Chapter 438: First Love Girlfriend

After sitting for another while, until nearly nine o'clock, guests began to arrive one after another.

However, most were relatives from the same village or close kin, thinking to come early to help out.

In truth, there was nothing much to help with; it was just to show one's face and pay respects. After exchanging a few pleasantries, they each found a table to brag and chat.

Gu Ming brought over a plate of melon seeds, cracking them with great delight. Lin Sicheng did not have the habit of snacking, so he only tasted a few.

The two were chatting about interesting anecdotes from the police academy; Gu Ming was in the middle of spitting as he spoke when he suddenly paused, blinking his eyes as he stared at the entrance of the hall.

Thinking he had gotten stuck, Lin Sicheng pushed his water glass: "Keep going!"

Go to hell.

Gu Ming gestured with his chin: "That one at the reception desk, is that the little delinquent from your class?"

Lin Sicheng turned his head and squinted to look.

She was quite tall with a slightly sturdy build, wearing tight jeans, high-heeled knee-high boots, and a dark-colored overcoat.

Her figure wasn't particularly good, but she knew how to dress, looking quite sharp. It was just that her makeup was a bit heavy: big wavy hair draped over her shoulders, and her eyeshadow was so heavy it looked like she had been punched twice.

Her eyelashes were also extremely long, a full centimeter. Her lips looked like they had been stained with bloody lard, red and shiny.

Lin Sicheng nodded: "She has a name: Jia Chun!"

Gu Ming curled his lip: Just a female hoodlum, how is she 'pure' 【Jia Chun】 at all?

It must have been the second semester of Lin Sicheng's first year of high school; Lin Sicheng was the study monitor, and when he collected her homework, she wouldn't hand it in, eventually getting kicked home by the head teacher to call her parents. This woman couldn't swallow her anger, so she called people that night, preparing to ambush Lin Sicheng at the school gate.

Fortunately, someone tipped him off and told Lin Sicheng. Lin Sicheng left evening self-study early and went to the third-year building to find him. Then the two brothers dismantled a bench, and relying on just two bench legs, they cracked the heads of the four hoodlums.

That night, this woman's makeup was even thicker than it was now, and as her tears flowed down, they washed two black trenches into her face...

Just as he was reminiscing, seemingly having spotted Lin Sicheng, the woman walked over. Gu Ming gloated: "Chengwa, do you think she'll give you two slaps?"

Lin Sicheng was baffled: "Why?"

"Nonsense, for revenge, of course?" Gu Ming said as if it were obvious, "You beat her until she was wailing back then..."

Lin Sicheng paused for a moment and flatly denied it: "I didn't, you remembered wrong!"

Heh, only a few years have passed, and I'm not seventy or eighty yet, am I?

Gu Ming remembered it very clearly: after knocking down the four hoodlums, this woman still wanted to bring a few older male students to try again; Lin Sicheng kicked one flying, pulled another down with a bench leg, and then slapped this woman twice.

One on the left cheek, one on the right. The boys ran away immediately, leaving only this woman sitting on the ground wailing.

He had asked him at the time: How could you bring yourself to do it? Lin Sicheng had argued convincingly: Strike once to open the way, and avoid a hundred strikes to come.

Since then, no one in school dared to bully Lin Sicheng: because not only could he fight, he even hit women...

Just as he was reminiscing, the woman walked over. Lin Sicheng stood up and took the initiative to greet her: "Jia Chun!"

Then, he introduced Gu Ming: "This is my brother, you should remember him!"

Jia Chun certainly remembered: in this life, she had only been beaten by an outsider that one time, how could she forget?

She was a woman, and holding a grudge was only natural, but after knowing that Lin Sicheng wasn't doing very well, the bit of anger in Jia Chun's heart inexplicably vanished...

The woman blinked her eyes, looking him up and down. There was no hostility, just a bit of mockery: "Lin Sicheng, I heard you graduated?" Lin Sicheng smiled: "Yes, I'm a graduate student!"

"Still archaeology?"

He figured that if he said Cultural Relics Protection, this woman wouldn't understand, so Lin Sicheng nodded: "Right!"

The woman sighed: "What's the point of studying archaeology as a graduate student? After studying for a few years and coming out, aren't you still just doing archaeology?"

"Either you go into the deep mountains or the barren deserts, you can't even see a living person. Being able to dig in the dirt in a village is like Chinese New Year."

"Either digging up tombs or scraping graves, or else counting dead people's bones. Not to mention you can't go home many times a year, the pay isn't high, and you don't even have a permanent position..." The woman chattered on and on, pretending to be regretful: "Tell me, if you had studied at Tsinghua or Peking University back then, how good would it be now?"

Gu Ming subconsciously glanced over: If this had been said a year ago, even if Lin Sicheng didn't lose his temper on the spot, he would definitely have turned and walked away.

Because the year of the college entrance exam, Lin Sicheng scored 698, just two points shy of a flat seven hundred. He ranked twenty-seventh in Xijing and fifty-fifth in the entire province. He could have applied to over ninety-five percent of the majors at both Tsinghua and Peking University.

Unfortunately, his grandfather had stubbornly forced him to apply to Xida, and because of this, Lin Sicheng had been sulking with his family for three whole years.

It wasn't until last autumn, when this kid suddenly had some kind of epiphany, that things eased up.

But looking back now, a blessing in disguise: let alone Tsinghua or Peking, even if Lin Sicheng had been admitted to Harvard or MIT, would he have his current achievements?

Lin Sicheng just smiled: "It's not bad now!"

The woman looked disdainful: "You're just being stubborn!"

One look and it was clear this woman was here to show off, but Gu Ming still couldn't help himself: "Jia Chun, you've graduated from university too, right?"

"Of course, I graduated last year!" The woman lifted her chin, "I'm at Nokia now!"

What is that?

Gu Ming was stunned, his face full of disbelief: "How did you get in?"

It was no wonder he didn't believe it: since the Xijing Nokia production base was built and started hiring in 2005, graduates from all major universities had been breaking their heads to get in over the past three years.

The reason was simple: the base salary for fresh graduates was 6,800, which was more than three times that of a Xijing civil servant, and it increased every year. If you got married, the company arranged housing for free, and the house was given to you for free after reaching a certain number of years of service. If you had children, no matter how many, everything from kindergarten to high school was covered.

With benefits like these, who could say it was bad?

But with so many people going, the threshold was naturally high: to get in, one's academic background had to be at least a 211 science or engineering degree, and Xijing institutions were prioritized. Therefore, in the past three years, the fresh graduates who successfully landed jobs were basically monopolized by Xijiao University, Xigong University, Xidian, and Xida, accounting for as much as ninety-two percent. Gu Ming felt that the probability of this woman getting into those three schools was smaller than the probability of the Earth flying out of the Milky Way. And don't even talk about those three top universities; it would be a struggle for her to even get into a first-tier university.

Jia Chun was instead stumped by the question: "Why couldn't I get in?"

Gu Ming was suspicious: "Are you on the production line?"

"Don't talk nonsense if you don't know!" Jia Chun glared at him, "The production line doesn't need to hire university students!"

Gu Ming wanted to ask more, but Lin Sicheng changed the subject: "Jia Chun, the classmates are all arranged over here, I'll take you over!"

"No need, it's boring for me to sit alone, I'll chat with you guys!"

The woman pulled the melon seed plate over and cracked them with a "pitter-patter": "Lin Sicheng, I heard that archaeology graduate students have to go out often, and you have to pay for travel and accommodation yourself. Does it cost fifty thousand a year?"

How would Lin Sicheng know so clearly? He gave a vague answer: "Something like that!"

"I heard your grandfather retired?"

"Right, he retired last year!"

"And your dad, still at the Funeral Home? Your mom is still at the High School?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, if you calculate it like that, their annual salary isn't even enough for you to spend!"

Lin Sicheng paused, then smiled: "It seems it really isn't enough!"

"Definitely not enough!" The woman wore a look of deep distress, "Fifty or sixty thousand a year, that's over two hundred thousand in four years... You say, if you didn't go to graduate school and just started working, how good would that be?"

"Is that so?"

Lin Sicheng was calm and indifferent, but Gu Ming felt more uncomfortable the more he heard, feeling a headache coming on.

After listening for a while longer, he truly couldn't hold back: "Jia Chun, your lipstick fell off!"

"What?"

Gu Ming pointed: "Your lipstick, it's stuck on your teeth!"

"That's impossible, this is Maybelline..." The woman took out a makeup mirror to check, let out an "Ah," and said, "It really fell off?" Before the words were out, she had already run out several meters, clattering as she rushed toward the restroom.

Gu Ming let out a sharp breath: "Lin Sicheng, this woman has mocked you to such a degree, how can you actually endure it?"

Lin Sicheng smiled: "What is there to be unable to endure?"

Why is it that many years after graduation, sometimes at class reunions, some people lose their composure or even leave in a huff the moment they are teased by classmates?

Because there are far too many people like Jia Chun who just love to watch others make a fool of themselves and laugh at others for not doing as well as they are.

The key is that the things she says sometimes are indeed facts. Those with poor psychological resilience will naturally break down and get angry. But if it isn't a fact, or even the exact opposite, then why get angry?

Lin Sicheng just felt: Today's Jia Chun is particularly amusing.

Gu Ming also realized: Lin Sicheng was deliberately teasing that woman, and he suddenly laughed out loud: "Idiot!"

After cursing, he remembered: "Is this woman lying? With her high school grades, could she get into a key university?" Lin Sicheng shook his head: "Not a key university, I remember she studied liberal arts at Chang'an College; I forgot the specific major. But her being at Nokia should be true: she has a blue lanyard around her neck, it should be an employee badge hanging from it. If nothing goes wrong, after the banquet starts and she takes off her coat, you'll be able to see it." Gu Ming was stunned: Chang'an College, isn't that a third-tier university, and a private one at that?

No wonder she only studied for three years?

"Then how did she get in?"

Lin Sicheng explained: "Only the R&D Department at Nokia requires a degree from a key university, which is the part the media focuses on promoting. Besides that, there are logistics, the office, the logistics center, and the customer service center; these also recruit every year, but they only require an undergraduate degree. Of course, the pay certainly isn't that high, just around two thousand."

Two thousand is high enough, on par with a civil servant's salary...

Gu Ming was stunned, pondering for a long time: "A third-tier university can get in too?"

In theory, a third-tier university really shouldn't be able to get in, let alone a private third-tier one?

Lin Sicheng sighed: "Her surname is Jia, she's a relocated household from Jiawang Village. Before the land was requisitioned to build the factory, the village had an agreement with Nokia: how many workers to recruit from the village every year, which also included fresh university graduates..."

Gu Ming suddenly realized: This trick again?

Back then he was still curious: Xida High School was a provincial key school after all, how did a problem student like Jia Chun get in?

Later, after asking his dad, he found out: getting into a key high school doesn't necessarily require passing the exam; there are also high-priced classes...

As these thoughts turned, Gu Ming had a sudden inspiration: "Oh right, what do you think about letting Lin Pingwa get into Nokia? He's a fresh graduate from Xidian, and he studied electronic computing; he's even exempt from the written test..."

Lin Sicheng shook his head: "Not good!"

It's not that he must let Lin Siping take the civil service exam, but Nokia has already started to go downhill: last year, Apple released the iPhone system, this year, Android launched the Symbian system, at most in three more years, Nokia will go bankrupt...

"Why not let him go?" Gu Ming looked puzzled: "It's six thousand eight a month?"

Lin Sicheng let out a "Heh": "Xijiao University has a more famous name, why don't you go?"

Gu Ming was stunned: "My dad won't let me!"

Isn't that nonsense?

Lin Siping's father-in-law, mother-in-law, and wife are all civil servants, and it's not like the family is short on money? Plus, he's a top student from Xidian, it's impossible for them to let him go to a private enterprise.

Lin Sicheng thought for a moment: "Finish up these two days first. After he takes his wife to visit her parents, you invite him out and we'll sit down together!" "Why, to sing, to drink?"

"That works too, but try to find a quieter place to give him some guidance..."

In his previous life, Lin Sicheng was at odds with his family and didn't attend Lin Siping's wedding. He only saw him once when his grandfather passed away; by that time, Lin Siping had already tested into the Provincial Procuratorate, and they said his wife was at the District Court.

Because he was busy at the time, he didn't manage to ask about anything else. It wasn't until a few years later, when Lin Sicheng was framed and arrested, that his parents asked Lin Siping for help, and in the end, it was a close call.

He didn't know how he solved it or who he found, but Lin Sicheng reviewed it afterward: if it weren't for Lin Siping's help, he would have served at least three years. For this, Lin Sicheng went to thank him specifically, but Lin Siping didn't want any of the things he brought, and in the end, they just had a meal.

Afterward, Lin Sicheng went to Beijing, and because he returned rarely, he only kept in touch over the phone during holidays.

Therefore, in his previous life, Lin Sicheng really didn't know if his wife's surname was Hu or if his father-in-law was at the Police Station. Moreover, in his previous life, Lin Sicheng didn't know any Director Hu.

But the favor was real; whether it was in his past life or this one, as long as there is a chance to repay it, he definitely must repay it.

What's more, this doesn't count as repaying a favor, it's just encouraging him: in his previous life, Lin Siping, an engineering student, was still able to test into the Provincial Procuratorate; there's no reason he can't test into it in this life?

As these thoughts turned, Lin Sicheng added a reminder: "Remember, don't forget!"

"Don't worry!" Gu Ming patted his chest, "He's bringing his wife, should we bring ours?"

Lin Sicheng was stunned, looking at him like an idiot: "You've got a hole in your head!"

"Hey!" Gu Ming let out a strange cry and started rolling up his sleeves. Halfway through, he realized: Lin Pingwa's wife is only three or four months pregnant, it's the dangerous period, running around really isn't appropriate.

What's more, going to a place like a KTV?

Just as he was pondering, Jia Chun returned, her lips red and bright.

Just after sitting down, she stood up again, looked up at the air conditioner: "Why is it so hot?"

Along with the sound, she unbuttoned her coat, revealing a work shirt marked "NOKIA," as well as the employee badge on her chest.

She even looked surprised: "Ah, I came out in such a rush, I actually forgot to take it off?"

Gu Ming sneered inwardly: As expected of Lin Sicheng, his predictions are god-like...

Just as he was preparing to say something sarcastic, Jia Chun suddenly stood up again, then waved toward the entrance of the hall: "Ning Hui, He Yunzhi, over here..."

Immediately, she went to greet them.

They were two girls, one slightly shorter with delicate features. The other was very tall, even taller than Jia Chun, but very slim.

Looking closely, not only was her figure good, but she was also extremely beautiful.

Staring with wide eyes, Gu Ming let out a "Ha!": "Lin Sicheng, look quickly, your ex-girlfriend!"

Lin Sicheng gave a cold laugh: "Your skin is itching for a beating, is it?"