BTO CH25

Hou Jun couldn’t wrap his head around it. Afraid that thinking too deeply would lead him down forbidden paths, he lowered his head and continued working on his homework.

Tan Kai happened to walk into the classroom just then and also noticed the conspicuous pair of desk mates wearing masks: “Monkey Bro, what’s going on with those two?”

Hou Jun shook his head and said sternly, “Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything.”

Tan Kai: “…I was just asking, what’s with the huge reaction?”

The morning classes were still mostly dedicated to review.

The math teacher combined key review concepts with new material. The math teacher’s surname was Zhou, and word was she and Old Meng used to be classmates, though they didn’t look like peers in the slightest.

Ms. Zhou maintained herself well and dressed quite fashionably; she even wore a dark gray vest over her thin blouse. “Have you figured out the concept tested in the first half of this problem? It’s exactly what you learned in freshman year! Just because the problem is slightly altered, you can’t understand it anymore?”

“Your thinking is too rigid,” Ms. Zhou said. “You don’t know how to adapt.”

Xu Sheng found that although he didn’t know how to solve the problem, it looked very familiar.

The weather was already stifling, and wearing a mask for an extended period made it even stuffier. Xu Sheng hooked a finger under the edge of his mask to let in some air and poked Shao Zhan with his pen: “Did you explain this problem last night?”

Holding his phone, Shao Zhan tapped the screen twice before his voice finally filtered through the mask: “The one I explained three times and you still didn’t understand.”

Shao Zhan drove the knife deeper: “I’m surprised you actually remembered it.”

“…” Xu Sheng said, “It’d be unreasonable to have no impression of it at all. I’m not that hopeless, right? Besides, learning isn’t something that can be achieved overnight.”

Saying this, Xu Sheng leaned a bit closer to Shao Zhan: “What are you playing?”

Shao Zhan’s phone screen wasn’t displaying any of the games Xu Sheng usually played, just rows and columns of number grids.

“Pay attention to the class,” Shao Zhan didn’t look up, reaching out to press a hand against Xu Sheng’s forehead and pushing him back, adding, “Sudoku.”

Xu Sheng had originally thought he could watch him play some mini-game to alleviate the boredom and depression of sitting in class. Hearing the word ‘Sudoku’, all those thoughts vanished.

He truly couldn’t understand why someone would waste the precious opportunity to play games in class on Sudoku.

Halfway through explaining the problem, Ms. Zhou found it incredibly difficult to ignore the two students in the back row wearing masks—especially since one of them was playing on his phone. Taking advantage of a moment when the students were busy writing down the problem, she raised her voice and asked, “Shao Zhan, Xu Sheng, what’s the deal with you two? Aren’t those masks trapping the heat?”

Sitting in the front row, Hou Jun rushed to answer for them: “Teacher, the two of them are feeling unwell.”

“Feeling unwell but still have the energy to play on your phone—” Ms. Zhou nodded and commented, “Strong will despite physical frailty.”

Shao Zhan: “…”

Ms. Zhou added: “If you could put even one-tenth of that perseverance into your studies, your exam scores wouldn’t be like this.” As she spoke, she couldn’t help but wonder, “Are you truly feeling unwell?”

Shao Zhan’s acting was actually quite half-hearted. Just like the impression he gave when he first walked into the classroom, you couldn’t sense that he was faking an illness at all; it was a textbook display of acting cool.

Xu Sheng nudged him with an elbow.

“What?” Shao Zhan asked.

“Cough,” Xu Sheng reminded him in a low voice.

Catching on, Shao Zhan exited Sudoku and casually opened a game to keep up appearances. Then, amidst the peaceful and serene problem-solving atmosphere of Class 7, and under Ms. Zhou’s questioning gaze, he took a breath: “…Cough.”

After Shao Zhan’s “cough,” Xu Sheng quickly followed suit. His professional skills were better than Shao Zhan’s; he didn’t just cough, he included physical acting.

Xu Sheng hunched his upper body slightly, lowered his head, and let his shoulders tremble slightly in rhythm with the cough: “Cough, cough.”

Shao Zhan: “Aren’t you overdoing it a bit?”

Xu Sheng: “What do you know about seamless acting? My intensity is just right.”

Due to Xu Sheng’s “just right” intensity, Ms. Zhou became deeply concerned about the two students’ health.

After class, she returned to the teachers’ office. While placing her lesson plans on her desk, she sighed and said to Meng Guowei, “Old Meng, it seems students Shao Zhan and Xu Sheng from your class aren’t feeling well…”

Meng Guowei had also just returned to the office and hadn’t even had time to take a sip of water. He had gone to Director Gu’s office to pick up a notice about a new outbreak of some disease in Dong Province, though he hadn’t read it carefully yet: “I just got back. In a bit, all the homeroom teachers need to come get a notice from me. It’s a new directive from the school asking students to take precautions. It’s exhausting me—”

Saying this, Meng Guowei abruptly flipped open his teacup lid and tilted his head back for a drink before turning around to ask, “Old Zhou, what did you just say?”

Zhou Yuan frowned, saying, “I just taught a class in your room. Shao Zhan and Xu Sheng are wearing masks and look like they’ve caught a cold. It seems quite serious, especially student Shao Zhan, who was coughing so hard he couldn’t even straighten his back.”

Meng Guowei: “Ah?”

“I think you should have them go to the clinic next period to get checked,” Zhou Yuan offered his own unique perspective on the phenomenon of the two wearing masks together, “Let’s hope it’s not some infectious disease.”

Zhou Yuan’s mention of infectious disease wasn’t just a casual remark; there were indeed many precedents. The school was densely populated, with people constantly moving about. If hygiene wasn’t strictly maintained, one person catching a cold could lead to the entire class catching it.

After Zhou Yuan finished speaking, he noticed that the hand Meng Guowei was using to hold his teacup had unexpectedly begun to tremble slightly. “Old Meng, what’s wrong with you?”

Zhou Yuan’s gaze shifted right and landed on the sophomore grade notice Meng Guowei had just brought back from Director Gu’s office, spread open on the desk.

Black text on a white background, the first line written in large, bolded Song typeface: ——Notice Regarding Our School’s Strengthening of Environmental Hygiene to Prevent Virus Transmission.

Hello, teachers and students:Recently, two cases have occurred in Dong Province of our country, confirmed as the N411 novel influenza virus. This virus can spread rapidly through the air.Initial symptoms are similar to a common cold, primarily presenting as fatigue, weakness in the limbs, headache, and fever, accompanied by a cough. Due to its long incubation period and lack of detectability, we urge students to be highly vigilant.

The rest of the document consisted entirely of suggestions on how to improve environmental hygiene, such as opening windows frequently for ventilation.

This kind of notice was handed down almost every other month. The probability of an actual outbreak occurring on campus was less than one in ten million; often, several graduating classes could pass without encountering a single instance.

Initially, Meng Guowei hadn’t taken the matter seriously at all, thinking he would just have the class rep hand them out to the class later so they were informed.

However, Zhou Yuan’s words forced him to formally confront this prevention notice.

After reading it, Zhou Yuan completely understood Meng Guowei’s current tension. He quickly recovered and offered comfort: “Old Meng, don’t be nervous. We can’t jump to conclusions given the current situation. Perhaps things aren’t what we think; the probability of it just being a common cold is still relatively high.”

Meng Guowei raised a hand and supported himself on the desk: “You’re right, let’s hope so.”

Zhou Yuan continued comforting him: “Dong Province is over two thousand kilometers away from us; the infection source wouldn’t spread that fast.”

The next period was Meng Guowei’s class.

When the bell rang, he took a deep breath and carried his lesson plans toward Class 7. However, the moment he set his textbook down, he saw the two students wearing masks. Meng Guowei looked away, feigning composure: “Let’s turn our textbooks to page 68. Yesterday we left off at…”

“Cough.”

This sound came from his most prized student, “Shao Zhan.”

Meng Guowei took a deep breath: “Left off at this sentence, ‘Yuzhang, the ancient commandery, Hongdu, the new prefecture…’“

“…Cough.”

This sound came from his most headache-inducing student, “Xu Sheng.”

Before class, Xu Sheng had already agreed with Shao Zhan that coughing three times would be enough to fulfill their quota. They would pick their own times to cough, trying to stagger them.

Consequently, Meng Guowei taught this class in a state of extreme anxiety. He paused midway and said, “Xu Sheng.”

Shao Zhan looked up.

“Open the window wider,” Meng Guowei paused and pointed at the window. “There’s a lot of dust in the class, let’s air it out.”

Shao Zhan tossed his phone back into his desk, stood up, and opened the window.

Only then did Meng Guowei feel his breathing ease slightly.

Over these past few days, Xu Sheng had formed the habit of taking notes in class. After all, since he couldn’t do anything else, just sitting there was boring; taking notes was more interesting than doing nothing.

He had always been using Shao Zhan’s textbook. If any classmate came to borrow the book, they would discover that the handwriting in the Study God’s class notes had suddenly become sloppy—sloppy to the point of being incomprehensible.

Halfway through writing, Xu Sheng noticed Shao Zhan’s gaze: “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Shao Zhan wanted to ask where all that copybook practice had gone, but ultimately turned a blind eye, letting him scribble aimlessly in his textbook.

Tutoring was clearly useless. Practicing handwriting was also useless.

Meng Guowei taught this class in a state of terror. He had originally planned to hand out Director Gu’s notice during class, but being a meticulous person, he worried that handing it out now would cause psychological pressure for the two mask-wearing students and trigger unnecessary panic.

So, after returning to the office, he pondered for a long time before stopping a student who had come to submit an error-correction notebook and was heading back to class: “Go to Class 7 and call Shao Zhan and Xu Sheng over.”

When Xu Sheng went over, he couldn’t guess at all what Old Meng wanted with them.

However, as Shao Zhan stood up, he remarked, “You were coughing too hard.”

Coughing like that, how could we not be called over for questioning?

Following behind Shao Zhan, the two walked in tandem down the sophomore corridor wearing masks, attracting quite a few stares. Some students even kept turning their heads to look long after they had walked past.

The Zhan-Wu-Bu-Sheng topic thread received fresh material.

In the office.

As soon as Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan sat down, Meng Guowei handed them two cups of hot water: “I heard you two have some issues with your health?”

Taking the hot water, Xu Sheng weighed his words: “It’s alright, just feeling a bit unwell.”

Don’t specify what’s wrong; the key to faking an illness is being vague.

Meng Guowei: “Recently… have you been… feeling tired very easily?”

Xu Sheng’s hand reached behind Shao Zhan and gave him a light pinch on his side.

Shao Zhan said, “A little.”

Meng Guowei: “Weakness in your limbs?”

In order to fake the illness, Xu Sheng was willing to admit to anything: “That’s right.”

Meng Guowei paused for a second after every sentence. His heart clenching, he asked another question: “Perhaps, you also occasionally feel a headache and a fever?”

Xu Sheng calculated in his mind that a headache and a fever wasn’t a major issue either. He could admit to it.

Finally, he said, “Yes.”

What the two didn’t know was that Meng Guowei’s world felt as if it had been struck by lightning and torn apart. This outstanding teacher, who had taught for many years and could calmly handle any unexpected situation, was experiencing a thunderstorm in his brain.

Meng Guowei thought to himself: We’re doomed.