Chapter 3

After leaving the Education Bureau, Lin Nanzhi found a small eatery and bought a bowl of rice noodles for five yuan.

As she handed over the money, she couldn’t help but sigh—everything seemed so cheap now. In the next ten years, aside from the bus fare staying at three yuan, almost everything else would increase in price, some to an outrageous extent.

After finishing her rice noodles, she took a bus. But instead of going home or returning to school, she went straight to the police station to file a report.

—-

In her past life, she had only made guesses about who was behind it. In her anger, she had dropped out of school, letting the culprits get away with it. But in this life, she would make sure the person who spread the rumors paid the price.

Even though they were all minors, the impact of what they had done was significant enough to leave a lasting mark on her record.

Lin Nanzhi decided to leave the matter entirely to the police. She had no intention of returning to school—there was only one week left, and then it would be exam time. She had already learned everything she needed; the rest was just review. Whether she attended or not didn’t really matter.

As for her books…

She reached into her pocket and pulled out an old-school mobile phone. This was actually her mother’s phone, given to her so they could stay in contact after her mother left with her older sister. It had been over a decade since she last used this kind of phone, so she fumbled a bit before finding QQ. She messaged a classmate from her village in a different class, asking them to bring her books home after school.

The bus went directly to the city, without stopping at villages along the way, which made it inconvenient.

Fortunately, apart from buses, there were plenty of vans offering rides, especially on Sundays and Fridays when business was booming.

With many students needing transport and only a few vans running, each vehicle was often crammed with at least ten people.

Lin Nanzhi still remembered once taking a van that had squeezed in sixteen students. She and a few others had even been crammed into the trunk. (Reminder: Please do not imitate this behavior. Always follow traffic safety rules!)

Although it was overcapacity, traffic enforcement was lax, and police officers were rare on the roads. Sometimes, it just came down to luck.

—-

It was now past 4 PM, still an hour before school let out. Lin Nanzhi got lucky and found a van filled only with adults, so there was more space.

When she arrived at the highway exit, she paid three yuan and started walking home.

Her house was located between the city and a township—29 kilometers from the city and 8 kilometers from the township. The village was large, almost the size of a whole district. The highway was near the third section of the village, while her house was in the second section, meaning she had to pass through both the third and first sections to reach home.

It was already December, and the fields had been harvested. With nothing left to do and the weather getting colder, most villagers stayed indoors, warming themselves by the fire, so the roads were nearly empty.

But when she reached the second section, she happened to run into a crowd of children getting out of the village elementary school.

—–

In the village, only a few wealthy families lived in brick houses. Most people still lived in traditional mud houses.

These so-called mud houses were built by digging up red clay, mixing it with water, and layering it into wooden molds placed on a foundation. Each layer was pounded down, left to dry, and then another layer was added. This process was repeated until the house was complete.

Most villagers’ living rooms still had compacted dirt floors, with very few having concrete flooring.

Lin Nanzhi’s house was one of the last in the village, surrounded by neighbors on all sides. It was also a mud house, but unlike most, her family had a concrete floor and a large window, making the interior much brighter.

Aside from the mud house, her family also had a small, modest brick building with an asbestos roof. It had once been used for raising pigs, but in the past two years, they had stopped farming livestock, leaving the structure unused.

Between the pigsty and the main house was another small room, about the size of a bathroom, stacked with firewood.

The house door was open, and the television inside was playing Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf. There was no need to guess who was at home.

Her house wasn’t large—around 30 to 40 square meters—with only one bedroom. The room contained a 1.2-meter-wide bed and a 90×50 cm redwood chest, leaving little extra space.

To the left of the entrance was a wooden cupboard holding a newly purchased rice cooker, a village-installed biogas stove, and some pots and basins. Next to it was a stone water tank, followed by a shelf with washbasins, and then an eight-immortal table with a 20-inch LCD TV on top.

Her parents had worked away from home for years, only returning after seven or eight years. They had saved up some money, making their home slightly better equipped than others in the village. The concrete flooring, large window, and television were the first of their kind in the village. Her father, always trendy, had even bought two speakers and a collection of DVDs.

To the right of the entrance stood a red-painted, four-door wooden cabinet about 1.6 meters tall.

The cabinet was used for storing dishes and leftovers, while the drawers held important documents. On top of it sat a small Buddhist shrine, with portraits of famous figures and landscape paintings pasted on the wall.

Beside the cabinet was a doorway covered by a white cloth instead of a door. The cloth was embroidered by her mother, featuring a lifelike scene of mandarin ducks playing in the water.

On the right side of the room was a second-hand sofa set her father had bought. There were two single sofas on either side, with a cement-built raised platform in the middle.

The home’s heater was a square iron stove with a metal pipe to vent the smoke outside.

At that moment, Lin Nanzhi’s younger brother, Lin Nanxun, was sprawled on the sofa in a classic slouched posture. One hand held the TV remote, while the other gripped a five-mao spicy snack. He munched away while watching the cartoon.

When a classic line from the show played, he burst into laughter, leaving Lin Nanzhi speechless.

Sensing her gaze, he glanced at her. His misty blue eyes were bright, but his expression remained indifferent as he turned back to the TV.

Lin Nanzhi didn’t find this strange. If Lin Nanxun had actually greeted her, she would’ve been more surprised.

Ever since they were kids, their parents had taken him with them, and he had rarely been home. By the time he returned, she was already in fifth grade. Now, they had only lived together for about four years.

She had never been close to her older sister, Lin Nanxuan—they had fought fiercely since childhood. So, she never had the desire to be close to Lin Nanxun either.

Lin Nanxun probably felt the same way.

With nothing else to do, she sat on the sofa, watching cartoons with him for half an hour before getting up to cook. Just as she finished preparing the rice, someone walked in.

It was a tall, slightly chubby boy who looked honest and good-natured. He placed Lin Nanzhi’s schoolbag on the sofa and said, “Lin Nanzhi, I asked your roommate to pack up your homework and clothes. I left them here.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, by the way, you won’t believe it—just a few hours after you left, the police came to school. They talked to your homeroom teacher. I don’t know what they said, but your teacher looked furious when she left.”

Lin Nanzhi wasn’t surprised.

So-called anonymous reports? She didn’t buy it.

For the teacher to believe it so readily, without even asking questions, it must have been a “model student” who wrote the complaint. No way the teacher hadn’t noticed.

But she would find out who it was soon enough.