"Old Zhao thinks highly of you," Chen Zhuo said, his tone light as he clutched the coin in his hand.
"He’s training you like you’re his hand-picked successor."
"I’d rather go sweep the floors at the Shaolin Temple than be his hand-picked successor," Zhang Qiang muttered.
"If you really can’t stand him watching you like a hawk every day, I can teach you a secret move."
Chen Zhuo leaned forward, propping his elbows on the edge of the desk and looking at Zhang Qiang.
The moment Zhang Qiang heard the words "secret move," his eyes lit up for a second, but he immediately grew wary again.
"What secret move? Don’t you try to screw me over again."
Chen Zhuo raised an eyebrow, his tone casual.
"On the first day of school, go find him in his office. Just tell him the winter break homework was too basic, that it wasn’t challenging enough."
Zhang Qiang froze, thinking he must have misheard.
Chen Zhuo continued.
"Then, ask him to find you some capstone problems from previous years’ National Junior High Mathematics Leagues. Say you want to practice. I guarantee that after you say that, his gaze won’t just lose its murderous edge—it’ll be filled with the tender love of a doting father."
The study fell silent for two seconds.
Zhang Qiang’s face turned green, bit by bit.
He shrank back in terror, his chair sliding a short distance across the floor.
"Just kill me!"
Zhang Qiang stared at Chen Zhuo as if he were a monster.
"If I actually dared to run to the office and say that to Old Zhao, he’d pin me to his desk and dissect me on the spot to see if I’ve been body-snatched by an alien! National Junior High Mathematics League? I can’t even solve the last problem on the final exam!"
Seeing Zhang Qiang’s on-the-verge-of-a-breakdown expression, Chen Zhuo finally couldn’t hold it in and let out a soft laugh.
He placed the arcade token in his hand back on top of the stack of coins, making a crisp clinking sound.
"Alright, I’ll stop messing with you."
Chen Zhuo pulled his gaze back, letting it fall on the open workbook in front of Zhang Qiang.
"Where are you stuck?"
At the mention of homework, Zhang Qiang’s shoulders slumped again.
He pulled his chair back to the desk and pointed to a major geometry problem on the paper.
"This one. I’ve been staring at it for half an hour. I’ve already torn through two sheets of scratch paper trying to draw it out."
Chen Zhuo glanced down.
It was a classic comprehensive geometry problem from the second semester of eighth grade. The problem presented a circle, two tangent lines drawn from a point outside the circle, and an isosceles triangle nested inside. It asked to prove that two specific line segments were equal and then to find the measure of an angle.
The diagram was cluttered with several solid lines drawn every which way, making it visually distracting.
Zhang Qiang, at his side, was running his hands through his hair in frustration.
"Old Zhao says in class every day that to solve geometry problems, you need to develop graphical intuition, understand the overall logic of the problem, and learn to deduce conclusions from the given conditions."
Zhang Qiang pointed at the complex diagram, venting his frustrations.
"Intuition, my ass! I look at this diagram and my brain turns to mush. There’s a circle here, a triangle there, tangents, secants... I have no idea where to even start drawing. It feels like every line I could add makes sense, but at the same time, it feels like every line is useless."
As he spoke, Zhang Qiang opened the black-covered notebook Chen Zhuo had given him.
"I’ve memorized all those congruent triangle theorems and tangent properties you summarized for me, but when I look at this diagram, how am I supposed to know which one to use? With so many conditions all thrown together, I just can’t wrap my head around it."
Chen Zhuo listened to Zhang Qiang’s complaints, his gaze lingering on the problem for a moment before turning to the neat stack of arcade tokens on the corner of the desk.
Chen Zhuo knew exactly what Zhang Qiang’s problem was.
He could memorize a specific formula, and he could recite a specific theorem.
But when faced with a comprehensive problem that required processing multiple conditions simultaneously—where several prerequisites had to be handled at once to reach a conclusion—his brain’s processing capacity would instantly overload and crash.
The kind of big-picture intuition Old Zhao demanded was, for Zhang Qiang, like trying to run a massive 3D game on a computer that could only handle Minesweeper.
Completely incompatible.
’If he’s not compatible with big-picture thinking, then let’s just smash the big picture into pieces.’
Chen Zhuo reached out and knocked over the whole stack of arcade tokens. The coins scattered across the desk with a clattering sound.
Zhang Qiang jumped, startled, and looked at Chen Zhuo.
Chen Zhuo picked out one of the coins and tapped it gently on the desk.
"Qiangzi, let me ask you something."
Chen Zhuo didn’t point at the geometry problem. Instead, he looked into Zhang Qiang’s eyes, his tone shifting to that of a casual chat.
"When you’re at the downtown arcade playing *The King of Fighters ’97*, and you’re using Yagami Iori, what if your opponent picks Kusanagi Kyo and suddenly jumps across the screen to kick you?"
Chen Zhuo paused.
"In that moment, do you stop to think about the angle of his jump’s parabolic arc, calculate his character’s collision box the instant he lands, or wonder how many attack frames his kick has?"
Zhang Qiang rolled his eyes as if looking at an idiot.
"Am I crazy? Who thinks about that stuff?"
The moment the conversation turned to arcade games, Zhang Qiang instantly perked up, all the lethargy from doing homework completely gone.
"If the other guy dares to jump, I don’t give a damn about his parabola. I’ll just do an anti-air heavy punch with my eyes closed, or pull back on the joystick and mash out an Oniyaki to knock him down! Then when he lands, I’ll follow up with an Aoi Hana and take off half his health bar."
Zhang Qiang even unconsciously mimed the motion of working a joystick, saying matter-of-factly:
"It’s called muscle memory! Who does data calculations when playing arcade games? You see the move, you press the button. That’s it!"
"Exactly."
Chen Zhuo slapped the coin in his hand down on the worksheet, making a soft smack.
"Muscle memory."

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