Supper Baby

018 We Slackers Must Have Self-Respect

"Any gift is a token of appreciation." Unfazed by her words, Tan Mo simply unscrewed the bottle and let her smell it. "The scent is actually quite nice."

Tan Qi fanned the air in front of her nose, frowning.

"Get that away from me. What kind of cheap junk is that?"

Ignoring her, Tan Mo returned to her room and pushed open the door.

What greeted her eyes was an even more despair-inducing sight.

"You're back, Mo Mo?" Chong Huan placed the small stack of practice sheets he was holding on the table and waved her over.

She'd only been downstairs for a short while, and another pile of books had appeared on her desk.

Slacker Mo wept internally.

Chong Huan continued amiably, "I found a few sets of practice exams for you. Just give them a try."

Tan Mo flipped open one of the test papers in despair. Her brain short-circuited.

This amount of questions wasn't exactly something you could just "give a try," was it?

"Keep it up, that acceptance letter from Cheng Ye is waiting for you."

Chong Huan gave her an encouraging fist pump, then quickly dragged Tan Rou away.

Leaving Tan Mo alone to chew on their couple's affection (metaphorically), tears in her eyes, staring at the notes and textbooks.

To prepare for the little quiz tomorrow morning, Tan Mo decided to start with the subject she found least intimidating: math.

"Functions..."

She finished going through her notes, then slumped back in her chair and closed the book. That's when she realized her mind had a crystal-clear memory of every single page's content.

Noticing this change, she excitedly dug out her history notes.

Event after event in the history book was vividly present in her mind.

Tan Mo's heart soared with joy.

Could she be a little genius with a photographic memory?

Lunchtime.

Having read all morning, Tan Mo's mind was still full of classical prose, functions, and equations even at the dining table. Looking at the curved shape of the prawns on her plate, her mind jumped straight to quadratic functions.

Xu Piao saw her distracted state and understood perfectly well.

In the past, Tan Mo's grades had at best bounced between passing and above-average in a small county middle school. Now, aiming for a key high school in Jiangqi City was simply too much for her.

Every year, there were plenty of people like her who overestimated themselves, took a wild shot at it, and then got weeded out.

"Old Mr. Tan, seeing Mo Mo study so diligently really makes my heart ache," she said, maintaining her mask of maternal kindness. "Why don't we donate a building to Cheng Ye? Pull some strings?"

Tan Qi chuckled to herself. That was a veiled dig at Tan Mo's poor academic performance, wasn't it?

She herself was a top student in her sophomore year at Cheng Ye, ranked near the top, and she also had a grade-nine piano certificate as a specialty. This Tan Mo, who'd just been found and brought back, probably couldn't hold a candle to her at school.

Tan Mo had been thinking about finding some example problems to look at in the afternoon when she heard Xu Piao's comment.

Was she implying she thought Tan Mo couldn't get into Cheng Ye on her own merits and needed to buy her way in? It weirdly felt like being looked down upon.

"Stepmother, I don't think that's necessary," she said coldly.

"Stepmother is just worried you won't get in."

"If I don't get in, then I don't get in. It's no big deal if I end up attending an ordinary high school." Tan Mo met her gaze directly. "I'd rather give it my best shot and fail than rely on the family's money to get into a key school."

Old Mr. Tan remained silent, but a look of relieved (gratified approval) shone in his eyes.

His precious granddaughter had backbone.

If she truly didn't get in, he could always reach out to his old friend at Jiangqi No. 1 High School.

"Good! Since Mo Mo has such determination, Grandpa supports you too," he said with a laugh.

Seeing Grandpa chime in, Tan Rou also echoed, "And I'll do my best to help you too."

Tan Mo looked at the flame of determination kindled in her sister's eyes and mentally lit a candle for herself.

Hellish review sessions were about to begin.

Only Chong Huan, silently shoveling food in a corner, felt his heart bleed.

He'd been hoping to use the summer break to whisk his future wife away on adventures, far from the prying eyes of Jiangqi. Now, it looked like his plans were dashed.

"Don't worry, Mo Mo. Your brother Chong will do his best to help you too."

He decided to join the ranks of those torturing the slacker student.

Tan Mo saw the blazing fire in his eyes and felt her heart turn to ice.

She had a premonition: fifteen days of being ravaged by nine school subjects were about to begin.

---

Meanwhile, after delivering his gift, Yuan Xing didn't head back to his studio. Instead, he veered off towards Jiangqi City's ancient street.

He parked his motorcycle outside the street, navigated through it, and arrived before a mid-century Western-style building opposite the street's exit. He pulled out an ID card to show the security guard, then walked straight in.

This was the base of the Great Xia Institute for the Study of Anomalous Events, whose official front-of-house business was a themed café.

The moment he entered, he spotted Huaisheng waiting for him at a seat by the counter, sipping on a bottle of X-zai milk.

"Boss, you know your elder sister spent the whole breakfast complaining about you to me? My ears are practically calloused," Huaisheng whined the moment she saw him, her face crumpled in misery. "She even threatened to spill all your embarrassing childhood stories—like you wetting the bed at three and crying all night, up to you getting pushed down by a girl at seven and crying for three hours straight."

Tough luck for you, having to sit through the whole spiel.

Yuan Xing patted her shoulder in a gesture of consolation.

"But seriously, Boss, did you get to see Mo Mo?" Huaisheng immediately got down to business.

She wasn't slaving away just so the boss could free up time to chase a girlfriend; of course, she needed an update.

"I saw her, but she's busy with her entrance exams these days. No time," Yuan Xing replied.

"Uh... how about you go tutor her?"

It wasn't a bad suggestion. Two people leaning close under a desk lamp, elbows almost touching, explaining problems warmly and sweetly—romantic, terribly romantic.

Then this imagined scene was brutally shattered by Yuan Xing. "Remember those tutoring sessions I gave you?"

Huaisheng wisely shut her mouth.

She was a barely literate rube, but kind-hearted Boss Fang hadn't abandoned her. Like a demon possessed, he'd pushed her from elementary to college-level material in just three months, making her wish she were dead.

Scarier than her own perpetually stern-faced mother.

He had a point. Little sister Tan Mo was so special to him; how could he subject her to such brutally efficient teaching methods?

"Time's about right. Get ready for the meeting," Yuan Xing said, checking his watch.

11:00 AM. Private Room.

"We can now confirm that this 'Righteous Judge' has connections to the perpetrators of three homicides. We traced the IP—the messages with pre-crime announcements and scene photos were sent using foreign servers, likely faked."

Yuan Xing put photos from the three murder scenes up on the PPT and began his briefing.

"The crime scenes were all cleaned up. There's insufficient conclusive evidence," Zhou Aohai added from his seat, holding the forensic reports for the three cases. "The doors weren't forced. None of the three victims contacted anyone externally before death. And surveillance around all three scenes shows no suspicious persons entering or exiting."

"Invisible Man — we can call him that, right?" Huaisheng scratched her head.

Logical deduction wasn't her forte, but coming up with names? She excelled at that.

Yuan Xing offered a hint, "But don't you think the dates of these three crime scenes are... rather peculiar?"