Chapter 106: Teacher Wang’s Mathematics Mini-lesson
Wang Heng has always disliked fighting unprepared battles.
This Saturday, before Ye Xun arrived, he had already bought a complete set of high school arts stream mathematics tutoring materials, along with two sets of mock test papers. From these problems, he selected twelve problems, moderate in difficulty but covering quite a few knowledge points.
First test the waters, then teach according to the student’s ability. Although he had never truly been a tutor before, he could search online for strategies from seniors in the field.
After making full preparations, at the coffee shop by the school gate, Wang Heng met Ye Xun who had come by subway. The seats they sat at were right next to the spot from the last social gathering, a two-person table by the window.
Ye Xun wasn’t wearing her school uniform, but a shirt, small skirt, and mid-calf socks similar to their first meeting. Her hair, now cut much shorter, had also changed; her bangs were parted to the sides, revealing a smooth forehead, and a small braid on top made her look especially playful and cute.
However, Wang Heng only glanced once, greeted her, and then looked no more. No matter what emotional fluctuations the young girl’s appearance brought, at least on the surface, he couldn’t show such an obvious flaw so easily.
He spread out the problems he had selected in front of the young girl and said, “Do these first, so I can see your foundation.”
“Are these the ones circled?”
“Right, just these.”
“Got it.” Ye Xun nodded, picked up the pen, and faced it like a formidable enemy.
Then she silently worked on the problems, while Wang Heng silently watched from across the table.
After more than half an hour, seven out of the twelve problems were completed, while the remaining five were only started and couldn’t be continued. Seeing this, Wang Heng pressed down on the pen in her hand and took those test papers.
“Hmm, half wrong,” Wang Heng commented, “I can see you’ve encountered these knowledge points before, but when they’re in problems, you can’t get around them.”
The young girl said helplessly, “Yeah, I haven’t really done problems like these before.”
Wang Heng: “Mathematics is most importantly about logical thinking. But since it’s not about majoring in mathematics, just getting a high score on the exam, there’s no need to make it so troublesome. You just need to master all those strategies through practice. Simply put, it’s doing lots of problems.”
“Doing lots of problems?” Ye Xun’s voice trembled, her face paling slightly.
Wang Heng explained, “Once your proficiency is high, you’ll naturally know what to do when you see similar strategies, and both your accuracy and speed on problems will improve. Plus, if you pick the right problems, you won’t need to do too many.”
Ye Xun probed, “When you say not too many, exactly how many is that?”
Wang Heng: “Roughly, two test papers a day is about enough. The key isn’t the number of problems, but fully understanding each one—best to make a mistake notebook, copy down the problems you got wrong, including how you went wrong and what the correct train of thought is… The more important the problem, the more detailed you should make it.”
Ye Xun thought for a moment, looking troubled: “But what I need to learn isn’t just mathematics, but other subjects too.”
Wang Heng counted on his fingers: “Besides mathematics, what you need to take are Chinese Language, English, and Liberal Arts Comprehensive. Among these three, your Chinese Language foundation is definitely solid, and with Liberal Arts Comprehensive, it’s all about memorization. Just understand the train of thought in the textbook and memorize the various knowledge points—that, I believe your memory can handle. Then English should be even less difficult for you…”
Ye Xun asked curiously, “How do you know my English level is decent?”
Because in the first playthrough your job was in English—Wang Heng certainly wouldn’t say that; he had plenty of reasons.
“Because you went to a private school before, probably one aimed at studying abroad, right? In a school like that, your English level definitely wouldn’t be bad.”
The young girl nodded: “Exactly…”
“Alright, enough chit-chat. I’ll first connect the knowledge points as much as possible and explain them to you. There are over a hundred knowledge points in high school mathematics, and when they make problems, they combine multiple knowledge points, so you have to know them inside out.”
Saying this, Wang Heng stood up and opened the tutoring materials. To point out the key parts, he needed to look at the same materials as Ye Xun. But in this process, he always maintained a safe distance from the young girl.
From his experience in the first playthrough, he was quite skilled in many little tactics in male-female relationships. From actual experience, when girls get along with boys, they usually have a self-protective awareness of a safe distance. If the boy gets too close, it gives the girl an unsafe feeling.
But if the boy has a suitable excuse and very ‘reasonably’ closes the distance, over time, the girl often gets accustomed. The result is not only a shortened safe distance between them, but also increased intimacy.
What Wang Heng was consciously doing now was avoiding that. So when explaining knowledge points, he kept a full meter between his footing and Ye Xun’s. He stretched out his arm, holding a pen, to point at the content in the tutoring materials.
After explaining like this for a few minutes, Ye Xun turned her head to look at him and asked, somewhat puzzled, “Is there something off about me?”
Wang Heng: “What?”
Ye Xun asked more clearly: “Why are you staying so far away?”
Wang Heng: “I have social phobia.”
Ye Xun’s eyes lit up, not sure what she associated it with, and nodded repeatedly: “I get it, genius hackers in movies are all like you!”
Wang Heng: “…If you say so. Anyway, digest what I just explained, finish these practice problems. Then… uh, I need to take a phone call, you do the problems first.”
Feeling his mobile phone vibrating in his pocket, Wang Heng instinctively walked into the nearby restroom.
He took out his mobile phone and saw the incoming call display was Lu Qi.
He answered the call, said “hello,” and heard the older sister type teasing from the other end of the phone: “How was your lie-in today?”
“Pretty good. By the way, Sister Lu, I think I told you yesterday that I’m not going to the company today…”
Lu Qi interrupted: “Yeah, you said you’re not coming to the company, but what about tomorrow? You should be coming, right?”
“If no accidents, yes…” Wang Heng asked cautiously, “Sister Lu, do you have something important for me?”
Lu Qi pondered for a moment and said, “Indeed, something very important, but it has nothing to do with work.”
Wang Heng: “Then, what does it relate to?”
Lu Qi took a deep breath: “Money. I just saw that Bitcoin has risen to nearly three thousand yuan each, aren’t we selling yet?”
“Oh, that,” Wang Heng breathed a sigh of relief and smiled, “Believe me, it’s not time yet.”
Lu Qi: “I just calculated—if we sell now, the 100,000 I initially invested with you would turn into 360,000…”
This time, it was Wang Heng’s turn to interrupt her.
“Sister Lu, relax, leave it to me, okay?”
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