Chapter 15: Which Ones Are Easy to Get Money From?
The sound of footsteps running up and down the stairs, the clamor of new students who hadn’t yet shed their childishness, chasing each other with practice books and textbooks, laughing and joking.
Outside, people were coming and going, all heading to the dean’s office to move new books. The well-disciplined classes lined up in an orderly fashion, with their homeroom teachers leading the way.
The less-disciplined classes were like a flock of scattered wild chickens, rushing out in a chaotic mess.
In First Grade, Class Nine, a few boys in the back row had moved their stools outside, complaining that the classroom was too stuffy and the air outside was better. They sat with their legs crossed like old men, watching the new students move books back and forth. After a while, two or three girls followed suit, saying the classroom was too noisy.
Zhou Wanfeng looked at the temporarily appointed class president, who was completely engrossed in his game, and the tall vice president, Chen Yisen, who had already moved his stool outside the classroom and was chatting happily with someone like an old man at the village entrance.
Looking at the noisy and chaotic classroom, Zhou Wanfeng felt like she was stuck in the mud, a particularly disgusting feeling. She stood up and walked out with a blank expression. Her deskmate, Mai Jiaqi, was eating snacks and watching the game, even shouting out commands when she got excited.
Zhou Wanfeng went out and followed the students who were moving books to the dean’s office. The other classes were all led by their teachers, one by one. She went alone, tagging along behind the class in front.
The teacher in front announced the class name and the number of students. After the dean’s office teacher checked, he waved for the students to go in and count the textbooks.
The textbooks and practice books for each subject were arranged in order.
“Count how many students are in your class, and take that many books. If you take too many, you’ll have to bring them back,” the dean’s office teacher stood up and reminded the students not to miscount or take duplicates.
It was the first day of school, and she didn’t even recognize the faces of her classmates. Zhou Wanfeng followed behind with her head down and slipped in. Her hair wasn’t long, and she was wearing neutral casual clothes. While others were squatting and counting textbooks, she started from one side and took one of each.
After taking a tall stack, with more than a dozen textbooks, practice books, and notebooks, Zhou Wanfeng supported it from the bottom with one hand and walked to the dean’s office teacher at the door. “Teacher, please make a separate note. First Grade, Class Nine, forty-two students, one person has received their books.”
Only then did the teacher next to her notice that this student was not from his class.
The dean’s office teacher was stunned. “What?”
“Please make a separate note. First Grade, Class Nine, forty-two students, one person has received their books,” Zhou Wanfeng repeated, then carried the books and walked out.
“No, student, you can’t take them like this. Your homeroom teacher has to come and sign, and you have to take them class by class,” the teacher in charge of distributing books at the dean’s office hurriedly stopped Zhou Wanfeng.
Zhou Wanfeng stopped. “Teacher, our class’s situation is special. Other classes can come and line up to get their books one by one. But in First Grade, Class Nine, I doubt anyone will come to get them even when class starts. You might even have to deliver them personally. But it’s probably just our class, so you can just make a note of it. As long as the other classes are correct, the remaining ones won’t be a problem.”
The new classes were lining up to get their books. Some curious students had already gone in to look at them.
Zhou Wanfeng held the books. “Teacher, you can just make a note of it. 42-1.”
“That’s not how you get books. Hurry up and put them back. Have your homeroom teacher organize the students to come and get them.”
Zhou Wanfeng stood still, looking at the dean’s office teacher with a blank expression. She pursed her lips. “You’re right, there’s no such thing. Why didn’t the school just evenly distribute the students of First Grade, Class Nine into other classes? I really don’t know what the school was thinking, putting a bunch of students like this in one class.”
The dean’s office teacher was suddenly stunned.
All the teachers and staff at the school knew that an extra class had been added to the first grade this year. The original plan was to break them up and scatter them. But just after the admissions ended this year, the school’s investors had given the school a task.
Shuangshu Model Middle School wanted to be rated, to gain honor, to enter the ranks of the top-tier middle schools in Yunhai City. To do that, they had to produce outstanding results. And a school’s results were nothing more than the students’ results. The scores on the high school entrance exam, the number of students admitted to key high schools, the number of students admitted to regular high schools.
Especially this summer vacation, they had recruited many excellent teachers from outside, with the clear goal of improving student performance.
But the extra class they had enrolled this year was a bit of a headache for the school. In the past, more students meant more profit. Now, they wanted to take the route of fewer but better students.
But since the students had been admitted and the tuition had been paid, they couldn’t just not let them come.
The school leadership held a special meeting and finally decided to put all these students in one class. As the saying goes, you don’t mind a few more bad apples in a rotten bunch, but a few bad apples can spoil the whole barrel.
This year, they were going to focus on student performance. They had heard so much about it at the summer meetings that their ears were calloused. At the same time, this First Grade, Class Nine was particularly special.
The dean’s office teacher was speechless. The school’s little secret had been pointed out so directly. It was like someone had grabbed him by the vitals. He was a little stunned, mainly because as a teacher, he had never seen a student who dared to talk back with such sarcasm.
He couldn’t help but size her up. Her eyes were spirited, her gaze direct. She was truly worthy of being in First Grade, Class Nine.
The other classes were waiting to get their books. The students were getting impatient and started to clamor. The dean’s office teacher frowned and waved his hand. “Go on, go on.” He then went to register her.
Zhou Wanfeng carried her stack of new books back to the classroom and slammed them on the desk with a thud.
The students in the classroom all looked over curiously. The ones in the back row even stood up to look. They were even more curious when they saw the new books on her desk.
They whispered, “How did she get new books?”
“I don’t know. Just her own.”
Zhou Wanfeng sat down and started to arrange her new books, completely ignoring the curious gazes and whispers around her. Mai Jiaqi next to her leaned over, her round eyes wide. “Hey, you went to get the textbooks. Why didn’t you ask me to go with you?” She then curiously picked up a Chinese textbook and flipped through it. She leaned over, revealing her two small canine teeth. “I’ve never been to the dean’s office. Wanfeng, can you help me get mine too?”
Zhou Wanfeng’s eyes were cold, and the corners of her mouth lifted slightly, as if she didn’t understand what she was saying.
“Wanfeng, please, please go again for me. My family owns a shop. I’ll give you all my snacks. From now on, I’ll bring a portion for you too. How about it?” Mai Jiaqi said, pulling on Zhou Wanfeng’s arm like a spoiled child.
Zhou Wanfeng looked at her and sneered, pushing her away. She took out the few bags of snacks that were taking up space in her desk and returned them all.
“Keep them for yourself.”
Zhou Wanfeng took back her Chinese textbook, opened her pencil case, and wrote her name in each of her books.
This class was a complete mess. She didn’t want to meddle in other people’s business, nor did she want to stand out and cause trouble. She just wanted to study hard in peace.
Since no one was willing to get the new books, she would only get her own. What did other people have to do with her?
Just as she had written her name on the blank page of her Chinese textbook, she heard a soft sobbing sound next to her. She glanced over and saw Mai Jiaqi crying with her head in her arms on the desk. The girl next to her noticed and kindly offered her a tissue, telling her not to cry. Others were also looking over. Zhou Wanfeng simply ignored them and continued to write her name in her books.
As she was writing, she consciously noticed that the chaotic noise in the class had changed. Zhou Wanfeng looked up and found that a large portion of the class was looking at the window. She followed their gaze.
The few boys and girls who had been hanging out at the door were now surrounded by a few upperclassmen. One of the tall boys had his hands in his pockets and was standing at the back door of the classroom, scanning the room. He suddenly beckoned to a boy in the back row and called out, “Zhu Junling.”
The boy named Zhu Junling was the one who had been bragging about hitting his teacher in class earlier.
Zhu Junling was a little reluctant to go out when he was called, but the tall boy walked straight in and put his arm around Zhu Junling’s neck from behind.
“Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear me call you? Come out and talk,” he said, half-forcing him up and out the door. In the blink of an eye, Zhu Junling was surrounded by four or five upperclassmen and led away to talk.
As soon as he left, the classroom erupted in a boil again.
“The one who just came in was Peng Zhen, from the third grade. I’ve seen him smoking with some hooligans at the entrance of some arcades and pool halls. Those people have tattoos all over their necks, arms, chests, and backs.”
“A big brother I know told me not to be too flashy at school, especially not to show off my wealth, because I’ll be targeted.”
“I know. He and four or five others often corner people in the arcade and go through their pockets for game tokens and money. If you don’t give it to them, they’ll beat you up.”
The class was in a heated discussion. Zhou Wanfeng continued to seriously write her name in her books. She didn’t care when Zhu Junling came back.
By the time the other classes started to clean up, their homeroom teacher, Sun Mulan, had not returned. Instead, a male teacher from the next class came over and shouted, “School’s out. Classes officially start tomorrow. Morning self-study is at 7:20.” He didn’t give any other instructions and just turned and left.
A bunch of new students were in the classroom, reading comics, playing games, and chatting. When they heard that school was out, the classroom emptied out in a flash.
Zhou Wanfeng looked up. There were only a few people left in the classroom. The temporary class president with glasses behind her was still playing his game. The tall, thin boy in front, Jiang Yi, hadn’t said a word all morning. He was now standing up, ready to leave.
A few boys in the back row were dawdling, including Zhu Junling. They were acting furtively, glancing at the door from time to time.
The girl who had been painting her nails by the wall during class said with a smile, “What are you guys doing? It’s like someone is going to rob you at the door.” Her familiar tone made it seem like they had known each other for a long time.
The girl went out of the classroom, looked around, and then came back and shouted, “I looked. There’s no one.”
Zhou Wanfeng was the last one. She slung her bag over her shoulder, picked up her car key, and closed the front and back classroom doors. The bikes in the shed were in a mess. She had to move several bikes to get her own little white one out.
The school gate was crowded with people. It was easy to distinguish between the students and the socialites and hooligans. There were several groups of them squatting or standing at the school gate, some in groups of three or four, some in groups of six or seven. They were dressed very conspicuously. Even if their hair was combed neatly, they had to have a tuft sticking up.
Pure black hair was a sin. It was either straw yellow or pig’s blood red. If you saw someone with black hair, you’d turn your head and see a tuft of yellow hair on their forehead, and a snarling snake head tattooed on their jaw.
Zhou Wanfeng pedaled her bike, slowly weaving through the crowd. She looked at these young socialites who were trying to act tough. The younger ones looked like high school students, and the older ones were no more than twenty. No one knew better than her that these people could only mess with the junior high school students here.
It was rare for one in ten of them to actually make it in the real world.
The road ahead widened, and she saw her classmate, the tall Zhu Junling, surrounded by a few upperclassmen. His shoulders were slumped. He was clearly taller than the people around him, but he was being held down and couldn’t stand up straight.
“Zhu Junling, you have to help us out with this, bro. Otherwise, we’ll have a hard time too,” the third-year boy named Peng Zhen said, his arm around Zhu Junling’s shoulder, acting like they were close brothers.
“You need someone to protect you at this school, right? Otherwise, with your reputation, you would have been stopped by those guys at the school gate. Don’t you think I was the one who brought you out?”
Zhu Junling had lost his arrogant attitude from the classroom and was nodding obediently.
“From now on, you’ll be under our protection, so naturally, we’re brothers. We’ll protect you at school, and our big brothers will protect us outside of school. It’s a chain. And in between, there are expenses for cigarettes and alcohol. The situation in your class has already spread. You’ll be responsible for helping us find out which students are easy to get some pocket money from, like those from rich families, those who like to be alone, and those who live in big houses in good neighborhoods.”
Zhou Wanfeng followed behind on her bike at a leisurely pace. The road was crowded with chattering students, so no one noticed her riding slowly.
She heard Zhu Junling, who had been looking down with slumped shoulders, raise his head and say in a low voice, “Yes. I know one person in the class. He has a strange personality, but his family is very rich. He lives in that South Lake Mansion complex.”