Chapter 220: How Can You Study Well With Bugs and Beasts Around?

When evening study hall began, the class rose to their feet in scattered, half-hearted fashion.

Jiang Nian, with nothing better to do, loved to observe Zhang Ningzhi, staring—

Anyway, he'd finished his homework that afternoon, and the feeling of doing homework in class was the same as slacking off on the job—pure bliss.

Zhang Ningzhi sensed someone's gaze and felt a bit speechless.

"What are you doing?"

"Thirsty."

"Didn't you bring your own water?" Zhang Ningzhi shot him a glance, then stopped looking at him directly. "If you have no water, just bear with it. Go fill up after class."

In the end, the affection had faded, and Jiang Nian, unable to freeload drinks, felt miserable all over.

"Share half your lemon tea with me."

He was no longer using imperatives now, but straight declarative statements.

That's how you hustle—swing the rod whether there's a date on the tree or not; even ones you've already drunk work.

"No." Zhang Ningzhi held a grudge against him every single day.

"Later I'll steal the straw from your drink, so you'll have no choice but to share half with me." Jiang Nian said something outrageous with an utterly calm face.

Zhang Ningzhi's little head burned hot—angry and amused at once—she could only keep her face tight.

"You dare!"

Li Hua, unable to tolerate these two any longer, complained.

"Be a human being."

"What's wrong, baby? You jealous?" Jiang Nian shot him a glance, then suddenly asked, "Oh right, Hua, have you ever tried peeing into boiling water?"

Li Hua froze, stroking his chin.

"Why couldn't you?"

"Heat transfer, right? The heat travels up along your stream and scalds you." Jiang Nian coaxed patiently. "A hundred degrees, straight up—makes the birds startle in terror."

At those words, Li Hua got so scared he nearly shrank himself back inside.

Boys can deeply empathize with such a fatal strike to the cock, even when the misfortune isn't happening to themselves.

"Your fucking talk is really cursed."

He thought for a while, instinctively feeling this was a fallacy.

But on second thought, liquid does flow back when the temperature is high.

He thought it over for ages and still couldn't figure it out, so he simply decided to boil a pot of water after school and try it himself.

Strike while the cock is hot—miss it and it's gone forever.

Evening study hall was about to end, and in the gradually quieting classroom, a voice suddenly rang out.

"Ah-Cheng, you're playing video games again. Take a break, won't you? Go read a book."

The class burst into laughter; even the girls couldn't hold it in.

To be fair, the guys who tell Nantong jokes all day and bump into each other between classes are basically straight men.

Some girls laughing into a heap might actually love watching Nantong.

"Opening thunder strike."

"I'm a historian—this is the Little Southern Liang."

"Why's Sun Zhicheng bro not saying anything? Born without the ability to laugh?"

"That day, I just couldn't stand classmate Lin Dong's nagging anymore and rushed out, and who would've thought I'd run into a really strange person who wanted to take me to the convenience store."

The classroom was a riot of giggles; evening self-study began in this inescapable atmosphere, only gradually quieting down after the class bell rang.

About ten minutes later, Old Liu flashed in through the door, a stack of test papers in his hand.

"Weekly test, fam."

The classroom instantly fell silent; everyone was dumbfounded.

Two seconds later, the big suckers finally realized the gravity of the situation, and wails instantly rose on all sides.

"I'm numb—Chinese test in the first period of evening self-study?"

"I haven't even finished my homework!"

"Outrageous! What has Chinese ever done to you? That's a crime! Come with me to turn yourself in."

Jiang Nian felt nothing about it; he quite liked Chinese tests.

A Chinese test took three periods of evening self-study, plus the essay.

All in all, it was enough to eat up the entire evening self-study session.

Of course, a math test would be even better—from looking down at the first question to looking up. Face red, steaming; two hours gone in an instant.

"Last Sunday, because of the parent meeting, the weekly test was delayed." Old Liu was still explaining at the podium. "Anyway, you're taking it one way or another."

"Students, clear your desks. Ah, sit according to last week's test seating. No switching seats, no whispering."

Rustle rustle, the class began clearing their desks.

Some hauled the books from their desk shelves to the side of the podium; others chose to shove them into the iron cabinet embedded in the wall—purely bored out of their minds.

Jiang Nian didn't have much in his book basket; he gathered the books on his desk and tossed them straight in.

Done in one second, he turned to help Zhang Ningzhi, whose desk situation was complicated.

This is what twisted love looks like.

Big bro's uneducated, big bro doesn't like to talk, but he loves you.

This is also the beautiful-strong-pitiful move: you won't let me drink your lemon tea, so I'll morally kidnap you.

Of course, this trick is useless against little bastards with a negative morality index.

Zhang Ningzhi saw Jiang Nian silently helping her tidy up, and recalling her own words just now, couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt—her tone had seemed a bit harsh.

He carried Zhang Ningzhi's books to the lectern, and when he came back, he saw Zhang Ningzhi take out a box of lemon tea from her drawer.

She hesitated for a moment, then quickly stuffed it into his hand.

"This is for you."

Jiang Nian was immediately delighted — no matter what, yay anyway.

"Thanks, baby."

The noisy classroom drowned out his words, but Zhang Ningzhi, sitting right next to him, heard every syllable clearly.

Baby?

Although Jiang Nian often acted crazy and liked to call the guys "baby" this and "baby" that for no reason, this word had already inflated countless times over within Class Three's Nantong circle.

But hearing it once still made her heart explode with a violent flutter.

Zhang Ningzhi rested one hand against the desk edge, her heartbeat tangled and chaotic, like a wild goose's tracks on snow. She blinked, looking perfectly composed on the surface, though her chest rose and fell in long, slow waves. She didn't dare make any big movements, afraid of losing her composure.

She stood there in a daze for a moment before finally pulling herself together from that sweetness, which had inflated like Zimbabwean currency.

Only then did Zhang Ningzhi lower her eyes and slowly pack up her exam stationery.

Her heart was still pounding hard, but she could barely rein it in — at least she wouldn't be too embarrassing.

She silently admonished herself in her heart: don't be so pathetic.

The language exam was extremely boring.

Yu Tongjie was in low spirits. He sat down at his seat according to his student number.

His gaze instinctively drifted toward Li Qingrong's seat, and he couldn't help feeling a bit weary.

There had been too much homework lately, and he was falling a little behind on his studies.

To the point that he was basically running himself ragged finishing homework for every subject — though he did want to copy.

But not long after he'd been promoted to the class, he'd said with his own mouth that he wouldn't copy homework.

He'd even subtly mocked his seatmate who did copy homework — so this was reaping what he'd sown.

But it didn't matter — as long as he waited until this Sunday's seat change, things would be fine.

Hu Nianzhong had said he was a slow-warming kind of person. Too embarrassed to go straight to the head teacher about switching groups, he needed a bit of time to mentally prepare.

Country bumpkins are such a hassle.

Just as he was thinking this, he looked up and saw Jiang Nian chatting with Li Qingrong.

Yu Tongjie: "."

What struck him as strange, though, was that his heart didn't seem to ripple much.

A month ago, he might have been sulking about it for a while; now all that was left was... exhaustion.

Damn it, the honors class really doesn't treat ordinary students like people.

If you didn't know, you'd think they were students; if you didn't know, you'd think he'd come to school to be worked like a beast of burden.

A wave of weariness washed over him, and Yu Tongjie closed his eyes.

A voice even rose in his heart, saying he might really work himself to death in this godforsaken place in this lifetime.

Tao Ran, a stack of test papers and answer sheets in hand, was circling the classroom, calling out toward the back rows.

"Anyone still missing test papers or answer sheets?"

"We're short on answer sheets over here!" Zhou Yuting raised her hand high, her voice caught somewhere between a pinched and an unpitched tone. "Over here, over here."

Tao Ran was only a few steps away from her, so he simply walked over and lowered his head to count the answer sheets.

"How many short?"

"Let me see — altogether, anyone who's short, raise your hand, I'll count." Zhou Yuting was volunteering herself for work again, and in the meantime she sneakily glanced at Tao Ran.

Not bad — suitable for keeping deep in the fish pond.

"One, two, three — seven in total." Zhou Yuting's face broke into a smile. Watching Tao Ran in the gaps between him counting the answer sheets, her eyes sparkled, and she seized the chance to ask:

"Class commissary, do you like Ford cars?"

Tao Ran was busy counting the answer sheets, and the class was a bit noisy, so he didn't catch what she'd said.

He vaguely caught something about a "Fu-something car" — a Furry license plate?

He had no plans to date in high school, so he never hid his fetishes.

A real man should like Furry — yeah, it's a bit perverted. So what? And then? So what if he does?

You gonna kill me? Buddy.

He counted out seven answer sheets and handed them to Zhou Yuting, then paused to think for a few seconds.

"Mm, does the thing you mentioned have fur?"

Zhou Yuting was baffled — what kind of decent car has fur? Could it be a Transformer? There were some Transformers in that show that did look like they had grass growing on them.

"I guess... yeah."

"That's pretty cool, I like that too." Tao Ran said that and walked off.

Zhou Yuting had no idea what just happened and decided to look it up when she got home that evening.

Boys' hobbies are too niche.

Mid-language-exam.

Two evening self-study periods passed in the blink of an eye, and Jiang Nian's hand was sore from writing. He'd only just barely finished his 800-character essay — regardless of how much he got right, at least he could say he'd finished.

The essay was also written completely at random, just throwing in some stock phrases to pad it out.

It wasn't that he wasn't taking it seriously — the language exam's key point for pulling up scores wasn't there.

After doing so many language test papers, his essay score had basically shown no improvement.

What's the impact on the college entrance exam of doing one fewer language test paper?

Of course there is one.

This influence was like the biology world losing Ma Guojun, who once appeared on a biology exam question. "The place where sperm and egg combine—" he had answered "on the bed."

Jiang Nian finished early and had nothing to do.

So he began his favorite pastime again—staring at the class monitor, zoning out for a while as he gazed at her profile. Then he started spinning his pen, and since his own pen didn't spin well, he set his sights on the class monitor's pen.

"Ahem, class monitor, may I borrow your pen?"

Li Qingrong was writing the last two hundred words of her essay, her arm encircling the test paper protectively.

Because a certain someone had a prior offense of sneaking peeks at her essays, she had to keep her guard up.

Hearing this, she turned her head and glanced at Jiang Nian.

"Mm."

After the language exam ended, the classroom crowd returned to their seats.

The fourth period evening self-study had not yet begun.

Li Hua suddenly stopped writing, turned his head, and said to Jiang Nian.

"Nian ah, how can you study well while hanging around with insects!"

Jiang Nian froze, afraid this damn thing would suddenly pull out a gun and point it at him.

No wait, it should be pointed at Cai Xiaoqing—she's the real boss of Class Three, he's at most a little lackey standing around.

(End of chapter)