Chapter 4: 4

As a teacher, Li Lu really didn’t want to see any of his students living in that kind of home situation. He looked over at the half-grown child in front of him. Everything about the child looked neat and clean. No one would have guessed he didn’t have an adult at home to look after him. However, it wasn’t likely a child would tell a lie that was so easy to expose, and it was true that even after getting such a good score and taking first place on the admission exam, not a single family member came with the child to register. There really seemed to be no adult taking care of him.

After taking down the child’s information, Li Lu handed Shen Shao an enrollment form. “Take this to the payment office to pay the tuition. After you get the receipt, bring it back to me to sign.” Then Li Lu asked, “Are you going to apply to live at school?”

The experimental junior high’s dormitory really wasn’t very good. As a class teacher, he didn’t want the highest-ranked student in his class to endure those conditions. A child’s living environment inevitably impacted his academic performance. But the child was in a unique family situation. Even if Li Lu wanted to discuss things with the child’s parents, he couldn’t.

“I’m not going to live on campus.” Shen Shao gripped the enrollment form and lowered his head. “My mother left me some money for school.”

Seeing the child with his head bowed like that, Li Lu couldn’t ask for details. He gave Shen Shao some helpful advice before school began, then told him to go pay the fee.

“Mr. Li, is that child a relative of yours?” The teacher of Class 2 was sitting to the side. When he saw Li Lu speaking especially gently to the student who’d just signed up, he said jokingly, “What a clean-cut young man. He looks like a good kid. If all of our students were like that, we’d have it easy.”

“You think we’re related?” Li Lu smiled, but he couldn’t just say the student had no mother and his cheating father ran off. “He’s just a student with good grades. His situation at home is a little special.”

“Isn’t he the one who got first place and a perfect score on the math exam?” When the other teacher saw Li Lu smile without giving any details, he felt a little jealous. The school had two experimental classes. When the top four in the admission exam were randomly assigned to classes, the first and third place students were taken by Lao Li, while his class only got second and fourth.

A lot of people were at the payment office. Shen Shao waited in line for a long time to pay the fees. By the time he got back to the registration room, there were several parents and students at Mr. Li’s desk. He stood to the side and listened to them talk.

The parents were saying polite things to the teacher. After asking a few questions about the school, they began to introduce their children, talking about how serious they were about school and how hard they worked, hoping to make a good impression before school began.

“Mr. Li, my boy is plenty sturdy. If he doesn’t listen to you teachers, go ahead and teach him a lesson. We parents will always back you up.” A somewhat grandiose parent said this, then hit his son’s back with a loud smack of his beefy palm.

Shen Shao listened to the sound and felt a pang on the child’s behalf. Seeing the boy, who was somewhat short, stagger towards him, Shen Shao silently stepped back.

“Look at that kid, now look at you.” The grandstanding parent pointed to Shen Shao, then looked at his own child with disgust. He patted his son’s head with his big hand and said curtly to Li Lu, “Mr. Li, even if my boy doesn’t say anything right now, it’s the truth. He won’t cause you any trouble.”

Li Lu had been a teacher for years and seen all kinds of parents, so the bold demeanor of this father didn’t faze him. He just looked at the child again. “Your name is Yang HongQiang, right?”

“Yes.” Yang HongQiang nodded placidly. When his father was distracted, he looked at Shen Shao standing next to him and grinned.

Shen Shao smiled back. The past was so long ago that he didn’t remember many students from junior high. What’s more, back then he was assigned to Class 2 instead of Class 1. He didn’t have much of an impression of the run-of-the-mill students.

“Shen Shao, are your fees paid?” Li Lu saw him standing to the side. He glanced at Shen Shao’s payment slip, put a tick mark next to his name, put away the receipt, and handed the stub to Shen Shao. “School officially begins on September 1. We’ll gather in the classroom at 8:30 in the morning. Class 1 is on the fifth floor of the No. 1 teaching building, first classroom on the left. Don’t be late.”

“Thank you, teacher.” Shen Shao took the payment stub, smiled at Li Lu and the classmate named Yang HongQiang, and turned to leave the registration desk.

“That name sounds familiar,” Yang ZhiAn thought for a while until he remembered. “Isn’t Shen Shao the student who took first place on the admission exam?” With that, he gazed at Shen Shao’s back with enthusiastic eyes, and then looked at his own son with disgust.

Yang HongQiang scratched his head as if he hadn’t seen his father’s unhappiness. Anyway, even if his father was disappointed, Yang HongQiang was a generous soul and didn’t hold it against his classmate.

School would begin in a few days. Shen Shao cleaned up the apartment, asked the locksmith to change the locks on the door, bought a lot of reference books and famous works from home and abroad, and returned to the village on the 31st.

“Xiao Shao, did you sign up for school?”

“Yes, class starts tomorrow.”

“That’s good. And you’re in the experimental class. You’ll get into a good college in the future.” One of the villagers said this and gave Shen Shao a smile. The person suddenly thought of something. “I heard Shen ZhengYang of Shen FuDong’s family also enrolled in the experimental junior high. They say his father got him in thanks to a relative, but he had to spend some money too. He’s just an ordinary student, not in an elite class like you.”

Shen Shao smiled and didn’t reply. After saying goodbye to the villagers, he walked to his house. Even after walking a long way, he could hear them discussing how much money Shen FuDong earned working out of town and how much he spent to get Shen ZhengYang into the experimental junior high.

He remembered that in his previous life Shen ZhengYang did well in school. Later on he was admitted to a somewhat prestigious university, and the villagers talked him up for a long time. However, Shen Shao was working in another city and never met the village’s high achiever.

After he got home, he brought some fruit to his uncle’s house. His eldest uncle was there with Shen Yuan and Shen Hong. He put down the grapes and apples and said, “Uncle, I’m heading to school tomorrow.”

“Why did you buy all this?” Shen JianJun knew the fruit wasn’t cheap. He was going to tell Shen Shao to take it back, but when he turned around, his two daughters had already dug into the apples and were biting into them. He felt a little unhappy. Their family wasn’t well off, and their children didn’t get to eat things like that often. However, as a father, it wasn’t easy to call out his own daughters for their lack of manners. He coughed, then said, “You’re in the experimental class?”

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Shen Shao nodded. “School starts tomorrow morning. It’s too far to travel back and forth, so I’ll go to the county later tonight.”

As he listened to his daughters crunching and chomping the apples, Shen JianJun felt even more upset. His younger brother had done wrong, but as an uncle he couldn’t do much to help his nephew. How would his family be able to hold their heads up when they met Shen Shao’s future family members someday?

“It’s better if you go early. Don’t be late on the first day, the teacher will have a bad impression of you.” Shen JianJun touched his trouser pocket but, in the end, didn’t take out the one hundred yuan bill that was inside. “I’ll keep an eye on your house. Don’t worry about anything. Just go study.”

Shen Shao glanced at Shen Yuan and Shen Hong, who were gnawing on the apples. For once they weren’t giving him dirty looks—they were even smiling.

“Then I’ll head out. Uncle, take good care of yourself.” Shen Shao stood up. Just as he walked out the door, he ran into his eldest aunt coming back with a bundle of pigweed on her back. He repeated what he’d just said to his uncle.

“Well… Take good care of yourself.” Eldest Aunt glanced inside the house. Seeing Shen JianJun smoking a cigarette and not saying anything, she gave Shen Shao a bag of newly picked, freshly dried peanuts. “Take these for a snack and have fun.”

Shen Shao brought the peanuts home and began to pack. In fact, there was nothing valuable in the house. The most valuable thing was the passbook with more than 10,000 yuan, and that would come with him. He gazed around at the empty rooms, then walked out of the living room and locked the door.

On the morning of September 1, the gate of the experimental junior high bustled with activity, and various stalls in the street outside began to open for business. Shen Shao bought some milk the previous day. When he got up in the morning, he heated the milk and boiled an egg. After eating, he still felt hungry, so he bought a steamed roll for thirty cents in the breakfast place downstairs. Only then did he feel full.

When he entered the classroom of Class 1, a small number of students were already there. He found a seat in the third or fourth row and sat down. After a few minutes, the student he met during enrollment a few days ago walked in from outside.

“Hey, you’re already here?” Yang HongQiang saw Shen Shao and sat next to him in a friendly way. “So early?”

“I don’t live too far away,” Shen Shao said. He looked at the students around him. Some of them already knew each other, and they chose to sit next to each other and chat. The whole classroom was as noisy as a vegetable market.

By 8:30, most of the students who had a long commute had arrived. There weren’t enough chairs or desks, so a few of the latecomers had to stand in the back.

Officially there are only forty places in each class, but more than seventy children were there. They were basically all children of households with relatives or parents who bought places with money or power.

Soon after, Li Lu appeared, and several workers brought in more than ten sets of tables and chairs. Once everyone was seated, the originally spacious classroom felt crowded.

Li Lu called the students to order, then introduced himself. Seeing that most of the students were sitting quietly, he felt satisfied with their behavior. He took out the roster and said, “Let’s get to know each other. The number I’ll read is your student number. Make sure to remember it. When I say your name, stand up and say ‘here’. I’ll start roll call now.”

“Number one, Shen Shao.”

“Here!” When Shen Shao stood up, the classroom buzzed. The teacher nodded, and he sat down calmly.

A lot of students in the class were curious about the boy who took first place in the admission exam. When Li Lu read Shen Shao’s name, everyone gazed over to see if he looked like a nerd.

They saw that their first-ranked classmate was pale and clean-looking, neatly-dressed, with no glasses on his face. He didn’t match their image of a bookworm.

Some of the girls thought Shen Shao was especially good-looking.

“Number 79, Zhang XiaoLan,” said Li Lu. After reading the roster and glancing around the room he began to talk about the schedule. What time self-study began in the morning, how long the lunch break lasted at noon, what time class resumed in the afternoon, and when self-study ended in the evening. After relaying this information, he began to talk about the rules for their class. “Students with poor grades who don’t like to study will switch to an ordinary class next semester. The experimental class is for serious students who work hard.”

As a result of Li Lu’s words, the entire class fell silent.

Li Lu was satisfied with the deterrent effect of these words. He said some things about hoping everyone would make good progress in learning, and then he sent several larger boys to the logistics department to bring back the school books that would be distributed.

Perhaps because it was for the experimental class, the logistics department quickly counted out their books. When Shen Shao finished distributing the books a while later, it was almost eleven o’clock.

“Everyone, go home and preview the content. Class will officially begin tomorrow morning. Class is dismissed.”

The instant the words left Li Lu’s lips, the students leaped up like a herd of energetic, cheerful horses and scampered quickly out.

As Shen Shao walked out of the classroom with Yang HongQiang, he listened to Yang HongQiang whispering about whose parents did what. But Shen Shao didn’t pay much attention. He was already focused on tomorrow.

 

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