Chapter 37 — I Won’t Let Him Start a Puppy Love With Anyone Else
An odd silence fell between the two desks. Everyone was floored by this “gift.”
Yu Fan practicing his own name made sense.
Why would he practice your name?
And putting gifts aside, whether other people would like this or not was unknown, but Yu Fan definitely would not.
Curious what character might be under the next sheet, Wang Lu’an could not help flipping again.
Bang.
Yu Fan slapped his palm down on the copybook.
As expected, thought Wang Lu’an.
Yu Fan grabbed the white sleeve, scowling as if it were filthy, stuffed the copybook into his own drawer, then turned and asked, “Chen Jingshen, are you itching for a beating?”
“?”
Bro, wrong drawer. Shouldn’t you be shoving that back in the top student’s desk?
The gift-giver himself looked unruffled, one arm loose on the desk, two fingers idly pinching a pen.
“I had never printed a copybook before, so I tested it with my own name,” Chen Jingshen said. “If you do not want to write those pages, throw them out.”
“With you teaching?” Yu Fan said. “Before I throw them out I will shred them.”
“Mm.”
Zhang Xianjing narrowed her eyes, gaze sliding between the two of them. Something felt off, but she could not put her finger on it.
The bell rang. The biology teacher appeared in the hallway.
Wang Lu’an was about to head back to his seat when he remembered something and held out a hand to Yu Fan. “Why are you so lazy? The trash can is right behind you. I will toss it for you on my way.”
Chen Jingshen paused in the act of pulling out his textbook, then lifted his lids and gave Wang Lu’an a cool look.
“?”
Wang Lu’an’s hand was pushed away.
“I can do it myself,” Yu Fan said, shoving his hands back in his pockets. “Go to your seat.”
“…”
Yu Fan had planned to torch the Five-Three and Slow Bird workbooks in his drawer the second midterms ended, then sleep on his desk for three days straight.
Plans could not keep up with changes. The next few days he sat through every class propped on an elbow, lazily listening just like the previous two weeks.
Two weeks of cramming had messed up his body clock. He could not sleep in the day. By midnight, as soon as he finished watching the problem videos Chen Jingshen sent, he got sleepy.
He used to video with Chen Jingshen until two in the morning.
During the big break on Friday, Zuo Kuan leaned out the window. “Yu Fan, let’s go smoke in the bathroom.”
“No.” Yu Fan refused. “If I smoke I cannot sleep in class.”
“You do not sleep anyway. I get it, you plan to outwork me until graduation.” Wang Lu’an slumped toward the door, eyes barely open. “Come on, Zuo Kuan, I will go with you.”
“Yu Fan! Chen Jingshen!” Gao Shi called from the door. “Teacher wants you in Director Hu’s office!”
Director Hu had two offices. One was in the staff building. The other was right under Class Seven’s floor. For convenience, he spent four days a week in this building.
When the two reached the door, Yu Fan glanced inside.
A woman sat across from Hu Pang’s desk. Ding Xiao stood behind her, hands crossed at his waist.
Chen Jingshen was about to knock when someone tugged his sleeve.
“Go in and do not talk,” Yu Fan muttered, then turned the knob and strolled in. “Reporting.”
He flicked a look at Ding Xiao. The moment the other boy saw him, his head ducked even lower and his shoulders twitched.
Ding Xiao’s mother had met Yu Fan once already. This time her emotions ran even hotter.
“Director, look at this.” The thin-faced woman pointed at Yu Fan, voice rising. “My son gets scared as soon as he sees him. That proves my son has been bullied by him a lot.”
“Please, parent, calm down,” said Hu Pang. “We will talk this through.”
After she calmed a little, he looked at the two boys. “Yu Fan, tell me yourself. Since that time in the cafeteria back in tenth grade, have you bullied Ding Xiao again?”
“No.”
“Then why is he so afraid of you?” the woman demanded.
“Do not know. Maybe because your son is a wuss.”
The woman exploded, smacking the desk. “What is wrong with you kids? What are you saying? Where are your parents? They did not even show up last time. No, I have to meet your parents and have them teach you properly—”
“No need,” Yu Fan said mildly. “Just manage your own son. Look at him. What a F***ing state.”
Hu Pang frowned, about to tell him to mind his mouth, when the woman suddenly lunged and swung her handbag at the boy’s face.
Yu Fan’s eyes went cold and he started to move, but a hand hauled him backward by the shoulder.
Chen Jingshen stepped in front of him, lifted his arm, and slapped the handbag aside. It hit the floor with a thud.
The office door swung open. Zhuang Fangqin rushed in. She had witnessed the scene from the window, stunned and angry. “What is going on, Director? Wasn’t today the day Ding Xiao came to apologize to my students? What is this parent doing?”
The school had spent a few days investigating the exam-skipping.
They pulled the rear-gate cameras and caught the mouth of the alley near the pool hall. It clearly showed Yu Fan being led in by students from the other school, and Chen Jingshen going in to drag him out.
They contacted the other school’s administrators, who quickly identified the students by their faces. Those kids were not even close to Ding Xiao and were eager to dump the blame on a ringleader. They told all of it.
One buzz-cut boy even had chat logs with Ding Xiao on his phone. The picture snapped into focus. Ding Xiao knew Yu Fan had beef with that school, so he colluded to set this up.
The other school wanted to beat Yu Fan to vent. Ding Xiao wanted to report him for fighting and get him expelled.
None of them expected that the boy who used to get jumped by seniors and never utter a word might tell the teachers about this for the sake of a make-up exam.
“Ding Xiao says he has been bullied by Yu Fan for a long time, so he did this,” said Hu Pang, rapping the desk. “But, parent, what you did just now is also violence. If you truly want to resolve this, sit down. Otherwise I will have to ask you to leave and we will talk another time.”
The woman took several deep breaths and forced herself to calm down, then shot Yu Fan a hateful look.
Too bad another boy kept blocking him. That boy was too tall, and her glare did not get through.
Only when Chen Jingshen let go of his shoulder did Yu Fan come back to himself.
Zhuang Fangqin shut the door and stood in front of the two students. “Parent, you say my student is bullying your child. Do you have proof?”
“You still need proof?” the woman said. “Back in tenth grade, he smashed a lunch tray in my son’s face. You were the one who apologized for him, right? And now you have the nerve to ask me that?”
“That incident already earned Yu Fan a punishment,” said Zhuang Fangqin. “You cannot assume that means he kept bullying your child afterward. So, do you have proof?”
Yu Fan suddenly remembered the third year of middle school. A boy challenged him to a fight. Yu Fan knocked his tooth out.
The boy returned with a few parents. The school called Yu Kaiming.
He stood in the office, surrounded by adults cursing him. Someone shoved him. He had not expected it and stumbled easily.
Yu Kaiming smoked, kicked him in the back, then smiled and apologized to the parents. He said he would discipline the boy at home.
From then on, if a parent tried to lay hands on him, Yu Fan would hit back.
But right now.
Looking at the two people standing in front of him, the spark that had flared up died away. His shoulders loosened for no reason.
Forget it.
He took advantage of his position and sat on the arm of the sofa.
The woman frowned and turned to her son. “Come on, sweetheart, tell them what you told me at home. Do not be scared. Mom is here.”
Huddled in the corner, silent until now, Ding Xiao finally piped up. “He… hit me. In, in the first-floor bathroom of the science building.”
“You see?” the woman crowed. “He hit my son.”
The spot he named was famous for having no camera.
Now Hu Pang regretted it, really regretted it. He had thought that blind corner was small and not worth the cost of another camera.
A lazy voice came from the back. “So a big one and a small one came to run a scam today.”
“Shut it,” snapped Zhuang Fangqin. She turned back to the woman. “When exactly did this happen? Were there other students nearby? Did Ding Xiao have any visible injuries?”
“Oh, so you want my kid to have injuries, is that it?” the woman said, brow creasing. “I do not get it. My son is honest, has excellent grades, sits in Class One for exams. You do not believe him, and you believe this kind of…”
“He cheated to get in,” said a cool voice that cut her off.
Silence dropped over the room.
Ding Xiao, who had been staring at the floor, jerked his head up to stare at Chen Jingshen.
The woman froze, slow to process. “What nonsense are you…”
“He cheated on the midterm and the final in the second term of tenth grade. I saw it.” Chen Jingshen’s tone was even. “He hid his phone in his shoe. If you pull the footage, you should find it.”
The school recorded every exam. A teacher monitored the feeds.
But footage was usually pulled only after a teacher caught a student cheating, because one teacher could not watch twenty rooms.
Chen Jingshen had come with Yu Fan and even helped him just now, so the woman subconsciously lumped him in with “bad students.” “How could you see it? He was sitting in Class One for those two.”
“Hey, allow me to introduce him,” said the boy on the sofa, sticking his head out. Yu Fan could not resist lifting a finger and tapping Chen Jingshen’s sleeve as he pointed. “Him. First in the grade, sits in Class One every exam. His name is on the first desk. He leaves your son eight hundred streets behind in both character and study. You want to compare your son to him? Does your son measure up?”
“…”
The woman stood blinking for a few seconds, then bent to snatch up her bag, charging for Yu Fan a second time.
Hu Pang’s face wrinkled into a knot. He rushed forward to grab her. “You cannot hit students. You cannot hit our students. Ms. Zhuang, take those two back to your office.”
Zhuang Fangqin hauled her two boys out.
She downed seven gulps of tea before she could breathe normally.
The homeroom teacher of Class Eight came in with her lesson plans and laughed at the sight. “What, are you punishing them to stand?”
“I want to scold them, but today they are in the right and I do not even know what to scold,” Zhuang said. “So I will let them stand a bit. It helps my mood.”
The two in question: “…”
“I heard,” said the other teacher. “I just passed the director’s office. They are about to pull the exam footage.”
“You are lucky. That will be easy to solve once it is clear.” The Class Eight teacher sighed. “My class’s situation is what is giving me a headache.”
“What happened?”
They started chatting.
Yu Fan glanced at the time, nudged the back of Chen Jingshen’s hand, and whispered, “Tell her your stomach hurts.”
Chen dipped his head and whispered back, “Why do you not tell her?”
“…”
Why the hell are you leaning in like that?
Yu Fan edged back. “Are you dumb? She will not believe me.”
“Then…”
“Say it. Louder,” Zhuang said. “Mr. Gu and I will keep talking after you are done.”
“…”
When both boys shut up, Zhuang rolled her eyes. “Go on, Mr. Gu.”
“Here is the thing. I confiscated a love letter in our class. Good lord, it was so mushy I could not finish reading it.”
“Kids start early these days,” Zhuang lamented.
“That is not the point. The point is, the recipient of that letter is a boy in your class.” Mr. Gu lifted his head. “Since he is here, I will say it straight. I do not allow early dating in my class. If that girl still manages to get her feelings across to you by some other means, you must keep your purity. Yu, my student.”
“…”
Chen Jingshen blinked without expression.
“Do not worry,” Zhuang said with pride. “Yu Fan has basically racked up every punishment he could since tenth grade, except the early-dating one. He has never touched that.”
Yu Fan kept a frosty face and said nothing.
Was that a compliment?
“I know, but you never know,” Mr. Gu said. “The girl in my class is really pretty.”
“Relax. He definitely will not,” Zhuang said. She looked up. “Yu Fan, I promised Mr. Gu. Do not make me go back on my word.”
“How about I write you a pledge, promising I will not date in high school?”
“No need.” Zhuang finally smiled. She turned to the boy beside him and said casually, “Jingshen, you are his deskmate. Help me keep an eye on him.”
“?”
“Okay,” Chen Jingshen said, calm as ever. “I will not let him start a puppy love with anyone else.”
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