Wen Jiaojiao broke into a slight sweat. “I’ll be fine. There aren’t any monsters in the confinement room, so what do I have to be afraid of?”
“Alright, you guys don’t need to worry. I’ll be able to return to training with you the day after tomorrow. Don’t miss me too much.”
“Yeah, right. Who’s going to miss you? We’re not men who are after your looks.” Zhang Shaoying rolled her eyes at her.
Wu Qin and Wang Xiaomei couldn’t help laughing.
“Don’t worry. I’ll bring you your meals tomorrow,” Wang Xiaomei said.
Wen Jiaojiao smiled. “Okay. Thank you in advance. I’m off.”
Just as she reached the door, Qiu Shumin and the others happened to return from outside. Their expressions were anything but friendly when they saw her.
As they passed by, one of them said disdainfully, “Why is someone like her staying in our dormitory? No, I’m going to report this to the regiment commander and ask to have our dormitory changed!”
Wen Jiaojiao heard every word. She merely curled the corners of her lips slightly and ignored them, continuing toward the confinement room.
Qiu Shumin’s voice wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t quiet either. Everyone inside and outside the dormitory could hear her.
Zhang Shaoying had long been unable to stand these women’s attitude. She snorted coldly.
“You’d better transfer out today. I’ve disliked you people for a long time.”
The moment Qiu Shumin and the others heard this, they glared angrily at her.
“Zhang Shaoying, what do you mean by that?!”
Zhang Shaoying sneered. “You’ve even gone to school, yet you can’t understand what I’m saying?”
“I said I’ve disliked you for a long time. You’d better transfer out today!”
“You!”
Qiu Shumin and the others glared furiously at her.
Zhang Shaoying rolled up her sleeves and stood there aggressively.
“What? You want to fight? Come on!”
Yao Fang sneered sarcastically. “She starts a fight at the slightest disagreement. How can there be such a crude woman?”
“Birds of a feather flock together. What kind of good people could those who are close to Wen Jiaojiao possibly be?”
That remark insulted all three of them.
Wang Xiaomei’s face flushed with anger, but she didn’t dare argue with these city girls, so she could only swallow her anger.
Wu Qin valued manners and proper upbringing. Even though her lips were trembling with anger, she couldn’t bring herself to curse at them.
Zhang Shaoying, however, had no such reservations.
She immediately grabbed Yao Fang by the hair.
“What did you say? Say it again!”
Yao Fang’s scalp hurt terribly. Seeing that Zhang Shaoying had actually dared to hit her, she stopped holding back.
“You pulled my hair! I’ll fight you!”
Qiu Shumin and the others immediately rushed over to help her.
Wu Qin was extremely anxious, but before long, she was left completely dumbfounded by Zhang Shaoying’s fighting ability.
Even against four people at once, Zhang Shaoying didn’t fall behind. The only damage was that her uniform had been ripped open at the collar.
None of the four women had ever been beaten like this before. They huddled together, too frightened to move, yet still shouted defiantly.
“Zhang Shaoying, how dare you hit us! We’re going to report you to Regiment Commander Shen!”
Zhang Shaoying looked completely unconcerned.
“Go ahead and complain if you want. Go now. Otherwise, I’ll beat you until you have to be carried there!”
They never did anything useful. All day long, they gossiped and criticized others, yet the moment they stepped onto the training field, every one of them turned into a weakling.
As far as Zhang Shaoying was concerned, they were worlds apart from Wen Jiaojiao.
Sure, Wen Jiaojiao was beautiful, but she wasn’t delicate or spoiled. Unlike these women, who complained about everything from morning till night.
She would rather be friends with men than deal with these women. They were simply too annoying.
Qiu Shumin and the others had been thoroughly frightened by the beating. When they saw Zhang Shaoying raise her fist again, they immediately ran out the door to complain to Regiment Commander Shen.
Shen Wenjie had just finished dealing with Wen Jiaojiao’s matter and hadn’t even had time to catch her breath when another group of half-crazed women came running over.
Their hair was disheveled, and their clothes were a mess. Their appearance immediately attracted the attention of both the male and female soldiers nearby.
Shen Wenjie’s face darkened instantly.
“You four, get inside!”
The moment Qiu Shumin and the others entered, they began crying and complaining.
“Regiment Commander Shen, you have to stand up for us! Zhang Shaoying beat us!”
“…”
Shen Wenjie pinched the bridge of her nose, her head throbbing.
This batch of new recruits was simply too unruly!
In the end, the entire dormitory was punished with confinement.
Wen Jiaojiao had just finished writing her self-criticism and was about to lie down and rest her eyes when the confinement-room door opened again.
A whole group of people walked in.
And they were all familiar faces.
Zhang Shaoying looked completely unconcerned. Wu Qin looked helpless. Wang Xiaomei looked nervous. And the other four looked like resentful wives, all sporting bruised and swollen faces.
Wen Jiaojiao stared at them in surprise.
“Why are you guys here?”
Zhang Shaoying shrugged and plopped down beside her.
“Move over. Can’t you tell? We came to keep you company.”
Wen Jiaojiao: “…”
Wu Qin gave a bitter smile.
“After you left, Shaoying got into a fight with those four. In the end, all of us got punished by Regiment Commander Shen.”
Before she could finish speaking, Qiu Shumin and the other three began protesting that they absolutely refused to share a confinement room with them.
The soldier guarding the confinement rooms took one look at how many people there were and decided to split them between two rooms.
The soldiers were secretly baffled.
Were female soldiers really this fierce nowadays? They were even getting into group fights…
Once the door closed, the confinement room became dark and quiet again.
Only then did Wen Jiaojiao ask, “What happened? Someone explain it to me.”
Wu Qin then told her everything that had happened after she left.
After hearing the whole story, Wen Jiaojiao felt both touched and helpless.
“They were just running their mouths. You could have let them say whatever they wanted. Because of me, you ended up getting punished too. How am I supposed to feel okay about that?”
Zhang Shaoying waved her hand dismissively.
“Even without you, I would have ended up fighting them sooner or later. I just couldn’t stand them.”
Wu Qin usually appeared gentle and refined, but when it mattered, she was very loyal.
“Jiaojiao, they really went too far. If I knew how to fight, I would have joined Shaoying and beaten them up too!”
“They were saying such awful things!”
Wang Xiaomei bit her lip but didn’t say anything.
Hearing the three of them defend her, Wen Jiaojiao felt warmth spread through her heart.
She said gratefully, “You’re all such good comrades!”
“To thank you, I’ll cook something delicious for you guys when I get the chance.”
Zhang Shaoying immediately looked at her.
“You can cook?”
Wen Jiaojiao nodded.
“I can make a few dishes. Once I get my allowance, I’ll find somewhere and cook a meal for all of you.”
“That sounds great. We’ll be waiting,” Wu Qin said with a smile.
Zhang Shaoying was secretly looking forward to it as well. For some reason, she had a feeling Wen Jiaojiao’s cooking would definitely be delicious.
“Ugh, I hate writing self-criticisms the most. Jiaojiao, why don’t you write mine for me?”
Zhang Shaoying stared at the paper and pen in front of her as though they were giving her a headache.
Wen Jiaojiao gave her a helpless look.
“I’d like to help you, but our handwriting is different. Regiment Commander Shen will notice.”
“…Sigh!”
Zhang Shaoying straightened her collar, uncapped her pen, and began writing.
As she adjusted her collar, Wen Jiaojiao finally noticed that the fabric near the collar had been ripped open.
“Was this torn during the fight?”
“Yeah. They tried to grab my hair, but unfortunately for them, they were too short and could only reach my collar.”
She sounded rather proud of it.
Wen Jiaojiao smiled.
“Thank you for standing up for me. Once we’re back in the dormitory, I’ll mend your uniform for you.”
Zhang Shaoying raised her head.
“Oh? You know how to mend clothes too?”
“Mending clothes isn’t difficult. I’ve known how to do it since I was little.”
She had grown up in the countryside, so she knew how to do all the things ordinary girls were expected to know.
Wang Xiaomei, on the other hand, looked puzzled.
“Isn’t mending clothes something every girl knows how to do? Shaoying, you don’t know how?”
Wu Qin quickly chimed in.
“I know how too.”
The moment she heard that both of them knew, Zhang Shaoying’s expression became slightly embarrassed.
“Not knowing how to mend clothes isn’t against the law…”
“Since you know how, Jiaojiao, I’ll leave my uniform to you.”
Wen Jiaojiao readily agreed.
“No problem.”