Chapter 109: Tutoring
The cold morning air was slowly pushed back by the rising sun. A bright but not dazzling light shone through the window lattice, cut into square pieces and spread on the floor.
A small beam of light ran to the desk where Nuonuo was writing, jumping in his open book.
Nuonuo wrinkled his little nose, his five fingers still stretched out in the air, and he tilted his head and looked at his brother in confusion. “Why isn’t it five, ya?”
My little fingers have five!
Fei Luo was stunned by Nuonuo’s “righteous” little appearance. After a little thought, he answered seriously, “Because one plus one does not equal five.”
Fei Luo, who was already in the third grade and had started to learn more advanced addition and subtraction within ten thousand, was very sure that one plus one did not equal five!
Nuonuo opened his little fingers, was dazed for a moment, and then slowly held his little face in his hands, sighing with extreme sorrow.
Fei Luo saw the sunlight cast a side shadow on his little brother’s face. Nuonuo’s chubby little face seemed to have become thinner at this moment because of this arithmetic problem.
“It’s okay. We’ll just count again.”
Fei Luo was not good at comforting people, but he still racked his brains to coax his little brother.
Nuonuo also let out a small breath, nodded, and once again stretched out his fingers, staring at them seriously, and began to count. “One, two, three…”
Fei Luo saw his little brother count past again and quickly said, “No, no, you’ve counted too many.”
Nuonuo quickly stopped, pressed down one of his little fingers with his other hand, leaving four fingers in the air, and even waved them happily. “Four!”
Nuonuo, who felt he had calculated correctly, picked up his little pencil and seriously wrote a “3” in his notebook.
Fei Luo: “…”
Saying four but writing three? What does that mean?
Pursing his lips and holding his breath, Fei Luo watched as Nuonuo wrote the answer to all five questions as three.
“The answer is not three,” Fei Luo quickly said, a little weakly.
Nuonuo nodded his little head and looked at his brother. “I know, ya. I wrote four!”
Fei Luo: “You didn’t write four either.”
The two of them looked at each other in silence for a while. Fei Luo looked at Nuonuo’s extremely confused little eyes and finally couldn’t help but sigh. He jumped off his chair and ran out to ask for help.
Fei Han had been busy repairing the laboratory these past few days. More than half of the laboratories on the ground had been destroyed, but the ones underground were still intact.
The experimental potions that those transmigrators wanted to destroy were also not damaged.
When Fei Han was reorganizing the laboratory, he looked at the bottle of pale blue potion, which was still sparkling under the sunlight, and was silent for a long time.
The potion in the glass test tube swayed slightly, a bit like a small wave rising in the sea. Its crystal-clear appearance did not match its name as a zombie reagent at all.
All the potion formulas inside had been collected, but the most important configuration ratio had not yet been figured out by Fei Han, and no clinical trials had been conducted.
Perhaps it wouldn’t take more than a decade. It might only take a few years for the remaining key point to be broken through.
But…
At that time, Fei Han was in the underground laboratory, sitting in a chair with his forehead in his hand, but he couldn’t muster the strength to continue.
He felt that he didn’t really want to continue this experiment.
This kind of contradictory psychology had never appeared in Fei Han’s seventeen years of life.
But the moment he thought of how, in more than a decade, Nuonuo would not yet be an adult, and this world would be destroyed by his own hands, turning into an ugly and dark appearance, Fei Han felt a stuffiness in his chest, and he could barely breathe.
And so, for the past two days, Fei Han simply didn’t want to go to the laboratory. He stayed at home, flipping through various books, immersing himself in them, and temporarily not thinking about these messy problems.
Just as he closed a book as thick as a brick and was about to take the next one, he heard a knock on the door.
“Fei Luo? What’s wrong?”
Fei Han rubbed his forehead, saw Fei Luo walk in, and looked up to ask.
Fei Luo stopped and panted for a couple of breaths. When his breathing was even, he finally said, “Eldest Brother, do you know how to do primary school arithmetic problems?”
Fei Han sighed, rubbing his forehead, and said with a bit of helplessness, “I’ve graduated with a master’s degree. Do you think I would?”
Fei Luo had always been self-enclosed before and really didn’t know that his eldest brother’s knowledge was so high. He pursed his lips and continued embarrassedly, “Then, Eldest Brother, do you have time?”
In the small study of the bedroom.
Nuonuo was swinging his short little legs, his little face lying on the table as he counted the little red flower stickers on his desk with his little hands. When he reached four, he couldn’t help but squint his eyes happily.
He has four little red flowers!
Just as he was humming a happy tune, he saw his eldest brother’s slender figure in the corner of his eye. Nuonuo quickly sat up and stretched out his little arms for a hug. “Brother, hwug, ya!”
Fei Han tapped Nuonuo’s forehead, looked at the open notebook on his desk, pulled out a chair, and sat down. “Don’t act spoiled. Come and do your homework.”
His tone was slightly firm as he refused the little one’s hug. Fei Han put the pencil back into Nuonuo’s small hands and looked down at his homework.
His gaze swept over the “3” written after “1+1.” Fei Han was stunned for a while before he frowned slightly and asked, “Did you write this yourself?”
Nuonuo puffed out his little chest with great pride, his little hands clutching the pencil tightly as he nodded his little head heavily. “I wrote it myself!”
Afraid that his brother wouldn’t believe him, Nuonuo even took the pencil and seriously demonstrated it for his brother on the paper. “I just wrote it like this, and then I wrote out four.”
Looking at the “3” on the paper, Fei Han was silent for a moment, not knowing what to say.
“Have you learned up to four?”
Looking at the little one who was pointing at three and calling it four, Fei Han asked uncertainly.
Nuonuo nodded his head. “I’ve learned it. Teacher Xiao Ran taught us!”
Fei Han roughly understood the progress of the kindergarten during this period. Hearing that he hadn’t even started to learn five, and that the homework was all addition within four, his brow almost twisted into a knot.
He had thought the kindergarten’s progress would be slow, but he didn’t expect it to be this slow.
Sighing, Fei Han finally resigned himself to picking up a pencil and writing one, two, three, four again for Nuonuo.
After all, from Nuonuo’s performance, he really might not be able to recognize them all.
As he had expected, Nuonuo only recognized the simplest “one.” As for the numbers that followed, no matter how he looked, he couldn’t figure out what they were.
Nuonuo felt that these few numbers were very familiar, but he just couldn’t remember them. He quickly held his little head and said in a panic, “Brother, my head seems to be broken!”
Fei Han thought to himself that his head had probably never been good.
Taking a sip of the water in the glass and barely calming down, Fei Han then took Nuonuo and carefully recognized the numbers again.
And this morning’s tutoring, Fei Han finally experienced what it meant to forget in a flash.
It was just these four numbers, and the result should have been able to be counted on his fingers. But when it came to Nuonuo, he just couldn’t figure it out.
Nuonuo could count, he could count to five in one breath! But that was all.
Once it was written on paper, it was as if a magic spell had been cast. Looking at these numbers, Nuonuo’s mind was directly in a mess.
Holding his little face in his hands, Nuonuo’s eyes were like a spiral. He blinked his little eyes, not really processing anything, and tried his best to learn.
In three hours this morning, with Fei Han’s unremitting efforts, Nuonuo had finally learned the simplest math problem, one plus one.
Sighing heavily, Fei Han took the cup and drank all the water in it. His previous calmness and self-control had long since completely disappeared, and his whole person was on the verge of collapse.
In fact, at the end of his teaching, he had even wanted to produce the zombie potion overnight and let the whole planet be destroyed tomorrow!
Nuonuo, on the other hand, was stretching his little fingers, still huffing and puffing as he tried to count.
Turning his little face to secretly glance at his brother, Nuonuo unexpectedly met Fei Han’s dark eyes. He quickly curved his lips and gave his brother a well-behaved and soft smile.
The moment Nuonuo smiled, his whole person was like he had been fished out of a honey jar, so sweet it could directly melt your heart. You couldn’t bear to say any harsh words to him.
Fei Han saw Nuonuo’s harmless and well-behaved smile, and the anger in his heart had long since dissipated. He sighed and couldn’t help but curl his lips.
Clearing his throat, Fei Han rubbed the little one’s head. “It’s okay. It’s already very good to have learned one problem today.”
At Nuonuo’s side, Fei Han had completely abandoned his previous high standards and praised him with extreme insincerity.
Nuonuo nodded his head, and his little eyes also unconsciously lit up.
In learning, time seemed to pass very quickly. Just as Nuonuo had figured out how much one plus one was, the day had passed with a swoosh.
Early the next morning, the teacher sent a notice in the parent group in advance that there would be a pop quiz to test the homework from the weekend.
Seeing this news, the most nervous person was not Nuonuo, but Fei Han.
He got up early, dug Nuonuo out of his bed, and, while Nuonuo was still sleepy-eyed, carried him to wash his face and brush his teeth.
When Nuonuo was nodding his little head and dozing off in his arms, Fei Han nervously placed him on the sofa, propped up his little face, and said, “Nuonuo, wake up. Brother is going to give you a pre-exam cram session.”
Fei Jing, who had just returned home after staying up all night, heard this and almost laughed out loud.
“Haha, cough, cough, cough!”
Fei Jing, who had laughed so hard he had choked, clutched his stomach and, unable to hold on, quickly went upstairs to catch up on sleep.
Fei Han looked at Fei Jing going upstairs as if he were looking at a fool. He let out a cold snort and then turned his head back, repeating what he had taught Nuonuo yesterday.
Nuonuo’s eyes were open, but they were vacant and dazed, clearly still immersed in his sleep and not yet recovered.
Looking at his brother, Nuonuo let out a little “huh?” and said in a small voice, “Brother, you’re in my dream. Does one plus one equal four?”
Fei Han slowly closed his eyes, sighed lightly, and then reached out his finger to give Nuonuo a flick on the head. “Even in a dream, one plus one cannot equal four!”
