“Did Gu Miao make a fuss when you changed your chat icon from that green bunny avatar?” Jiang Cheng asked between class periods as he organized his notes from the previous class. Gu Fei had changed his icon from the green bunny to a photo of Gu Miao.
The photo showed the little lady’s new haircut. After her hair had grown out enough, Li Yan had given her a short bob, one where the bottom edge of her bangs was a hundred miles away from her eyebrows. In the picture, one of her eyebrows was raised. She looked like she was in a pretty good mood, singular and smug.
“All good. She’s the one who changed it for me,” Gu Fei said. “Do you need to go pee?”
“Ah, I…” Jiang Cheng paused.
“You’re not sure, right?” Gu Fei sighed as he stood up. “Come on. Let’s go take a piss.”
“I was gonna say I don’t think I need to go,” Jiang Cheng tutted, standing up too. “Just say you want me to go with you.”
“I don’t need you to come with me,” Gu Fei said immediately. “Really, it’s not necessary. Go back to class.”
Jiang Cheng narrowed his eyes.
“Go, I’m begging you,” Gu Fei said. “Let me go to the bathroom by myself. Allow me to bravely march on my solo journey to the lavatory.”
“Weirdo,” Jiang Cheng said as he walked down the stairs with Gu Fei. “I’m kinda hungry. Wanna go to the snack stand later for something to eat? Zhou Jing said they have oden now.”
Gu Fei nodded. “Sure.”
“It’s one of the nice things about Fourth High.” Jiang Cheng salivated at the thought. “In my old school, the snack stand was only open for half a semester before it got scrapped. The cafeteria didn’t sell food outside of scheduled mealtimes, so if you didn’t carry some food of your own, you’d die of starvation in less than an hour.”
“The snack stand at Fourth High rakes in quite a lot of money every month,” Gu Fei said with a chuckle. “It’s much more profitable than our store.”
“All your store needs is someone with the time to manage it, then it’d do much better,” Jiang Cheng sighed. “It looks cleaner than all the competition—that’s why I went in the first time.”
“If you hadn’t come into my store that day, you would’ve been out cold on the sidewalk for at least an hour,” said Gu Fei.
“Bullshit.”
“Really. Even when I wanted to bring you inside, Liu Fan and the others were voting against it.” Gu Fei smiled. “It’s not a good area. Most people are afraid of drawing trouble to themselves.”
“Then why’d you take me in?” Jiang Cheng asked.
“You helped Gu Miao,” Gu Fei said. “Besides, I couldn’t let her watch her own big brother stand by while someone died on our doorstep.”
“I only passed out for a while. I wasn’t dying!”
“But mainly it was because of your good looks.” Gu Fei gave him a thumbs-up. “So very handsome.”
Jiang Cheng clicked his tongue.
The oden they sold at the school snack stand was pretty good. Unfortunately, by the time they’d carried it from the snack stand back to the classroom, it had mostly cooled down.
Jiang Cheng was now fully acclimated to the local customs, so he put his head down and ate as he listened to the lecture. He was even a little envious of one of the students in Class Seven next door who’d brought an electric thermos to school so he could cook food in class… Of course, the guy had also been made to do a self-reflection speech in front of the whole school, having apparently been reported by a classmate who didn’t have anything warm to eat in class that day.
“Jiang Cheng!” Lao-Lu shouted from the lectern.
Jiang Cheng had just skewered the last fish ball, about to deliver it into his mouth, but the impact of Lao-Lu’s roar sent his hand shaking, and the fish ball fell to the ground along with the skewer.
“Ah,” he cried mournfully. It was bad enough to see that he only had one fish ball left when he was nowhere near satisfied, but he couldn’t even get the last one into his mouth. He briefly considered picking it up while no one was watching, rinsing it in the broth, and eating it.
“Now, I get that you’re all tired from studying, so I won’t nag you about sneaking in some food during class!” Lao-Lu said, pointing at him. “But aren’t you eating a little too slowly?! Do you think this is a food appreciation class? I would’ve thought you’d bought a full Han-Manchurian feast at the pace you were going! Get up here! Translate this passage!”
Jiang Cheng carefully placed the paper bowl into his desk drawer. There were still some dregs of broth left at the bottom; he could chug it later to sate his craving.
He walked up to the front of the room. He’d only just picked up a piece of chalk when Lao-Lu handed him a short, stubby piece. “Use this one! No need for you to waste your energy snapping a fresh one! I’ve sharpened it for you!”
“…Oh.” Jiang Cheng took the chalk and started writing on the board, not pausing for a second to think.
By this point of their high school career, no other teacher would call students up to the board. They had to hang on to every precious minute to hammer the key points into the students’ brains or drill them with countless mock exams which would then be dissected at length, all the while repeating the same key points over and over.
Here is a key point, and there is also a key point. These are all key points, and those have all been tested in previous years! After a whole round of this, one would think there wasn’t a single unimportant point in the entire textbook.
But not Lao-Lu. He insisted on calling someone up in every single class. Jiang Cheng thought it must be why the students were more focused, relatively speaking, in his class, since there was no way of knowing when they’d get picked. Anyone who couldn’t answer or recite correctly would face a round of harsh rebukes.
“Your handwriting has improved,” Lao-Lu remarked, looking at Jiang Cheng’s answer. “Yes. Not bad, not bad. If I were the one marking the exams, I wouldn’t deduct marks for tidiness this time.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lu,” Jiang Cheng said.
It was true that his handwriting had improved—he knew it himself. Every day when he memorized passages, he would jot out key points on scrap paper to increase his retention, which had the secondary function of training his handwriting.
As Gu Fei put it, it was finally legible.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Da-Fei!” When class ended for the morning, Wang Xu pushed Zhou Jing away and plopped himself down on his desk. “Jiang Cheng!”
“Hm?” Jiang Cheng answered without looking up. He was finishing a set of questions he hadn’t gotten to complete during the last period.
“You guys are free later, right?” Wang Xu said. “Let’s go eat some meat pies. My dad made a new filling, wanna come try it?”
“What is it?” Gu Fei asked.
“Corn!” Wang Xu said. “I mean, it’s not that unusual, but it tastes pretty good. Really. Wanna come?”
Gu Fei threw a glance at Jiang Cheng.
“Ugh, I’m so done with you two.” Wang Xu waved his hand. “Shouldn’t have bothered asking you in the first place… Jiang Cheng?”
Jiang Cheng nodded and smiled. “Sounds good.”
Sooner or later, he’d have to take out both Wang Xu and Zhou Jing for good. But maybe they could keep Wang Xu around a little longer; after all, he was the provider of delicious meat pies.
“Shall we call up Er-Miao, too?” Wang Xu suggested.
“Nah,” said Gu Fei. “My mom made wontons for her today.”
“All righty then.” Wang Xu stood up. “Let’s go, go, go!”