There’s a psycho who has a crush on me

Chapter 59

Gu Zheng’s English foundation was so poor that even an ordinary middle school student would probably be better than him. After he translated the first sentence of the cloze test, he couldn’t understand any of the sentences that followed. Either he didn’t know this word or he didn’t understand that grammar.

But Tian Mi didn’t let him sit down. Every time he paused, she would remind him of the word’s meaning, explain the sentence’s grammar, and teach the students how to do this type of fill-in-the-blank exercise.

In this halting manner, Gu Zheng actually managed to translate the entire cloze passage and even learned several key points. Only then did Tian Mi let him sit down, giving him a smile and praising him, saying his voice was very loud when answering questions in class, which was excellent.

After Gu Zheng sat down, his heart was still pounding. He didn’t know if it was because he was too nervous when the teacher called on him to answer questions, or because he was somewhat excited about being praised by Tian Mi.

Ever since Gu Zheng started developing in the direction of a rich playboy, he had never received praise from a teacher again. It wasn’t that he had never been called on by teachers to answer questions before, but most of those teachers didn’t have the patience to teach him carefully like Tian Mi did. Usually, they would just scold him harshly.

However, even though Tian Mi seemed so gentle, Gu Zheng still hadn’t let go of his fear of her. He had just sat down and breathed a sigh of relief when, not long after, Tian Mi called on him again to answer a question.

“Student Gu Zheng, please explain the meaning of this fixed phrase.” Tian Mi tapped the blackboard, pointing to the “lose one’s heart” she had just written and asked Gu Zheng.

Hearing this, Gu Zheng’s body swayed violently again. He swallowed and said awkwardly, “Teacher Tian, I don’t know…”

“If you don’t know, you can try to guess. When everyone encounters unfamiliar fixed phrases during reading comprehension, you can also try to guess by breaking down the words and understanding them separately—” Tian Mi raised her eyebrows. Gu Zheng looked at this gesture and felt it was somewhat familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before. Before he could remember, he heard Tian Mi continue, “You should at least know what ‘lose’ means, right? And you should understand ‘heart’ too, right? What about when you combine the two?”

Gu Zheng knew these two words. After thinking for a while, he tentatively asked Tian Mi, “Utterly heartless and crazy?”

Yu Pei, who was preparing to carefully remind Gu Zheng of the answer: “…”

As soon as Gu Zheng finished speaking, the entire class burst into wild laughter. Even Luo Changzhou couldn’t help but press his fist against his lips and laugh.

Gu Zheng looked completely bewildered and asked them both in confusion, “Did I say it wrong?”

Tian Mi looked at him with both helplessness and amusement. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Yu Pei and called on him: “Since Student Gu Zheng doesn’t know, let’s have Student Gu Zheng’s good friend Yu Pei answer this question.”

English was Yu Pei’s strong suit. He stood up and gave a perfect answer: “This fixed phrase means ‘to fall in love with someone’ and is generally used with the preposition ‘to’.”

“Very good, sit down.” Tian Mi praised Yu Pei and waved her hand, letting both him and Gu Zheng sit down.

Only then did Gu Zheng realize how far his translation was from the correct answer.

After sitting down this time, he was also on edge, not daring to let his mind wander anymore. He followed Tian Mi’s lesson and took notes seriously, constantly preparing for the possibility of being called on again by Tian Mi to answer questions.

However, this time until class ended, Tian Mi didn’t call on him to answer questions again.

Gu Zheng complained to Yu Pei and Luo Changzhou with a dejected face: “Teacher Tian Mi is really too scary.”

“I think Teacher Tian Mi is quite gentle.” Yu Pei disagreed with Gu Zheng’s words. The class when Tian Mi had called on him to read the text had helped him rediscover his love for English. “Besides, she didn’t scold you.”

“She didn’t scold me.” Gu Zheng had to admit. After this class, he had actually learned quite a bit of knowledge, but he still felt that Teacher Tian Mi was scary. Finally, he said, “I’ll never dare not hand in my English homework again.”

But this matter didn’t end there. When Gu Zheng returned to the Yu family home after school that day, he found that Yu Qing had also come back. Everyone was sitting together happily eating the dinner prepared by the Yu family’s chef when Yu Qing suddenly asked about Gu Zheng’s recent study situation.

Gu Zheng immediately became alert, thinking that Yu Qing was gathering information for his father. He quickly put on the appearance of a good student and said seriously, “Very good, much better than before.”

“Really?” Yu Qing didn’t quite believe him. Hearing this, he raised his eyebrows. His dark eyes, deep like pools, looked toward Gu Zheng. His gaze was light but very intimidating. When Gu Zheng met his gaze, he finally remembered who Teacher Tian’s expression when looking at him that afternoon resembled. It was like Yu Qing!

Just as Gu Zheng thought of Tian Mi, Yu Qing asked over there: “Haven’t been not handing in homework?”

Gu Zheng said cautiously, “No, no, I’m very well-behaved. I write all my homework.”

“That’s good.” Yu Qing stopped looking at him, his tone light and airy. “You must study hard.”

Gu Zheng nodded repeatedly. After finishing dinner and going upstairs, he immediately went to borrow English homework from Yu Pei, muttering constantly: “Teacher Tian Mi is really scary. Are all English teachers this fierce?”

Yu Pei almost died laughing listening to his words. After taking a shower and lying in bed, he was about to call Luo Changzhou to tell him about this when an unfamiliar number called in.

He looked at this string of unnoted numbers on his phone screen. The location showed South City. Thinking it might be a classmate or something, he paused for a while before pressing the answer button and said slowly, “…Hello? May I ask who—”

“Ah Pei, it’s me.” A somewhat familiar voice came from the other end of the phone, but Yu Pei thought for a while and couldn’t remember who the owner of this voice was, until he identified himself, and Yu Pei suddenly remembered him.

“Second Uncle? Why are you suddenly calling me?” Yu Pei called out to him in surprise.

The person who called was Ning Jinglan’s younger brother, Ning Junwei, Yu Pei’s second uncle. But Yu Pei wasn’t very familiar with him. Not only him, but Yu Pei was like this with all the Ning family members—familiar yet strange.

Ning Jinglan didn’t like him, so naturally she wouldn’t let him have too much contact with her family members. Yu Pei’s memories of them were only the reunion dinner when returning to the Ning family’s old mansion every New Year.

Under Ning Jinglan’s deliberate influence, over time, whether it was the Ning family or the Yu family, everyone’s attention was focused on Yu Qing, the excellent eldest son of the Yu family. For Yu Pei, the younger son of the Yu family, their evaluation was mostly just “a very well-behaved and quiet child.”

Later, when the Yu family had their accident and Yu Pei was hospitalized, he remembered that this second uncle hadn’t come to see him either. So for him to call him so late, Yu Pei was very surprised.

“Nothing much, it’s just that Second Uncle hasn’t seen you for a long time, so I’m calling you. By the way, I heard that you and your brother were in a car accident some time ago. Is everything alright?” Second Uncle Ning laughed. His voice, which should have been kind and gentle, had some other indescribable feeling when Yu Pei heard it.

“Oh…” Yu Pei responded softly, holding the phone and walking to sit on the terrace, his fingers gently stroking the leaves of the Tagimoucia plant. “I’ve been very well recently. The car accident wasn’t serious either. My brother and I weren’t hurt much. Thank you for your concern, Second Uncle.”

Although he said this, Yu Pei couldn’t help thinking: This car accident happened so long ago, and he’d already started going back to school for classes, but Second Uncle was only now calling him. He must have something to talk to him about, right?

Indeed, that was the case. After Second Uncle Ning exchanged pleasantries with Yu Pei for just a few sentences, he started talking about other things. However, the person Second Uncle Ning brought up with him was actually Yu Qing.

Second Uncle Ning told him: “Ah Pei, I heard your brother has been dating recently. Do you know who his girlfriend is?”

Big brother was dating?

Yu Pei was stunned when he heard this news, because Yu Qing had never mentioned this to him, and his usual words and actions didn’t show that he was in love. However, he was usually in class and Yu Qing wasn’t home much either, so if he didn’t say anything, it was normal for him to not notice.

So Yu Pei answered truthfully: “I don’t know. Brother hasn’t mentioned it to me.”

Second Uncle Ning immediately said in surprise: “Your brother doesn’t even tell you about this?”

Yu Pei really disliked Second Uncle Ning’s tone, which seemed like he was trying to drive a wedge between him and Yu Qing’s relationship. He didn’t know why, perhaps under Ning Jinglan’s influence, or perhaps Ning Jinglan had said something to the Ning family members, but most of the Ning family believed he would compete with Yu Qing for the Yu family’s assets. Even though he worked very hard to make his existence transparent, he couldn’t change the Ning family’s view.

He said to Second Uncle Ning: “Brother dating is his business. This is his privacy. After all, they’re just boyfriend and girlfriend, not married. It’s nothing if brother doesn’t tell me.”

Second Uncle Ning might have heard the anger in his tone and laughed: “Alright, alright, let’s not talk about this anymore. By the way, Ah Pei, your mother has been in the hospital for some time now. The doctor called recently and said her condition has improved a lot. If she had family companionship, she would recover even faster. Have you been to the hospital to see her?”

Yu Pei held the phone and didn’t speak for a long time.

“Ah Pei?” Second Uncle Ning thought he had hung up and asked again.

“Second Uncle, it’s very late. I have to go to class tomorrow, so I’ll hang up now.” Yu Pei said this sentence stiffly, and without waiting for Second Uncle Ning to say anything else, he hung up the phone.

He sat in the chair in silence for a while, then suddenly raised his hand and threw his phone hard toward the floor. But the floor was covered with thick carpet, and the phone made a muffled sound on it, rolled a few times, and stopped.

Yu Pei lay on the table with his head buried deeply between his arms. When Second Uncle Ning asked him that question, he also wanted to ask Second Uncle Ning whether he knew why he didn’t go to see Mother Yu.

Maybe for them, no matter what Ning Jinglan did, she was his mother, and how could there be overnight grudges between mother and son? Both the grace of birth and the grace of raising were important. Mother Yu gave birth to him and raised him to this age. No matter what she did, Yu Pei should be tolerant of her.

Moreover, they would say, Ning Jinglan only acted this way because she was sick. She didn’t do it on purpose.

Yu Pei knew all of this. How could he not know that Ning Jinglan didn’t love him only because she was sick? But he had been tolerant of her too. He had been tolerant of her for a full seventeen years, living according to her wishes from childhood to adulthood.

But Ning Jinglan’s illness couldn’t be cured anymore, and he could no longer be tolerant of her.

Much less could he forgive her.