Chapter 28

Zhao Xiaopeng smiled when he saw her return and immediately asked, “Xiao Li”, aren’t your parents’ home?”

Jian Li’s inner warning alarm went off at full blast.

She forced a smile, but the curve of her lips wasn’t convincing enough: “Uncle Xiaopeng, what’s the matter with my dad?”

“Nothing much, just wanted to have a chat with him.”

Jian Li felt more and more suspicious of this person.

“My dad’s very busy, Uncle Xiaopeng. If you have something urgent, just tell me, and I’ll let my dad know.”

Tell Jian Li?

Zhao Xiaopeng laughed, “Never mind, it’s not that important. I was just trying to catch your dad when he’s free.”

Jian Li stared at Zhao Xiaopeng’s retreating figure, thinking to herself—she’d make sure her dad stayed busy before the year ended!

Jian Feng, who was at the market, shivered.

Wang Mengmei asked, “Are you cold?”

Jian Feng adjusted his clothes, “It’s nothing.”

Wang Mengmei continued, “You can tell that the weather’s getting colder. When it gets cold, the number of people coming in the evening will drop.”

Lunch wasn’t a problem. The food stayed warm, but in the evening, it’s harder. Guests can’t just sit in the chilly breeze.

Jian Feng sighed, “How about we use the money to expand the shop?”

By expanding the shop, they could have a coal stove indoors during the winter, so business could continue.

The winter in Taocheng lasts four months—there’s no way business can pause for that long.

Wang Mengmei was hesitant. Should she use the money for her husband’s driver’s license or expand the shop first?

If she spent it on the driver’s license, they’d struggle with business during the winter months. But if she expanded the shop…

She wasn’t sure if more people would come when it’s cold.

“Maybe we should wait a bit longer.”

If they worked harder, opening earlier and closing later, they could sell more, and maybe by the time winter came, they’d have enough saved.

—-

When the autumn winds began, Jian Li faced her first exam of the semester—the midterms.

Jian Li had undoubtedly improved. She hadn’t memorized some of the subjects in the humanities, but she did quite well in the other subjects.

When the results came out, Xia Liu was shocked.

“You actually came in second!”

Second in the whole class.

Xia Liu grabbed her arm and shook her back and forth.

“Tell me! Are you actually Jian Li? You must be a monster! Give me back my good friend!”

Jian Li felt like if she were an egg, she’d have been scrambled by now from all the shaking.

Xia Liu clutched her head and sighed, “This is it, my mom’s going to use you as a reference now.”

Her new catchphrase was probably going to be “Look at how well Jian Li is doing.”

They had agreed to move forward together, but why did her friend suddenly improve so much?

For Teacher Fang, Jian Li’s good results were a sign that she had “opened up.”

If Jian Li hadn’t spoken at the flag ceremony not long ago, Teacher Fang would’ve surely made her go up again as an example.

Teacher Fang proudly praised Jian Li in front of the whole class.

“We’re already in the second year of junior high, and soon it will be the third year. After that, we’ll move on to high school. Learning isn’t for others, it’s for yourself. As long as you put in the effort, you will surely see results.”

“Jian Li is a great example. She must’ve worked hard during the summer break, and that’s why she achieved such great results.”

Jian Li lowered her head a little awkwardly. All she did during the summer was catch crabs by the river and go out at night with a flashlight to catch bugs.

It was probably cheating to rely on a retake.

Jian Li accepted the praise with a thick face but kept the award certificate at the bottom of her desk.

It was a bit embarrassing.

Jian Li came second, so when the seats were rearranged, it wasn’t Xia Liu saving her a spot anymore—it was Jian Li saving one for Xia Liu.

Jian Li moved two rows forward. It was still by the window, but closer to the board, so she could see better.

She was sitting next to the aisle, and Xia Liu was by the window.

Xia Liu hugged her arm emotionally. “You’re the best.”

Xia Liu had a keen nose and could smell every little thing. When winter came, she suffered the most.

Whenever she entered the classroom from the cold outside, the warm, mixed smell of everything would hit her.

Xia Liu called it the “human smell.”

The colder it got, the stronger the “human smell” became, and after a while, Xia Liu would feel nauseous.

By leaving the window seat for her, Jian Li allowed Xia Liu to crack it open for some fresh air. Otherwise, if the room became too stuffy, she’d have to lie down as soon as she got home.

Jian Li was about to chat with Xia Liu when a shadow suddenly loomed over her.

The top student in the class silently moved to sit in front of her.

Xia Liu stuck out her tongue and whispered, “She’s definitely upset that you’re doing better than her.”

Jian Li shrugged. “If she’s upset, then so be it.”

Xia Liu was frustrated, “You should do even better next time and put her in her place!”

Xia Liu got along with most of the girls in the class, but she didn’t get along with Xu Yanan, the top student.

That wasn’t surprising—hardly anyone in the class got along with Xu Yanan.

Xu Yanan was an oddball among the girls in the class.

When others were playing jump rope or tossing bean bags, she would just sneer.

—-

The words she casually says every day are: “What’s the point of this thing?”

“I just don’t like playing with girls, they’re always so chatty.”

At the beginning of the school year, Xu Yanan was close to a few of the better students in the class. Later, those boys didn’t want to hang out with her anymore.

One of the boys complained to someone: “Is Xu Yanan crazy? She keeps asking me where I am in my studies, then she insists on explaining the problems to me. She’s just like my mom—can’t talk about anything but school, it’s so annoying.”

Gradually, no one in the class interacted with Xu Yanan anymore, and she started to keep to herself, not talking to anyone.

Fortunately, Xu Yanan was good at her studies, and since the day she entered school, she only dropped from first place once.

That time, she came second, and the next day, she came to school with a very short haircut, almost to the scalp.

For the rest of the semester, Xu Yanan studied like crazy, and only when she regained first place did she return to her proud demeanor.

Xia Liu had a big opinion of Xu Yanan, not just because Xu Yanan was arrogant and aloof, but also because Xu Yanan was from a cotton mill family.

Whenever students from the same grade went home, they would hear their parents talk about Xu Yanan.

“Look at Xu Yanan, so successful, and look at you!”

“She’s getting first place every year and bringing home first-place certificates. What are you doing all day long?”

“Other people’s Xu Yanan” was Xia Liu’s nightmare.

Xu Yanan was good at everything—she could do housework, she could study, and when she was a child, she could stand on a stool to cook for her parents.

Xu Yanan was capable of anything.

Whenever Xia Liu thought about Xu Yanan, she was annoyed. Xu Yanan was like a mountain pressing down on her.

And Xu Yanan had been in the same class with her from elementary to middle school. Xia Liu had been compared to her all along, which led to her bias against Xu Yanan.

Xia Liu whispered to Jian Li: “Xu Yanan must have a problem. Whoever comes second, she always sits in front of them.”

For more than a year, there was no stable second-place student in the class, only Xu Yanan, who was always in first place.

Jian Li covered her mouth and whispered to Xia Liu: “She’s probably going to keep an eye on me.”

Sure enough, as the class monitor, Xu Yanan turned around after class and said to Jian Li: “You’re not allowed to talk in class. If it happens again, I’ll tell the teacher.”

Xia Liu was so angry she gasped for air: “You’re the class monitor, not the discipline officer.”

Even discipline officers don’t report everything!

Xu Yanan: “You talking affects me and others.”

Jian Li stopped Xia Liu: “Okay, I understand.”

Only then did Xu Yanan turn around, leaving Jian Li with a stubborn back of her head.

Xia Liu was full of things she wanted to say but really feared Xu Yanan reporting her, so she could only hold it in until after school to tell Jian Li.

The two of them went to a small shop across from the school and bought two cups of flavored milk tea.

The milk tea made with milk powder was thin and bland, with a sickly sweet industrial scent, just like the taste Jian Li remembered.

Jian Li got a taro-flavored one, and Xia Liu chose chocolate.

Xia Liu bit the straw flat: “Is she sick or something?”

“How can she be so annoying? Just because she got first place, does she think she’s so great? Like everyone else is below her! Being class monitor and all she does is report little things, so annoying!”

“She’s definitely targeting you, looking for trouble on purpose.”

Jian Li knew very well that Xu Yanan was looking for trouble, but what could she do?

“How about we tell the teacher and get her moved to another seat, or we’ll switch.”

Sitting next to someone like that, you don’t even have the freedom to talk.

Jian Li spread her hands: “Probably not.”

In her palm was a small note that Xu Yanan had slipped her before school ended.

[“I know your second place was gained through cheating. Next time, I’ll be watching you.”]

Xia Liu was dumbfounded: “What? Does she have a problem or what!”

How could she just accuse Jian Li of cheating? They sat next to each other, and although they were distanced after the exam, they were still in the same row. Even if Jian Li had copied, how could she have gotten second place?

“She must be crazy.”

Jian Li: “I think if we move, she’ll just follow us.”

Xu Yanan had already decided that Jian Li’s second place was achieved through cheating, so they’d have to wait for the next exam to see how things turned out.

Jian Li: “It’s fine, next time I’ll definitely get second place again.”

She might make a mistake or two, but her overall score shouldn’t drop, and then Xu Yanan wouldn’t be watching her.

Xia Liu sympathized with Jian Li and gave her half of her spicy strips.

“Then you really have to study hard, it’s best if you get first place.”

—-

After the midterm exam, the school held a parent-teacher meeting.

Jian Li made significant progress, and Teacher Fang asked her to tell her parents to come and share her experience on stage.

Wang Mengmei and Jian Feng discussed it and decided that Wang Mengmei would go.

Wang Mengmei had attended many parent meetings, but this was the first time she looked forward to it so much.

She gritted her teeth and bought herself a silk scarf, planning to wear it with her best outfit.

“I really didn’t expect that I’d have a day where I could hold my head high.”

Jian Feng was a bit envious; he wanted to go too.

Previously, they took turns going to Jian Li’s parent-teacher meetings.

“You’d better speak well when you go, there’ll be so many parents in the audience.”

Wang Mengmei waved her hand, “I got this.”

She wrote and drew on her accounting notebook, drafting something.

The main idea was about how she raised her child. Teacher Fang had asked her to talk about how she cultivated her child’s interest in reading.

Wang Mengmei was very pleased, “When Jian Li was little, I always read storybooks to her, and after finishing, I’d ask her to retell the story!”

Jian Feng replied, “Why are you talking about when she was little? What the teacher meant was for you to share something useful that parents can learn from now.”

Wang Mengmei racked her brain, “I signed her up for a composition class!”

Jian Feng said, “…You’re not going to say it was the one where you were scammed, are you?”

More than a year ago, when Jian Li was still in elementary school, her Chinese teacher mentioned a composition competition in class, and Jian Li’s essay was said to have made it into the preliminaries.

At that time, Wang Mengmei was very excited. To help her daughter succeed, she enrolled Jian Li in a twenty-yuan composition class recommended by the teacher.

After ten lessons, Jian Li made it into the finals and won third place.

Winning third place meant that her essay would be included in the composition anthology, and Jian Li’s teacher said she needed to pay a 100-yuan publishing fee.

Wang Mengmei gritted her teeth and paid, only to receive a poorly bound composition anthology.

Later, Wang Mengmei discovered it was all a scam.

The so-called composition contest was actually just a competition organized by the training class itself. In the end, they randomly selected people to say they made it into the anthology and charged a publishing fee.

The composition anthology wasn’t even sold in bookstores; they just printed a few hundred copies to give to parents. That book is still in Wang Mengmei’s kitchen, used as a coaster.

After the truth came out, Wang Mengmei felt a bit embarrassed, “Well, at least I tried, unlike you.”

Jian Feng responded, “I took her to the park and the zoo. Her first essay, when she was little, was ‘A Day at the Zoo,’ wasn’t it?”

Jian Feng proudly added, “I had some contribution.”

Wang Mengmei rolled her eyes, “You’re shameless! Back then, you were sitting by the gate saying you weren’t going in to save the ticket money.”

Jian Feng: “…”

He really did forget that he didn’t go in.

Wang Mengmei looked at the certificate Jian Li brought home, “We should go again sometime, we didn’t even take photos the last time we went.”

—-

On the day of the parent-teacher meeting, Wang Mengmei arrived early and saw Sun Yan sitting in front of her.

Sun Yan didn’t look too happy.

Her daughter, Xu Yanan, had come in first place. Why should Jian Li get second?

As soon as Wang Mengmei sat down, Sun Yan sarcastically said, “Our Yanan’s grades are all earned with real effort, not like some people who get dishonorable high scores by cheating.”