Chapter 24: I’ll Make You More Famous p1
Jiang Yi ran to several offices, but they were all locked and empty. He finally ran into a teacher halfway and grabbed her arm, pulling her towards the restroom. “Teacher, there’s… someone smoking in the restroom.”
Jiang Yi was not stupid. He didn’t dare to tell the truth. He didn’t know what the situation in the restroom was at this moment, so he just pulled her over first.
Lin Jiawen was being pulled by Jiang Yi and didn’t even have time to say that she was not a teacher.
But students smoking in the restroom was indeed a violation of school rules, and she couldn’t just ignore it. “Student, slow down.”
Lin Jiawen was wearing high heels. They weren’t high, but they were still high heels. The male student was tall and had long legs, and he was pulling her along at a run. “Teacher, if we’re not fast, they’ll be gone. There are several of them.”
As they ran towards the restroom, they ran into Zhou Wanfeng, Zhu Junling, and their group.
Jiang Yi looked left and right, panting heavily. He glanced at Zhou Wanfeng and pointed towards the men’s restroom.
“A few third-year boys were smoking. When they saw someone come in, they threw away their cigarette butts and left. If we go now, we’ll probably just smell some smoke,” Ding Gaoming explained with a chuckle. But when he looked at the female teacher Jiang Yi had brought, her expression was one of astonishment as she looked around, her gaze finally landing on Zhou Wanfeng in front.
“Wanfeng?” Lin Jiawen’s eyes were filled with doubt. She was not stupid and had figured it out.
Zhou Wanfeng chuckled and glanced at Jiang Yi. She hadn’t expected him to find a teacher just in case, and for it to be such a coincidence.
Lin Jiawen stared at the footprints on Zhu Junling’s clothes that hadn’t been dusted off, her brow furrowed as she looked at Zhou Wanfeng. “Wanfeng, I remember you said you just wanted to study hard at school. Haven’t you learned your lesson from the trouble you caused a few days ago?”
Lin Jiawen remembered the events of a few days ago. The fight in class, the complaint against the teacher, the report against the school. It had caused her to be called in for a talk with the school leadership several times, and the matter had only just passed.
Chen Yisen and Zhu Junling looked at each other, their minds still in a daze.
Ding Gaoming’s eyes lit up. “Teacher, teacher, it’s a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding.” He then helped to pat the footprints off Zhu Junling’s clothes. “Teacher, these footprints are so big, they’re not our class president’s. And the fight in class last time, it really wasn’t our class president’s fault. The whole class can testify. It was the bastard in the back row… no, the male classmate who started it. Our class president is really studying hard. She’s the only one in the whole class who is studying seriously, and she also cares for her classmates.”
Zhou Wanfeng sighed and waved for them to go back to the classroom. Now that she was with Zhu Junling, Ding Gaoming, and the others, it was easy for people to get the wrong idea.
The four of them left first. Jiang Yi took a step and then looked back. Chen Yisen put his arm around his shoulder and muttered, “Which teacher did you call? It took them so long to get here. If it weren’t for the boss holding them off in the front, we would have been done for by the time you got here.”
Lin Jiawen also heard the conversation. She looked at Zhou Wanfeng and took a deep breath, feeling that her guess was correct. “Wanfeng, I know that First Grade, Class Nine is not the kind of class you imagined. But I guarantee that the things the teachers teach in class are all the same. Study hard and don’t be affected. Build a good foundation in your three years of junior high, and choose a good high school when the time comes. You can’t cause any more trouble at school. If you get a demerit, it will be recorded in your file, and the high school admissions will see it. What if your score is high enough, but the school doesn’t admit you because of this file? Wouldn’t that be a loss?”
Zhou Wanfeng smiled. “Cousin-Aunt, you’re not in my situation. You say a good high school is three years from now, but what about these three years? If the river is blocked by mud, it will only accumulate more and more. A carp can leap over the dragon’s gate, but without a strong current, it can only be trapped in the mud, unable to move.”
Lin Jiawen frowned, thinking about what Zhou Wanfeng had said. Mud, river? She was about to ask what she meant, but she saw that Zhou Wanfeng had already turned and left. She could only shout at her back, “Wanfeng, don’t cause any more trouble! Remember to study hard!”
By the time Zhou Wanfeng returned to the classroom,
the class was in an uproar. Ding Gaoming and Chen Yisen had moved their stools and were sitting next to Chen Hao, one singing and the other echoing. “Some people, they think they’re brothers, but when it matters, they’re nowhere to be seen.”
“Playing deaf.”
“Blind.”
“Can’t move their legs.”
“Bro, my heart is cold. We’re in the same class, but we’re not united.”
“If we get bullied by other classes in the future, we’ll all be as timid as quails. Chen Hao, our class president just said that even if you were the one cornered in the restroom, she would have gone. For anyone in the class, even Zhao Shenyu, she would have gone.”
“That’s right. The class president said that as the class president, she will both discipline us and protect us. She said she will keep her word.”
“The class president just hopes that we don’t disturb the teacher during class. She doesn’t care if we don’t do our homework, and she doesn’t say anything if we sleep in class. Why would you provoke such a good class president? When a classmate is being bullied, can you stand up, or can you shout a few times?”
“Exactly. Don’t be so rowdy in class in the future. We’re sitting behind you, and we find you noisy. The class president’s requirements for us are not harsh. She faced a few third years all by herself. Who else would dare?”
Zhou Wanfeng stood at the door and listened for a few sentences, then stopped the two show-offs with a look.
As soon as she sat down and took out her notebook to do math problems, Zhu Junling moved his chair and sat in the aisle. Ignoring the gazes of his classmates, he whispered, “They want me to steal your class fees…”
“You can’t steal it. To be precise, no one can,” Zhou Wanfeng said, taking out the bulging money bag from the inner pocket of her backpack.
Zhu Junling didn’t understand. He reached out and opened the money bag, only to find it filled with shredded pieces of paper. He was dumbfounded. “Where’s the money?”
He had seen her put the money she had collected into this bag.
“Not even a ghost can steal money from me, let alone you,” Zhou Wanfeng said, looking at Zhu Junling with a sneer, then lowered her head and started to do her problems.
Zhu Junling looked at the money bag for a long time but still couldn’t figure it out. However, he looked at Zhou Wanfeng with a worried expression and stammered a “thank you.” “Class president, why don’t you take a couple of days off? Or have your family pick you up? Peng Zhen and his group won’t let it go after what you said today. If you go to and from school alone, they’ll definitely corner you.” Zhu Junling felt that he was the cause of this. He felt a little guilty that someone else had gotten into trouble for helping him, and now he looked at Zhou Wanfeng with a sense of self-blame.
“Why did you hit the teacher in elementary school?” Zhou Wanfeng’s sudden question stunned Zhu Junling. He then remembered that she had heard him bragging in class, and his face turned red with embarrassment. The thought of his boasting at the beginning of the school year, only to be cornered in the restroom and kicked to the ground, unable to move,
he looked up and saw Zhou Wanfeng looking at him seriously, her pen paused, waiting for his answer. He couldn’t be bothered with embarrassment anymore and whispered, “I… have a bad memory. I can’t memorize the texts no matter how hard I try. Even if I memorize it today, I’ll forget most of it by tomorrow. But that teacher always called on me to recite. I would stumble through it, and she would always hit me on the head with a book, calling me a pig brain, saying that even a pig would have memorized it after so many times, and that I was worse than a pig. She always said that about me, and after class, my classmates would often say it too. Later, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I hit her.”
After hearing this, Zhou Wanfeng waved her hand for him to go back and lowered her head to do her problems.
“Class president, um… you be careful,” Zhu Junling said as he returned to the back row.
Zhu Junling’s voice was low, but the surrounding students could still hear him. They had thought that what Ding Gaoming and Chen Yisen had said was an exaggeration. But now that the person involved had said it himself, they all looked at Zhou Wanfeng with different eyes.
She had really faced Peng Zhen and his group of third years all by herself. It sounded like she had angered them, and they were going to corner her.
If it were them, the thought of someone waiting to ambush and beat them up on their way to and from school would be enough to make them panic. But now, everyone was looking at Zhou Wanfeng. Her expression was normal, calm and composed, and she was seriously doing her math problems.
Suddenly, the students in the class realized how big the gap between them and her was.
Just now, when Ding Gaoming had come to the classroom to call for help, they hadn’t moved. They had thought it had nothing to do with them. They weren’t on good terms with Zhu Junling, so what happened to him didn’t affect them.
But Zhou Wanfeng had gone. Suddenly, the word “class president” had taken on an important meaning. It was not the class president of the past who would urge you to hand in your homework, maintain order during self-study, and tattle to the teacher.
They suddenly understood what Zhou Wanfeng had said before: the head of a class is the boss of the class. While she disciplined them, she also truly protected them. She hadn’t been all talk. She had really done it.
Now, when the students in the class looked at Zhou Wanfeng, at her serious and proper demeanor, they couldn’t help but feel a sense of respect.
In the afternoon, even the teachers in class were a little different. Especially since the teachers for Class Eight and Class Nine were basically the same. The difference was particularly noticeable after teaching Class Nine and then going to Class Eight.
When they saw the homeroom teacher of Class Eight, Wang Chenggang, they said, “The classroom discipline in Class Eight is not as good as in Class Nine next door. They’re rowdy during breaks, but they don’t interrupt in class. The students in the front row are still quite serious about their studies. Zhou Wanfeng is leading them well. She’s active in class, not afraid of making mistakes, and dares to ask and answer questions. It’s even made the other students more active in raising their hands to answer. Class Eight should learn from them.”
Hearing this, Sun Mulan was relieved. Although she didn’t know what had happened, she knew that Zhou Wanfeng had solved some problems in her own way when she wasn’t looking.
She hoped that this atmosphere would continue.
Zhou Wanfeng’s back bicycle wheel was bent, so she had left it at home.
After evening self-study, Jiang Yi gave Zhou Wanfeng a ride home on his bike. Zhou Wanfeng told him, “If you give me a ride and we run into Peng Zhen and his group, they’ll probably beat you up too.”
Jiang Yi smiled. “So be it. But you can fight. You hold them off, and I’ll take the opportunity to run.”
“You dare to walk with me, but you don’t have the guts to fight with me?” Zhou Wanfeng thought that her bike would be fixed by tomorrow. That group of third years wouldn’t be that efficient.
Jiang Yi said nothing.
Zhou Wanfeng didn’t say any more about it. She closed her eyes and felt the cool night wind, and began to recite the Chinese text, a chapter she hadn’t learned yet.
After reciting one, she moved on to the next.
After reciting the Chinese, she started to recite English words and texts. Her mouth was not idle the whole way. Zhou Wanfeng treated this as consolidation and review, taking any free moment to practice.
When they arrived at South Lake Mansion, Jiang Yi took her to her door and even looked at the house number before leaving, saying they would go together tomorrow.
Zhou Wanfeng usually washed up first when she got home. She was very fast. She changed into her pajamas and went to the third-floor study with her textbooks.
Her schedule basically didn’t clash with Yun Chengbin’s. By the time she got home, he had already finished his homework and gone to bed.
At the desk in the study, Yun Jingya was studying. Zhou Wanfeng sat on the other side. As soon as she sat down, Yun Jingya handed her a few test papers.
“Wanfeng, these are test papers made by our school’s own teachers. I asked the teacher for an extra copy. You can try them when you have time. You can ask me if you don’t understand anything.” The experimental middle school was indeed a key junior high in the city. The questions on these test papers looked quite difficult.
There were papers for every subject. Zhou Wanfeng folded them and put them aside, planning to try them after she had finished her preview.
“Where are you in Chinese?” Yun Jingya often compared the progress of their two schools and would lend Zhou Wanfeng her class notes, and also look at Zhou Wanfeng’s.
Many of Zhou Wanfeng’s study methods were learned from Yun Jingya, but people were different. Yun Jingya’s study methods were clearly more suited to her. Their ways of thinking and understanding were different. For the same reading comprehension, Yun Jingya could understand it more deeply and find the core faster.
“Chinese is all about the text, Wanfeng. You need to read more. In addition to improving your memorization and dictation of Chinese, students with good grades won’t lose points on these basic questions. The difficulty is in the open-ended questions at the end. These can only be improved through more reading, more studying, and more perception and comparison.”
Yun Jingya even specially selected a few books from the shelf and told Zhou Wanfeng to read more when she had time.
“English is all about listening, speaking, and writing, and mastering grammar. There are no other shortcuts.”
“As for math, our math teacher says it’s all about doing more problems. You can’t learn it just by looking. You have to do the problems. For the problems you get wrong, create a mistake notebook, record where you went wrong, and just look at the mistake notebook before the exam. Our teacher also said that apart from the top tier of geniuses, the IQ gap between people is actually not that big. It all depends on hard work and effort.”
In Yun Jingya’s eyes, Zhou Wanfeng was not stupid at all. She was hardworking, diligent, and very self-disciplined. Sometimes, when she looked at Wanfeng engrossed in her studies, she would feel a sense of panic, as if she would be surpassed.
But then she would think that it was nothing. There were many good students in her class.
Zhou Wanfeng nodded. “There’s a guy in our class who’s particularly good at math. He said the same thing. He doesn’t even listen to the teacher in class. He studies on his own. If he doesn’t understand something, he’ll just keep at it. He’s way ahead, and the practice problems he does are all sorts of different kinds.” Jiang Yi definitely had a talent for math. Thanks to him, whenever she had a math problem she couldn’t solve, he was the first person she would ask.
The two of them studied together until a little past eleven, then packed up and went to bed.
Zhou Wanfeng had moved back to the attic. She had to get up early every day to exercise, which would disturb Yun Jingya’s rest. When Yun Lan found out, she had the attic completely cleaned out during the day.
There was no time for a detailed renovation, so they just cleaned it, put up wallpaper, and laid down interlocking floor mats.
After the entire attic was cleaned out, it was very spacious. The old bed was replaced with a large one, and a wardrobe, shoe rack, small sofa, and so on were added. It was decorated very thoughtfully, and they even bought a few large stuffed animals to put in it, making the whole room feel warm and cozy.
Thinking of Yun Lan, Zhou Wanfeng didn’t know whether to pity her or feel sorry for her. She was clearly no match for Zhou Zhiru. She was simple and easy to deceive, believing whatever Zhou Zhiru said. To think that even a suspicious person like Yang Yijun could raise such a daughter, she probably felt bad herself.
Especially since she was so in love.
Zhou Wanfeng thought that if she were Zhou Zhiru, a wife like Yun Lan would be a good choice. She was beautiful, simple-minded, and obedient. Even if her family’s fortune declined in the future, she would definitely not be able to take away a single bit of his assets.
On Saturday and Sunday, Zhou Wanfeng went out to buy some things, and also went to the bookstore Jiang Yi had mentioned to buy a few workbooks.
Yang Yijun had been quite busy lately. She said that Yunhai City was holding a children’s Go competition, and she had been invited to attend.
This Sunday, a new auntie had come to the house. It was the person who had been said to be coming to work before.
Her surname was Luo. She was in her forties, with a fair, round face, and a very friendly smile.
When Auntie Luo arrived, Auntie Zhang’s long face showed her disapproval. But the kitchen auntie was very enthusiastic, and even Xiao Ling was. They spent the whole day showing her around and introducing her to the family’s affairs and people.
She didn’t know how they had introduced her, but Auntie Luo was very polite and friendly to her.
Old Dong’s bike repair skills were limited. He could wipe it down and oil the chain. But the wheel was completely bent, and he had been tinkering with it for two days without success. He was about to send it out to be repaired.
Zhou Wanfeng came downstairs for a break after finishing her homework and rolled up her sleeves to fix it herself. Old Dong watched from the side at first. Auntie Zhang called him to sweep the fallen leaves at the entrance. When he came back, the bike was fixed.
The tires were inflated, and she rode it around the yard for a test run. Everything was normal.
Old Dong was amazed and silently gave her a thumbs-up.
Zhou Wanfeng washed her hands and went upstairs to continue studying.