Hello, Old Times Chapter 81

Chapter 81: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

There were four main teaching buildings in the school which were divided into four areas. Each grade occupied one and the last one was the administration and management area. When Zhou Zhou walked up to the second floor of Area B, she suddenly remembered that she had the history exercise book she was going to give Xin Rui in her bag so she turned and walked towards Class 3.

A girl who was about to exit helped Yu Zhou Zhou call Xin Rui’s name then continued her call, “Didn’t I ask you to put my unform into my bag, our form teacher is like a maniac. On the first day of school, he’s going to chop me up. Then did you hear it or not last night, there’s less than half an hour until the flag raising ceremony…”

“Zhou Zhou.”

Yu Zhou Zhou returned to her senses. Xin Rui stood by the door and looked at her expressionlessly. Her light tan accentuated her sharp features and dressed in a white shirt, she looked good.

“You cut your hair.” Yu Zhou Zhou bowed her head to dig out the exercise book from her bag.

“Mhm,” Xin Rui twirled a strand of shoulder length hair with a finger as she slowly walked to the back door of the class, “I got bored of keeping a ponytail and wanted to change it up.”

“For you,” Yu Zhou Zhou passed over the exercise book.

“Thanks. Mhm.”

Yu Zhou Zhou realised that Xin Rui was absentminded, her attention was completed focused on the back window. She was a little confused hence she walked up behind her and looked inside.

“Who is she?” Yu Zhou Zhou asked softly.

“Who?” Xin Rui pretended not to understand.

Yu Zhou Zhou shrugged and smiled but didn’t pursue it further.

Xin Rui lowered her head and embarrassedly replied, “Ling Xiang Qian.”

There were only a dozen or so people in the class. Xin Rui’s gaze was locked on the first row by the window where a girl sat alone so Yu Zhou Zhou could directly tell her target. They both knew inside that Xin Rui pretending to be confused only appeared petty.

Yu Zhou Zhou didn’t speak. She slowly walked to the front door to look inside.

“Hey, you…” Xin Rui wanted to stop her but Yu Zhou Zhou had already stood at the open door to quietly look inside while Xin Rui leaned against the wall to watch Yu Zhou Zhou.

Ling Xiang Qian had placed her book on her lap instead of on the desk. She had her head bowed down so deeply that Yu Zhou Zhou couldn’t see her face clearly. In the first year of high school, Yu Zhou Zhou were classmates in Class 1 while she was in Class 2. After being next door classmates for an entire year, in Yu Zhou Zhou’s recollections, they seemed to have never bumped into each other at Zhenhua.

Ling Xiang Qian was wearing a pale pink t-shirt with a white Nike jacket over it. Her long straight hair gave a gentle lustre in the morning light. Sensing that someone was staring at her, she raised her head and met with Yu Zhou Zhou’s gaze.

Having not met for the last four years, Ling Xiang Qian had changed greatly. She was just as pretty as before with a peach blossom face but she had restrained her childish arrogance. Ling Xiang Qian didn’t avoid Yu Zhou Zhou’s gaze. She smiled generously and Yu Zhou Zhou smiled back in response.

“So pretty,” Yu Zhou Zhou said, “I’ve given you the book now so I’ll be going.”

“She came to study humanities which caused quite a sensation at school,” Xin Rui said in an unimpressed tone, “She’s definitely going to rank first in the year in humanities.”

“Let’s still go home together this evening?” Yu Zhou Zhou didn’t reply to her comment nor did she look back.

When she reached the stairs, she couldn’t help but look back at the Class 3 sign. Xin Rui was leaning against the wall in a daze.

“She’s definitely going to rank first in the year,” In this sentence, there was no admiration nor blessing.

Yu Zhou Zhou thought more than once that Wen Miao had been right.

—

When going upstairs, Yu Zhou Zhou suddenly felt flustered for some reason. She ran up the stairs, three steps at a time but slipped and almost fell to the ground. She desperately grabbed the railing so that she wouldn’t land on her face. A boy on the side started to laugh loudly without any sympathy. Yu Zhou Zhou froze for a moment and looked at the boy who was laughing unscrupulously. He had on a simple school uniform over his thin frame and a pale and plain face. With an immature laughter, he was like a middle school student.

“Sorry,” That boy bowed towards Yu Zhou Zhou in embarrassment.

“It’s fine… Mhm, good morning.” Yu Zhou Zhou smiled. Her gloomy mood from the morning had cleared a lot from this somersault and the other party’s unrestrained laugh. When she was on the verge of falling, her heart beat quickened and she was lucky to have survived the catastrophe.

“Good morning.” The boy nodded like he was pounding garlic, even the sound from the nodding could be heard. “Actually, I know you, you’re Yu Zhou Zhou.”

“Mhm, I am. You are?”

“I’m your desk mate. I’m Zheng Yan Yi. You weren’t there when the seats were being allocated. We’ve been allocated to the same desk.”

“Zhen Yan Yi? Yan Yi?” Yu Zhou Zhou found it funny. She thought of Hikoichi Aido* from the Ryonan High Team in Slam Dunk, he was a boy who was always eager to collect information. Suddenly, she felt another burst of sadness because he was a character who was never able to play on the courts.

*[Hikoichi Aido’s Chinese translation is Aida Yan Yi – the same characters as Zheng Yan Yi’s name.]

“Yup, just call me Yan Yi.”

There were only a dozen or so girls in Class 7. Yu Zhou Zhou’s seat was in the third row from the back, by the window. The window faced the roads. Zhou Zhou was a little envious of the classes that had windows facing the side of the playground. Her position happened to face the big poster of a Lancome perfume on the wall of the Lotus Shopping Centre.

“This is our class schedule. It was copied onto the blackboard after the seats were allocated that day. In history, we have to relearn the modern Chinese history content from the first year of history. For Geography, we’re starting from world geography. Economics will be covered during the revision classes over break. As for Maths, Literature and English, those are normal. That’s what was discussed during the meeting that day. By the way, why didn’t you come? Everyone was very concerned about the seating allocations.” Yan Yi widened his eyes.

He was a very enthusiastic desk mate and seemed to be very serious about his studies as well. Yu Zhou Zhou looked at this history book in his hand with the key points clearly marked with different colored highlighters and smiled, “Self-made colouring paper?”

Yan Yi scratched his head in embarrassment, “No, I like doing this to my books, it gives it my style.”

Zhou Zhou opened out her book, it was clean and clear as if it had just been bought from the bookstore.

“I didn’t take any geography, history or politic lessons in my first year of high school. These three subjects won’t be counted in the school rankings anyway.” Yu Zhou Zhou shrugged, “Fortunately, I can learn these from start again after taking humanities.”

“Why did you choose humanities? Your science scores are so good…”

[T/N in the second year of high school, Chinese students have to choose between one of two streams – humanities/liberal arts and science.]

“Hey, by the way, do we still have to do the flag raising ceremony today?” Yu Zhou Zhou asked suddenly.

“Of course, It’s at 7:40, there’s still another 10 minutes. I’m planning to read the history book, how about you?”

“Oh.” Yu Zhou Zhou flipped open her empty history book then cast her gaze out the window. Yan Yi suddenly realised that she hadn’t answered any of the three questions he had asked just now. He opened his lips, wanting to ask but when he saw Yu Zhou Zhou in a daze, he held back and lowered his head to read about the Opium War.

Below the window was the main entrance of Zhenhua, The street outside the gates were already extremely congested.

It was an international motor show.

The sign prohibiting honking has never been of use. Every morning, the horns would beep loudly. Mercedes Benz and Audi cars were no longer novel but the white, extended Cadillac still caught Yu Zhou Zhou by surprise.

“Yan Yi, look at this car.”

“This is… oh my god, isn’t it just going to school? Is there need for such a big show?” Yan Yi muttered before returning back to his seat to continue to read, “What do you think? It’s too much.”

“Heh, I just think that the car is very beautiful. I don’t have any special feelings.”

Zhenhua’s original campus wasn’t this big and there wasn’t a need to build the school too big. As the leading representative high school of the province, Zhenhua only enrolled 500 students every year, maintaining a shocking enrolment rate. Three years ago, Zhenhua started to open a school aub-branch like the top high schools in other provinces. It promised that the sub-branch and main branch would use the same teaching team and every teacher would teach both at the main school and branch school concurrently. In addition, the number of students admitted would be twice the admission number of the main branch.  Finally, they received a large amount of tuition fees and built this beautiful new school campus. For a while, there were endless disputes within the province, especially the parents of students at the main branch who petitioned against it many times but the sub-branch was still vigorously established. For a period of time, it was like fire and ice within the school.

It was also the sub-branch that allowed Zhenhua to make great strides towards becoming a wealthy high school, recruiting a white Cadillac owner.

Suddenly, she saw the back profile of a boy walking out against the flow of people. He seemed to have met a familiar classmate, there were four people who got together laughing.

Yu Zhou Zhou quietly stared at that strange yet familiar figure for so long that she felt a little dizzy. She turned her gaze back and noticed Yan Yi writing furiously on a thick notebook. Yu Zhou Zhou didn’t ask him what notes he was taking nor praise him for taking notes. After staying in the top class for a year, she had learnt a lot. Even if Yan Yi wasn’t the type to be discreet and reserved, she didn’t want to take the risk.

She still remembered when she fell sick in the second semester of her first year of high school. She had no choice but to borrow English notes from the girl behind her. The other party had reluctantly taken it out, flipped to the last few pages and handed them to her. There were quite a lot of notes hence she asked if she could borrow it home to copy it – the girl had said, “Yes, just rip those pages out.” Yu Zhou Zhou froze for a moment then returned the notebook back in realisation. When she turned back around embarrassedly, her desk mate had laughed softly, “The front of the notebook contains notes from Zheng Da Yong’s tuition classes. It’s 50rmb per lesson, how would she let you take such a treasured item home? Don’t be silly.”

From then on, no matter what others’ were studying or what workbooks they were using, Yu Zhou Zhou would pretend not to see a thing. Moreover, unlike middle school, she wasn’t very keen on being top in grades.

Opening the history book, there were key points circled in the Opium War chapter but it was blank after that. Yu Zhou Zhou indeed didn’t consider studying humanities at the beginning. It was a sentence from Chen An, “I think it’ll be pretty good for you to study humanities” that she signed up for the humanities stream. Even Chen An was taken aback and had replied with a surprised emoji over text.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s humanities or sciences. I’ll just take humanities.”

Chen An didn’t reply after that.

When she picked up her pen and started carefully scanning through the contents of the book, she suddenly heard an order from the front podium, “It’s almost 7:20, everyone go downstairs and get into line.”

The form teacher left after giving the instructions, leaving only a blurred figure.

“What’s the rush for, competing even for standing in line, do you think we’re elementary students.” A few girls muttered from behind.

Yan Yi put down his pen, “Shall we go together?”

After speaking, he discovered that his desk mate had a dazed expression and her mind had already drifted off.