QT: Against My Will (Volume 2)

5.2 - Her Fourth Lifetime - His Intellectual & Her Genius

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"It takes a split second to recognize my love; a lifetime to weigh its worth, and a heartbeat to seize the moment."

- Lu Kai aka Xuan Mu

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° Xue Bi dismissed the shocked stares of her new students and took her seat behind the teacher's desk. "Don't worry. I just wanted to see your creativity," she said, settling into her chair.

° "As long as you can use the equations correctly in the right places, I don't care if you can remember them or not," Xue Bi continued. "I have other jobs besides spending time on grading your retakes, so try to be quiet and not to fail."

° Her eyes halted on the curious boy before her as if locking on her prey. "Concepts such as temperature and energy were only invented relatively recently, and were probably taken at school in the same way as 'Paris is the capital of France' rather than 'What the hell does this mean, and why does the universe behave in this way?'"

° She continued, "It's hard, but you really have to understand this stuff. I'm Xue Bi, and I'll be teaching Thermodynamics and Electromagnetism starting the following semester."

° Sighing in relief, the students took Xue Bi's words as permission to use their cheats. However, some didn't dare to do it openly.

° This hesitancy led to a few students failing the exam, doing the exact opposite of what Xue Bi had hoped for. Now she faced the task of creating new exam questions for the retakes, cutting into the precious time she could have spent in the laboratory.

° "Did you get lost?" Xue Bi asked the male in a black shirt. She had called out all the names, and not once had he reacted.

° "No," Lu Kai answered, "I'm a special guest."

° "Oh, sorry..." It was definite. Xue Bi decided. She stamped a 'new helper' on his forehead. "...Enjoy your stay."

° "I will," Lu Kai smiled at her. Once Xue Bi broke eye contact, he picked up the pencil and began answering the questions.

° It wasn't that he was a jerk. He didn't argue with teachers, nor did he have that endearing, slightly rebellious spirit that could get his grades docked. He wasn't condescending.

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° After completing her master's in physics, Xue Bi had set her sights on a doctoral program. Her focus was primarily on material science. The prospect of creating new materials and enhancing the properties of existing ones had been her main motivator in choosing this line of study.

° At the age of 25, Xue Bi was not just a student but also a researcher assistant and a teaching assistant. This seven-day a week, low pay work could be described as "slave labor". But what wouldn't one do for the sake of a PhD diploma, right?

° Xue Bi considered herself fortunate; she was not short on funds and didn't have to provide for her well-off family.

° Switching the focus to Lu Kai, he was just a fifteen years old boy who 'accidentally' memorized an entire textbook in his head just to inspect his older brother's arranged date.

° When would his parents finally give up? There was no way his mysophobic, asēxual, and aromāntic of a brother would get interested in a human being.

° Finishing his exam early, Lu Kai rose from his seat and handed the papers to Xue Bi.

° "You forgot your ID, and now you also forgot to write down your name? What's wrong with kids these days, taking exams of their own free will," Xue Bi mused.