Falling in Love with High School English Teacher Sakura (GL Teacher-Student Love) - Chapter 10

Since Liu Yugang’s failed robbery attempt where he was instead smashed with a brick by Yue Ran, he had been harboring both fear and hatred toward her.

Among Liu Yugang’s friends in class was Xu Ning, a simple-minded, brawny guy who feared nothing—not even Yue Ran. Liu Yugang decided to take advantage of Xu Ning’s stupidity and egg him on to pick a fight with Yue Ran. That way, even if Xu Ning managed to rough her up, Yue Ran wouldn’t be able to trace it back to him.

During recess, the dim-witted Xu Ning, goaded by Liu Yugang, came over to challenge Yue Ran—to see whose fist was harder. Xu Ning had a habit of challenging male classmates to these fist-to-fist duels, where both would clench their fists and punch each other’s knuckles until one couldn’t take the pain and surrendered. Xu Ning had already defeated every boy in class this way, earning himself the self-proclaimed title of “Iron Fist, Undefeated Under Heaven.”

Confident in his strength, Xu Ning was certain a girl like Yue Ran stood no chance. He was already picturing her crying from the pain of his iron-hard punches.

Yue Ran really didn’t want to bother with this muscle-brained idiot, but sometimes, ignoring him wasn’t an option. Though she had outright refused to participate in such a pointless contest, Xu Ning kept pestering her, driving her up the wall. Finally, she agreed—but only if they followed her rules. Eager to prove himself, Xu Ning nodded without hesitation.

Yue Ran proposed that they compete to see who could break the ceramic flowerpot on the windowsill first—using only their fists.

Xu Ning, brimming with confidence, blurted, “I’ll go first!”

Yue Ran was more than happy to let him. “Sure, go ahead,” she said.

Just as she expected, Xu Ning’s first punch didn’t break the pot—only turned his knuckles red. The flowerpot was made of thick, sturdy ceramic, nothing like the flimsy junk that would flood the market in the future.

Refusing to back down, Xu Ning threw a second punch, then a third, much to the amusement of the entire class. Liu Yugang, watching from the sidelines, was furious that this idiot was being played for a fool without even realizing it.

Yue Ran winced just watching Xu Ning hammer away at the pot—her own hand throbbing in sympathy. Her deskmate, Cao Yu, stifled a laugh beside her.

At that moment, Wang Piaopiao walked into the classroom—only to see that brat Xu Ning punching her beloved begonia plant and flowerpot, which she had carefully placed on the windowsill. Her bl00d boiled. “Just how much does this kid hate me to take it out on my favorite flowers?” she fumed.

In three quick strides, Wang Piaopiao grabbed Xu Ning by the collar, dragged him to the front of the class, and—smack! smack!—slapped him twice across the face. The force of those blows reduced the tough-guy Xu Ning to tears, snot and all. Yue Ran couldn’t help but feel a mix of pity and exasperation for him. She mentally mourned his stupidity for two seconds.

Even with just her toes, Yuera could figure out why the usually simple-minded and brawny Xu Ning suddenly came to pick a fight with her. She turned her head and glared fiercely at Liu Yugang, who immediately shrank back, cursing Xu Ning in his heart for being more of a liability than a help. Liu Yugang was genuinely afraid Yuera might crack his skull open with a brick again like last time.

If Xu Ning really smashed the flowerpot with his fists, Yuera would just admit defeat—so what if she lost? Let Xu Ning’s iron fists continue to dominate the class. There was no way Yuera would be foolish enough to punch a flowerpot herself—how utterly brainless would that be? She realized Xu Ning was a lot like Li Yuanba, the third son of Tang Dynasty’s Li Yuan—unbelievably strong but simple-minded, in other words, an idiot.

Math class was taught by an elderly teacher surnamed Zhang. This lesson focused on arithmetic problems students frequently got wrong on their exams. Teacher Zhang was quite kind and approachable. She first went over some simpler problems before moving on to the final, most challenging question on the test—an extra-credit problem so difficult that Yuera was the only one in the class who had solved it correctly.

With a gentle smile, Teacher Zhang called Yuera’s name and asked her to come up to the front to explain her thought process.

Yuera stood up, walked to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and wrote out the equation. Then, in the simplest terms, she explained the solution to her classmates.

Teacher Zhang nodded approvingly as she listened to Yuera’s clear reasoning. Many students, following along with the equation on the board, found themselves understanding the notoriously difficult problem for the first time. Of course, those who were particularly slow, like Xu Ning, remained clueless no matter how well Yuera explained it.

After finishing, Yuera set the chalk down, turned to face the class, and said, “That’s my approach to solving this problem.”

Teacher Zhang led the applause and praised Yuera before letting her return to her seat. The class realized that Yuera—once ranked at the very bottom—had truly changed. Teacher Zhang encouraged everyone to learn from Yuera’s example of steady accumulation leading to sudden brilliance. The praise even made Yuera blush—after all, the problem wasn’t that hard.

Cao Yu was delighted to have such an outstanding deskmate. The class belle and monitor turned around, studying Yuera with a complicated expression for the first time. Ever since the school marathon incident where Yuera had helped her during heatstroke, the monitor had begun to see her in a different light—not as the annoying girl she’d assumed. Sure, losing her long-held top rank to Yuera still stung, but this math problem proved Yuera had earned her success through genuine ability, not cheating, as some classmates had whispered. The neatly written solution on the board spoke for itself—none of the students, not even the monitor, had solved it correctly. As she stared at Yuera’s elegant handwriting, the monitor’s emotions grew even more tangled.