My wife is a witch princess

Chapter 36 Xia Li's calculation skills are no worse than those of college students after a litt

The banner at the secondhand mobile phone store fluttered in the wind, the words "Year-end clearance sale, buy a phone and get a free prize draw" slightly faded. Xia Li stood in front of the counter, finally stopping in a corner.

It has a purple plastic casing with worn edges and corners, and is priced at the lowest.

"I want this one," she said, pointing with her finger through the glass.

Song Che glanced at the old-fashioned car, then at her: "Aren't you going to look around some more? This model is pretty old."

"I'll take this one."

"Alright." Song Che paid, and the shopkeeper smiled and brought out a raffle box. Xia Li went first, pulling out a pack of tissues. When it was Song Che's turn, he reached in and stirred it around, his fingertips touching a piece of cardboard. He pulled it out and saw—two movie tickets.

The boss's smile froze for a moment.

Song Che didn't say anything, put the ticket in his pocket, and mentally gave Bruce another credit.

A purebred lucky cat.

Stepping outside the store, the afternoon sunlight was sparse. Xia Li held the purple phone up to her eyes, looking at it from left to right.

"How is it supposed to answer the questions?" She held up the rather old-fashioned cell phone, her blue eyes full of seriousness.

"Click here to type... never mind." Song Che took the phone and quickly adjusted the settings. "I'll switch to handwriting input for you. Just write directly."

"Um."

Xia Li hugged her phone to her chest and swiped her fingertips across the screen a few times. Song Che glanced at it curiously, but she noticed and glared back at him with her blue eyes.

She fiddled with her phone for a while before carefully putting it away. Then, she naturally gestured for Song Che to walk to the inside of the road, her every move displaying the demeanor of a prince.

...Just like a child throwing a tantrum.

Song Che was too lazy to argue anymore, since there were few people and cars on this stretch of road anyway. What piqued Song Che's curiosity was the information she had secretly inquired about. However, seeing how protective she was of herself, he could only give up and turn his attention to a more practical problem—how to fill the loophole in the identity verification process, as he really didn't have any connections in this area.

At the bus stop, the two waited side by side for the bus. When it arrived, they boarded and realized that although there were empty seats, there was only enough for one person. He had just looked at Xia Li when she spoke first:

"I want to stand."

...Fine, I wasn't planning on giving it to you anyway.

You big idiot!

Song Che sat down casually. Next to him was a little girl of about eleven or twelve years old, with a ponytail and a cute appearance. The girl turned her head to look at Song Che, suddenly froze, and then quickly turned her face to the window. Only the tip of her nose twitched slightly, and her tongue quietly licked the corner of her mouth.

Xia Li was standing on the handrail next to Song Che, and her posture made Song Che want to laugh a little—she wasn't holding the handrail very firmly, refused to sit in the empty seat, and her ankle was clearly still uncomfortable, but she insisted on being stubborn. The car swayed, and she fell forward, hurriedly grabbing the pillar in front of her to regain her balance.

Song Che thought of an animal—a squirrel holding a chestnut.

"Aren't you going to sit for a while?" he said. "My legs are getting numb from sitting so long."

"I won't sit." Xia Li tucked her stray hair behind her ear, as if she hadn't almost fallen just now. "I'll exercise while standing."

"Hold on tight, there's a turn ahead."

The words had barely left her mouth when the car lurched again. Xia Li lurched forward, a few strands of her neatly styled hair falling loose once more. She looked up and saw Song Che suppressing a laugh.

Xia Li pursed her lips.

She seems... a little anxious.

"Hey, don't hit the driver on the head! It's not his fault!"

……

Back in their rented apartment, Song Che slumped into the small sofa. Bruce jumped onto his lap, rubbing his fluffy head against Song Che's arm and chin, making contented purrs. The little guy was all warm and cozy, making Song Che feel very comfortable.

"Alright Bruce, I'll refill your food bowl..." Song Che got up, only to find that both the cat food bowl and water bowl were full.

Well, it's just her being coquettish.

He didn't plan to take a nap today, afraid of oversleeping, so he took out his review materials from his bag, ready to go through the first-year math that Jiang Shuo had taught him that morning again.

Xia Li moved a small stool and sat upright opposite the table, looking like she was waiting for the lesson to begin.

"Which step should we start with?" she asked.

"Let me think... I need to figure out your level first before making arrangements. Language requires long-term accumulation, and I happen to be studying math, so let's start with the simplest arithmetic." Song Che pulled out a few sheets of draft paper, "Let's see how large numbers you can calculate."

He wrote down several basic addition and subtraction problems on a piece of paper, ranging from single digits to tens of thousands. Xia Li could recognize numbers, but her actual calculation ability was hard to say.

Xia Li was handed a pencil, and she began to scribble and write on the draft paper, her attitude on par with that of someone researching forbidden potions.

Song Che then opened the document and started reading it again from the first page.

When he felt he had seen enough, he looked up and found Xia Li biting the pen cap, the draft paper in front of her already covered with dense marks.

At a quick glance, the calculations for the ones and hundreds places were correct, but the questions for the ten-thousands place clearly stumped her.

She even tried to convert the numbers into units of measurement for potions to understand them, but to no avail. At this moment, she was looking down and counting her fingers, her expression grave, clearly having realized the harsh reality that she didn't have enough fingers.

So she kicked off her boots.

Song Che watched as she bent over, the edge of her socks slipping down to her ankles, revealing her fair instep and pale pink toes. She lifted her foot, her toes twitching as if...counting?

This level...

At most, he'd be a fourth-year university student, right? No higher. Any higher would be disrespectful to the other kindergarteners. As everyone knows, excellent senior university students are no less capable in calculation than kindergarteners.

Song Che put down his book, picked up another pen and a new sheet of draft paper, and walked over.

"Time's up, it's time to hand in your paper."

"...I haven't finished calculating yet." Xia Li actually pulled the draft paper into her bosom, her movements showing a hint of reluctance.

"Exam rule number one: Failure to submit the paper within the time limit will result in a score of zero."

"...Oh." Only then did she slowly hand over the paper filled with writing.

The paper was a hodgepodge of numbers, potion recipe symbols, and what appeared to be a magic circle sketch—she actually hoped to solve arithmetic problems using magical principles!

Song Che painstakingly extracted the math problems from the occult manuscript. There were five in total; he got three right, one wrong, and the last one blank.

Xia Li gripped her pencil tightly, her voice low: "How many did you get right?"

"Three paths."

Her fingers tightened their grip on the pen. Was this a disgrace to the witch? It was clearly a humiliation!

Calculating these strange arrangements of symbols did indeed bother her, but when it came to potion proportions, she would never make a mistake.

The last question was so difficult that even counting with fingers and toes wasn't enough; I got stuck at 9999. The second-to-last question was clearly a miscount.

"The last one." She looked up, a hint of defiance in her voice, "The number is too big, I can't possibly count it all. You... can you count it?"

Who would take off their socks and count their toes when doing addition and subtraction?

Song Che sighed inwardly. It wasn't that the education system in this other world didn't include basic mathematics; rather, this prince had simply stumbled on something as trivial as cooking.

He flattened the draft paper and wrote the two numbers vertically aligned in the blank space.

"Listen carefully, no matter how large the number is, the principle of addition and subtraction is the same. Align each digit, add or subtract, and borrow from the next digit if necessary. For example, 1347 minus 983..."

He calculated step by step, the pen tip leaving marks on the paper. "Seven minus three equals four, you can count that. Four minus eight is not enough, so we borrow a '1' from the hundreds place '3'. Just so you know, there's no situation where we don't borrow. Don't ask me what would happen if we didn't borrow. After borrowing, '3' becomes '2', the borrowed '1' plus the original '4' equals 14, minus 8 equals 6... and so on, the final result is 364."

Xia Li stared at the paper, her blue eyes following the movement of the pen tip, then suddenly nodded: "I understand. So, 34612 minus 1678 equals 32934."

Song Che did some mental calculations and raised an eyebrow in surprise: "...You got it right. Your Highness is actually quite talented."

—Just don't take your socks off again.

Song Che recalled doing the same thing when he was a child, and his mother laughed at him for days. He didn't say it aloud, but silently stored the image of the witch princess taking off her socks to do math in his memory, thinking he might be able to use it someday to threaten Xia Li.