Chapter 350

Outside Class Three.

"Another bright sunny day," Qian Bao sighed, stepping into the classroom under the morning light, "OK, class begins."

"Why does your class smell like spicy strips?"

"Li Hua, stand up!"

"It's not me, teacher," Li Hua said, bewildered, rising with a red mouth, "What evidence do you have?"

"Evidence?" Qian Bao, wearing a pink down jacket and fitted gray pants, sneered.

"Turn around, let everyone see."

Instantly, the classroom erupted in roaring laughter.

Jiang Nian laughed, "Hua, who stuffed a spicy strip in your mouth?"

Ma Guojun's fat face crumpled into a thin slit as he grinned, "Kid, you didn't even wipe your mouth after eating?"

Li Hua wiped his mouth—his wrist bore a streak of red oil.

"What the fuck?"

At the back of the classroom, beside the blackboard.

Wang returned to his hometown.

Qian Bao dressed especially pink today, like an eighteen-year-old girl.

"OK, everyone, take out your test papers, look at the vocabulary fill-in-the-blank section."

Starting with grammar—typical veteran teacher's calmness.

Since the atmosphere was just livened up, she seized the moment while the students' energy was high and pressed on to finish the grammar section.

Otherwise, if you put it off until later, no one will listen to the lecture for sure.

After the first class ended, the class collapsed again in a rustling wave. Qian Bao glanced over, then walked away in her platform shoes.

The bell rang—the second class began.

Students forced themselves awake, eyes bleary, drooping like wilted eggplants.

"So sleepy," Yang Qiming's head was foggy—he'd chatted all night with "Lü Xuan," then realized he'd messaged the wrong person.

Lü Xuan changed her profile picture last night—from a lonely woman gazing at the sea—to a cute kitten.

Yang Qiming added her on QQ in the evening but didn't label her. After evening self-study, he picked up his phone and found the chat box gone.

He scrolled through his message list, found the profile picture, opened the blank page, and started chatting.

They talked from poetry and verse to life goals—until past four in the morning. He figured it was time to flirt a bit, when suddenly he felt the urge to urinate.

He got up to pee, and the other person sent a message.

"Bro, you're pretty funny."

In that moment, he suddenly realized something. He opened her space, studied it carefully, then checked her signature.

The sky fell.

A distant cousin from the countryside, added on QQ with no label.

So close—just a hair's breadth away.

He was about to say something lewd.

In the late night, Yang Qiming didn't sleep a single second. He didn't fall asleep until 5:30, totaling one hour of sleep.

Now, the aftereffects of staying up all night caught up with him.

"Off stealing something?" Zhou Yuting glanced at her desk-mate Yang Qiming, "Sleeping through morning self-study, sleeping between classes."

Before Yang Qiming could speak, Qian Bao clapped her hands on the podium.

"Alright, no talking during class."

Then she picked up the test paper but didn't start immediately. Instead, she paused a moment and shared a bit of gossip.

"Hey, did Teacher Liu tell you about the soccer class tournament?"

At this, the class, previously half-asleep,

Especially the boys, snapped awake instantly. Eyes wide, their expressions visibly brightened.

"Really?"

"Why soccer? Isn't there a basketball class tournament?"

"Of course—basketball leads to broken bones. School leaders hate trouble. Soccer's much safer."

"People from the next class said so too—apparently it's in response to policy."

"Who in our class plays soccer?"

"The usual guys who play during PE, who else?"

The class buzzed with chatter; Qian Bao didn't stop them. Instead, she smiled, even joining in a few comments.

After about five minutes, she clapped her hands.

"OK, save soccer tournament talk for after class. Take out your papers, look at section D—what option is wrong?"

Jiang Nian was looking down, working through the problems, when Li Hua nudged him. He looked up, confused.

"Gan ji mao?"

"Are you playing soccer in PE the day after tomorrow?" Li Hua looked shy, "I actually have a dream—to become the Prince of Soccer."

"Prince of Soccer? What kind of nonsense?" Jiang Nian was baffled, "Like the Soccer Baby thing? Wearing a jersey and dancing with a steel wool ball?"

"Damn it! Damn it!" Li Hua turned red. "I'm doing this for the cause of soccer! Do you know what would happen to the national team without me?"

Jiang Nian: "They'd win."

"Damn it! Damn it!!" Li Hua felt deeply insulted—the national team wouldn't stay bad forever, but without him, they'd win.

Qi ke xiu!

It was practically a curse more vicious than even a single-celled organism!

"Li Hua, stand up and go to the back!" Qian Bao called Li Hua's name, "You love talking so much, why don't you come up and give the lecture?"

Li Hua pinched the test paper as she stood up, muttering under her breath at her seat, stubbornly talking tough.

"If I really lectured, you wouldn't be happy again."

"What did you say?!!!" Qian Bao instantly flew into a rage, "Don't stand at the back either, come up and stand on the lecture platform!"

Jiang Nian was overjoyed, especially seeing Li Hua's cowardly-yet-stubborn look, nearly laughing himself silly.

"Li Hua's gone mad, saying she wants to create a new kind of English class."

After the second period ended, during the gap when all the Gao San students ran downstairs for exercise.

Wang Yuhe, mixed in among the crowd at the cramped stairwell, suddenly turned her head and lowered her voice to speak to Chen Yunyun beside her.

"Yunyun, can't I go play soccer?"

Chen Yunyun was still silently memorizing vocabulary in her palm; hearing this, she couldn't help but pause for a moment.

"It's not that you can't, it's just that our school has too few Gao San girls who play soccer—we can't even put together a decent team."

"Oh." Wang Yuhe's mood instantly dropped, her mouth wiggling twice, "Fine then, I won't play during PE class."

Chen Yunyun couldn't bear it and thought for a moment before saying.

"You could ask Jiang Nian, let him bring you along to play. I remember him saying something about playing in a match during Gao Yi."

"Him?"

Wang Yuhe was going down the stairs, just about to say something, when the crowd rushing down instantly scattered them apart again, forcing her to separate from Chen Yunyun.

Only after reaching the first floor did the two best friends reunite.

"Jiang Nian played soccer too?" Wang Yuhe stopped one foot right on the line where sunlight and the teaching building's shadow met, stomping down hard.

"Mm."

"Why didn't he tell me?" Wang Yuhe was puzzled.

Chen Yunyun was stumped by that question, pressed her lips together, and decided to push the blame onto Jiang Nian.

"He deliberately didn't tell you."

"Great! I knew it!" Wang Yuhe clenched her fists, then hesitated a little, "But, would he bring me along?"

"What if I play better than him? Jiang Nian would definitely get embarrassed and angry."

Chen Yunyun glanced at Wang Yuhe, suppressing the upward curve of her lips.

"He won't."

On the crimson running track of the sports field, the broadcast blared deafeningly.

Each class formed up in a loose, scattered line, class flags fluttering in the sunlight, and shrill whistles divided the sports field into two sections.

Class Three was positioned near the exit, belonging to the sort of "the general on the field is beyond the emperor's command" existence.

Li Qingrong gently turned her head, her gaze sweeping over Jiang Nian, who was talking with Chen Yunyun, her clear eyes as still as autumn water.

Her skin was very fair—not a glowing white, but rather, set against the platinum sunlight, a white like frost.

Like the purest ice cream, three-dimensional and translucent.

Until she turned her head, a ripple appearing in her eyes the moment she lowered them.

"Class monitor, what's wrong?" Nie Qiqi clung to her sweetly, wishing she could just transform into the class monitor's eight-armed octopus accessory.

"Nothing." Li Qingrong's tone was very flat.

"Oh, alright then." Nie Qiqi, seeing the class monitor really wasn't in a bad mood, continued, "Can I sign up for the pot-throwing competition?"

Pot-throwing?

Li Qingrong remembered now—that little thing at the back of the classroom. The homeroom teacher had brought it over before the joint exam.

She remembered Jiang Nian didn't play.

Before Li Qingrong could answer, standing class vice-monitor Cai Xiaoqing reached out and dragged the little vixen away first.

"Come, come, come, sign up with me."

"What are you doing, let go, let go." Nie Qiqi struggled, "I'm signing up with the class monitor, not with you."

Cai Xiaoqing said, "Each class has one slot for boys and one for girls—you wouldn't stand a chance even if you went."

"What about the boys' side? Doesn't Jiang Nian throw super accurately too?" Nie Qiqi refused to back down, "The boys are signing up enthusiastically all the same."

"They—" Cai Xiaoqing didn't know what to say.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over them.

Li Qingrong avoided the gazes of the two, smoothed the hair by her temples that the wind had tousled, and asked in a flat tone.

"... Who's holding the sign-up sheet?"

Jiang Nian had run four laps, face neither red nor breath short. While the class waited in formation to be dismissed, he turned his head to glance at the soccer field.

It's been a long time since he played soccer.

During Gao Yi he had too much time on his hands, but back then he didn't really understand his parents, and his relationship with Xu Qianqian had only just begun to ease.

So his mood was off the entire Gao Yi year.

Every day it was either basketball or soccer, and troublesome romantic entanglements were plentiful—either being chased and taken advantage of by girl perverts, or being sneak-hugged by stalkers.

Gao Yi was full of troublesome romances he couldn't cut off, Gao Er was chasing after Little Zhou without success. Of course, Little Zhou also dropped some coins, which was a bit topsy-turvy.

Who could blame it—he was broke, willing but unable.

Sometimes life is just this abstract: the more you chase something the less you get it, while planting willows by accident actually yields shade.

Gao Er was like viewing flowers through fog, like a dream.

He looked at the soccer field, covered in dead grass, patchy and bald in spots, the brown earth already exposed, looking extremely shabby.

He thought to himself, maybe he should enter the competition—winning even a small prize would be good.

Given the school's usual ways, there might even be a prize. Champion's hard to say, but the top three definitely get a few hundred yuan — that's a fortune.

Might as well tease the elementary schooler along the way; playing her is too easy.

After the morning run ended.

Jiang Nian went upstairs with Li Hua and Ma Guojun, and suddenly noticed several people at the doorway carrying desks out of the Sanban Sect classroom.

The three of them exchanged glances, each seeing the surprise in the others' eyes.

"Moving that fast?"

"Any slower and this afternoon's physics scores will be out — that bastard's stuff." Jiang Nian glanced toward the stairwell.

At the end of the corridor, Yu Tongjie left only the back view of him carrying a stool. A few Zero Class people helped him move the desks and book baskets.

Suddenly, Yu Tongjie turned his head as if possessed.

His gaze cut through the noisy crowd in the corridor and locked straight onto Jiang Nian, his eyes carrying a naked hatred.

"What's he doing?"

"Probably... looking back for his daddy." Jiang Nian walked toward the classroom. "Come on, let's go see your new classmate with the round face and whiskers."

Li Hua: "Eat shit! Definitely a beauty."

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