An Ning, seated on the bench, turned her head. Beside her stood a girl with two braided pigtails and a shy, sweet smile on her face.
"No one is sitting here. You can sit."
An Ning shook her head. Yin Xuemei smiled shyly and sat down on the bench, keeping the greatest possible distance from An Ning.
An Ning paid it no mind and simply sat there attentively. Of everyone in the courtyard, her attitude toward learning was undoubtedly the best.
One by one, people trickled into the courtyard, finding familiar faces and settling down beside them.
Before long, a young man wearing a white shirt and black trousers, a fountain pen clipped to his breast pocket, stepped up to the front. He confidently tossed his head, shaking his slicked-back, middle-parted hair.
"I am Yang Jianguo. Tonight, I will teach everyone the multiplication table."
Yang Jianguo was extremely confident—or rather, he saw himself as a cut above the rest. Although he was a sent-down youth, policies had recently relaxed, and he was convinced he would be leaving this place soon. This only inflated his sense of superiority.
He recited the table from memory first. When he finished, he tilted his head back, expecting applause. But below, there was only silence. Forget applause—some people had already started to leave.
'A bunch of ignorant peasants. Utterly unteachable.'
With an impatient look, Yang Jianguo turned and wrote the multiplication table from one to three on the blackboard.
"We'll start with this for today. You wouldn't be able to remember any more than that."
The moment Yang Jianguo finished speaking, An Ning raised her hand high in the air.
Yang Jianguo, at the front, spotted An Ning immediately. He felt a surge of pride, quickly followed by disdain. 'Figures. It must be because I'm so handsome,' he thought. 'But a mere village girl? She's not worthy of me.'
"You there. What are you raising your hand for?"
An Ning stood up, and all eyes turned to her.
"Are we learning anything else today besides this? If not, I'm going home."
'Going home?'
Yang Jianguo snorted in contempt. 'So this village girl knows how to play games to grab my attention.'
"It's your freedom to go wherever you want. Why are you asking me?"
Yang Jianguo tossed his hair again, striking a nonchalant pose.
An Ning found him very odd. 'If his hair is getting in his eyes, why doesn't he just cut it?'
"You're the teacher. Who else am I supposed to ask?"
An Ning then asked again, a hint of disappointment in her voice, "When will we learn how to read? Are you still going to be the teacher?"
'She didn't like this Yang Jianguo and had no desire to learn reading from him. If push came to shove, she could just wait for her younger brother to come home on break.'
"Learned it already? HAHAHAHA, you're killing me." Yang Jianguo sneered at An Ning. 'Pretty, but dumb as a rock. A village girl, just as I thought.'
An Ning clearly sensed Yang Jianguo's contempt, as well as the sizing-up looks from the crowd. It seemed they were doubting her.
'But why?' she wondered. 'As long as it's not about my identity or farming, I always tell the truth.'
'And besides... is this supposed to be difficult?'
"One times one is one, one times two is two… three times seven is twenty-one… seven times seven is forty-nine… nine times nine is eighty-one."
An Ning recited the entire table smoothly and flawlessly in a clear, loud voice. After she finished, she stared at Yang Jianguo and said, "The first time you recited it, you said six times nine is fifty-five. It's fifty-four."
With that, An Ning turned and walked away.
"Stop right there!"
Yang Jianguo shouted from the front. An Ning paused and turned. "It's okay to make a mistake. Just get it right next time. You don't need to compare yourself to me."
This unique brand of comfort, courtesy of An Ning, only made Yang Jianguo more furious. He pointed a finger at her and yelled, "You just memorized the table ahead of time! What are you trying to prove, showing off like this?"
An Ning looked at herself in confusion, checking herself over before looking up at Yang Jianguo. "I'm not trying to prove anything. And I didn't memorize it beforehand. I learned it just by hearing it once."
"You're lying! That's a joke! I've never met anyone who could memorize the multiplication table after hearing it just once."
Yang Jianguo didn't believe her, and neither did the onlookers. Most people were inclined to believe Yang Jianguo; they just couldn't figure out An Ning's motives.
An Ning looked at Yang Jianguo with a touch of pity. "It's not your fault you've seen so little of the world."
HISS—
"What's Little Mute An trying to do?"
"No idea. What's this all about?"
"Second An, what's your little sister trying to do?"
"She hasn't taken a fancy to that Yang Jianguo fellow, has she? Let me tell you, that guy is bad news."
The person next to An Guoming whispered this to him.
An Guoming nodded. 'As if I didn't know that.' But as he looked at An Ning, he didn't get the impression that his little sister was interested in Yang Jianguo at all.
Yang Jianguo's mockery was now completely undisguised. The other sent-down youths at the front also looked on with contempt. 'Such shameless boasting from a mere village girl.'
"Maybe you should think before you brag, huh? Learned it after hearing it once? I bet you don't even know how to write your own name."
"Jianguo, don't be so harsh. Perhaps she really is a heaven-sent prodigy."
"You never know, maybe a genius can pop up in a small village."
The sent-down youths chimed in one after another, their words dripping with sarcasm—praise on the surface, but ridicule underneath. Nearly everyone present understood their true meaning. Everyone, that is, except An Ning.
She nodded in complete agreement and said earnestly, "Good. I'm glad you realize it."
She turned to leave again, but Yang Jianguo and the other sent-down youths weren't about to let her go.
"Since you're such a genius, why don't you stay and teach us something?"
"Perfect. I have a math problem here I'd like to ask our genius about."
An Ning turned back reluctantly, walked through the crowd, and came to a stop in front of the man holding the textbook.
"Just one question. I need to get a good rest for farming tomorrow."
'Farming is the most important thing. How can I let something as trivial as math get in the way?'
The sent-down youth holding the book was preparing for the college entrance exams. He despised braggarts, so he pointed to an exceptionally difficult problem in his workbook and said, "This one right here."
An Ning followed his finger. It was a calculation problem. Fortunately, there were no Chinese characters in it, so she knew the answer instantly.
"The answer is negative four."
The man with the book sneered. "You don't really think you can get away with just blurting out a random number, do you?"
"Okay, okay, the fact that she even knows what a negative number is, is impressive enough."
"That's right, don't fight."
Someone stepped up to play peacemaker, but An Ning didn't even understand what the commotion was about. 'I gave the answer,' she thought. 'It can't be wrong.'
"The answer is negative four. Any other answer would be incorrect."
Having said her piece, An Ning turned around once more, this time calling out to An Guoming on the other side of the yard.
"Second Brother, I'm going home first!"
"Alright, alright! You go on ahead."
An Ning left on her own. She went home to rest, wanting to save up her energy for a full day of work tomorrow.
After the commotion An Ning had caused, the literacy class broke up. Not many people had been there to seriously study in the first place; most had come to gossip and enjoy the spectacle.
"Zhou Qiangguo, you leaving?"
Someone called out to Zhou Qiangguo, who was holding the workbook. When he didn't move, the person walked over. "What are you doing? If we head back now, we can still get some studying in."
"She... she got it right."