"Have you finished all five questions?"
Lu Bei took the paper with the questions written on it and began to look them over carefully.
The girl's problem-solving level before him was pretty much what he had anticipated.
Among these five questions:
Xiao Wanting had easily solved the two simplest ones at the beginning.
As for the remaining three, one was correct, the middle steps of another were wrong, and the last one had a completely flawed approach from the very start.
"I'm sorry, Senior, I'm just too stupid."
Looking at the marks Lu Bei had made, Xiao Wanting's fair little face instantly flushed crimson.
"It's fine."
Lu Bei gently rubbed the scratch paper, looking at the densely filled marks on it. His mood was actually quite good.
When it comes to a student, whether a senior is genuinely serious or just putting on an act is very easy to tell from the student's attitude toward doing problems.
"I'll give you a new problem-solving approach. Try this method."
Lu Bei pulled a brand-new sheet of scratch paper from the side.
He demonstrated his problem-solving approach in a relatively slow but sufficiently clear manner.
His expression was so serious that it made him momentarily overlook Xiao Wanting's expression beside him.
They were sitting too close.
Xiao Wanting sniffed, her small nose twitching as she secretly sized up Lu Bei, who was just a couple of decimeters away.
Without a sound, she quietly shifted her seat to get even closer to Lu Bei.
The scent coming from the senior didn't feel at all like the pungent sweat odor that drifted from far away off the boys in class after a P.E. lesson.
It seemed to carry a faint, sunshine-like fragrance.
"What is it?"
Lu Bei turned his head, looking at Xiao Wanting with a puzzled expression.
"Nothing."
Blushing, Xiao Wanting turned her head away.
*We're sitting too much too close...* She quietly swallowed those words back down before they left her lips.
Given the senior's personality, if she were to point it out, he would definitely notice his own oversight and keep his distance.
"Alright, I've finished the calculation. Try doing it again."
Lu Bei put down his pen and looked at the girl before him with encouraging eyes.
After hesitating for a moment, Xiao Wanting took the pen, struggling as she looked at problems that still seemed like heavenly scripts to her.
Even though this little one wanted desperately to write down the right answers,... knowledge-based difficulties cannot be solved simply by a person's emotions.
Just like that damn higher mathematics.
"Did I explain it too compliated? Let's try a simpler way then."
Seeing the girl make the exact same mistake, Lu Bei sighed. Then, pulling out a fresh sheet of scratch paper and pondering for a moment, he simplified the calculation process a bit.
As for Xiao Wanting, she patted her cheeks; not wanting to let go to waste Lu Bei's efforts, she listened with exceptional focus.
.......................
"How is it? How is it? Did the tutoring go smoothly?"
Two hours passed in the blink of an eye.
Xiao Wanting's experimental tutoring session successfully came to an end.
Although the teaching had encountered a few bumps at the beginning, it still concluded smoothly.
A point that might have caused Xiao Wanting to lose marks in her future college entrance examination was successfully resolved by Lu Bei.
Zhao Yarong, who had arrived right on the dot, pushed the door open just as the session ended and focused her gaze on Lu Bei.
"She's very hardworking—harder working than the average person—but it's still not quite enough. If she can work a bit harder, there's a strong hope of boosting her score by several dozen points over three months."
"As for Classmate Xiaoxiao, her foundation is pretty good. What a student like her lacks is a bit of inspiration and problem-solving perspective."
Lu Bei cupped his chin with his hand and pondered for a moment with a hint of hesitation.
When it comes down to it, studying relies quite a bit on talent.
Unlike provinces where there is no intense "involution," in highly competitive provinces, tens of thousands of spots are contested among hundreds of thousands of people.
To say that everyone who fails the exam in the end simply didn't work hard enough would be far too biased.
"Then, let's talk about the tutoring fee with you, Auntie."
"How does 200 per hour sound? Normally, because of classes, my child only has time on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings."
Zhao Yarong sighed, reading between the lines of Lu Bei's unspoken thoughts.
However, she didn't dwell on it.
"That works. Then I will carve out two hours for each of those two time slots."
Lu Bei nodded in agreement.
He still had plenty of time right now.
At least... there was no need to be in too much of a rush just yet.
For him, the easiest way to make money... Bitcoin was dirt cheap before it fully took off in 2013.
He still had plenty of time left.
At a time like this, rather than... rushing blindly toward the future, pausing to look around might be even better.
"Hey, can't we make it a bit more? How about adding another hour every day?"
Zhao Yarong pouted with a trace of disappointment.
As a parent, she didn't know much about education.
However... she firmly believed in the theory that the longer the study time and the harder one worked, the more likely the score would improve.
"Generally speaking, other parents would try to cut down the time and price at a time like this, seeing as the financial burden of education isn't small."
Lu Bei didn't answer the question directly.
He merely spread his hands and made a small joke.
"Well, nothing can be done about it—who told Auntie to be a scheming client?"
Zhao Yarong stuck out her tongue and then gave her own head a firm knock.
Yet this natural, deadpan mischief was impossible to truly dislike.
"Mom, Senior is usually very busy too."
"If we add more time, the salary and things like that should go up as well."
Xiao Wanting uttered words that clearly sided with an outsider.
This made Lu Bei, who had completely missed out on this job opportunity in his past life, suffer a critical hit to his composure all over again.
Compared to the bosses he would meet in future jobs who talked about "blessings" and "dedication" while demanding unpaid overtime—
Xiao Wanting... was truly an angel!
How foolish could he have been back then to let this interview slip away?
"A daughter raised is hard to keep!"
Zhao Yarong rubbed her temples with a slight headache.
Listening to her daughter's words, she suddenly felt that what the other girl—the one who had stormed off in a huff earlier—had said actually made a fair bit of sense.
"If I have time, I'll carve out a bit more of it."
Lu Bei pressed a hand to his chest, suppressing a somewhat erratic heartbeat as he spoke.
"It's a deal then."
Zhao Yarong sighed, and after a moment of pondering whose thoughts were unknown, she spoke with a slightly helpless expression.
"Xiao Xiao, go see Xiao Lu off."
"No need, I know the way. There's no need to trouble anyone here."
Lu Bei waved his hands hastily in refusal.
"No, Senior went through the trouble of tutoring me. It would be very impolite not to even show this bit of courtesy."
Xiao Wanting grabbed Lu Bei's sleeve, her expression earnest.
Looking at the little one's face, she seemed completely serious.
Though he always felt her purpose wasn't quite the "courtesy" she spoke of.
Yet if he wanted to refuse... it would probably take a lot of talking.
Just as Lu Bei was about to say something, his phone suddenly rang.
So, offering a brief apology, Lu Bei stood up and walked over to a quiet spot.
The contact displayed on the phone was Wang Minghui, a fairly close friend of Lu Bei's from college.
"Hello, Brother Lu Bei, something big has happened."
As soon as Lu Bei answered the call, he heard Wang Minghui shouting in a panic.
Before Lu Bei could reply, he heard the guy hurriedly add:
"The campus singing competition has been moved up! Weren't you planning to confess to that Xu Qingshuang during this competition?"
"Just in case you forgot, I went ahead and signed you up for it. Don't mention it."