I'm A Math Idiot, So What? - Chapter 31

Question: What catalyst is needed after a full meal to cultivate a person into a gluttonous sack of wine and rice?

Answer: A math test paper.

Fang Congxin truly lives up to being Professor Fang’s son. Professor Fang enjoys doing math warm-ups before meals, while Fang Congxin likes to have math desserts after meals. This time, he came prepared. After I finished my bath and lit incense, he put a thin paper full of questions in front of me, claiming that he had spent forty-nine minutes crafting it, capable of assessing my overall math abilities without any flaws.

I glanced lightly at the questions and asked him, “How long do I have to finish this?”

He checked his watch and replied, “Forty minutes?” As he spoke, he opened his own iPad to work on the side.

I nodded, “That’s enough time for a nap, enough for a nap.”

Ah, I accidentally let the truth slip out.

I picked up my pen and, in this vast ocean of mathematics, hoisted my sail and rowed my oars. This is Hemingway sailing against the wind, declaring war on destiny!

Ten minutes passed, and the boat moved. But the direction was not quite right. How come I was paddling down towards the seabed? Why is the boat sinking?

Hemingway said, life always leaves us battered and bruised, but eventually, those wounded places will become our strongest areas.

Yes, the sea cannot make me yield! I slowly began to grow gills underwater. I swam and swam, and wait, Nemo, why are you here too? Where’s your dad? Are you and your dad still together? Did your dad turn into a beast and do something to you?

“Lin Meng!” Someone pushed me awake.

Fang Congxin was silently looking at me. I silently looked back at him.

Sigh, I let out a breath, “Give me five more minutes, I’ll swim a bit longer—no, I mean I’ll solve a few more problems.”

I gathered my spirits and, in this vast ocean of mathematics, hoisted my sail and rowed my oars. This is Hemingway sailing against the wind, declaring war on destiny again!”Ah, look at what I’ve caught up here?! A bright red goldfish with a shimmering tail. The goldfish pleaded with me, ‘Let me go, and I will grant you three wishes.’ I said, ‘Alright, for my first wish, please solve this problem: Let f(x) be a non-negative continuous function on the interval [a, b]; prove that its average value on the interval [a, b] is no more than its square root. That is, (b-a)-—’ The goldfish started frothing at the mouth and died. I said, ‘Are you not following the script anymore?! I have two more problems waiting behind this one!’

‘Lin Meng!’

‘Ah?’ I jumped up from the desk.

‘Did you fall asleep again?’

‘No.’

‘Life must be tough, huh?’

‘Ah?’

‘Just now, your snoring sounded like a car engine, but in just a few minutes it changed to the sound of a tractor. Your living standards are dropping pretty fast!’

‘You’re talking nonsense. My snoring is like the interludes of a nightingale under the flowers, the whispers of a spring flowing beneath the ice. The icy spring is chilly, and when the strings are taut and silent, the sound pauses briefly.’

An ugly daughter-in-law has to meet her in-laws; the math that I can’t show off still has to be presented. I handed my answer sheet to him.

Fang Congxin took a glanced at my answer sheet, smudged in a few places with ink, and said, ‘There are still some commendable points.’

I eagerly leaned over to see, ‘Where, where?’

‘Look at how well you wrote this character; it’s especially neat, clear, and easy to understand. It’s obvious that the person who wrote it has years of skill.’

I pulled my neck back, trying to save face, ‘Mainly, your question wasn’t well formulated.’

Fang Congxin looked at me with a slight smile, ‘Oh? Please enlighten me.’

I circled the second question separately.

‘You shoot at a plane three times independently. The hit rate for the first shot is 0.4, for the second it’s 0.5, and for the third it’s 0.7. The probability of hitting the plane with one concentrated shot and bringing it down is 0.2, while the probability of hitting it twice with concentrated shots and bringing it down is 0.6. If hit three times, the plane will definitely be shot down. What is the probability of bringing down the plane after three shots?’

‘May I ask, where is this question incorrect?’

‘You should formulate it this way—if I confess my love to Liu Haoran in person, the chance of success for the first confession is 0.4, for the second it’s 0.5, and for the third it’s 0.”“7. The probability of me confessing my feelings while being surrounded by Liu Haoran’s fans is 0.2, the probability of being surrounded twice is 0.6, and three times guarantees being surrounded. What is the probability of being surrounded after confessing three times?”

“What’s the answer?”

“1,” I said, “and a hundred percent chance of getting beaten up.”

He pretended to roll up non-existent sleeves: “I see I’m bound to die sooner or later, so why not let this Changning Liu Haoran be the one to kill you on the spot.”

I stood up and said, “I, Changning Ouyang Nana, won’t agree to that!”

His expression changed several times, as if he regained some fighting spirit, starting off like every ambitious math teacher I had before who ultimately fell short: “Ouyang Nana, have you heard the story of the tortoise and the hare?”

“I have. The rabbit got tired halfway and fell asleep under a tree, and the tortoise caught up. The tortoise then thought the little rabbit was so cute that it kissed her, and later the rabbit had a baby. Guess what? A clam!”

He stared at me speechlessly for a few seconds, cleared his throat, and adjusted himself: “Then you’ve heard the story of the foolish old man moving mountains, right?”

“I have. Before he died, the old man told his son to move the mountains. The son replied: ‘Which mountain?’”

He cleared his throat again: “How about Jingwei filling the sea?”

“I can tell you all about the story of Jingwei filling the sea. Jingwei is the daughter of the Flame Emperor. Where is the Flame Emperor from? Baoji, Shaanxi. Where on the Guanzhong Plain is there a sea? So, Jingwei actually drowned in a lake. After dying, she went to the East Sea to confront the Dragon King but failed, so she protested every day by throwing stones at the entrance of the East Sea. Now that’s just being stubborn—”

Just as I was excitedly explaining these fables to him, he suddenly stood up and rolled up his sleeves: “I think a beating is still the best option!”

Hey, wait! Am I not allowed to admit I was wrong?!

Then Fang Congxin started explaining the problems to me.

The entire process of him explaining can’t be accurately recorded due to his alien-like speech, so I’ll summarize it in a way like this:

“Ma Dongmei.”

“What Mei?”

“Ma Dongmei.”

“Ma Dong what?”

“Ma Dongmei.”

“Ma what Mei?”

“I think a beating is still the best option.”

Ah, the boy with aspirations of slaying dragons, the boy who once knew no bounds as he shouted about conquering the world, the boy who felt so exceptional—how did you go from black hair to white in an instant? How did you come to terms with reality and surrender? How did you manage to reconcile with the world?

Huh?

Fang Congxin, why are you lying on my sofa? Aren’t you getting up for class?

Do we need to call your psychologist? Do you need an oxygen mask?”Do you need CPR?”

Not long after, Fang Congxin received a phone call and hurriedly left.

He didn’t mention what to do next, so I guessed he was fleeing in a hurry, cutting his losses in time.

Just as he left, my parents arrived, each carrying large supermarket bags. My mother, while taking off her shoes, lamented a few words in regret. At the end of her rambling, she casually asked if I had eaten the noodles that Fang Congxin had brought for me.

I thought about the half bowl of noodles I had shared with him in the spirit of Kong Rong letting others take the pears, and then remembered the lovingly fried eggs and sausages I had made for him, concluding that I had indeed gone easy on him.

In the following days, there was no news from Fang Congxin. Although I knew he would eventually choose to give up on me, just like all my previous math teachers, I didn’t expect him to see through my essence and cut losses after just one class. It was clear that he was someone who understood the situation and knew how to take care of himself.

I had no hopes for his tutoring, so my emotions didn’t fluctuate much. However, my mother couldn’t sit still; she called Teacher Feng to inquire about Fang Congxin’s whereabouts in front of me. The two of them chatted on the phone for half an hour, and after my mother found out that Fang Congxin had returned to Beijing, she felt very disappointed. Before coming to Changning, she visited the Honghua Temple in Taixi to have my fortune read, which predicted I would have an especially large peach blossom this year. She had fallen for Fang Congxin at first sight and impulsively pinned that large peach blossom on his chest, disregarding his feelings. Now that he was gone, her wish was unfulfilled; she couldn’t think of food or tea and looked like someone who had just experienced a breakup, which was quite pitiful.

I tried to comfort her, reminding her that every year before the end-of-term exams, our family would donate money to become members of the Honghua Temple, accumulating points, and we had become senior members, surely entitled to special benefits. This year, the fortune teller’s promise of a big peach blossom didn’t materialize, but we could consult him again next year—who knows, he might say he would gift me a big peach next time, and the year after that perhaps a dried peach. Besides math, there’s hope everywhere in life; she should not be so hard on her stomach.

As a result, I was rewarded with a flying chopstick from my mother.

For the past few days, my parents had been busy tidying up the house, and now the place looked bright and new, like it was reborn. I decided to brave the heat and go out with them for some fun.I was definitely behaving like a dutiful daughter comparable to Cao E.

Summer in Changning is like Hou Yi’s warehouse, where he stored all the suns he shot down back in the day. The kid who sang “Planting the Sun” and said he wanted to send the sun to children in the North and South Poles also mistakenly had his package sent to Changning. If you want to eat grilled lamb skewers, all you need to do is bring some cumin and lead a sheep onto the streets of Changning, and you’re set.

For the sake of cherishing life, locals in Changning absolutely refrain from outdoor activities during the day.

However, since my parents traveled a thousand miles to get here, we had to go out and stroll around. Besides, after this trip, I would have to venture alone, tattered and stumbling, to tackle the Himalayas of math, possibly sacrificing myself for truth and progress—so I should fulfill my filial duties before that.

So, like checking off a bucket list, I got up early, looked into the mirror, and put on a particularly flamboyant makeup look that I had never tried before.

My dad frowned, while my mom held my face and examined me from left to right, asking my dad where she had seen me dressed like this.

My mom slapped her forehead and said, “Ah, it’s just like when we went to that rundown little village in the Philippines last year, and the tour guide took us into a small temple. The Buddha statue in that temple hadn’t been renovated in hundreds of years, and we happened to arrive when they were painting it bright red and green. The temple was filled with half-old, half-new unfinished products. Xiaomeng looks just like that startling statue we saw back then.”

I sighed and put down my eyebrow pencil, about to explain to them that this was a trendy makeup style with profound meaning behind it when there was a knock on the door.

I thought it was a delivery and got up to open the door. Standing outside was Fang Congxin, someone I hadn’t seen for several days.

What was he doing here?

Seeing my look, Fang Congxin instinctively took a step back. “Dressed like the King of Poker, where are you planning to scare someone?”

Ugh!

As soon as my mom heard Fang Congxin’s voice, she came alive like a withered tree meeting spring, her face beaming with enthusiasm as she came out and took his hand, welcoming him in. “Congxin is here! Oh, look at you, all sweaty. Hurry up and get a clean towel.” Once she finished instructing me, she asked Fang Congxin, “Where did you come from, carrying such a big bag?”

“The airport, Auntie. The taxi couldn’t get through this area, so I had to walk a bit.”

Seeing the heat rising from his head, I exercised a little sympathy and went to find a towel in the room.

I rummaged through the room for a long time. “Mom! Where are the new towels?” My mom had been here for a few days, and all my stuff had been rearranged.“It’s right in the drawer where you keep your underwear,” my mom shouted as the mother of remote communication.

“……”

“I’ll just wash my face in the bathroom and let it air dry, Auntie.”

“Oh, oh, let me get you a glass of water. Old Lin, hurry up and turn on the air conditioning.”