Chapter 39
Fang walked over, and Chen Aimei, who was about to say something to Guan Nan, paused for a moment, then called out Jiang Li's name: "What's wrong with her?"
Jiang Li dialed his phone, lowered his eyes, and tapped the message box, his tone indifferent and aloof: "I don't know."
"You don't know either?" Chen Aimei seemed unconvinced.
Lin Rui, who was rummaging through something on Yu Shu's table and already disliked her, spoke even more recklessly: "What could he possibly know? He's not her mother. Does she need to ask him before taking a dump or farting?"
"Lin Rui, how can you talk like that!" Chen Aimei pouted, looking both spoiled and unhappy.
“I’ve always spoken like this, and,” Lin Rui opened his notebook, found the book he wanted, and lowered his voice in a cold and ruthless manner while maintaining his self-respect, “Don’t pretend in front of me, it disgusts me.”
"......"
Chen Aimei's eyes reddened with anger, and she looked pitiful: "Jiang Li, look at him!"
"What's wrong?" Yu Shu came back from the restroom and saw Lin Rui, who had come with him to get the book, was also there. Looking at the scene, he knew that Lin Rui was still disgusted by the incident in junior high school when Chen Aimei led a group of boys and girls to gamble Xie Shuwan in the toilet while they were not around. But when he saw that Chen Aimei looked like she was about to cry, he had a headache and quickly tried to ease the atmosphere: "Hey, we're all classmates, why make things so tense?"
Yu Shu couldn't stand seeing people cry, but Jiang Li sat there silently staring at the screen with a very serious expression.
"Damn, what's going on?" Yu Shu took out tissues from Ye Na's drawer. "Don't cry, just tell me what's wrong."
Chen Aimei said innocently, "I just want to ask Guan Nan—"
"You're asking about Guan Nan?" Before she could finish speaking, Yu Shu's expression turned strange and somewhat impolite. "What's it to you?"
It seems unexpected that Yu Shu, who is usually the most easy to talk to, would act this way.
Chen Aimei muttered a few words and then hummed.
After she walked away, Yena angrily snatched the tissue from Yu Shu's hand, sat down and muttered under her breath, "Is she crazy? She bullied someone like this and she's innocent. What's she pretending for? It's disgusting."
The fact that the campus had no solid walls and that the school was isolated had already been leaked among a few close friends.
But since it's not a physical problem, few people care about such minor squabbles.
As soon as Guan Nan entered the office, she saw a message from her English teacher, sent in a very unfriendly tone: "With this much time on your hands, worry more about your own grades. Your grades are so terrible, aren't you ashamed?"
She was holding a phone in one hand and a freshly poured bowl of hot water in the other, and she looked like she was in a very bad mood.
"..." Guan Nan was speechless for a moment because the English teacher's desk and the class monitor's desk were right next to each other.
This time, perhaps having learned from the previous lesson, Banban did not ask her to go out alone, nor did he ask her to sit down. The two of them, sitting and standing, appeared to be sizing each other up and scolding each other.
Banban said, "Guan Nan, do you know that before you, very few liberal arts students in previous years were able to get into a 685 university, and even fewer were able to get past the critical point of 680?"
"Hmm." Guan Nan didn't quite understand why Banban, who seemed so wary, still had the leisure to have a heart-to-heart talk with her.
"Your teacher knows you're a good person—you're neither arrogant nor impatient," the class monitor said earnestly. "I always say that we have a genius in our class; you'll definitely be the top liberal arts student in the 2017 college entrance exam..."
genius......
Upon hearing this word, Guan Nan was momentarily dazed, as if she had been transported to another world.
Banban sighed: "But geniuses and madmen are at opposite ends of the spectrum; that line can't be crossed even half a step."
At this point, he looked at Guan Nan with a serious expression, "Do you understand what the teacher meant?"
Guan Nan snapped out of her daze and shook her head: "I don't know."
“Your dad called me.” Class monitor went straight to the point. “He said you asked him for money, and when he didn’t give it to you, you smashed up the house. In a fit of anger, he slapped you, and you ran away from home that night. Is that right? I know your situation is special. I don’t believe one side of the story. I want to hear your version of events. I know you won’t lie.”
Guan Nan gave a mocking smirk, not recounting the whole incident, and calmly said, "I didn't ask for money, I didn't smash up the house, I didn't run away from home, I just went home, back to my own home."
One of the teachers asked, "Have you gone back to Cangyuan?"
“Yes, teacher.” Guan Nan nodded. “I’ve gone back to my own home.”
Fortunately, Banban is a good teacher who understands her specific family situation. In this situation, she did not resort to the so-called "father and daughter can't hold grudges overnight" to smooth things over. Instead, she briefly talked to her about safety awareness when living alone, and after confirming that Guan Nan was not lying, she called Guan Weimin back after Guan Nan left.
The conversation on the phone was unpleasant, and even the usually mild-mannered Banban blushed.
"We should respect and acknowledge children's choices and decisions."
"As parents, we should always—"
The other party hung up the phone, and Banban's words were stuck in her throat. She silently finished the three words she hadn't finished saying: "Be more forgiving."
He turned his head and happened to see the English teacher coming out. He sighed again, "I don't know how this child has managed all these years."
"Don't sigh, you're wasting your good fortune with your sighs." The English teacher handed him a glass of water.
Back in the classroom, Guan Nan was still a little upset and didn't notice anything unusual.
Jiang Li looked up from the screen, turned his head slightly to look at her, his expression indifferent: "Are you free next Friday?"
"Next Friday..." Next Friday is the 24th, which happens to be Christmas Eve. Guan Nan frowned and said, "Something's come up."
"What is it?" Jiang Li asked.
Upon hearing this, Guan Nan subconsciously pursed her lips, looking somewhat troubled.
Jiang Li raised an eyebrow slightly: "Can't you say?"
“Hmm,” Guan Nan nodded silently, “No.”
"Neither can I?"
"......"
Is this something you should be able to do?
After Guan Nan finished two questions, she noticed his gaze was still fixed on her. She looked up at him, and he casually raised his eyebrow. After a two-second silence, she slumped her shoulders in defeat and whispered, "I'm going to set up a stall."
"Set up a stall?"
"That's right, selling things."
"Selling things?" After a moment's thought, Jiang Li said slowly, "Oh, selling apples."
She nodded: "They also sell balloons and flowers."
Are you alone?
“No,” Guan Nan shook her head and said honestly, “I’m with Brother Qi Yang.”
Jiang Li remained expressionless: "...Oh, where do you buy it?"
"It should be Happy Valley," Guan Nan replied as she finished writing the homework the teacher had just assigned.
Jiang Li asked doubtfully, "Should?"
“Because it was also at Happy Valley last year,” Guan Nan bit her pen tip. When she picked up her cup to drink water, she found that the hot water had been replaced with a new batch. For the past few months, her water cup has always been like this at this time of year, as if it has an endless supply of water. “Sales are pretty good. I can earn more than two hundred yuan a night.”
She said she earned more money in one night than she did in a full day of part-time work, and she seemed quite happy about it.
Seeing this, Jiang Li nodded and didn't say anything more.
In the following days, Zhang Guilian made several calls to the class monitor, some specifically asking her to call back, but she refused to answer them all.
Since the student grants have been received, the purpose of these calls is self-evident.
On the afternoon of December 23, Guan Nan submitted an application for evening self-study to her class before school ended, which took effect on the evening of December 24, 2015.
......
On Christmas Eve, the 23rd, Happy Valley was packed with people.
The people coming out of the subway were all men and women with scary special effects makeup.
The narrow alley was lined with stalls selling things to fit the Ghost Festival atmosphere. Compared to the other stalls, Guan Nan's stall was not only deserted, but the items were also so uninteresting that they didn't pique anyone's interest. Looking at the cart full of goods, she suddenly felt that the situation was a bit tricky.
After shouting for a while, they still hadn't sold anything.
After glancing at the time, Guan Nan said goodbye to Qi Yang and went to the subway restroom.
As she washed her hands and went outside, she was still preoccupied with what to do with that huge box of goods. She had to find a way to sell them, or they would be stuck with her.
There was a box containing 500 yuan worth of goods, which she and Qi Yang each received half of.
When I went to the wholesale market this afternoon, the owner specifically mentioned that if I bought any goods today because of the holiday, they wouldn't give me a refund if I didn't sell them all.
Not giving a refund means that if you can't sell it, your 500 yuan investment will be stuck in your hands.
While thinking about how to sell them, Guan Nan accidentally bumped into a girl at the corner. He instinctively grabbed her wrist and said apologetically, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."
The girl waved her hand to indicate that she was fine and continued talking on the phone about taking photos.
Seeing this, Guan Nan continued walking out, when suddenly someone behind her called out, "Hey—Guan Nan!"
She turned around in confusion.
The girl grabbed her hand, took the phone away from her ear, and laughed in a frightening way.
For a moment, Guan Nan didn't recognize who the other person was and was still a little confused: "Uh, hello."
Seeing her blank expression, clearly no one was there but she was trying to act calm and greet people, the girl immediately laughed and pinched her cheek: "You're so cute."
Guan Nan leaned back awkwardly, avoiding the girl's hand, and gave an embarrassed smile.
"What? Don't you recognize me?" The girl stared at her, and when she shook her head, she had no choice but to introduce herself, "I'm Xie Shuwan. What's wrong? Don't I look like you?"
"......"
That's so unlike anything I've ever seen...
At first glance, it's quite frightening.
Guan Nan quieted down for a moment, then honestly said, "I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you."
"Really?" Hearing this, Xie Shuwan got even more excited and said, "Then I'm going to pretend to be an NPC and scare them later. They'll be really surprised!"
"Huh?" Guan Nan was a little surprised. Was this how it was used?
"Do you want to put on makeup? I brought some cosmetics with me outside." Xie Shuwan was very happy to invite her to go to Happy Valley to be an NPC and prank the players.
As soon as she finished speaking, an adult carrying a child walked over. When the child saw Xie Shuwan's face clearly, his mouth dropped open.
Guan Nan watched as Xie Shuwan smiled at the child.
Then, the child immediately cried out.
His mother immediately patted his back to comfort him, but he clung to her shoulder and howled at the top of his lungs. He even pointed at Xie Shuwan and cried, "Waaaaah, there's a monster!"
"I'm going to get Ultraman to beat you to death!"
"......"
"......"
The boy's mother comforted him a few times and taught him, "Your sister is not a monster, she is a fairy. Didn't I tell you before? There is a unicorn with one eye, and your sister is the one-eyed fairy."
Guan Nan took a closer look; the makeup was indeed somewhat frightening.
"I don't want it, I don't want a one-eyed dragon!" the child cried uncontrollably.
Xie Shuwan awkwardly stuck out her tongue and gestured to Guan Nan, indicating that she would go into the restroom first.
"Goodbye." Guan Nan waved to her.
After leaving, she passed a bubble stall and bought a bubble machine and a few ribbons of colored string. When she returned to the stall, it was still deserted.
Seeing that she had bought a bubble machine, Qi Yang smiled and said, "Go ahead and play with it. Who buys one these days?"
“It’s not just for fun,” Guan Nan shook his head, “I’ve thought of a way, let’s try it out first.”
As she spoke, she handed the bubble machine to Qi Yang and squatted down on the ground.
I opened the box, took out a few uninflated bubble balls, and tried to stuff the single roses that had been unpacked into them. It took me a lot of effort to manage a few.
She cut the long stick down to about one-third of its length.
After finishing, Guan Nan tried using a bubble machine to make bubbles, holding up the bubble balloon in an attempt to attract people.
Unfortunately, the effect was minimal.
“When I came here, I saw that there were apple vendors at the subway entrance. Their prices were higher than ours, but they were selling very well.” Guan Nan frowned, staring at the apples piled up like a Christmas tree, puzzled and worried: “Is it a problem with our location?”
To make it look better, they also hung miniature Santa Clauses on it and wrapped it with colored lights.
Because they were a step behind, the good spots were taken early, leaving them in the corners and edges.
Qi Yang, however, was quite optimistic: "There are more stalls this year than last year, so it's normal for business to be a little worse."
That's what she said, but Guan Nan still felt guilty. The money lost due to unsold goods wasn't just hers; it had also dragged Qi Yang down with it. It was all her fault for being too confident, thinking it would be like last year, selling them all in just a few hours.
Watching the other stalls close one after another, Guan Nan began to get increasingly anxious.
"It's alright," Qi Yang patted her gently and said softly, "If we can't sell them, we'll just eat them ourselves."
The more Guan Nan heard him say this, the heavier her sense of guilt became.
After much deliberation, the two decided to find a better location: on the upper side of the stairs at the corner of the entrance to Happy Valley. The location was just right; any further forward and the security guards would shoo people away, and any further back and the crowds wouldn't notice them.
Perhaps it really was a better location; they sold a lot of roses in a row.
Guan Nan finally showed her first smile of the night.
This made the two of them even more enthusiastic in their sales pitch, and people were even taking photos in front of the stacked Christmas trees. Before long, half a box of apples was left, all the roses were sold out, and there were still some boba balls left.
A group of people came up the steps, and their voices sounded very familiar: "We told you we'd go take pictures first, but you guys are so slow, we're going to have to wait forever."
"Waiting is one thing, but you guys switched to the wrong line, making us wait for nothing," another girl said.
"Wasting time is a waste. Time is money, and money is life."
"This is indirect murder!"
"Damn it, can you guys stop making things so scary?" The boy quickly tried to distance himself: "It's not that I got on the wrong line, it's Jiang Gou. Don't frame the wrong person, okay?"
Guan Nan frowned; why did that voice sound so much like Yu Shu's?
"What do you mean you're framing me? You got on the wrong bus, didn't you know that?" the girl said.
In the blink of an eye, she saw people coming up, confirming her guess. Yu Shu was still talking non-stop: "Didn't I call Xie Shuwan at the time? He got on the No. 4 bus by himself, and I didn't even look before I got on with him."
Road No. 4, or Line 4 subway, I guess.
Guan Nan listened, pursed her lips, and said, "Line 4 goes to the Wetland Park."
As they approached, Yu Shu saw the bubble machine and quickly changed the subject: "There's a bubble machine over there, Tang Xin. Didn't you want a bubble machine? Why don't you go take a look?"
The makeup on their faces was different, yet it was all exceptionally terrifying.
Blue Avatar, blood-stained zombie, tearful clown, cute pumpkin ghost.
Jiang Li was the only one Guan Nan recognized among the group.
--Santa Claus.
He wore a Christmas outfit that didn't make him look bulky at all. A festive hat covered his white hair, he wore frameless glasses, a fake white beard, and he was carrying a large red sock.
He appears casual and relaxed, yet with the addition of glasses, he looks extremely refined.
This was a side of Jiang Li that Guan Nan had never seen before.
She stared at him, lost in thought.
Not far away, Jiang Li lazily raised an eyebrow, as if to say hello.
As if realizing something, Guan Nan slightly tugged at her lips and then looked away.
When Tang Xin asked Qi Yang, Qi Yang, who was pressing the bubble machine button, said, "Sorry, we're out of bubble machines, but we do have apples and balloons. Would you like to take a look?"
"Ah," Tang Xin said, a little disappointed, "then I don't want it anymore."
"We want them! We want them all!" Xie Shuwan stepped forward with a horrifying, one-eyed makeup that looked like a disfigurement. "Hey Nannan, I told you she was here."
Tang Xin from Avatar also smiled and waved: "Hi."
Guan Nan smiled and said, "Come and have fun."
When Qi Yang glanced at them, Guan Nan took the opportunity to introduce them, "This is my neighbor's older brother, and this is my classmate."
"Hello everyone," Qi Yang was momentarily surprised to see so many people. He didn't recognize Jiang Li, who looked familiar among them, so he smiled and handed over the bubble machine he was hawking. "You guys can take this and play with it. We're almost done."
With a clown-like face, Yu Shu peered intently at the cart and asked, "You've set up a stall here?"
“Hmm,” Guan Nan said, “there are more people here.”
Before he could finish speaking, Lin Rui interrupted him, diverting his attention, "Why didn't you sell them in the boys' dorm? The boys' dorm—"
Lin Rui said, "I'm sorry to disturb your business."
They selected a few balls, and Qi Yang smiled and refused their money. However, Xie Shuwan simply and rudely swiped 200 yuan, turned around, and immediately waved goodbye with a smile.
After they left, Lin Rui gave Guan Nan two hundred yuan in cash and whispered, "Give the money to them tomorrow. We don't make money off our classmates. We can also take this opportunity to maintain our friendship."
What he didn't say was that Guan Nan had a few friends, and these friends were much more important than that little bit of money.
After the stall ended, Guan Nan took out her share of the money and gave it to him according to the amount they had split between them. Even though Qi Yang insisted on refusing, Guan Nan still insisted on giving it to him.
Back at Hecangyuan, after sorting and classifying the good things, it was already 11:46 PM.
Qi Yang went to close the shop first, and Guan Nan returned the cart to the rental owner by herself. On her way back, she vaguely saw someone standing under the clock tower.
As she got closer, she discovered that the person was dressed as Santa Claus.
After pausing for two seconds, Guan Nan slowed down and carefully examined the person in order to verify her guess.
The person wearing the hat seemed to be in a lot of discomfort, so he took it off.
For some reason, I took it off and put it back on after only two seconds.
—"Trick or treat."
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