Chapter 48

Jing Miao was amazing.
Except for Chinese, a subject with too much subjectivity, he could teach almost anything.
The career problem had arrived thorny, but it was solved quickly.
Not only did Jing Miao do well—these school-age children from seven to twelve, after attending his classes, developed a much stronger interest in learning.
Jing Miao also found enormous fulfillment in it.
In that one month of vacation, he excitedly told Xi Siyan every day how happy he had been and how great he was.
He pored over textbooks, prepared lesson plans seriously, and even accurately sensed these kids’ weak points and “ceilings.”
He created a full set of test questions that even teachers from the capital’s top primary schools praised.
Some questions were adapted from other prep books.
Some were his own.
Su Wan gained yet another thing to show off about.
The Xi family’s side hall and Xi Siyan’s study became Jing Miao’s workplace.
They were forced to live with his parents for a long time.
Jing Miao became famous in the Political Academy residential compound—everyone wanted to stuff their little troublemakers into the Xi home.
— The teacher is pretty and gentle, and he smells nice too. He teaches really well. If I don’t understand a problem, he’ll explain it over and over without getting annoyed. Teacher Jing is the best teacher in the world.
That was the praise a child wrote in an essay about him.
Their worries were resolved with such ease that Su Wan was even preparing to register and apply for him, to open a formal school.
She told Jing Miao to get ready and take teacher certification exams for each level.
Only Xi Siyan was deeply dissatisfied.
Every day he looked at those children—the oldest were already twelve or thirteen—clinging to Jing Miao the moment anything happened, refusing to let go, chirping “I like Teacher Jing so much” nonstop.
Xi Siyan’s teeth itched.
How were parents teaching kids these days? Every one of them sweet-tongued, good at coaxing people.
They’d grow up to be players—sea kings and sea queens, scumbags and scumbagettes!
The breaking point was a sixth-grade girl from some primary school, hugging Jing Miao and declaring she wanted to marry him when she grew up.
The second that was said, the other kids couldn’t sit still:
boys said they wanted to marry him,
girls said they wanted to marry him—
like they were fighting over an apple.
Xi Siyan completely exploded.
Like a lunatic, he stormed into Jing Miao’s “classroom” and refused harshly:
“This is my wife. This is my spouse. You can’t marry him, and you can’t marry him either! Go find your own husbands and wives! Class ends early today—go home and play games, surf the internet, kick a soccer ball! Don’t be so passionate about studying!”
And then he sent the children home…
For the first time, Su Wan and Xi Yucheng felt their excellent son had truly disgraced the Xi family’s face.
Before they could properly scold Xi Siyan, their younger son softened, cried, and cried Jing Miao back to the bedroom.
“Gege, don’t be angry,” he said on the left.
“Miaomiao loves gege the most,” he said on the right.
He coaxed and acted cute until Xi Siyan went blank, then held him and soothed him gently:
“Okay, okay. Miaomiao, don’t cry. Gege isn’t angry anymore. I love you the most too.”
Su Wan: “Is it far for Xi Siyan to commute from here to Huada every day? Can he go back and live by himself?”
Xi Yucheng: “Seconded.”
Su Wan: “Such a grown man and still this clingy with his wife—so embarrassing. How did I give birth to this thing? I get annoyed just seeing him!”
Xi Yucheng: “Couldn’t agree more. Can we have only Miaomiao as our child?”
The trial classes really did pause for now, and the school never got set up.
Half of it was because Xi Siyan went insane with jealousy.
The other half was because Jing Miao had a new idea.
He wanted to teach at a public-interest primary school for migrant workers’ children in the capital.
While Su Wan was still thinking this was all because Xi Siyan’s “episode” needed a stiletto discipline session, Jing Miao seriously explained his reasoning.
“I want to teach at that primary school.”
Xi Yucheng’s eyes lit up.
“Why, Miaomiao?”
Jing Miao explained calmly:
“I saw Dad on the news being interviewed on TV. He said there are many migrant workers in the capital. Their children are pitiful—if they study back home, they might not see their parents all year; if they come to the capital, living costs and tuition are too high, so they can’t study here.”
“So the government opened several primary schools like that. They said this year the municipal office allocated another 46.5 million.”
He was sensitive to numbers; one hearing was enough to carve it into his mind.
“But if they allocated so much money, why do they still say there’s a shortage of teachers?” Jing Miao didn’t understand. “Those children feel so pitiful. A school has so many kids but only a dozen teachers. Yet every year the capital and surrounding prefecture-level cities graduate hundreds of thousands of normal-university students…”
If it were the old Jing Miao, he would have understood.
The current Jing Miao could not.
He had little concept of desire or money.
He ate, wore, lived, and traveled with the best of everything, so he couldn’t understand why no one wanted to teach at migrant workers’ children schools.
Naturally, it was because conditions were bad.
In a metropolis overflowing with desire, schools of this charitable nature had poor conditions.
Compared to public schools, the benefits were worse.
Compared to expensive private schools, they were worse in every way.
Few young people were willing to go.
It wasn’t coldness.
It was being forced by life.
To stand firm in the capital, where the cost of living was extremely high, was not easy.
But Jing Miao said seriously that he wanted to go.
He didn’t need money.
He simply felt sorry for those children.
And more importantly, one such school was right beside Huada.
It wasn’t large. The student count wasn’t huge either.
But the teachers were limited—they had to teach all six grades, more than three hundred children total.
It seemed the kids at home could no longer satisfy Jing Miao’s overflowing tenderness.
Xi Yucheng was nearly moved to tears.
“Our family has truly accumulated virtue to have Miaomiao.”
“Then prepare to take the teacher certification exams, Miaomiao.”
Su Wan was dazed.
She hadn’t processed it yet: the “spoiled child” the psychologist spoke about had now pulled out a pure heart.
So Lin Song had misjudged something again.
Leaving the Xi family to become fully independent—being pushed into thinking about what he liked besides Xi Siyan—that wasn’t wrong.
But Jing Miao had clearly taken a different road to choose his life.
Because he wanted Xi Siyan to be happy and not worry over him,
he proactively thought:
besides Xi Siyan, what else do I like?
what else can I do?
what can I do that still lets me stay by his side?