Tokyo: Rabbit Police and Her Evil Partner

Chapter 401 Zero Egg Partner
After Mayu-chan finished mocking her lifelong rival, she swaggered back to the classroom, approached Hira-sakurako's desk, and asked in a very familiar manner:

"Sakura-chan, how did you cheat? Teach me!"

Hira Sakurako thought this guy wasn't very bright, but considering Mayu had just helped her out, she explained honestly, "I didn't cheat."

Mayu-chan didn't believe it, waving her hand seriously and saying, "How is that possible? Are you a robot? How could you possibly solve that kind of problem? The number is clearly over twenty!"

"Just...think about it, and I'll figure it out." Hira Sakura didn't know how to communicate with the paramecium.

"Ha! I figured it out in a second~" Mayu-chan mimicked Hira-sakurako's tone, pointed at her with her thumb, and turned to her friends, saying, "Here comes a big talker!"

My friend gave an awkward laugh and tried to smooth things over, saying, "Maybe Sakura-chan is smarter..."

"Am I stupid? I'll see how many points you got!" Mayu-chan frowned, snatched her friend's test paper, and looked down at it. The scarlet 90 points were particularly eye-catching. This guy only got one question wrong!

"Okay!" Mayu-chan looked up and asked, "How did you cheat?"

"I didn't cheat!" The girl shook her head repeatedly, extremely anxious, not wanting her hard work to be accused of cheating.

"Then how did you figure that out?" Mayu-chan demanded.

"I just... I thought and thought, and that's how I came up with it," my friend said.

"Oh dear~ I thought and thought and figured it out~" Mayu-chan imitated her friend's voice, pouting and looking unhappy, and said, "Of course I know that! Isn't there any technique that can make even a fool solve the problem?"

"I have one!" another student raised their hand: "I cut the eraser into fifty pieces with a pencil sharpener, so I can use the erasers to count!"

Mayu's eyes lit up, and she praised the other person as a genius. She sat back down in her seat, rummaged in her drawer, and took out a white cat-shaped eraser.

She held the pencil sharpener over the kitten's neck, wanting to cut it, but then hesitated. Eraser Cat was her good friend; they had spent many boring class hours together, and she really didn't want to turn Cat into a pile of pieces with her own hands.

"Keep it up!" your friend encouraged. "Cut the cat sauce into pieces so you can pass your exams!"

Mayu-chan closed her eyes, her hand holding the knife trembling, and she sobbed, "I don't want to kill Neko-chan!"

But if she doesn't kill the cat-chan, and then gets a zero on her test, she'll definitely get scolded by her parents when she gets home...

"you can!"

"To get high scores, you need to become a cold-blooded, emotionless arithmetic machine!"

“Kill kill kill kill kill!!”

Her friends egged her on, encouraging Mayu to go all out against the eraser.

Hira Sakura couldn't stand it any longer and couldn't help but remind him, "That... eraser isn't alive; it was just made into the shape of a cat."

"Of course I know that," Mayu-chan said with a 'Are you an idiot?' look. "But can you bear to see such a cute kitten die?"

“But it’s not alive,” Hira Sakurako repeated.

"I know, but it's so cute," Mayu-chan said earnestly.

"If you keep rubbing it for a few days, it will turn completely black," Hirayuki warned.

"That's why I never use it to wipe my notebooks!" Mayu-chan said proudly.

"Aren't you going to use the eraser? What are you going to do with it then?" Hira Sakurako was completely baffled.

"I play games with it, sing with it, play house, and it plays the role of the mother cat..."

Mayu-chan's explanations became increasingly abstract, leaving Hira-sakura completely bewildered. It made her feel like her peers were aliens, and she simply couldn't understand their thought processes.

In the blink of an eye, the school bell rang, and the students returned to their seats. Mayu put away her pencil sharpener; the boy who had been hiding in the toilet crying also returned, his eyes red and looking aggrieved.

The third period was a foreign language lesson. The original teacher was unavailable, so Mr. Suga substituted. Hira Sakurako squinted as she watched Fushimi Shika walk up to the podium looking all high and mighty.

The students all stood up and greeted the teacher. Ping Yingzi, wanting to fit in, followed suit.

Fushimi Shika had no idea how to teach elementary school students. He pretended to ask the students how far they had progressed in their studies, in order to probe the previous teacher's teaching methods.

The good students raised their hands first and said that last time they learned an English song and played a letter matching game. The teacher said that in the next class they would be taught to play a role-playing game.

Before the 2011 education reform, Japanese elementary schools did not have foreign language classes. After the reform, the lower grades of elementary school mainly focus on "foreign language teaching activities" to cultivate interest, generally one class per week, without any test targets.

So-called role-playing games mainly involve setting up simple scenarios, such as in a shop or school, and having students play different roles and communicate using simple English dialogues, such as: "Hello! How are you?" "I'm fine, thank you, and you."

It's very simple.

But Fushimi Shika misunderstood. He suspected that the previous teacher had a strange hobby of teaching elementary school students to play role-playing games. He immediately said that they would not learn those strange things today, and everyone would play a little game together.

The children cheered when they heard they could play.

Fushimi Shika had his own plan. He clapped his hands to indicate that the game required pairs of students to find their own partners. He had already observed before entering the room that there were an even number of students in the class, which meant that Sakura would be able to find a partner no matter what.

In this way, the probability of Hira Sakura making new friends will increase significantly!

"Sakurako-chan, I'll team up with you!"

Mayu is very cunning. She thinks that Hira Sakura is the smartest and the only one in the class who got a perfect score in arithmetic. Teaming up with Hira Sakura will definitely increase their chances of winning!

Even though I don't know the rules of the game or what we're competing in, I'm sure I can't go wrong by teaming up with smart people!
Hira Sakurako was reluctant to agree. She felt the little girl who scored nine points was more normal, while Mayu-chan was merely intelligent and, in her eyes, barely human, making her very difficult to communicate with. However, the other girl was a socially awkward person, extremely outgoing, and joined her group without explanation. As the ultimate socially anxious person, Hira Sakurako naturally couldn't refuse outright and could only reluctantly agree.

The class was in a chaotic mess, with several children fighting over who would be their partner. In the end, the fair and impartial teacher Fushimi stepped in and had the children pull on each other's arms in a tug-of-war; whoever won got the partner.

The child being pulled seemed to enjoy it, feeling like everyone was vying for him and he was the center of attention.

It took the elementary school students more than ten minutes to form teams.

Fushimi Shika began announcing the game rules: two people would form a team and perform an English dialogue on stage. Each dialogue consisted of a question and an answer, and the team with the most dialogues would win.

The winner will receive a mystery grand prize!

Hira Sakurako had no expectations for Fushimi Shika's mysterious grand prize; the guy would probably just pull out a broken piece of chalk to appease the elementary school student.

But the other students were very enthusiastic; the children's energy seemed inexhaustible, and they immediately began to prepare.

The little girl who had just scored nine points on her test was now writing her lines. She had learned some basic English vocabulary in her after-school tutoring class and was teaching her co-star how to pronounce them.

Seeing this, Mayu-chan also hunched over her desk and began writing furiously. Hira-sakura leaned over and glanced at it; she had written a whole bunch of 'hi's' on it.

Hi?

Hi!

Hi...

hi~hi~hi~
"What are you writing?" Hira Sakurako couldn't help but ask.

"English conversation!" Mayu instructed, "This is pronounced 'hi,' easy, right? When we go on stage later, we'll just say 'hi hi hi' to each other, and we'll definitely win the championship!"

"This can't be considered a conversation, can it?" Hira Sakurako questioned.

"really?"

Mayu-chan was taken aback and raised her hand to ask the teacher. Fushimi Shika leaned closer, glanced at the notebook, then turned to look at Hirai Sakurako, her eyes seeming to ask, 'Is this idiot your new friend?'

“That doesn’t count,” Professor Fushimi added, introducing a new rule: “It must have a definite meaning!”

"what?"

Mayu-chan was disappointed. She turned to Hira-sakura-ko to borrow an eraser, intending to erase the 'hi' from her notebook. The latter, however, was only thinking about bringing her weapon on her first day of school and hadn't brought all her stationery, so she couldn't help.

All the other students refused to lend her an eraser, so Mayu-chan had to dab some saliva on her index finger and vigorously rub the notebook, turning the writing into a dusty mess and getting her hands covered in pencil dust.

"Does Sakura-chan speak English?" Mayu asked.

Hira Sakurako really doesn't know how. As a seasoned otaku, she'll probably never go abroad in her life, so there's no need for her to specifically learn a foreign language.

"I haven't studied it," she said honestly.

"It doesn't matter, I have a solution."

After saying that, Mayu secretly sidled up to the other students, copied their homework from their notebooks, and eavesdropped on the English words they were reading, memorizing their pronunciation using the Japanese syllabary.

The other students weren't blind; they all avoided the situation, and some even reported Mayu to Mr. Suga for cheating.

Mayu-chan ran around, piecing together a few sentences that were not very meaningful, and then taught Hira-sakura how to pronounce them.

They huddled around the same desk, one speaking in a sweet, childish voice, the other in a soft, gentle tone.

Seeing this, Fushimi Shika felt particularly gratified. Although her new friend was not a normal child, at least Sakura had made a new friend of the same age.

After a ten-minute preparation period, the students went on stage in groups and performed their dialogues haltingly. They had all attended tutoring classes outside of school to varying degrees, and while other public school elementary school students were still learning English songs, they had already started learning English vocabulary.

Unsurprisingly, Hira Sakurako and Mayu-chan came in last place. Mayu-chan had no idea what she was saying, babbling incoherently as if she were speaking English, which led to their elimination.

Although Hira Sakurako didn't care about the 'mystery grand prize', she was still a little disappointed, feeling that she had dragged the team down... She was even a little nervous, worried that Paramecium would blame her, and after going offstage, she pursed her lips and didn't say a word.

Mayu-chan didn't seem to mind. She patted Hira-sakura's shoulder and said with a grin, "Now you're a zero too! From now on, we're the zero-point partners!"

"Zero-egg partner?" Hira Sakurako repeated subconsciously, sounding utterly stupid.

“That’s right!” Mayu-chan gave a thumbs up.

For some reason, Hira Sakura felt a sense of relief. After sitting back down, she secretly glanced at Mayu-chan's profile, who then took out a pencil sharpener, hesitating whether to kill Neko-chan.

At that moment, Hira Sakurako felt that maybe Neko-chan really was alive and had been Mayu's good friend.

“Thirteen plus seventeen equals thirty,” she suddenly said.

"Huh? What?" Mayu didn't react. The English conversation on stage was still going on, and the classroom was a bit noisy, so she didn't quite hear it.

I said, thirteen plus seventeen equals thirty.

Hira Sakurako repeated softly, then turned to the side and said, "So don't kill Neko-chan, I'll pass you notes later."

(End of this chapter)