sun. Whose quote would you cite?”

I thought he would think of Su Shi or Tagore, both of whom I had circled for him.

Instead, he thought of Nezha. “My fate is mine, not heaven’s!”

I was so angry I gave him a set of Meow Combo Punches. “You are like a combination of Da Vinci and He Zhizhang. Da Vinci He Zhizhang!”

Lu Jiayu had some talent for math, but not much.

I taught him the same type of problem three times, breaking it apart and explaining every detail, yet he still did not get it.

Furious, I grabbed him by the throat. “I will give you one more chance. What formula do we use here? Stupid pig, think! I clearly taught you this before!”

He rolled his eyes from being choked. “Uh… I don’t know…”

My ten fingers tightened, making his breathing grow more difficult. “Do you have a brain and refuse to use it just to prove the rumor that rich second-generation kids are all idiots? You useless waste who is nothing without your parents! Trash!”

After I let go, he gasped for breath, then wrote furiously and finished it all in one go.

He shouted, “Damn, that felt amazing!”

Sure enough, the harsher I was, the more effective it became.

It was just a little hard on my acting skills.

His total scores across all the papers rose by almost a hundred points.

Mrs. Lu was so happy she flew to Lake Como for vacation.

Just as I was preparing to go all in, a call came from my hometown.

They said my grandmother had broken a finger while doing farm work and urgently needed money for surgery.

I calmly transferred money, contacted people from the village, and video-called my grandmother.

Lu Jiayu was shocked. “Grandma’s finger is broken. How are you not panicking at all?”

“This kind of thing is common in the countryside,” I said numbly. “It is not her first time either.”

In the video, blood seeped through the bandage around the severed finger. The old woman’s face was ashen and exhausted.

“Losing a bit of finger won’t stop me from working. How is this bit of rotten flesh worth ten or twenty thousand yuan? I am not reattaching it. I am not getting treated. There are still pigs at home to feed…”

“How are you not worth it? You are the most precious person in my heart!”

I turned my head away from her, yet in front of Lu Jiayu, I wiped my tears in a sorry state.

Lu Jiayu, who had been laughing and joking, suddenly looked mature.

He calmly made a call, contacted the most authoritative reconstructive surgery specialist nearby, arranged an immediate transfer, and the reattachment surgery succeeded.

The childhood regret of not being able to help Grandma did not repeat itself, thanks to Lu Jiayu.

I wanted to kneel and thank him, but I was afraid breaking character would ruin the act and affect the job afterward.

So I could only say stubbornly, “Do not think this means I will let you off. Start memorizing classical poems. I will give you the second line, and you recite the first!”

My grandmother looked at me in confusion. “How can you speak to your benefactor like that?”

Lu Jiayu answered first, “I am just asking for discipline! If nobody hits or scolds me, I won’t listen. Grandma, don’t worry about it.”

My grandmother did not understand, but she respected it. She muttered softly, “So he is henpecked…”

Me: “…”