12 Chapter Eleven
◎Don't go crazy, we're at Teacher Liang's house.◎
"Dear leaders, teachers, parents, and students—"
Yu Jinyang paused, frowned, and continued reading.
The elderly father in the audience had now switched to using a long lens and a telephoto lens to target his son. There were more cameras than a film crew shooting a kissing scene. His phone was also busy, snapping two photos and sending them to Ms. Tang Xiang, reporting, "Your son is so shy. Talking about his dear classmates is like it's going to kill him."
Tang Xiang replied: "Did you change his speech? Can't you be a little more reliable on this deadly holiday? Ah Yang's going through puberty!"
The boy on the stage had returned to normal. His voice was calm and clear, and his words were articulated clearly. It had a cool quality, like the clash of jade stones, that swept across the playground, which was being scorched by the blazing sun in the afternoon.
"Hello everyone.
I am Yu Jinyang from Class 1, Grade 9. As the student representative speaking at this year's pep rally, I feel deeply honored and also keenly aware of the great responsibility. This marks the starting point of our 100-day sprint—
...
Growth may be a transformation, but academic success isn't something you can achieve by hoping for a miracle. Teachers often say that hard work pays off; you reap what you sow. Success is never accidental; it requires diligent effort and sweat. In these 100 days, we will be in our best condition, making the most of every minute to identify and fill in any gaps in our knowledge; at the same time, we will adjust our mindset and calmly face the exam—”
So rigid.
So serious.
How boring.
Li Yingqiao squatted behind Gao Dian, looking at Yu Jinyang on the podium, who was serious, calm and composed. She sighed deeply, which strengthened her belief that she should not study. She felt that the more he studied, the sillier he became.
"Good! Well said!" Liang Mei squatted down to the side and clapped like a seal.
Li Yingqiao glanced at her sideways, then looked away expressionlessly.
As expected, he couldn't study. A rigid teacher likes a rigid student, leading to a rigid life.
The young man's confident and dignified voice continued on stage—
"We will not slacken our efforts in the next 100 days, and we believe that hard work will be rewarded."
Laziness is like a cavity; every snack you sneak into bed at night is a sweet trap. If you want to enjoy the pleasures of the moment, you must bear the pain and anxiety of getting your teeth pulled in the future.
...
Finally, I wish you all the best of luck in the exams one hundred days from now, and that you achieve top marks!
Li Yingqiao had a traumatic experience with tooth extraction back in Xiaohua City. Li Shuli didn't take her to the hospital, but instead went to a nearby dental clinic—the storefront was so narrow, about a quarter the width of their grocery store, a long strip squeezed between the repair shop and the breakfast shop, it really looked like the public toilet between the two shops at first glance.
In county towns, dentists usually use their own names as signs, prominently displayed in black lettering on a blue background, as if afraid a child wouldn't be able to find someone to seek revenge. Li Yingqiao remembered the dentist who extracted her tooth as Pu Ding. After that, every time she passed Pu Ding's clinic, she would give him a hard glare.
Because Pu Ding left a small cotton ball in her gum after pulling her tooth, she was in pain for more than two months, and half of her face was swollen like a steamed bun. When she went to the city hospital for her second filling, Li Shuli pulled out a bloodstained cotton ball that had been buried in her gum for more than two months.
Later, Li Yingqiao learned that the reason Pu Ding's shop was so small was because it had been vandalized.
During the two months of toothache, as Li Yingqiao's deskmate, Yu Jinyang had to endure being punched, bitten, and hit by her to relieve the pain.
Unless she really angered him, Li Yingqiao usually wouldn't hit him hard. She would bite him a couple of times, and when he didn't react and continued doing his homework, she would casually toss his arm aside and go play by herself.
**
After the rally, Liang Mei led the children home to give them another pep talk, analyze the current middle school entrance exam situation, and give Li Yingqiao a little nudge.
As soon as the children entered the house, they saw the living creatures in the bottles and jars on the balcony and rushed over excitedly, surrounding them and starting to chatter amongst themselves, explaining things to each other.
"Can you eat crickets?" Zheng Miaojia asked.
"I don't know," Li Yingqiao shook her head and said, "but you definitely can't eat dung beetles."
Speaking of this, Gao Dian immediately perked up, but being tall, he didn't go up to the balcony. Instead, he and Yu Jinyang stood inside the sliding door of the balcony. "Hey, have you guys eaten cicadas yet? They're a specialty of Qingyi. My parents said they'd take me to Qingyi to eat them after the high school entrance exam."
Li Yingqiao glanced at him sideways: "You must eat a wide variety of foods in Guangdong, right? You're missing out on cicadas, aren't you?"
"I'm innocent! My idol," Gao Dian exclaimed, clutching his chest dramatically, looking as if his heart was breaking. "You can't just make baseless assumptions about my diet—"
Before he could finish speaking, Li Yingqiao caught a glimpse of someone's elbow next to Gao Dian out of the corner of her eye. She immediately glared at Gao Dian, who obediently made way for her to settle scores later—she stared directly at Yu Jinyang, who hadn't spoken since entering the room, her eyes slightly narrowed as she cracked her knuckles, and walked towards him step by step with a cold smile, gritting her teeth as she called out to him, "Yu, meow, meow—"
Yu Jinyang glanced indifferently at his dramatic childhood sweetheart across from him, but instinctively took two steps back, and casually moved the vase that Teacher Liang had placed on the table further in, so that the person opposite him wouldn't suddenly pounce on him and break it.
"Don't go crazy, we're at Teacher Liang's house," he warned weakly.
Li Yingqiao approached step by step, repeating the words he had just spoken on stage, each word seemingly ground out from between his teeth: "Laziness is like a cavity, right? Huh? Who are you calling on on stage!"
“That’s enough, Teacher Liang,” he said without batting an eye. “I advised her not to argue with such a stubborn mule.”
"Yu Miaomiao!" Li Yingqiao strode forward, leaving Yu Jinyang with nowhere to retreat. His entire back slammed into the kitchen's glass sliding door with a loud bang, rattling the door frame and startling Liang Mei, who was boiling water inside. She instinctively glanced back at the two of them and saw Li Yingqiao gripping Yu Jinyang's neck with both hands, her fingers digging into his Adam's apple, shaking him violently and shouting, "Who's the donkey! Who are you calling a donkey!"
Yu Jinyang was about to shake her until she threw up, but the advantage of growing up is that Li Yingqiao's strength is now completely no match for the power that punch she received back then, which would have made the sun set immediately.
He could probably shake him even if he just straightened his neck slightly, but he was certain that if Li Yingqiao found it a little difficult to shake him, she would slap him on the back of the head without hesitation the next second. The high school entrance exam was coming up soon, and he needed to avoid a heavy blow to the back of the head.
So he decided to just let her sway with her Adam's apple tucked in.
"Li Yingqiao, can you be gentle? Don't push my Adam's apple back down. I worked so hard to grow it back," Yu Jinyang warned casually.
Sure enough, upon hearing this, she shook even more vigorously than ever before, exclaiming, "You were cuter when you were little! Shake it back, shake it back!"
Yu Jinyang: "…………"
"Can we eat dung beetles?" Zheng Miaojia was still asking when Gao Dian scratched his head and searched on Baidu on his phone.
When Liang Mei came out of the kitchen after boiling water and saw these two scenes, a hint of despair mixed with cuteness. She decided to throw caution to the wind: "They're all edible, they're all edible. Dung beetles are not only edible, but they're also a medicinal ingredient. Since everyone's here, and the other ingredients are all doomed, I'll cook them all in one pot tonight. Those who need to grow taller will grow taller, and those who need to improve their brains will improve their brains. Let's all get nourished together. Haha."
"..."
"..."
"..."
Only Li Yingqiao remained silent, feeling she didn't need to improve her height or intelligence. Teacher Liang didn't subtly criticize her.
So, the children could sense Liang Mei's sarcastic tone, and without saying a word, they all took their seats at the table, their four pairs of eyes following Liang Mei eagerly.
"What are you waiting for dinner?" Liang Mei was furious. "Take out your notebooks and write down your study plans for the next 100 days. Li Yingqiao, write down how much money you want to earn in the next 100 days."
The group of people all lowered their heads again and buried themselves in their writing.
Only Li Yingqiao, with a pen in her mouth, looked at Liang Mei thoughtfully, but Liang Mei ignored her.
Since Gao Dian transferred back from Shenzhen, his grades have improved dramatically. Previously at the bottom of the class in Xiaohua City, he now ranks in the top ten in Yu Jinyang's class. It's truly astonishing how far ahead Fengtan's educational resources are in a major province compared to its counterparts.
Just like the food chain, big fish eat small fish, small fish eat weeds, and the weeds are always worried about the small fish, fearing that they might be swallowed by the big fish swimming behind them if they are not careful. In this case, their nurturing is worthless, because neither they nor the small fish can escape the fate of being eaten by the big fish in the end.
The educational ecosystem in most county towns is similar—it's a haven built by grassroots teachers. They nurture these students with their own roots, and they tremble with fear for them. No matter how hard the little fish flap their fins, they can't create as much of a splash as the big fish with a gentle flick of their tails.
Liang Mei considered herself to have an average temper and average character. Her favorite thing to do in life was to defy fate. When her teacher learned that she had found Li Yingqiao, he advised her not to mislead students, saying she couldn't teach good students and couldn't change the impoverished education system in Fengtan, and told her to give up. Of course, she retorted, even making a solemn vow to her teacher. She just hadn't expected to encounter such a stubborn person. Li Yingqiao's hatred of studying was beyond her imagination, yet she had chosen her at first glance to be her little fish defying the teacher.
The others had already put down their pens, but Li Yingqiao was still writing furiously. Yu Jinyang had taken on the duties of a cadre, collecting the notebooks of the other two and himself and handing them to Liang Mei.
Everyone else stared at Li Yingqiao, this stubborn mule.
Li Yingqiao wasn't anxious at all, as she was the only one who hadn't submitted hers yet. On the contrary, Gao Dian was scratching his neck like an emperor who wasn't worried but a eunuch, constantly observing Liang Mei's expression.
She waved to Yu Jinyang, her pen still tucked between her fingers. The two were on the same side. Yu Jinyang stood in his seat, glancing down at her. Li Yingqiao's mouth was pursed into a bird's beak shape, like a little sparrow with an insect in its beak. It was clear how lazy she was. She leaned back in her chair with an air of indifference, preferring to pout and ask him in a muffled voice rather than put down her pen and speak properly.
"How much does your dad's car cost?" she asked.
"..."
Before Yu Jinyang could answer, Liang Mei, with her sharp ears, heard everything clearly. She grabbed the notebook that had just been collected and slapped it on Yu Jinyang's forehead: "Li Yingqiao! The next hundred days, not the next hundred years!"
"Fine!" Li Yingqiao snorted, finally letting go of her grip on him. She threw her pen on the table and decided to make an outrageous demand, holding up three fingers. "Three thousand yuan, one thousand yuan a month for the next three months. That's reasonable, isn't it!"
Yu Jinyang slowly picked up his cup, took a sip of water, and was just about to swallow—
Liang Mei made the final decision: "Deal. I'll double the amount. If you get into Tanzhong High School, I'll give you ten thousand."
ah?
Li Yingqiao was completely stunned, staring at Liang Mei in disbelief, but the others couldn't sit still any longer.
“Then I—” Gao Dian pointed to himself, looking at Liang Mei with shining eyes.
Liang Mei quoted prices one by one: "One thousand each for you and Miao Jia."
She turned to look at the person who was drinking water: "Yu Jinyang, ten yuan."
Yu Jinyang: "..."
She treated it as money spent on fish fry, hoping at least one would swim out.
[Author's Note]
An extra chapter will be added the day after tomorrow~ but it might be two chapters combined into one, with around 6,000 words.
Big promotion during the May Day holiday! Everyone gets 200 red envelopes!
[Stand-up ear rabbit head][Stand-up ear rabbit head][Stand-up ear rabbit head][Stand-up ear rabbit head]
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