"Whoa, Qiao Yu, wake up, wake up!"
After the morning self-study period, Zhou Shuang went out to the restroom, took a stroll down the hallway, and then excitedly rushed back to the classroom, vigorously patting his desk mate.
Qiao Yu opened his sleepy eyes, glanced at the excited Zhou Shuang, and asked irritably, "What's up?!"
"Holy crap! How can you still sleep? Don't you know last night, that guy named Xu from Class 1 dared to publicly confess to your girl? But you're lucky; he got rejected in front of everyone by your 'wife.' Talk about a loss of face." Zhou Shuang said with great enthusiasm.
His brain, which had been forcibly rebooted, still felt groggy.
But the words "your wife" in Zhou Shuang's sentence made him instantly alert...
What kind of joke is this? Wife? Can you just throw that word around?
Surprised, he asked, "What wife?"
"Xia Keke! Don't pretend. Who in the whole grade doesn't know you two are an item now? It's said that Xia Keke rejected that Xu guy so decisively last night because of you. Though it sounds great, I still feel like we, as men, can't tolerate this!
Knowing she's your wife and still daring to confess publicly, that's like not giving a damn about you! Qiao Yu, don't worry, just say the word, and tonight the brothers will help you out, teach that Xu guy a lesson, let him know what Class 13 stands for!"
Qiao Yu was speechless.
Not only did he not feel angry, he even felt a bit sorry for that Xu guy.
Just a poor kid deceived by Xia Keke's innocent beauty. That's why he always said, you can't just go for looks; when choosing a girlfriend, inner beauty is also very important...
Like if it were him—fine, Qiao Yu thought he'd probably try to pick a pretty one first too.
Thinking this way, Xia Keke did seem alright after all, apart from having too many scheming ideas and liking to boss people around for no reason. Nothing else was wrong.
Wait, they had breakfast together this morning and went to school, and the little girl didn't even mention this. Seems like she really didn't care about that Xu guy.
That guy was even more pitiful...
While thinking about all these messy things, he casually asked, "How do you know about this?"
"It was a public confession; how could I not know? The whole grade's almost heard about it. I heard from the Rocket Class that as soon as that Xu guy got to class, their homeroom teacher called him for a talk, spent the whole morning self-study with him, and he still hasn't returned to the classroom!"
After speaking, Zhou Shuang grinned and sneered, "Serves him right!"
His expression might as well have had "schadenfreude" written all over it, showing that he truly shared enmity with Qiao Yu.
"The guy's already so miserable, and you're still thinking about giving him a hard time tonight? Have some humanity," Qiao Yu said irritably, wanting to lay back down to sleep but finding he couldn't sleep anymore. He sighed inwardly and then picked up his chemistry book.
Let's just say his classmates were truly too idle, no survival pressure, and their little brains loved thinking about all sorts of nonsense. Go hungry two meals a day, and they'd have no time to think about love.
Besides, he's already scheduled his tasks for this period.
During the day, he revises middle school knowledge at school to prepare for the upcoming mock exams and the final entrance exam. He attends Teacher Lan's competition class once a week to deal with matters and learn professional mathematics typesetting software applications, and he uses the evenings and weekends to prepare for the upcoming Little Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition.
As for love...
Qiao Yu felt that love was quite heavy at this moment, both for himself and for the little girl. After all, he didn't have a father in his life; while other kids have no experience of being a father, he didn't even have the experience of being a son to a father.
So his primary task right now is to make money, and love can indeed wait until college.
"No, I'm just thinking about what's best for you! That Xu guy needs to recognize his own status... Hey, why do I feel so heavy-hearted seeing you turn those pages? Hey, Qiao Yu, why don't you help me figure out if I have a talent for math?"
Qiao Yu glanced at this guy inquisitively.
"I went to the internet cafe yesterday to check out some online English courses. They seemed so hard, I think I might not have a knack for languages. But I thought you were pretty cool doing math problems yesterday, the way Old Gong looked at you, seriously! So I was thinking, why not give math a try?" Zhou Shuang explained.
Qiao Yu withdrew his gaze, shifted his focus back on the chemistry book, and said without looking up, "That's easy, suppose there's a closed ecological experimental zone where the staff releases three rabbits into it every day for three consecutive days. So how many rabbits are there in the ecological test zone on the third day?"
"Damn, you're underestimating me with this, aren't you? Isn't it nine rabbits?" Zhou Shuang answered indignantly.
The desk mate felt this was an insult to his IQ, but evidently, Qiao Yu didn't think so, seriously saying, "See, your math talent is quite good. Trust me, math is really something like that."
Zhou Shuang was speechless, muttering, "Qiao Yu, aren't we friends? Why are you playing me like this?"
Qiao Yu sighed, finally moving his gaze from the chemistry book, looked at his dejected desk mate, thought for a moment, then casually picked up a piece of paper and pen, and started writing, mumbling as he did.
"Alright, still a closed ecological experimental zone, inside there's a group of rabbits. Staff observations find that the number of rabbits A changes over time t and can be described by a differential equation: dA(t)/dt=A(t)*(a-bA(t))
Where a and b are constants representing the natural growth rate of rabbits and the environmental inhibition factor. Researchers also found that when t=0, there were four rabbits in the test zone. Suppose after ten days of observation, there were nine rabbits. What is the maximum number of rabbits the test zone can accommodate?"
After writing it out, Qiao Yu directly handed the draft paper to his desk mate and encouragingly said, "Believe in your math skills and intuition, come on, tell me, what's the answer to this question!"
Zhou Shuang blankly looked at the question, then uncertainly answered, "Is it nine rabbits?"
"Wow, you actually got it right! Zhou Shuang, you're truly a genius, you can already calculate limits!" Qiao Yu lifted his hand and patted Zhou Shuang on the shoulder, then picked up his chemistry book again.
Qiao Yu felt he had done enough. He couldn't say you were hopeless, give up, right?
After all, they were desk mates, pretty good friends too, and encouraging him to learn more was ultimately good.
Fortunately, Zhou Shuang wasn't completely dumb.
He glanced again at the scribbles on the paper, especially that formula he couldn't quite understand, and suddenly realized the huge gap between him and this desk mate he thought of as a fellow traveler. A gap as big as 8848 meters.
Thinking about it, he suddenly had a flash of inspiration and called out, "Qiao Yu."
"Hmm?"
"Why not sign your name on this question?"
Qiao Yu turned his head suspiciously toward his desk mate, finding the request a bit odd.
Zhou Shuang said earnestly, "I plan to keep this problem as a collection."
Qiao Yu was speechless, then picked up the pen.
Luckily, his name was easy to write, so he wouldn't charge for it this time.