She’s Crazy C09

After a night’s rest, Su Zai Zai had recovered her spirits.

After all, she wasn’t the type to overthink things.

No matter what, she’d flirt first and deal with everything else later.

With this mindset, Su Zai Zai began making her presence felt around Zhang Lu Rang with increasing frequency.

After lunch, she bid farewell to Jiang Jia and returned to the classroom.

After calculating the time, she spent fifteen minutes doing homework, then grabbed the rest of her assignments for the day and headed straight for the reading room.

Finding the same spot as last time, she immediately saw Zhang Lu Rang, head down, writing his homework.

Someone was still sitting across from him, so Su Zai Zai decisively took the seat beside him.

Zhang Lu Rang didn’t even blink.

He seemed utterly indifferent to whoever sat next to him, his focus completely undisturbed.

Su Zai Zai glanced at his workbook.

English comprehension fill-in-the-blanks.

She blinked, quickly shifting her attention away from him and back to the chemistry formulas in her own workbook.

Frustration nearly drove her to the brink of collapse.

Her English was obviously excellent—so why did these letters become unrecognizable when put together like this?!

Question 3: Particles with the same number of electrons are called isoelectronic. Which of the following is not isoelectronic?

Su Zai Zai decided to stop complaining and began scribbling furiously in her notebook for ten minutes.

Meanwhile, Zhang Lu Rang, tormented by English, suddenly found himself distracted by the soft murmuring beside him.

He heard someone counting on their fingers and whispering under their breath:

“Hydrogen, helium, lithium… lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon… sodium… sodium… no, that’s not right… magnesium, aluminum, sodium, silicon, phosphorus… sodium, thirteen.”

Zhang Lu Rang: “…”

When she finally worked out the answer, Su Zai Zai let out a breath of relief, as if she had just been freed from a great burden.

Solving a tough problem was such a satisfying achievement.

As soon as she relaxed, she noticed Zhang Lu Rang looking at her.

His gaze was strange, filled with an emotion she couldn’t quite understand.

Su Zai Zai felt embarrassed under his stare and quickly lowered her eyes.

Only after he looked away did she let out a quiet sigh of relief.

Then, she cautiously peeked at his workbook again.

…He was still stuck on that same test.

And she had done that one before!

Curious, Su Zai Zai leaned over to take a closer look, thought about the answer, hesitated to speak, then held back.

Ten minutes later, she glanced over again—he was still working on the same cloze test.

She was so anxious that she wanted to snatch it from him and fill it in herself.

Another ten minutes passed, and when she noticed that Zhang Lu Rang had finally moved on to grammar fill-in-the-blank, she felt an inexplicable sense of relief.

At 6:20 PM, Zhang Lu Rang finished writing the last answer for his first reading comprehension passage, then started packing up his things to leave.

Su Zai Zai hurriedly stuffed her own materials into her backpack and quickly followed him out.

Once outside the reading room, she walked beside him and couldn’t help but quietly remark,

“You’re way too slow at doing cloze(fill-in-the-blanks) tests. You spent almost half an hour on it—that’s such a waste of time!”

Hearing the mention of English, Zhang Lu Rang’s irritation flared up. He hesitated for a moment before responding in a sullen tone,

“If I don’t understand it, I don’t feel like continuing.”

Su Zai Zai was shocked. “Wait, you understood it?”

“…” Not really.

“You only got three questions right! Are you sure you understood it?!”

“…” Did she really have to humiliate him like that, right to his face?

Su Zai Zai continued to rant beside him, her words tumbling out nonstop. Zhang Lu Rang, uncharacteristically annoyed, finally retorted in a low voice,

“You only got three of your chemistry multiple-choice questions right too. And you spent fifteen minutes on that one problem… and still got it wrong.”

Hearing him speak such a long sentence for the first time, Su Zai Zai was momentarily stunned. Then, unwilling to accept defeat, she defended herself,

“That’s because I didn’t pay attention in class.”

Zhang Lu Rang, who diligently listened to every English class yet still scored only thirty points, fell silent.

Realizing her mistake, Su Zai Zai quickly tried to correct herself.

“Ahem, I mean, I just haven’t done this type of question before. Now that I’ve practiced, I’ll get it right next time.”

Zhang Lu Rang remained silent.

Su Zai Zai scratched her head and kept trying, emphasizing,

“I always pay super close attention in class, but I just can’t seem to understand it. It’s so frustrating.”

She was definitely not the kind of student who ignored lessons—she was ambitious!

Seeing that Zhang Lu Rang had no desire to continue the conversation, Su Zai Zai stopped talking too.

The hallway was quiet, filled only with the sound of the wind, the rhythmic tapping of their shoes against the floor, the soft sound of their breathing, and… Su Zai Zai’s rapidly accelerating heartbeat.

They soon reached the third floor.

Zhang Lu Rang walked silently in the direction of their classroom.

“Zhang Lu Rang.”

Standing at the stairwell, Su Zai Zai was illuminated by the dim glow of the energy-saving light, making her fair face seem even more radiant.

He turned back, his expression calm and unreadable, quietly waiting for her to speak.

The dark sky stretched overhead, night falling like a veil of mist.

This time, Su Zai Zai didn’t joke. She softly reminded him,

“Stop stubbornly grinding through problems. Memorizing vocabulary is more useful.”

—

“What?! So now you’re teaching a top student how to study?!”

Su Zai Zai choked on her words, then weakly protested,

“His English is definitely not top-student level, okay?”

“But even with his low English score, he was still ranked in the top fifty for the whole grade last exam.”

“…”

Unable to refute that, Su Zai Zai thought for a moment before earnestly adding,

“Well, I’m sure he didn’t study vocabulary properly. That cloze test only had a few difficult words, all from Unit One, and he didn’t understand them.”

“Even top students have their struggles,” Jiang Jia sighed.

Su Zai Zai didn’t dwell on it, instead pointing at her chemistry question. “Can you check where I went wrong?”

Jiang Jia pressed her pencil against the paper, pulled out a scratch sheet, and started explaining. After finishing, she suddenly found it amusing.

“Hey, you actually asked about a chemistry question? Weren’t you planning to break up with chemistry?”

“We made up,” Su Zai Zai propped her chin on her hand, looking frustrated. “Ugh, sodium, magnesium, aluminum… why do I always mix them up?!”

…He didn’t hear that, right?

So embarrassing.

—

After the final evening self-study session ended, Zhang Lu Rang checked his English answers.

As expected, he only got three cloze test questions right. His grammar section was even worse, with just two correct.

Unexpectedly, he got all of his reading comprehension questions right.

That lifted his mood a little.

Still, he had no desire to read the answer explanations. He glanced at them once, then tossed the sheet back into his drawer.

Ye Zhenxin, packing her bag, saw the red markings on his workbook and couldn’t help but comment,

“You got so many wrong again?”

Zhang Lu Rang didn’t respond.

She hesitated, then sat back down and tilted her head toward him.

“Do you want me to tutor you?”

“No need.”

His immediate rejection made Ye Zhenxin a little awkward, but she just said,

“Well, don’t get discouraged. Keep working hard, and your grades will improve.”

“Mm.”

Zhang Lu Rang closed his workbook and put it away.

Ye Zhenxin, sensing no further conversation, said goodbye and left.

Zhang Lu Rang took out his math textbook and began reviewing.

He continued studying until just before the dorm curfew.

As he packed up his books, his gaze fell on his English textbook.

Su Zai Zai’s words echoed in his mind.

“Stop stubbornly grinding through problems. Memorizing vocabulary is more useful.”

Without much thought, he casually tossed the book onto the top of his stack.

Then he turned off the power switch, walked out the front door, and closed it behind him.

But when he reached the back door, his hand on the doorknob hesitated.

For some reason, an image of Su Zai Zai reciting the periodic table popped into his mind.

…Could it be that, when he did English exercises, he looked just as ridiculous?

No way.

Zhang Lu Rang ruffled his hair and stood there for a moment.

Then, he walked back to his desk.

Using the light filtering in from the hallway, he picked up the book from the top of his stack.

…Might as well memorize some words.