Yan Luqing: ? Wow, thanks.

She didn’t expect to see such a long compliment, it made her a little embarrassed.

But unexpectedly, right after that pink one came a red one——

Let Gu Ci eat this soft rice, what a bargain for him, fuck!

Yan Luqing: “?” Who are you saying eats soft rice?

Yan Luqing thought for a moment, then typed.

[Runaway Saintess]: Actually if you really need money…

[Zhang Nian]: ?

Zhang Nian popped up another pink bubble: Miss Yan, you really still remember me!

However, Yan Luqing’s next words ruthlessly destroyed his notion of freeloading.

[Runaway Saintess]: I can have my bodyguard help introduce a few jobs for you, guaranteed fair to all ages.

[Zhang Nian]: ………

Yan Luqing watched him eat crow, yet still felt annoyed——this person was too slanderous toward Gu Ci.

What do you mean Gu Ci eats soft rice?

Eat shit! He’s not the same as your kind of scum! He does not eat soft rice!!

Yan Luqing glared at the screen and, still indignant, typed to clear Gu Ci’s name.

[Runaway Saintess]: By the way, in case when you last came to my house you misunderstood my relationship with Gu Ci, let me clarify.

[Runaway Saintess]: He is my tutor; he’s merely staying at my house temporarily for the convenience of my studying from morning to night.

[Runaway Saintess]: Zhang Nian, don’t let me hear any bad rumors, okay.

[Zhang Nian]: ……Ah???

After Yan Luqing sent that, bubbles began to frantically appear over Zhang Nian’s head again. But she was too lazy to bother or to look, and simply deleted the friend and blocked him in one go.

“He still dared to call Gu Ci a freeloader……” Yan Luqing still thought of the matter before sleep, muttering, “Honestly unbelievable.”

The next morning.

After breakfast, Yan Luqing and Gu Ci sat facing each other in the study on the second floor; besides the two of them, there was also a beautiful-coated Border Collie sitting by the table.

——Since coming to this house, Wolf had been thriving, it was said the bodyguards took turns walking it, but always ended up exhausted because its need for exercise was too great, thus turning into the dog walking the people.

Now it herded the whole villa’s people into obedience, yet made exceptions only for Yan Luqing and Gu Ci.

Wolf was very attached to the two of them; except at mealtimes, it probably seldom saw such a scene of the two being alone together, so now it had followed them upstairs.

Yan Luqing stroked its head, then, with a sense of ceremony, placed notebook and pen in front of herself, looking at Gu Ci with an expectant face: “Let’s begin.”

Gu Ci was wearing black today. Yan Luqing watched his pale slender fingers fiddling with the glasses Dr. Liu had brought yesterday, and after she spoke of beginning, he raised his hand and placed them on the bridge of his nose.

This new pair of glasses turned out to look even better.

Yan Luqing truly suspected what sort of person was in Dr. Liu’s team designing these frames, how could they so perfectly fit Princess Ci’s face, so well match his temperament.

Once Gu Ci put on the glasses, he inexplicably had the air of a professor, only far too young and far too good-looking.

He looked at her, seemingly not quite understanding her reaction: “Student Yan, you are very expectant?”

“It’s not really expecting to study…”

Yan Luqing thought about it, truly not knowing how to explain that kind of strange feeling——’My favorite paper character is now my private tutor, so studying doesn’t feel so hateful anymore.’

She waved her hand: “Forget it, just take it as me suddenly becoming studious.”

Gu Ci said nothing further, pointing to the thick stack of textbooks beside him: “Take out what you need me to teach.”

When she had handed the textbooks to Gu Ci last night, Yan Luqing had already roughly looked through them. As she pulled them out one by one, she said: “My required English and Ideological and Moral Cultivation are fine, but Advanced Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Probability Theory, Introduction to Computer Science… I don’t think I can do them.”

“Oh,” Gu Ci smiled, rephrasing for her, “that is to say, except for English and Ideological and Moral Cultivation, you can’t do any.”

“……” Put like that it really did sound much worse!

Gu Ci looked at the person sitting opposite pout her lips, that look of unwillingness yet not daring to say anything, then continued arranging the textbooks.

While she was sorting the books, Gu Ci recalled what Yan Luqing had said that night, most of it revolving around “high school classmates.” She had not mentioned university at all, probably because she had not yet been involved with it.

So he asked directly: “Did you study third-year high school mathematics, how much do you still remember?”

Yan Luqing did not feel anything wrong with this question, after all, the original owner was someone who seldom attended class.

So she truthfully reported her real level: “I studied it.”

But since Gu Ci was in a science track class, and the mathematics of science and liberal arts was not the same, Yan Luqing cautiously added a sentence: “I should… be able to pass.”

“……”

Gu Ci’s gaze seemed to be filled with words, most likely sarcasm from a genius. Yan Luqing could neither read nor wanted to read it.

“Let’s start with Advanced Mathematics first,” Yan Luqing pulled out the textbook, looking at it with a bitter face, “I really fear it.”

Gu Ci’s hand spinning the pen paused, “Why fear it.”

“Have you never heard this saying?” Yan Luqing propped her cheek on her hand, speaking to him word by word, “Once there was a ‘Tall Tree,’ and many people hung upon it……”

“……”

……

After that, the formal lecture session began.

The Advanced Mathematics that she thought would be very difficult was unexpectedly manageable, because Advanced Mathematics began with sets, overlapping with high school knowledge and easy to understand; and Probability Theory was even simpler, with just a little explanation from Gu Ci, it seemed to overlap a lot with the probability content in high school mathematics.

Apart from English and Ideological and Moral Cultivation, Yan Luqing originally thought that Introduction to Computer Science would also be very difficult, yet it turned out to be something she could completely self-study just by reading the textbook. So what remained were only two subjects.

But the difficulty lay precisely in these two.

Electrical Engineering and University Physics were, to her, utterly incomprehensible heavenly books without words.

At first, Gu Ci still said: “Electrical Engineering and Physics are somewhat related; once you know one, it will be easier to understand the other.”

His tone was so light that it gave rise to the illusion that these two subjects could be easily mastered, but once the lecture began, Yan Luqing discovered that she could not learn either of them, let alone have one help her understand the other.

Gu Ci was only teaching the first two lessons. She could still hold on when she heard about Electrical Engineering, but once it reached Physics, Yan Luqing was already about to collapse. If not for Gu Ci’s voice keeping her up, she would definitely have long since fallen into a dead sleep.

That dreadful feeling of sitting in a first-year physics class seemed to reappear——she was clearly trying hard to keep her eyes open and look at the characters, yet they gradually blurred, those symbols overlapping little by little.

But before Gu Ci discovered it, she found a magical method.

If she didn’t stare at the book but stared at Gu Ci’s face, she wouldn’t feel sleepy.

What girl doesn’t like looking at a handsome youth? Anyway, she did.

What girl, when her most beloved paper character was sitting right before her in real life, could still fall asleep? Anyway, she wouldn’t.

Thus, changing strategy, she began to focus on Gu Ci’s face, and the drowsiness she had just felt quickly vanished.

Only, as her sleepiness vanished, a certain lecturing teacher naturally felt something was amiss.

“This student,” he stopped explaining the concept, lifted his eyes to look at her, “do I have words on my face?”

Student Yan immediately shook her head: “No.”

“But I’m really too sleepy…” Yan Luqing blinked at Gu Ci, her eyes still carrying the moisture left behind from a yawn, her expression full of seriousness as she said, “But because you look good, looking at you keeps me awake, then I’m not sleepy.”

“……”

That word again.

Gu Ci could no longer remember how many times he had heard the word “good-looking” come out of her mouth.

Yan Luqing realized that after she spoke this sentence, Gu Ci remained silent for at least ten seconds.

Afterwards, he twirled the pen and gave her a smile, his gaze sweeping at her face through the lenses: “But you can’t not look at the book at all, otherwise what difference is there between you awake and you asleep?”

“……”

And so Yan Luqing began the road of looking at the book for a while, then lifting her head to look at Gu Ci.

The problem of drowsiness was solved.

But a new problem soon arrived——if before she had been sleepy and confused, now she was awake and confused, in essence, there was no difference.

The two of them got stuck at one example problem. Yan Luqing, seeing Gu Ci still writing and drawing on the paper, couldn’t help but say: “Gu Ci, I feel like this subject is trying to fight against my brain.”

“……” Gu Ci’s hand stopped, and he said objectively, “To tell you the truth, I think so too.”

Gu Ci had always hated teaching people. In school, if someone asked him one or two questions, that was acceptable, but tutoring someone was something he never did.

In high school, he had good popularity, but those who were close to him knew that he was someone who hated wasting time, someone without patience.

The process of teaching Yan Luqing simply gave him the feeling of his soul under torture——what was dreadful was not that she couldn’t do it, but that he couldn’t understand why she couldn’t.

And what made him even more puzzled was… this terrifying scene of teaching somehow felt a bit familiar.

As if this was not the first time he had taught.

But Gu Ci quickly rejected that idea.

If he had taught a student like Yan Luqing before, how could he possibly forget? That would surely be engraved in his bones.

The two of them made rapid progress for the first hour; since they began Electrical Engineering and Physics, it was as if they got stuck—hitting a point and stalling—only able to advance in fits and starts. She even suspected whether Gu Ci’s lecture had been censored like Dr. Liu’s before, becoming “beep—.”

Yan Luqing studied so seriously that she tired herself out; after a while drowsiness returned, and this time it came on fiercely, so even Gu Ci’s face could not save her.

“This is bad, this is bad,” she rubbed her eyes, murmuring so softly the sound precisely reached someone’s ear, “now even looking at faces makes me sleepy… Gu Ci’s useless now too…”

“……”

Having yawned an unknown number of times, Yan Luqing realized Gu Ci’s voice had completely paused.

She looked up and saw that his expression seemed somewhat off.

Yan Luqing was very alert; she sniffed a not-very-good omen in his face and immediately tried to plead for a get-out-of-jail-free card: “Gu Ci… can you not scold me?” She squeezed her eyes hard, “I’ve been emotionally fragile lately, and I think I’m about to get it, really.”

Unexpectedly, Gu Ci nodded at her very amiably: “Mm, I won’t scold you.”

Yan Luqing immediately relaxed, and just as she was sleepy enough to yawn again, she was suddenly called by name—

“But, Student Yan Luqing,” Gu Ci looked at her, pointed at the Border Collie obediently squatting beside them, and smiled gently, “look, Wolf is nearly learning.”

Yan Luqing: “………”

Good gravy, you might as well have scolded me.