"No, no! That's not an eight, that's the letter B!"
John yelled, hands clawing at his hair, eyes desperate as he stared at the red chicken cocking its head and peering at the alphabet chart taped to the wall. Little Fire blinked, its sharp beak twitching.
"Bee... eight... eight-bee?"
John nearly cried, "Are you learning the alphabet or playing the lottery?"
Little Fire flapped its wings pat-pat, crowed a furious streak as if to object. It was sure it had tried its hardest, yet this human never understood the intellectual pain of a chicken dreaming of becoming a Phoenix.
Since John had taped the alphabet to the wall, their tiny room had turned into an express chicken classroom. John went to school in the morning, came back to play unwilling tutor at night, and Little Fire became a literal slow learner.
At first it got every letter wrong. It read A like "Ah," C like "See" turned into a weird "suh," it even spelled "egg" as "eh-guh-guh," sounding no different from a chicken chanting a cursed incantation.
John often lost his mind, "You want to be a Phoenix but you can't even say chicken, how do you plan to fly?"
Little Fire puffed its neck, eyes blazing, "I will learn! Are chickens supposed to lose to parrots?"
From then on it got disciplined. It crowed, then rushed to the chart. At noon it sat and spelled, at night it fell asleep clutching a book. Its beak tapped clack-clack on the pages, the sound so steady John got used to it.
Some days it got so frustrated it flapped madly and ran out to the balcony, sitting hunched like a stone statue. John had to bribe it, "Spell one word right and I'll give you a corn kernel."
The chicken's eyes lit up, it lunged back at the chart like a soldier heading for battle. For a kernel it gritted its beak and spelled every letter, even inventing study hacks: scratching letters into the floor with its claws, arranging corn into letter shapes, or standing in front of a mirror practicing pronunciation like an actor.
One day John came home to find the wall scribbled over with chicken handwriting made of... chicken droppings. He almost fainted. "You practice writing in horror style like this?"
Little Fire raised its head, proud, "This is called the chicken calligraphy method."
John stood dumbfounded and decided to clean the wall before the landlord saw.
Hard as it was, day by day it began to read the alphabet, to build words and simple sentences. When it spelled "chicken" correctly, it fluffed its wings in pride like it had won an Olympic gold.
John sighed, amused and moved, "Shows you, even a chicken can get somewhere with persistence."
Then one night, after it read through ten pages of a kids' book without a hitch, a bright chime rang inside its head:
Ting! Blessing "Wise Chicken" upgraded to "Professor Chicken." Greatly increases a chicken's learning and悟性.
John almost choked on his instant noodles. The chicken in front of him froze, stood tall, eyes suddenly bright, its whole bearing calmer and oddly grand.
Little Fire cleared its throat, speaking in a solemn tone:
"From now on call me Mr. Little Fire. If you want to show respect for scholarship, Professor Chicken will do."
John spat out his noodles, "You get promoted and act all high and mighty now?"
"This isn't arrogance, it's erudition," it said seriously. "With learning comes presence. I'm no ordinary chicken anymore."
From that day Little Fire became a genuine bookworm. It dove into John's bookshelf, devouring legends about Phoenixes.
Every story it read and reread, its beak tapped on the pages, clack clack, like punctuation. When it closed a book, its chicken face wore a satisfied look, eyes half-lidded as if dreaming of flapping across mountain ranges in a blaze.
"John," it rasped from too much reading, "one day when I crow, heaven and earth will tremble. Then hens will rush to offer golden corn to me."
John propped his chin, smiling wryly, "You really read too much."
One evening John put a pile of anatomy books on the table.
"Alright, Mr. Little Fire. Your reading comprehension's good enough. Now I'll teach you how to cultivate and absorb energy from the air. But humans and chickens are different, I'm just giving you the concept. You'll have to write your own training method for chickens."
Little Fire went blank, then its eyes sparkled like falling stars. It jumped up, wings flapping wildly until papers flew everywhere.
"This is a masterpiece! Chickens around the world will thank me, they'll put up statues of me everywhere!"
John slapped his forehead, "Statues of you are fine, just don't put one in front of my door."
From then on Little Fire studied like a madman. It buried itself in books on avian anatomy, shouting out discoveries with glee:
"Keel bone! Air sacs! Perfect! This is a four-dimensional airflow mechanism! Chickens are born to cultivate!"
John shivered, "You're turning into a mad scientist."
The chicken didn't care. It stopped grooming in the mirror, the little wooden comb gathered dust. Its red feathers were a mess, looking almost bare, but its eyes shone like headlights.
It arranged corn in a circle on the table, "This is the Corn Apex Formation. Eat and absorb spirit at the same time, a dual cultivation with food!"
John was speechless, laughing until tears came.
The room looked like a crazy lab now: books strewn everywhere, corn spread over the table, one bedraggled chicken bent over notes, crowing occasionally like cheering.
Under the yellow lamp the chicken's shadow quivered on the wall, looking ridiculous and somehow a bit majestic.
John murmured, "Just don't actually breathe fire in here. If you do, we'll both end up roast chicken."
But Little Fire didn't hear. It was lost in an academic frenzy, forgetting time and its proud plumage. All that remained was the burning desire to rewrite chicken destiny, eyes alight with someone who truly believed they were born to become a Phoenix.