DCTMOAS Chapter 24

After two days and nights of intense competition, the sports meet and cultural celebration finally came to a successful close.

No matter the event, Class 7 of Grade 11 had performed remarkably well. After the points and voting results were tallied, Yu Siting’s office desk gained another pile of trophies and certificates with nowhere to place them.

And then, school life returned to normal.

Having gotten used to waking up early, Chu Cheng almost never arrived late anymore. On some days, she even managed to show up early enough to help out her big brother.

The morning study prep bell rang twice. In the quiet hallway, came a series of creaking sounds. Mu Yiyang hobbled into the classroom, wearing one slipper and one sneaker, dragging his injured foot.

“Yo, my man Mu is here. Thought you wouldn’t be able to get out of bed.” His deskmate saw the returning “wounded soldier” and greeted him in his own unique way while hastily clearing the mess on the desk. “Hold on, I’ll make space for you.”

Yu Siting, standing at the podium, closed his book and stepped down with long strides. Showing concern for his student, he asked, “How’s your foot?”

Mu Yiyang took off his backpack and looked down at his tightly wrapped ankle. “It’s alright. A strained tendon, no broken bones. Just needs time to heal.”

“Good.” Yu Siting’s gaze swept across the back row. Then, seemingly casually, he pulled out the aisle seat. “Since your leg’s not doing well, don’t bother walking to the inside. Sit here.”

This seat originally belonged to Zhang Xi.

Her deskmate, the class rep Xu Wanwan, was currently sitting quietly, copying English vocabulary. Her fair and beautiful face was full of concentration, completely undisturbed by what was going on around her.

“Alright.” Mu Yiyang didn’t object and limped two steps toward the chair.

Yu Siting watched him sit down, then said in a low voice, “Even after your leg heals, no need to switch back. The classmates in the back are shorter—easy for you to block their view of the board.”

“Huh?” Li Sheng, sitting in the second-to-last row, was suddenly brought up. He looked confused. “I think… it’s okay though.”

Yu Siting merely glanced at him and said nothing, returning to the blackboard to continue assigning the morning quiz.

With tasks at hand, the students gradually settled down and focused. The classroom was soon filled only with the sound of pages turning and pens scratching on paper.

Self-study time passed slowly.

When the break bell rang, Teacher Yu at the back of the classroom continued reading his book without lifting his head and said, “No need to hand it in. Exchange papers with your deskmates for peer marking. We’ll go over it in class.”

His words felt like a kind of pardon, causing a wave of silent relief among the students who had racked their brains but still couldn’t figure out the answers.

Mu Yiyang’s math grades had always been among the best in the class. These slightly tricky advanced questions posed little challenge for him.

“Here it is,” he said confidently, tearing off a sheet of paper and casually writing the character “Mu” on it before placing it at the corner of the desk.

Xu Wanwan responded with an “Mm” but kept her eyes on her notebook.

Because of his injured leg, Mu Yiyang couldn’t run off and mess around like he usually did during breaks. As he looked around in boredom, he noticed that his new deskmate seemed to be frowning at the morning quiz—something rare for her.

Taking the opportunity, he glanced at her paper and remarked, “That’s clearly wrong.”

“What’s the problem?” Xu Wanwan finally turned her gentle eyes toward him, a hint of humility in her tone as she sought his input.

Mu Yiyang grabbed a pen and leaned in closer. “Look, here…”

In Yu Siting’s class, collaborative discussion was always encouraged as a learning method. So during break times, small groups of students gathering to help each other was a common sight.

Amid the rising and falling voices of discussion, Chu Cheng looked up from the teacher’s desk, gently rotating his stiff shoulders after grading papers.

In that moment, he suddenly noticed a girl he didn’t recognize standing near the back door, staring intently into the classroom.

Their eyes met—teacher and student. Before Chu Cheng could react, the girl panicked, turned around, and disappeared from view.

Huh? Was I that scary?

Chu Cheng doubted himself for a moment. When he looked again, she was already gone. He assumed she was just a student from another class looking for someone and didn’t think much of it.

The first class on Monday was supposed to be Chinese. The students had long prepared their textbooks and notebooks, but the teacher still hadn’t shown up.

“Mr. Chu, time to get to work!”

“If you’re not enthusiastic about teaching, maybe your ideology’s a little shaky~”

“You only get 45 joyful minutes a day with us, and you’re not going to seize the chance?”

Faced with a gentle and charismatic teacher, the students naturally loved to joke around. They all turned to tease him.

Chu Cheng couldn’t help but smile at the chatter from these talkative kids and joked, “Stop shouting, I’ve been dismissed.”

But the students didn’t take him seriously at all: “Impossible~ You’ll be teaching for decades. Who knows, even after retirement, the school might bring you back! Young man, don’t have such unrealistic dreams.”

As everyone continued to chatter and joke, the final bell before class rang—and suddenly, a new face appeared in Class 7’s classroom.

The newcomer was a young male teacher, tall and slender, with fair skin and wearing black-rimmed glasses. He looked reserved and sincere.

This was Lin Qi, the new assistant homeroom teacher of Class 11 (Grade 2) Section 5, and a recent graduate. He had previously met Chu Cheng while coordinating the collaborative stage performance for the cultural evening.

He looked up at the class schedule written on the blackboard and uncertainly asked from the back, “Is this my class?”

Chu Cheng nodded kindly. “Yes, Mr. Lin.”

What’s going on?

“I’d like to see who’s got the guts to replace Chu… Wait a second, why does this teacher look kind of familiar? Isn’t he the English teacher?”
There was a brief commotion among the students, but they quickly picked up on what was happening and quieted down.

The new teacher, hearing the students’ subtle defense of their vice homeroom teacher, quickly stepped up to the podium to explain.

“Yes, I teach English. Since Ms. Shen Nan Nan and Mr. Zhou Jin are on their honeymoon leave, the school had to make some temporary course adjustments. My surname is Lin, and I’ll be substituting as your English teacher for the next week. I hope we can all get along during this short time.”

“They went on their honeymoon, didn’t they?”

“Ms. Shen said she’d give us wedding candy!”

“Welcome, Mr. Lin! Since this is our first official meeting, do you have any talents to showcase?”

Now realizing what was going on, the students quickly warmed up again. Some of the more mischievous ones weren’t about to miss the chance to tease the slightly inexperienced substitute.

“Does putting away your Chinese books and taking out your English materials require you to use your mouths?”
A cold and stern voice suddenly rang out from behind the crowd.

Yu Siting had been standing outside the classroom listening for a while. When he saw that the class still hadn’t settled down, he finally couldn’t hold back and stepped in to enforce order.

He stood by the door, casually rolling a thin teaching guide into a tube and smacking the ringleader, Lu Yan, three times before stopping. “Stand up.”

He had forgotten that he didn’t have class this period—how frustrating.

“…My bad,” Class President Lu muttered, quickly pushing his chair back under the desk and staying quiet.

The swift punishment served as a warning, and the entire classroom instantly fell silent.

The main teacher of the neighboring Class 5 was a gentle female teacher who would usually only sigh and complain a bit when annoyed. Lin, the assistant homeroom teacher, had never seen someone discipline students without even a word of warning. The smile he had just started to show froze awkwardly on his face.

He pulled himself together and resumed, “Um, students, please turn to page 40 in your workbooks. Today we’ll be working on grammar exercises.”

“……”

Thanks to the big boss supervising from the back, the order in this English class was surprisingly perfect. Even the substitute teacher found himself constrained by the heavy atmosphere and ended up teaching the lesson with a lack of confidence.

At last, the exercise-filled class came to an end.

After the first class, it was inevitable that Mr. Lin would have some necessary discussion with the homeroom teacher. After a brief exchange, Teacher Yu gave a perfunctory word of thanks and then picked up the teaching guide to prepare for his next class.

Watching Yu Siting’s back as he left, Teacher Lin let out a slight sigh of relief. He gathered his things and went back upstairs to the office with Chu Cheng, unconsciously letting his true feelings slip out.

“Although I can’t compare in terms of academic results, the so-called ‘Demon King Class’ really is hard to handle.”

“Hm?” Upon hearing that, Teacher Chu looked at him curiously.

As fellow new teachers, the two naturally felt a bit closer. Teacher Lin even spoke with a hint of sympathy in his tone: “The students are full of tricks, and the homeroom teacher doesn’t seem that easy to get along with either. I’m just a substitute, but I barely dared to speak up on the podium earlier.”

Chu Cheng gave a soft laugh at his words. “Teacher Yu is just that kind of person. His words can be a bit sharp, but he’s reasonable. Once you get to know him, it gets much better.”

After all, to anyone meeting him for the first time, the “big boss” rarely leaves a friendly impression. But after saying that, Chu Cheng suddenly noticed something a little subtle.

It seemed like not long ago, Director Yang had said the same thing to him. Chu Cheng couldn’t help but reflect — since when had he become the one who instinctively defended Teacher Yu?

“Well, I’ve definitely experienced it — what it’s like to feel that pressure from behind…” Teacher Lin sighed, clutching his teaching materials and taking slow steps. Just as he was about to say more, he suddenly caught sight of something around the corner that drew his attention.

On the opposite side of the stairs, a tall girl had just entered the utility room next to the washroom. Following closely behind her were two boys with arms around each other’s shoulders — one of them with thick bandages wrapped around his foot.

“That’s Ding Hui from our class, and the other two are from your class, right?” Lin Qi’s voice was filled with suspicion, clearly sensing something that warranted attention.

Chu Cheng followed his gaze.

He recognized the girl named Ding Hui as the one who had been lingering outside Class 7’s classroom that morning. And the boy with the awkward gait — the “injured” one — was obviously Mu Yiyang.

Those two?

Chu Cheng thought about it for a moment and quickly understood.

Even though this situation had been within both his and Teacher Yu’s expectations, it seemed to be unfolding a bit faster than they anticipated.

“Teachee Lin…” He reached out and stopped his colleague, who was about to go forward to investigate, his expression slightly complicated. “I think… I can give you a brief explanation.”

“Tell me — what’s going on between you and Xu Wanwan?”

Inside the messy storage room, Mu Yiyang was not greeted by concern for his injury from his girlfriend, but instead by a rather jealous-sounding accusation.

“Me and her?” Mu Yiyang was clearly caught off guard and a little confused, having no idea where this was coming from.

“During the break after morning self-study, I saw everything,” Ding Hui cut straight to the point, offering him a reminder.

Looking at the serious expression on his girlfriend’s face, Mu Yiyang realized she wasn’t joking.

He quickly tried to recall everything that had happened since he arrived at school today, but still felt wronged. “Nothing special… oh, I explained a function problem to her?”

That casual tone irritated Ding Hui. “Why did it have to be you explaining it to her?”

“She was sitting near me and happened to ask. You’re… upset about that?” Mu Yiyang finally realized what was bothering her, but didn’t quite agree. “Both homeroom teachers were in the room at the time — what could I possibly do?”

“How come I never knew you liked discussing academic problems so much?” Ding Hui crossed her arms, leaning against a storage rack, her attitude cold from beginning to end.

Mu Yiyang gave a helpless smile. “My foot’s practically broken, I can’t even play basketball right now. It was just something I said in passing. Instead of feeling sorry for me, you’re getting jealous over nothing. Besides, when I try to explain problems to you, you don’t even want to listen.”

“Ah, so you’re saying I’m not as smart as her, and my grades aren’t as good either, huh?” Ding Hui let out a sneer, her rhetorical tone aggressive.

Huh? I’m innocent!

Girls really have a strange way of thinking…

Mu Yiyang felt like even his ankle was aching from frustration, but he had no choice. He took a deep breath and tried to coax her patiently: “Alright, don’t be mad. The test from this morning hasn’t been collected yet. I’ll go grab it now and go over each question with you, okay?”

As he spoke, he casually tried to drag Li Sheng—who’d been watching the drama—into it.

But Ding Hui’s brows furrowed, and her voice suddenly rose, “Don’t try that trick on me. If you’ve got the time, you should use it to reflect on your own problems.”

“Ugh.” Mu Yiyang was getting annoyed too. “There are so many girls in our class. How am I supposed to avoid every single one of them? You think this tiny thing is worth fighting over? Fine, I won’t tutor anyone next time, alright?”

Ding Hui’s anger spiked even more, and her words grew sharper: “Do you really think this is just about keeping a distance? Have you already forgotten why you got suspended last semester? Mu Yiyang, I’m warning you—don’t try to have it both ways. Xu Wanwan, huh? You’ve sure got big ambitions.”

At this point, Mu Yiyang felt like he’d just been stabbed. His emotions flared up too: “Seriously? You’re bringing up old stuff now? Ever since we got together, I haven’t been in contact with any other girls, have I? I even gave you my phone, WeChat, and QQ to check. And what does this have to do with Xu Wanwan? I haven’t even added her as a friend.”

While the couple quarreled fiercely, Li Sheng—acting as the reluctant “crutch”—started to feel awkward and tried to ease the tension: “Ding Hui, you’re really overthinking this. The guys lining up to chase after the campus belle could stretch from here to No. 7 High. Xu Wanwan wouldn’t give him a second glance…”

Are you seriously helping right now?

Mu Yiyang shot him a glare, irritated: “Get lost. Don’t make it worse.”

Ding Hui sneered coldly: “What, you’re upset now that the campus belle isn’t interested in you?”

“No, it’s not that. Why don’t you believe me…” He hadn’t even finished when he got cut off.

“Mu Yiyang, suit yourself.” Ding Hui dropped that line coldly, turned around, pushed the door open, and stormed out—ending the fight on a sour note.

He hadn’t done anything wrong, yet still got mocked and scolded. Mu Yiyang was seething with frustration and turned to his friend to vent: “Seriously, what did I do? First thing in the morning and I’m getting chewed out!”

Li Sheng, still trying to play peacemaker, tried to calm him down: “Alright, alright, don’t be mad. We’re talking about Xu Wanwan—the legendary top student of No. 10 High… What girlfriend wouldn’t get jealous? Just go apologize later.”

“Come on…” Mu Yiyang clutched his chest, feeling utterly suffocated, full of grievance with nowhere to let it out. “I’ve been sticking to male virtue all morning—I didn’t even look at another girl. Why the hell does she get to judge me like that out of nowhere?”

Li Sheng muttered quietly, “Well, isn’t that because of your shady track record… Hey, where are you going? Let me help you! Don’t fall again.”

Mu Yiyang didn’t want to hear another word. He shook off his hand in frustration and limped away, grumbling, “No need. I’ll just go take advantage of my proximity and visit the school beauty, alright?”

Bang—

The door to the storage room slammed shut in anger.

The soundproofing in the teaching building was terrible. Even the two teachers in the adjacent washroom squinted from the loud slam.

Chu Cheng had just finished summarizing the situation and rubbed the tips of his ears, turning to glance at his dazed colleague with an obedient smile. “See? I told you, it’s already being handled.”

Lin Qi had just absorbed an overwhelming amount of information in the past few minutes, and was still trying to process it all.

He opened his mouth, unsure of what to say, and finally muttered, “In that case, it’s probably best I don’t get involved. I’ll just… go prepare my lessons.”

Why would I stick around for this drama? I’m out!

Chu Cheng watched as Teacher Lin walked away with clear intentions of avoiding the mess. He smiled faintly.

Great, yet another new teacher traumatized. No way big bro’s image is ever getting cleaned up now.

Lunchtime.

Senior Zhou’s leave of absence meant Chu Cheng lost his usual lunch buddy. He didn’t feel like squeezing into the cafeteria, so he ordered delivery instead.

On his way back with the food, the fifth-floor office area was already deserted. By chance, he glanced over and noticed that Yu Siting was still prepping lessons in the math office.

He walked in and gently tapped on the glass window. “Why didn’t you go eat?”

“Ordered delivery—Lu Yan went to pick it up.” Yu Siting had just finished the last problem and closed the teaching reference book.

Chu Cheng smiled. “What, you two aren’t keeping up your health regimen today?”

While clearing off his desk to make room for food, Yu Siting answered, “Didn’t I give him a couple of slaps in front of the students this morning? He got upset and said only sour fish can fix his mood. But by the time evening self-study ends, the restaurant’s already closed.”

It was rare to see Teacher Yu coaxing a child.

The helpless indulgence on Yu’s face made Chu Cheng find the whole thing amusing. He couldn’t help but tease him a bit.

“Oh really? And here I thought you were skipping lunch out of guilt for crushing a budding high school romance.”

Yu Siting looked up, a faint smile barely visible in the depths of his dark eyes. “Sounds like you’re accusing me.”

“I thought you were just joking earlier, but you really went through with it.” Remembering the scene he’d stumbled upon outside the storage room that morning, Chu Cheng couldn’t help but feel a touch of sympathy despite understanding the situation.

“You’re messing with his emotions like that—aren’t you afraid he’ll end up traumatized and ‘locking up his heart’ again like before? Those teenage crushes are fragile things, you know.”

Yu Siting opened a drawer and pulled out a physics exam paper from the monthly test. “I can understand teenage infatuation, but this kind of love-struck brain that nearly flatlines at every turn? It’s better if it doesn’t get stirred at all.”

Chu Cheng lowered his eyes to the test paper. The answers were a complete mess. Beside the name “Mu Yiyang,” there were also the letters “DH” written in pencil.

It wasn’t until that morning that Chu Cheng finally learned what those two letters stood for.

“Teacher Li specifically brought this to show me. He graded this one by hand and gave him a break. But next time, once it’s scanned and processed, anything scribbled near the name field like this will be an automatic zero.”

If Mu Yiyang didn’t get a lesson that left a lasting impression, he’d keep thinking he could dominate both the dating scene and the exam hall.

Yu Siting stared at the two heavily scribbled letters and frowned. He didn’t really need to explain everything in detail, but when it came to Chu Cheng, he didn’t want to be misunderstood.

“Mu Yiyang’s math is nearly perfect, but his English is weak, and he lacks self-discipline. Pairing him with someone like Xu Wanwan, who’s only weak in math but strong in English and excels in character, intellect, and discipline, is a normal decision any class advisor would make. As for the rest of it… all I can say is, that was intentional too.”

“There are countless temptations out there in the real world, and trust issues are everywhere. Have you ever seen a true love story fall apart just because someone sat next to the school beauty? It’s better for him to see reality sooner rather than later.”

Given Yu Siting’s way of handling things, Chu Cheng really couldn’t find fault with it.

After a brief silence, Teacher Chu let out a sigh. “Still, that kid looked so heartbroken he could barely breathe.”

“Didn’t I tell you in advance? He’ll come to you crying about it.” Yu Siting smiled at the assistant homeroom teacher, and the usual stern air around him softened, making his features appear even more refined.

Chu Cheng: “…”

He almost forgot—even he was just part of the cleanup crew.

Guess I’ve already boarded this pirate ship.

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Author’s note:

Teacher Yu, with a big-dog-style grin: “Clear division of labor—welcome aboard.”