Chapter 5 Part 2 - Very Important Matter

Translated by: Jellylynn

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Edited by: Lynn

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Names mentioned in this chapter (which can also be found in the glossary ):

-俞知乐(yú zhī lè)- Yu Zhi Le, the female protagonist.

-余子涣(yú zǐ huàn)- Yu Zi Huan, the male lead

-小余(xiǎo yú)- Xiao Yu

-王大爷(wáng dà yé)- Wang Da Ye, an elderly living in the same building as the female and male leads

-四中(sì zhòng)- Fourth Middle School, the name of the Middle School in the neighbourhood.

-谢成龙(xiè chéng lóng)- Xie Cheng Long, the ‘boss’ who was the leader of the group of boys that insulted the male lead.

-李姐(lǐ jiě)- Sister Li, a staff of the mini-mart/Yu Zhi Le’s colleague.

“Heh, you think I’m stupid? His answer obviously couldn’t be the same as others. If not wouldn’t he be exposed immediately?” The form teacher stared at Yu Zhi Le scornfully, as if she was saying that she didn’t use her brain.

“So all the other people who have different answers to these papers should also be a suspect ah.” Although Yu Zhi Le was not the most intelligent, she hated people who look down on others even when their logic had loopholes.

“This…” the form teacher was speechless and glanced at it. She saw that amongst all of the students standing in front of the window, other than Yu Zi Huan who had his head held high, the rest of the students all lowered their heads and were repenting. This made her even more angry. “There are so many students. It can’t be that they collude to slander Yu Zi Huan, right!”

This was hard to tell. The more Yu Zhi Le observed Xie Cheng Long, the more she felt that Xie Cheng Long, even with his head down, was snickering. She didn’t know where their answer came from. However, it was probably because they were discovered cheating, so they pushed the responsibility onto Yu Zi Huan. Selling answers to the test papers was a more serious offense than cheating. The biggest black pot [1] had been backed up by someone, and they were not going to get blamed for it.

“I know the conditions in your family are not good.” Seeing Yu Zhi Le was being silent, the form teacher looked down on her outfit. She was wearing the T-shirt, jeans and sandals she had bought at a stall from a while back. “But we can’t indulge children to do such things against the law and violate discipline. Now they can buy and sell answers, wouldn’t they commit murder and arson in the future?”

Yu Zhi Le was disgusted by how she alleged that Yu Zi Huan was heading towards the path of becoming a criminal. Nevertheless, she still resisted the urge to scold and maintain a smile, “You are right. Our family conditions aren’t good and we can’t provide Xiao Huan with a good environment. However as much as we are poor people, we are not short of ambition.”

“I believe Xiao Huan will never do anything against the law and violate discipline. There must be someone else who sold these answers.” Yu Zhi Le was almost gnashing her teeth when she said the last sentence. However, when she noticed that Yu Zi Huan was staring at her, she still smiled with a lot of effort even though she was so angry by what the form teacher had said that she was about to weep.

Yu Zi Huan, who was standing by the window, had the light shone on his back. At four o’clock in the afternoon, the sun was shining on his shoulder. What was brighter than the sun was his eyes. She wasn’t sure if it was because the sunlight was too glaring that caused her to have blurred vision. Yu Zhi Le felt that Yu Zi Huan’s eyes seemed to be glistening like the stars and it was too dazzling.

“You believe him? Is there even any use of you believing him? You also have to show me the evidence!”

Yu Zhi Le was stumped by the form teacher’s words. Where was she going to have such evidence? She didn’t even know how many classmates were in Yu Zi Huan’s class. Even if she did, she wouldn’t be able to name the suspects.

“I have evidence.” Yu Zi Huan suddenly spoke.

Several students standing beside him stopped acting. They began to chatter amongst themselves. Xie Cheng Long, the leader of the group, stared intently at Yu Zi Huan and didn’t look away from him.

Yu Zi Huan took out a note from his trouser pocket and handed it to the form teacher.

When Xie Cheng long saw this, he pinched the boy beside him harshly and said quietly, “Didn’t I ask you to collect and get rid off all the cheat sheets?”

The form teacher took the note suspiciously and saw the answers written on it, including filling in the blanks, choosing and the two essay questions. She didn’t understand what Yu Zi Huan was implying. “What is this? Have you finally thought it through to confess now?”

“No, I didn’t write it. I just intercepted one of the notes passing around during the exam. You can see that this isn’t my handwriting.”

The form teacher looked carefully and suddenly her expression changed.

“You can see whose handwriting it is.”

The form teacher’s face turned blue and white for a while. She glared at Xie Cheng Long. Then, she turned around, waved her hand towards Yu Zi Huan and Yu Zhi Le and said, “It’s alright now. You can leave.”

Yu Zhi Le was a little confused about the sudden change in attitude, but she also understood that Yu Zi Huan had been cleared of all the accusations. Yu Zi Huan tugged her sleeve and pulled her out while she was still in disbelief.

“What’s going on?” When they left the school, Yu Zhi Le still hadn’t figured out how the form teacher just let them leave.

“Her daughter is also in our class. She is the class monitor. She is preparing to attain a title of excellent young pioneers captain of the city this year. It was a way to gain bonus points in the middle school entrance examination.” The contempt in Yu Zi Huan’s tone was no less than that of the form teacher when he spoke to Yu Zhi Le earlier. “If her daughter was found selling answers, do you think that would be possible?”

“That was written by your class monitor?” Yu Zhi Le finally understood. No wonder the form teacher’s face was so bad after recognising the handwriting. “But why did she do this? Is she short of money?”

“Who knows.” Yu Zi Huan didn’t care much about it and didn’t want to continue this topic.

“Speaking of which, your form teacher makes me so angry. How can such a person be qualified to be a teacher?” Yu Zhi Le recalled what happened earlier where she was so embarrassed that her face was flushed as if it was dripping blood. He looked at the expressionless Yu Zhi Huan. “I’m sorry, I’ll take back what I told you about pleasing the teacher or to please other teachers. With such a form teacher, you can forget about this.”

Yu Zi Huan looked at her curiously. “Why did you change your mind? Didn’t you say it was a good idea?”

“That’s because I think everyone will like you. In this situation, she wasn’t being partial towards you. So don’t waste your effort.”

“There is the kind of teacher who will never like you if you don’t give her gifts.” Yu Zi Huan heard Yu Zhi Le’s words and thought it made sense. He smiled as he said, ”By the way, thank you for coming to my school today.”

Yu Zhi Le consciously felt that she should accept his gratitude, but she felt inexplicably guilty. From the looks of it, in the future, even if she didn’t come, Yu Zi Huan would still be able to defend himself. She just came to be angry, “You don’t need to thank me, I didn’t do anything.”

“No, what you did was very important.” Yu Zi Huan stopped behind Yu Zhi Le who was walking ahead and whispered.

It had been a long time since someone believed and defended him unconditionally. It was very important.

[1] 背锅(bēi ɡuō)- the literal meaning means “carrying a pot on one’s back”, which originally describes a hunchback person. In internet slang, it is the abbreviation of “背黑锅(bēi hēi guō) carrying a black pot” which means “bearing faults for others”.