At Huizhong, the first class on Monday was usually the head teacher’s homeroom period.
The head teacher of Class 4 was surnamed Zhang, a middle-aged man.
Because his lectures on people never seemed to end, he had earned himself the nickname “Tang Sanzang”.
At the moment, he stood on the podium, his gaze sweeping coolly over the classroom.
A head teacher’s gaze naturally carried invisible daggers, so everyone immediately sat up straight and proper, quiet as church mice.
Only a rainbow-haired boy was still slumped across his desk, fast asleep.
The head teacher’s expression sank instantly, so annoyed he wanted to give the kid a few raps on the head.
He glared at the green-haired fatty. “Ji Yang, wake him up!”
It was only the first period of the day; could he really be that tired?
Ji Yang hurriedly poked Su Nanye’s arm. “Boss, wake up!”
Su Nanye slowly drifted back to consciousness, rubbing his left eye. “Is dinner ready?”
Ji Yang: “Oh!”
Furious, the head teacher hurled a piece of chalk at him. “All day long you only know how to eat and sleep! Who can even tell the difference between you and a pig?”
Su Nanye scratched his head.
He hadn’t wanted to sleep either, but the moment he stepped into the classroom, the air felt like it had been laced with sleeping potion.
He simply couldn’t control it.
“Why can’t you learn from Shen Yanli? He is always the most focused in his studies, and his grades are always first in the entire grade!”
The head teacher added another jab.
Su Nanye disdainfully blew a puff of air at his bangs. “What’s the use of being first in the grade?”
You couldn’t eat it as a meal!
Su Nanye sat in the very last row, while Shen Yanli sat in the front row.
Hearing Su Nanye’s words, Shen Yanli expressionlessly opened a new math test paper.
He was long used to the head teacher comparing Su Nanye to him, just as he was used to Su Nanye’s eternal attitude of arrogant disdain.
Of course, someone born at the peak of the pyramid didn’t need to care about grades.
To him, however, education was his only lifeline.
Taking out his pen, he removed his left hearing aid.
Sometimes, he felt having a faulty ear was a good thing because it allowed him to selectively tune out the noises of the outside world.
When he took off his left hearing aid, he could barely hear any sound at all.
No matter that his other ear couldn’t hear a thing even with a hearing aid on.
Homeroom periods always revolved around disciplinary issues and criticizing students who had performed poorly the previous week.
None of that had anything to do with him, so he might as well use the time to focus on his own tasks.
Given Shen Yanli’s stellar academic performance, obedience, and physical disability, the head teacher held a very high tolerance for him.
Whenever he saw him accidentally dozing off during class, he would assume the boy must be exhausted from his part-time job, even wishing he could toss a jacket over him to keep him from catching a cold.
Hearing Su Nanye’s retort, the head teacher glared at him. “Cut down on the video games! There are only a little over a hundred days left until the college entrance examination. Pull your head into the game!”
“Money isn’t everything. You can’t just buy a good university!”
A long string of words poured out, endless.
Acting like a lullaby, it made Su Nanye sleepy again.
After talking for a full five minutes, the head teacher finally remembered that there was still a student waiting for him outside.
“Alright, that is all I have to say for today. If you weren’t a student in my class, I wouldn’t waste my breath even if someone paid me to lecture you!”
Su Nanye kept a polite smile.
Zero people want to pay you to lecture anyone.
The head teacher’s tone softened considerably. “Oh right, a transfer student has joined our class. Let’s all give her a warm welcome.”
Su Ning had stood outside the classroom long enough for her legs to feel sore.
Hearing the head teacher finally call for her, she let out a sigh of relief.
She had heard every single word the head teacher had just said.
Teachers always hoped bad students would learn from good ones, but that kind of comparison invisibly worsened the relationship between the two.
On her very first night after time-traveling, she had asked her brother at home why he had gone to block Shen Yanli at the school gates.
Her brother had told her to stay out of his business with Shen Yanli.
The two of them had been sworn enemies for more than a single day.
She could only bring up what she had heard before her time travel.
Su Nanye had shaken his head. “I know more than one person surnamed Shen. There’s no way he’s the reason I went bankrupt!”
She had replied, “But you’re the one who offended him!”
Su Nanye had flicked his bangs. “Hard to say. My family is rich, and I’m handsome; I’ve accidentally offended plenty of people without even realizing it.”
Su Ning: “Oh!”
The two had been sworn enemies for too long, and it definitely couldn’t be resolved with just two sentences from Su Ning.
All she could do was make Su Nanye promise that he wouldn’t proactively seek trouble with Shen Yanli at school anymore.
Su Nanye hadn’t agreed at first, but seeing the stubborn look in his sister’s eyes, he finally relented. “As long as he doesn’t provoke me, I won’t look for him.”
Only then did Su Ning feel at ease.
Regardless, her intuition told her it was Shen Yanli.
Standing at the classroom door for five minutes, she had heard the head teacher mention that Shen Yanli was always first in the grade, which only reinforced her conviction.
In the millennium decade, Huizhong was a prestigious key high school in Haishi.
Maintaining the top rank in the grade was an immensely difficult feat, proving that Shen Yanli possessed a very high IQ.
Someone with high intelligence, even if born into poverty, as long as they walked the righteous path during an economically booming era and seized opportunities when they arose, achieving success was practically a sure thing.
Therefore, whether her brother believed it or not, her plan would proceed as usual.
With the college entrance examination just around the corner, a transfer student was arriving out of nowhere.
None of the students had anticipated this.
Naturally, everyone’s gazes shifted toward the doorway.
They watched as a pretty girl wearing a blue-and-white school uniform and brown leather shoes walked in.
Her dark, lustrous hair was tied up in a fluffy high ponytail, and her slender, white fingers gripped her backpack straps with effortless poise. “Hello everyone, my name is Su Ning. Please take good care of me from now on.”
Even though his ears hadn’t picked up any sound, he could sense a gentle breeze sweeping into the classroom.
Shen Yanli involuntarily raised his head.
Laying eyes on the young girl standing on the podium, massive ripples surged within his cool, clear pupils.
The last time he saw her was at Hongyan Tower, back on Wednesday night of last week.
For the following four consecutive days, he hadn’t laid eyes on her once.
It was as if this person had never existed at all.
Oddly enough, he kept thinking of her for no reason.
Yet he figured he would probably never see her again.
Otherwise, why would she have gone out of her way to make him remember her?
Perhaps she was a relative of Su Nanye’s from out of town, just visiting for a family trip.
Still, a strange, indescribable sense of emptiness lingered in his heart.
When he saw Su Nanye at school, he even had the strong urge to ask him directly.
However, Su Nanye would keep a wide berth whenever he saw him, as if he were carrying a plague.
He had neither the opportunity nor the reason to ask.
Just as he pushed that sense of emptiness deep into the darkest corners of his heart.
The girl appeared before his eyes once more, becoming his classmate.
Catching sight of that exquisite and lovely face again.
Shen Yanli’s heartbeat drummed like rolling thunder.
The sound wasn’t transmitted through the air, but rather through his bones straight into his ears, deafening.
During the days when he couldn’t afford a hearing aid, Shen Yanli had self-taught himself how to read lips.
Even without wearing his hearing aid, he could roughly figure out what the other person was saying.
The moment he saw the girl, however, he instinctively reached for the hearing aid on his desk and put it on.
She hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary, just a very simple self-introduction.
The whispering discussions of his classmates echoed endlessly around the room.
“Oh my god! So pretty, she looks almost unreal!”
“That skin, that hair; she’s more delicate than the dolls I buy from abroad. I want to collect her!”
“Do you hear yourself speaking?”
“…”
The head teacher tapped the podium. “Quiet.”
The entire class instantly fell silent as church mice.
The head teacher turned his attention to Su Ning.
She was someone the principal had specially entrusted to his care.
According to the principal, the girl’s father had donated several hundred thousand yuan to the school for the expansion of the library.
He asked her, “Su Ning, where would you like to sit?”