Chapter 51

In the afternoon, the air conditioner was blowing strong, and the white lace curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows fluttered in the air conditioning wind.

In the study, there was a huge square table. In the middle of the square table was a vase, not a pickled vegetable jar washed by Little Seven, but a proper vase, a rather European style one, milky white, with a bouquet of flowers with red berries inserted in the middle.

At first, Little Seven thought the flowers were fake, but later found there were fallen leaves on the table, so she knew they were real flowers.

Liang Lady seemed to have quite good taste in her life, and the little details at home were very delicate.

Like this flower arrangement. Little Seven would make do with a pickled vegetable jar and insert branches, probably influenced by this.

At Little Seven's age, seventeen, she was still very much influenced by her environment, and had a good memory. Sometimes when she saw something, she would unconsciously remember it.

The flowers didn't have much fragrance, they wouldn't affect people.

Surrounding the bouquet, seven female students sat around the huge square table.

Plus Little Seven, there were eight people total.

Nanny Sister Wang responsibly served tea, fruit and pastries, placing them in the middle.

It didn't look like tutoring, it was more like an afternoon tea gathering.

At first, Little Seven also felt a bit awkward. This group of children were probably twelve or thirteen, four or five years younger than her, but they all looked quite mature, dressed decently, and should come from well-off families.

One girl in particular, who sat next to Liang Jiajia, was clearly also liked by Liang Jiajia very much. She was exceptionally beautiful, Little Seven felt amazed just looking at her the first time.

Her skin was especially fair. Little Seven also had fair skin, but compared to her, she still felt she must be darker by two shades. The girl's skin was fair in that soft and lustrous way, it even had that transparent sense where you could almost see the blood vessels underneath.

And her eyes were so big and bright. Her hair was neatly trimmed to her shoulders. She wore a white butterfly hair clip on her head, on others it might seem redundant but it looked just right on her.

When she smiled, her teeth were exceptionally straight, as if her parents had paid special attention to changing her teeth since she was little, pulling them out as soon as they grew in and replacing them straight away, so her teeth were like a TV commercial, even straighter than Little Seven's, who had the special skill of orthodontics.

Little Seven's teeth were also quite neat, but there were still little fangs. She had simply corrected irregularities, without actually changing out her teeth, so there were still little differences in sizes.

Whereas this girl's teeth seemed to be perfectly identical in size.

Wearing a white dress, her calves also looked especially attractive, with little leather shoes.

In summary, she was the kind of girl who, when you look up in a group, would immediately catch your attention for being particularly good looking.

Her name also sounded elegant, Guan Jingzhi. Just listening you'd know she came from a distinguished family.

She seemed slightly more mature than Liang Jiajia. Liang Jiajia was obviously still innocent, but Guan Jingzhi already gave off a very steady presence, as if in the way she interacted with people, even her gaze, Little Seven felt that she herself might be more rash in comparison.

To feel inferior to a twelve year old girl like this was really shameful.

Fortunately Little Seven quickly adjusted her mental state. She was here to teach English, nothing else.

She also didn't know how Jiajia had gathered so many classmates, but decided to stick to her own pace.

First she handed out a little test to gauge and get a rough idea of the students' levels, so she could teach them accordingly.

The test questions were prepared by her when she was planning the lessons, covering foundational knowledge, some more in-depth knowledge, and some more peripheral things.

There was also a listening comprehension section which she would read out loud in English.

She still had two days left of her language sense buff. Actually that meant it was like the last day for these kids, because the next class was scheduled for Thursday.

But during this time, Little Seven hadn't been idle. She read English out loud every day, wrote English compositions every day, listened to the English radio station on Ximalaya, and felt her sense for the language was improving really fast.

She guessed that without the language sense buff, she might be lacking some of that unique lilt and inflection of English. But it probably wouldn't be too far off.

As she read out the listening comprehension, the little ones quieted down quite a bit.

Hearing crisp, melodious English coming out of a young teacher's mouth, was also something that inspired longing.

These students had all come after seeing Jiajia's TikTok videos and showing them to their parents. Jiajia came from a well-off family, one of the best in her class. Nowadays parents tended to be more practical. Hearing it was an English tutor specially arranged by Jiajia's mom, and after seeing the TikTok videos, they agreed this teacher seemed pretty good. Much better than what they could find themselves. So they were willing to let their kids come over. Plus Jiajia's closest friends were all girls. Although they were quite mature being in 8th grade, they still didn't easily mix with boys.

The seven girls came from varying backgrounds but they were all well-off.

Among them, Guan Jingzhi's parents were civil servants. Her mom worked in the Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department and her dad was a leader in the Military Region. She was doted on by everyone. Originally she didn't want to come but Jiajia kept showing off in their group chat, annoying her, so she came out of boredom.

She didn't expect to be pleasantly surprised. This teacher gave off a truly impressive presence.

Because of her family background, Guan Jingzhi interacted with many people, making her quite mature herself. She rarely thought highly of others. Yes, it was rare for her to find someone impressive.

But that's the feeling she got from the young teacher in front of her, very easygoing.

The other students all had their own thoughts, but at the start of the lesson they were more well-behaved than Jiajia had been initially, probably because they were at someone else's house so had Jiajia to compare to.

After the simple diagnostic test, Little Seven let them take a break while she graded the papers on the spot.

With the pace she had been learning recently, grading seven papers she had written herself was of course easy.

The results - three students, Jiajia included, belonged to the group who hadn't studied English well, with weaker foundations.

Another three had slightly better foundations, but were a little weaker in grammar and listening.

As for Guan Jingzhi, who looked the prettiest, Little Seven was quite surprised. Her English was very good. She had gotten all the foundational knowledge questions right. She had also mostly answered correctly for the more advanced reading comprehension. Just some more peripheral knowledge she was slightly weaker at. But that peripheral knowledge was what Little Seven had only recently started persisting in reading original English materials at the library for, so she felt if it was her from before, she wouldn't have gotten those right either.

So Little Seven felt that Guan Jingzhi didn't need to take these classes at all. Her English was very good, very solid, far surpassing normal 8th graders.

After grading, organizing took just ten minutes.

Little Seven called them back in to go over the test papers. She had been a student herself, so she understood especially well that sometimes when teachers lectured extensively, students might not necessarily understand or have the patience to listen attentively. It was better to focus specifically on going over questions, and only talk about other things after. This was from her own experience. So when she taught these students, she also took this approach, explaining things as simply and clearly as possible without rambling on just to show off her own knowledge.

From time to time she would pay attention to Guan Jingzhi. Although Guan Jingzhi had gotten most of them right, she still listened very attentively and didn't show impatience.

Little Seven thought to herself, among three people there must be someone worthy to learn from. This saying really applied to life. At this moment, looking at this twelve year old girl, she even felt a little admiration - if it had been herself who had gotten everything correct, she probably wouldn't have the patience to keep listening like that.

Because of this point, Little Seven also reined in her somewhat reckless and arrogant state of mind lately.