Chapter 8
After the brief encounter, Chen Zhiyi and Lin Ting had formed a preliminary impression of each other: one was an arrogant and rude young nobleman, and the other was a ruthless person who was two-faced.
In short, none of them left a good impression.
Uncle Chen led them to the study on the right. Lin Ting quickly looked around after entering. Although it was a study, it was huge, almost the size of a small two-bedroom apartment. There were two bookshelves on one side of the study. There weren't many classic literary works, but there were quite a few related to musical instruments and performances, and even more vinyl records and film reels, many of which were rare and couldn't be found online. On the other wall hung guitars, violins, and ukuleles.
It seems he has loved the arts since he was a child. If they didn't want their child to go down this path, they should have intervened long ago. It seems they really don't understand him.
A large desk was set up with a desk lamp and a notebook, but there were no other study tools. The male homeowner lay down on the tatami mat next to the desk as soon as he entered the room.
Putting a tatami mat in the study—is it so he can lie down to study, or learn to lie down?
Uncle Chen moved a chair over and placed it next to the desk. "Teacher Lin, please sit down."
Lin Ting nodded his thanks and sat down.
Uncle Chen walked to the tatami bed and said, "Young Master, I'll leave now. You should study hard with Teacher Lin. If you need anything, just call me."
Chen Zhiyi closed his eyes, gave an OK sign with his hand, and looked completely unconcerned.
Before leaving the room, Uncle Chen greeted Lin Ting again, asking her to be more understanding.
Lin Ting smiled without saying a word. Tolerance? Isn't arrogance and rebelliousness just spoiled by parents? They're all adults now, they should know to be responsible for their words and actions.
Hearing the door close, Chen Zhiyi immediately sat up in bed, looked at Lin Ting, and asked, "How much does my mom pay you per hour?"
"What's wrong?"
I'll give you double.
"Then what?"
"Then from now on, whenever you step into this study, we'll act like we don't know each other, and we won't disturb each other. You do your thing, and I'll do mine."
Lin Ting answered readily, "No problem." Then she took out her phone, found Chen's mother's number in her call log, and said, "I'll call her. You can tell your mother to ask for it when she pays my salary each month."
"Tch!" Chen Zhiyi waved his hand dismissively, rolled his eyes, and said, "This is boring!"
So he lay back on the tatami mat, leaning against the backrest, and casually picked up a fashion magazine from the bedside table to flip through, showing no intention of studying whatsoever.
Lin Ting remained seated, watching him. She had encountered several children who didn't like to study before, and her method for dealing with them was to avoid actively following them. Their ignoring you was a ploy to get you to submit, to beg them to study hard so they could keep their jobs, gain parental approval, and receive their wages. But Lin Ting wasn't willing to do that. First, studying was her own responsibility; there was no point in begging someone else to study if she didn't want to. Besides, it was just a part-time job, optional; if this one didn't work out, she could always find another. After all, no one could take away her knowledge base. And there was no need to lower herself, beg, or coax someone for a paycheck; she didn't like that.
By remaining still and waiting for the right moment to act, one side will eventually give in, and the one who gives in first will be the loser. Therefore, she must persevere and seize the initiative.
Chen Zhiyi flipped through magazines for a while, then picked up his phone to play games, and then lay down and fell asleep.
Lin Ting knew he was faking sleep, but didn't say anything and continued to sit quietly to the side.
She was quiet, which made him feel that the space was divided into two.
What a strange person. Chen Zhiyi peeked through the gaps in his fingers that were covering his eyes. Almost half an hour had passed, and she was still sitting upright, her hands crossed on her lap, her back ramrod straight—her posture was so proper it didn't seem like that of a modern person. Anyone else would probably have been sitting crookedly by now, and then picked up their phone to play. But she didn't. She didn't change at all, and didn't say a word.
If it were one of the previous tutors, they would have already been giving me a political lecture and trying every possible way to persuade me to study.
But she showed no intention of persuading him, which was so strange that Chen Zhiyi couldn't ignore her presence at all.
He straightened up again and looked at her with a contemptuous smile. "You make your money so easily. You don't have to do anything. You can just sit there."
Lin Ting smiled slightly, clearly unprovoked, and spoke slowly and deliberately, "You don't need to laugh at me. I have no right or reason to. Today is my first day here. If you're generous, I can treat it as a trial lecture without charging you, so I haven't earned a single penny from your family. Also, as for learning, the initiative is in your hands. If you don't want to learn, even if you're a top student from Tsinghua or Peking University, there's nothing I can do. Besides, I don't like asking people for things, and I'm even less willing to force them."
Chen Zhiyi was speechless after being rebuked; she saw right through him.
Just then, Lin Ting's phone alarm rang, and she knew that an hour had passed, so she stood up to leave.
Chen Zhiyi quickly stood up. "What do you mean? Today's class is over. My mom told me it's two hours a day."
"Given your condition today, is there any difference between one hour and two hours? One hour is better, to avoid gossip that I'm wasting time trying to make more money off people." After saying that, Lin Ting walked to the door and opened it.
Before leaving, he looked at Chen Zhiyi again and said, "I told you I don't like to force people to do things they don't want to do. If you continue to be in the same state as today, I will remain the same. If you don't like it and don't want to waste your family's assets, you can complain to your mother and fire me. Before you fire me, I will come here at three o'clock every afternoon."
“I know I’m not your first tutor. I can probably guess why the previous ones quit. But what I want to say is that I was hired by your mother. Of course, if she wants to fire me, she has to tell me herself. So no matter how you ignore me or look down on me, I can ignore it. You can’t provoke me.”
Chen Zhiyi couldn't get a word in edgewise during the long conversation. Watching Lin Ting's departing figure, he chuckled. This was the first time he had ever met someone with such a strong inner core and such composure.
For two consecutive days, the situation was the same as the first day. Chen Zhiyi did everything except for things related to studying, while Lin Ting remained calmly sitting to the side, arriving and leaving on time, an hour was an hour, not staying a second longer.
Senior student Zhao Ting called to inquire about the situation, and Lin Ting told her the truth.
Zhao Ting was getting anxious for her. With such a high hourly wage and such a good opportunity to make money, she had to pretend to coax him into learning from her!
Lin Ting laughed. There's a right and wrong way to coax someone. Some people are easy to coax, while others are just a waste of breath. Chen Zhiyi clearly belongs to the latter category.
In fact, she knew that Chen Zhiyi's attitude was not directed at her; it would be the same for anyone else. He categorized them all as "spies planted by their parents," which stemmed from psychological rejection and distrust.
Children from wealthy families don't care about academic performance; they are born at a level that ordinary people could never reach in several lifetimes.
Strangely enough, it had been three days and Lin Ting had not received a call from Chen Lan. Sometimes Chen Zhiyi would play games or musical instruments so loudly that people inside the house could hear him, but neither Uncle Chen nor Aunt Chen had come to talk to her. They had been very respectful to her for the past three days, greeting her with a smile and serving her tea, water, and fruit without fail, as if they hadn't seen or heard anything.
Just as Chen Lan said, she values the teacher's tolerance even more.
But tolerance has its limits. Lin Ting has already made a decision: if she hasn't received a dismissal call within a week, she will take the initiative to quit. Of course, she will also give Chen Zhiyi a chance. If he is willing to have a heart-to-heart talk with her, resolve the misunderstanding between them, and build mutual trust, she will continue to work there.
Lin Ting also sincerely told him, "You're overthinking it. I don't have that much free time to be your mother's eagle eye!"
She didn't charge a single penny for those seven days, treating it all as a tour fee, allowing her to experience a real-life version of the power struggles within a wealthy family—a truly authentic and emotionally resonant experience.
However, in order to maintain her reputation as a tutor built up over many years, starting from the second day, she would leave behind a complete set of past college entrance examination questions from Jinshi City. The questions were filled with problem-solving ideas and answer steps, detailed and rigorous, making them excellent review materials for senior high school students. Senior high school is all about the sea of questions, so you need to do more practice and thoroughly understand the past college entrance examination questions.
I still remember the surprised and puzzled look on Chen Zhiyi's face when she first took it out yesterday. Lin Ting glanced at him lightly and left.
Lin Ting thought to herself, "No matter what, you may not respect me, but I must respect your mother's trust."
Things started going astray from the fourth day onwards.
Lin Ting's insomnia has flared up again. She has had this problem for a long time and has been to the hospital. It is mainly caused by psychological reasons. Recently, she has been busy with her graduation project. She is strict with herself and has already rejected several design plans. When the pressure is too great, her old problem will flare up.
In the past, after taking sleeping pills for a period of time, adjusting my mindset, and supplementing it with some pre-sleep exercises, such as running or skipping rope, I would recover quickly.
The problem is that when I had trouble falling asleep last night, I found that I was out of sleeping pills. I managed to stay awake until 5 a.m. before I finally got a short nap, and my biological clock woke me up again at 7 a.m.
I didn't sleep all night, so I felt unwell, with dizziness and a headache. I felt really uncomfortable.
Lin Ting originally wanted to ask for leave, but then she thought it would only be an hour, and she could just wait it out. She also didn't want to be looked down upon by Chen Zhiyi.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, drowsiness came over her, which was the most difficult time to endure. Lin Ting sat at her desk and occasionally pressed her temples to relieve the soreness. She had some mentholatum in her bag, but she didn't use it, worried that these young masters would not be able to stand the pungent smell.
Unfortunately, Chen Zhiyi was very quiet today. He didn't play games or play any musical instruments. He just leaned against the tatami mat, listened to music with headphones on, and read a book that interested him.
As the room became quiet.
Of course, there were other sounds as well. There was the ticking of the alarm clock on the wall, the whooshing of the central air conditioning, and the rustling of pages turning. All sorts of subtle sounds intertwined, like a very effective lullaby, making Lin Ting drowsy. She soon couldn't resist and fell asleep on the table.
When Chen Zhiyi saw Lin Ting dozing off on the table, he reacted as if he had seen one of the eight wonders of the world. He immediately jumped off the tatami mat, walked quietly to the desk, and looked Lin Ting up and down. His tone was somewhat sarcastic, but his voice was very low, as if he was afraid of disturbing her. "You've already shown your true colors after only four days? You're just pretending like an old scholar who won't listen to reason."
He bent down and carefully examined Lin Ting. Her skin was unusually fair and translucent. Through her glasses, he could see that her eyes were quietly closed, and her long, narrow eyelashes, like small fans, cast a faint shadow.
"You even wear your glasses to sleep? Don't you find them uncomfortable?" Chen Zhiyi reached out to take off his glasses, but as soon as his hand touched them, Lin Ting suddenly turned her head, startling him so much that he immediately withdrew his hand. He thought she had woken up, but she had just changed her position and continued to sleep. Her cheek, which had just turned to the side, was flushed red, like a ripe peach.
"Luckily you didn't find out, otherwise you would have thought I was some kind of pervert, spying on people sleeping." However, Chen Zhiyi was indeed very curious about what she would look like without those big black-rimmed glasses. Didn't she know about contact lenses or colored contact lenses? Even he, a straight man, knew about them, let alone a female college student at the peak of her beauty. She was really an oddball.
Chen Zhiyi noticed a sketchbook lying next to her. The cover was laminated, and inside were various colorful flower and plant specimens that looked very beautiful. It must have been handmade, and there was no similar one available on the market. So, he was a little curious and carefully pulled the sketchbook out.
It's a DIY drawing book with the words "Lin Ting's Whimsical Ideas" written on the cover. It's a bit cheesy but cute.
Upon opening the book, Chen Zhiyi was even more astonished by what he found inside: hand-drawn clothing designs, both men's and women's, in various styles including sexy, casual, light luxury, and retro. Each design was like a work of art, and each drawing was marked with details, the fabrics used, and the source of inspiration. Even a layman like him could see that Lin Ting had a high level of design talent.
Remembering Chen Lan's phone call telling him that the new teacher was a top student from Tianjin University, Chen Zhiyi complained about how there were so many top students in the world, with every applicant claiming to be one, which was quite shameless. But this time, he felt he had finally met a real top student.
Chen Zhiyi turned to the last page, which was a series of pictures. The flower patterns on the clothes looked familiar, but he couldn't remember where he had seen them before.
He had just brought the picture book closer to examine it more closely when Lin Ting's phone alarm went off. He immediately put the picture book back, sat down on the edge of the tatami bed, crossed his legs, and prepared to look at Lin Ting with a scrutinizing attitude.
Lin Ting hadn't expected to actually fall asleep. When she woke up, she looked embarrassed and didn't know how to ease the awkwardness. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chen Zhiyi swinging his legs, chin slightly raised, eyebrows raised, and the corners of his mouth turned up, looking like he was watching a good show.
This was the first time she'd been caught slacking off by her employer. If word got out in the tutoring community, it would damage her reputation. Students and parents in the community all spoke highly of Teacher Lin, saying she was meticulous, responsible, and explained things thoroughly. The students she tutored all saw significant improvement in their grades, and she had a very serious work ethic. She couldn't afford to lose that "seriousness."
Especially on the first day we met, I was putting on a teacher's air, and now I've really embarrassed myself.
"Teacher Lin is getting paid quite comfortably, earning money while lying down?" Chen Zhiyi said sarcastically.
Lin Ting blushed all the way to the roots of her neck, her eyes darting away, not daring to look Chen Zhiyi in the eye.
Chen Zhiyi saw a shy expression on her face, which was completely different from her usual indifferent demeanor these past few days. She was much more interesting and cute. He grinned and continued to tease her, "Teacher Lin, how about I prepare an extra bed for you in the study starting tomorrow? Sleeping face down is bad for your cervical spine."
Lin Ting knew she couldn't avoid it, and she didn't want to explain to him; she made her attitude clear from the very first day.
So she stood up, took a step forward, the blush on her face faded, and she returned to her usual cold demeanor. Looking directly at Chen Zhiyi, she spoke calmly, "You don't need to embarrass me. I apologize for today's situation, and I promise it won't happen again. But I made my stance clear from the first day: if you feel I'm not up to the task of being your tutor, please have your mother call me. I'm ready anytime." Then she took today's college entrance exam questions from her bag and placed them on the table. "Goodbye."
Chen Zhiyi watched her stride out of the study, chest puffed out, as if he had just caught her for nothing.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com