A student's job is to study, but most students don't like studying, just as adults' job is to work, but they don't like working either.

Thomas Reed was one of the "majority," so when she heard this topic, her first reaction was to refuse.

"I don't want to listen."

Henry Clark didn't try to persuade her to study, but simply said, "Whenever you feel like listening, just let me know."

Hearing this, Thomas Reed was a bit surprised. She watched as Henry Clark turned her head and continued with her own work. Thomas Reed fiddled with the pen in her hand and suddenly felt a wave of boredom. She looked up and glanced around—this was a self-study period.

Some classmates were busy catching up on homework, some were correcting mistakes on test papers, some were secretly playing on their phones, some were huddled together whispering and giggling, and some were listening to music and playfully messing around... Some were frustrated, some were happy—everyone had their own thing to do.

But she just felt bored, with nothing she wanted to do. Beside her, Henry Clark was absorbed in her own world, as if her sense of time flowed differently from everyone else's.

Thomas Reed took out her test paper and skimmed through it. She corrected the mistakes, but only wrote down the answers—she still didn't really understand how those answers were arrived at.

Their math teacher's explanations were useless. He seemed to think that every clueless student had the same intelligence as he did, and had spent over a decade swimming through a sea of math problems just like him. He thought every problem was simple, so he rushed through them all, barely explaining anything.

That young teacher had no idea that, to help his clueless students understand, he needed to break things down step by step and feed it to them. He didn't seem to have that kind of patience either.

So those wrong problems became even more confusing to listen to, and she simply zoned out openly.

Maybe Thomas Reed was just really bored, or maybe the studious atmosphere beside her rubbed off on her, but she actually started to wrestle with those problems—flipping through her textbook and extra practice books, trying to figure out how to solve them.

But the solutions to math problems don't bend to a student's willpower; stubbornness only leads to frustration. Thomas Reed's desire to study flared up for less than half a class before it fizzled out.

The eraser was by her hand. She flicked it with her finger, and the soft eraser bounced over to Henry Clark's side. Henry Clark picked it up and looked at her with those clear, bright eyes, asking again, "Want to listen to the explanation?"

Thomas Reed: "...Okay."

Henry Clark scooted a little closer, took out her own notebook, as if she'd been prepared all along. "Then let's start with this problem."

Her voice was low but clear. The problems that seemed so difficult to Thomas Reed were broken down by her, instantly becoming organized and easy to follow. That feeling, as if a fog in front of her eyes was being lifted, and the sense of arriving at the answer through step-by-step reasoning and verification, was actually pretty nice.

Thomas Reed wrote down the answer, then turned to her deskmate and said, "If you were a teacher, you'd definitely be a good one."

She was much more thorough than their math teacher. Anything Thomas Reed didn't understand, Henry Clark could unravel for her.

"These problems—I could never solve them before, but after you explained them, they suddenly seem so easy..." Thomas Reed said.

Henry Clark flipped her test paper over. "Maybe it's like playing a game. Everything we've learned before is like a fragment, and now we need to keep taking out those fragments and putting them together to form different patterns."

Thomas Reed: "If that's the case, then I must have dropped my fragments along the way, so I can't piece them together anymore."

Henry Clark: "It's okay, just pick them up again."

Suddenly, Thomas Reed tapped her pen against Henry Clark's pen, a little discouraged. "Easier said than done!"

Henry Clark let her tap, then pointed to another problem. "Then let's pick up this piece first."

She pointed to the last big bonus question.

Thomas Reed took one look and refused, "This one's too hard."

Faced with her refusal, Henry Clark didn't even blink. Her hand was already on her notebook. "It's not hard, it's just a little tricky."

Thomas Reed resigned herself to listening, ready to not understand a thing. "You make it sound like it's a person."

But in the end, she understood—it was amazing. Henry Clark really was amazing.

Halfway through the explanation, Thomas Reed caught a glimpse of Emily Wright in front of them, leaning back against their desk, tilting her head, and listening intently as if she was also following Henry Clark's explanation.

Thomas Reed pressed a finger on Henry Clark's pen cap to make her pause, then deliberately cleared her throat. "Which little bunny has perked up her ears to listen in on someone else's conversation?"

The chair scraped as Emily Wright quickly leaned forward over her desk, pretending to be hard at work, her ears turning red with embarrassment.

Thomas Reed gave a little hum, propped her chin on one hand, and raised her eyebrows at Henry Clark, meaning, "Don't let her listen."

Henry Clark smiled and signaled for her to keep following the explanation.

For the rest of the self-study period, Henry Clark kept explaining problems to her—not just the ones she got wrong, but also the ones Thomas Reed got right. After going through all of them, Thomas Reed flipped through the test paper again and suddenly realized that if she did it over, she could definitely get a perfect score—not the kind of perfect score from memorizing answers, but one where she could solve every problem correctly on her own.