Luo’s Mom took the three children to buy notebooks and pens. She looked at the princess series notebook He Wenyu was holding with its colorful cover and pages, compared to the slightly thicker one with a robot cover that her son held, simple and clean inside with no patterns or color, and her daughter’s notebook which was thicker than those of He Wenyu and her son combined. Its cover was a clean and simple leather, looking very durable, with no patterns or colors inside and even including this year’s calendar—it really looked like sothing an old man would choose.
When it ca to pens, their choices were even more varied. He Wenyu chose a fancy-looking chanical pen, which ca with a box of pencil leads and a small bunny eraser. Her son picked seven-color oil pens, sothing he had ntioned wanting before. And the girl’s choice was even more unique; she picked water-based pens, not just one, but two in black and blue, and she also bought several pen refills, and even two colored star-markers.
It hardly seed like a selection a child would make, especially not a five-year-old; none of their choices were eye-catching, all were the most ordinary and cheapest available. Luo’s Mom wondered if her daughter had been possessed by an alien, when had she beco so sensible?
"Mom, buy a ruler, and set squares and a compass. I also want an English notebook with grid lines, and buy a sticky note pad too," Luo Qianqian said as she hugged her notebooks and pens, frowning as she spoke.
"Why do you need all those? Didn’t Grandpa Zhang just ask us to bring notebooks?" Luo Shufan wondered, baffled by his sister’s list of items.
"Just in case; we’ll have to buy them once school starts anyway," Luo Qianqian wouldn’t admit that she had a feeling that the strange, pushy old man who was going to be their tutor would play by the book. It was just a precaution.
"All right, we’ll buy them, we’ll buy whatever Qianqian says to buy. Should we get her so candy too?" Luo’s Mom said, her voice tinged with sadness as she looked at her daughter acting so grown-up. If it hadn’t been for the challenging few days they had had, the youngest of her three children wouldn’t have had to think so much, forced into growing up. Luo’s Mom felt a pang of heartache but still managed to smile.
"I don’t want..." Luo Qianqian, seeing the tears in her mom’s eyes and rembering the recent events, started to refuse but her words turned coquettish, "Candy doesn’t taste good. The small cakes Grandma Zhang made today were delicious, too bad Mom can’t make those. Maybe Mom could buy Qianqian a small bread instead."
"Mom, Qianqian doesn’t want it, I do, I want the cola-flavored candy," Luo Shufan said, cheekily seeking affection while watching his sister’s demanding deanor.
"Xiao Yu, what do you want?" Luo Qianqian, seeing her brother unabashedly asking for snacks, quickly involved Xiao Yu, not wanting their aunt’s little darling to miss out because she was too shy to ntion what she wanted.
"I want the new grape-flavored lollipop and the waterlon one." Unfortunately, Luo Qianqian needn’t have worried; what does a five-year-old know about being shy? If soone’s offering to buy sweets, that’s all that matters.
"Really not afraid of getting cavities..." Luo Qianqian watched He Wenyu and her brother happily bouncing with their sweets and turned away, muttering under her breath.
Luo Shufan, staying close to his sister, naturally didn’t miss the murmurs, "Qianqian, you just wouldn’t understand. Kids’ teeth are going to fall out anyway, so it doesn’t matter if they get cavities now."
"So? Is that your excuse for still wanting to eat candy even though you’re much older?"
"...Eat it or not, I don’t care, hmph, I won’t give you any, not even one, you keep your cavity-free teeth then."
Ti quickly passed in the siblings’ laughter and frolics, with the sunset and moonrise, and the moonset and sunrise. Early next morning, the three were once again sent to the entrance of Old Zhang’s House by Luo’s Mom.
"You’re early today. Let’s start with math today. Xiao Yu, you go feed the dogs and the cats first." Elder Zhang looked at the notebooks the three kids brought, his expression showing complete satisfaction.
"Alright." The mont He Wenyu heard ’mathematics,’ her first instinct was to run; she had no desire to morize things like one tis one equals one, two tis two equals four, Won’s Day on the eighth of March, and so on.
"I’m not sure about your levels, so I got two sets of test papers from a colleague. Give them a try. It’s okay if you don’t know the answers, just write down whatever you can think of. Don’t leave anything blank just because you don’t know it; science is about thinking. As long as you write sothing, you might get so points, but if you write nothing, you definitely won’t get any," Elder Zhang slowly explained to the brother and sister, who were staring at each other with wide and narrowed eyes, "Sit on opposite ends of the table and no whispering to each other."
"Grandpa Zhang, I just have one question. Can my brother and I avoid being ranked and then telling Mom?" Luo Qianqian directly raised her hand, but it wasn’t because she was afraid of doing poorly; she was just worried that her brother would be upset.
"Hehe, your brother will let you win; he won’t let Mom spank you," Luo Shufan said to his sister with a mischievous grin.
"As if, Mom would never do that. Besides, Mom already promised Grandpa Zhang she wouldn’t intervene in our studies. Whether we do well or poorly is our business," Luo Qianqian retorted with an eye roll, "Even if I co in last, I’d still be proud. What’s it to you, huh?"
"We’re not grading these; we’re just marking right or wrong. There are no marks on the paper, and since this set is a hybrid of many papers, I wouldn’t even know what the total marks should be, so there’s no need to worry," Elder Zhang handed out the papers to the siblings, "You have one hour. Do what you can in that ti, and once you’re done checking, you can go play outside. Grandma has made so new snacks.
"Snacks?" Luo Qianqian’s eyes lit up as she quickly skimd through the paper from top to bottom.
Luo Shufan expressed his concern outright, "I strongly suggest dividing the snacks into portions or I suspect Qianqian might abandon the paper altogether to eat, and what if she finishes them all?"
"First co, first served, haha!" Luo Qianqian didn’t care what her brother was saying and started answering the paper with a pen in hand.
Luo Shufan, seeing his sister already calculating, hurriedly got into the zone, anxious about the two foodies eting and leaving nothing for him.
Luo Qianqian, looking at the test paper in front of her, furrowed her brow more deeply. She looked up at her brother, who was at the other end of the table, frowning and not writing for a long ti, and fell into thought.
These problems don’t seem to have any issues at first glance, they look like elentary application problems, but why did it all feel like a conspiracy when combined? She had long forgotten the elentary thods for solving these, and now was she really expected to set up algebraic equations from junior high and high school? And calculate triangle side lengths—isn’t that within the realm of the Pythagorean Theorem and trigonotric laws? Oh my, this question is fierce, the internal angles of a circle? She just saw her brother asuring sothing with a protractor.
Absolute values, averages... Are these really elentary questions? And now there’s even a quadrant involved, my goodness, how mixed can the knowledge be?
Luo Qianqian bit her pen while Luo Shufan, head down, thoughtfully drew a few strokes from ti to ti.
Luo Qianqian, seeing that Luo Shufan had written nearly half a page, couldn’t care less about which thod to use and started scribbling furiously, at worst she could claim she learned it in a dream, right? They couldn’t take her to a psychologist for that, could they?
Her previous life was like a dream anyway, claiming she learned it there wouldn’t be too far-fetched.
Elder Zhang, surprised to see Luo Qianqian, who hadn’t written anything for a long ti, suddenly start writing furiously, wondered if the child wasn’t just copying questions to avoid leaving blanks.
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