Chapter 11: One Last Fish to Fry

“Dear leaders, teachers, parents, and… fellow students—”

Yu Junyang paused, frowned slightly, then continued reading.

The parents below had already switched to long-lens cameras aimed at their sons, with more cameras set up than a drama crew filming a kissing scene.

Their phones were busy too, snapping a couple of photos to send to Ms. Tang Xiang, reporting: “Your son is so shy, saying ‘dear fellow students’ like it’s taking his life.”

Tang Xiang replied: “Did you change his speech? You blockhead, can’t you be more reliable? Ah Yang is in puberty, warning!”

The young man on stage quickly returned to normal, his voice calm and clear, words crisp and cold as jade stones clashing, cutting through the scorching afternoon sun on the field.

“Hello, everyone.

I am Yu Junyang from Class 3-1.

As the student representative speaking at this year’s Oath-taking Assembly, I feel extremely honored, and also deeply aware of the heavy responsibility.

As the starting point for the hundred-day sprint—

Growth may be a transformation, but success does not come from wishful thinking or waiting for miracles to happen.

Teachers often say that ‘Heaven rewards diligence’, and your harvest matches your effort. Success is never accidental, it requires hard work and sweat.

In these hundred days, we will give our all, seize every second, fill in our gaps; at the same time, adjust our mindset and approach the exams with composure—”

So stiff.

So serious.

So boring.

Li Yingqiao squatted behind Gao Dian, watching Yu Junyang on the stage being all proper and solemn, let out a long sigh, and became even more determined not to study, feeling he got stupider the more he read.

“Good! Well said!”

Liang Mei squatted nearby, clapping like a seal.

Li Yingqiao gave her a sideways glance and retracted her gaze expressionlessly.

Sure enough, can’t study, stiff teachers like stiff students, a stiff life.

The boy’s composed voice on stage continued—

“In the next hundred days, we will not slack off, believing that Heaven rewards diligence. Laziness is like tooth decay. Every pack of snacks you sneak in bed at night, every bite is a sweet trap. If you want to enjoy the pleasure now, then you’ll have to bear the pain and anxiety of tooth extraction later. Finally, I wish everyone ultimate victory in the exams a hundred days from now, and for your names to shine on the honor roll!”

Li Yingqiao once had a traumatic experience with tooth extraction, back when she lived in Xiaohuacheng.

Li Shuli didn’t take her to a hospital but to a nearby dental clinic—a storefront barely a quarter the width of their grocery shop, long and narrow, squeezed between a repair shop and a breakfast place, so much so it looked like their shared internet café at first glance.

County dentists usually use their own names for their clinics, with bright blue signs and black letters, as if afraid children couldn’t find them for revenge.

Li Yingqiao remembered the dentist who pulled her tooth was called Pu Ding. Every time she passed his clinic after that, she would give him a fierce glare.

Because after Pu Ding pulled her tooth, a small cotton ball was left in her gum, hurting her for over two months, half her face swelling like a steamed bun.

The second time she needed a filling, Li Shuli took her to the city hospital, where they pulled out a blood-soaked cotton wad that had been buried in her gum for two months.

Later, Li Yingqiao learned why Pu Ding’s clinic was so small—it had been smashed up by someone.

During those two months of toothache, as Li Yingqiao’s deskmate, Yu Junyang had to endure her punching, biting, and hitting to help relieve her pain.

Unless she was truly angry, Li Yingqiao usually didn’t hit hard.

She’d bite him a couple of times, see he didn’t react, do her homework, then slap his arm and go play on her own.

After the Oath-taking Assembly ended, Liang Mei led a few kids to her home to give them another pep talk, analyze this year’s high school entrance exam trends, and give Li Yingqiao a bit of a warning.

As soon as the kids came in and saw the living things in jars and bottles on the balcony, they rushed over, surrounding them and babbling as they tried to science-explain to each other.

“Can you eat crickets?”

Zheng Miaojia asked.

“No idea,” Li Yingqiao shook her head, “but dung beetles definitely can’t be eaten, right?”

At this, Gao Dian got excited, but he was tall and didn’t squeeze onto the balcony, instead standing by the sliding door with Yu Junyang.

“Hey, have you ever eaten cicadas? Qingyi’s specialty, my parents said they’d take me to eat them there after the exams.”

Li Yingqiao looked at him sideways, “You eat all sorts of stuff in Guangdong, don’t you? Still want cicadas?”

“Injustice! Slander!”

Gao Dian clutched his chest dramatically, looking heartbroken, “You can’t just malign my diet like this—”

Before he could finish, Li Yingqiao’s peripheral vision caught a certain someone’s elbow beside Gao Dian.

She immediately shot him a look, and he knowingly made way for her—a narrow path for settling scores later—while she stared straight at Yu Junyang, who hadn’t spoken since entering, narrowing her eyes and cracking her knuckles as she coldly approached, gritting her teeth: “Yu, Tee, Yu—”

Yu Junyang looked calmly at his dramatic childhood friend, but his body reflexively retreated two steps, even moving the vase on the table further in, just in case she lunged at him and broke it.

“Don’t go crazy, we’re at Teacher Liang’s house.”

He warned, completely lacking in intimidation.

Li Yingqiao kept advancing, repeating what he’d just said on stage, each word squeezed out through clenched teeth: “Laziness is like tooth decay, huh? Who were you talking about on stage!”

“Say it was Teacher Liang, okay,” he replied, face unchanged, heartbeat steady, “I was advising her not to butt heads with a stubborn mule.”

“Yu He Tee!”

Li Yingqiao lunged forward.

Yu Junyang had nowhere left to retreat, his back thudding against the kitchen’s glass sliding door, the frame rattling loudly enough to startle Liang Mei, who was boiling water inside.

She instinctively turned to check on them, only to see Li Yingqiao with both hands around Yu Junyang’s neck, fingers pressing on his Adam’s apple, shaking him for all she was worth, demanding loudly, “Who’s the mule! Who are you calling a mule!”

Yu Junyang felt like she’d shake his guts out, but the good thing about growing up was that Li Yingqiao’s strength was no match for how, back in the day, a single punch from her could send the sun down.

He stiffened his neck a bit, and Li Yingqiao probably couldn’t even budge him now.

But he was sure that if she realized she couldn’t shake him, she’d slap him on the back of the head without hesitation—and with exams coming up, he had to protect his head.

So he decided to just let her shake him by the Adam’s apple.

“Li Yingqiao, can you go easy? Don’t push my Adam’s apple back in, it took me a lot of effort to grow it out.”

Yu Junyang still warned her lightly.

Sure enough, as soon as she heard this, she shook him even harder than ever, “You were much cuter as a kid! Go back! Shake it back!”

Yu Junyang: …

“Can you eat dung beetles or not?”

Zheng Miaojia was still asking, while Gao Dian scratched his head, searching on his phone.

Liang Mei came out from the kitchen with the water boiled, saw the scene, and while finding it cute, also felt a trace of despair.

She gave up: “You can eat them all, you can eat them all. Dung beetles aren’t just edible, they’re medicinal! Since everyone’s here, and all the ingredients are alive, I’ll cook you a pot tonight—those who need to grow taller, grow taller; those who need a brain boost, boost your brains. Everyone gets a supplement. Haha.”

Only Li Yingqiao was speechless; she felt she didn’t need to grow taller or smarter.

Teacher Liang wasn’t talking about her.

So, the kids more or less caught the sarcasm in Liang Mei’s tone, and immediately, without another word, lined up at the dining table, four pairs of eyes following Liang Mei as she moved.

“What, waiting for dinner?”

Liang Mei fumed, “Get your notebooks out, write your review plan for the next hundred days. Li Yingqiao, you write how much money you plan to spend in the next hundred days.”

Everyone bowed their heads and started writing furiously.

Only Li Yingqiao bit on her pen, deep in thought as she looked at Liang Mei, but Liang Mei ignored her.

Since transferring back from Shenzhen, Gao Dian’s grades had skyrocketed.

He used to be at the bottom of the class in Xiaohuacheng, but now, in Yu Junyang’s class, he could make it into the top ten.

You had to marvel—big provinces really did have better educational resources than a few streets in Fengtang.

It was like the ecological food chain: big fish eat little fish, little fish eat weeds, and the weeds worry daily for the little fish, afraid that if they’re not careful, the big fish swimming behind will swallow them up.

If that happens, their nurturing is meaningless, because neither they nor the little fish can escape being eaten by the big fish in the end.

And that’s pretty much the education ecosystem in the county—a world built by grassroots teachers.

They use their roots to nurture, but are always worried.

No matter how hard the little fish flap their fins, they can’t make waves like the big fish with just a flick of their tails.

Liang Mei admits her temper is average, her character is average.

Her favorite thing to do is fight with fate.

When other teachers found out she’d taken on Li Yingqiao, they advised her not to ruin the kids, said she couldn’t teach good students, and couldn’t change Fengtang’s poor education, told her to give up.

Of course she didn’t back down, even made a military pledge to the head teacher.

What she hadn’t expected was to run into a rare breed—Li Yingqiao’s hatred for studying was beyond her imagination, but she still picked her out as her little fish to fight fate with.

The others had already put down their pens, only Li Yingqiao was still writing furiously.

Yu Junyang, ever the class rep, collected the other two’s and his own notebooks and handed them to Liang Mei.

Everyone else stared at Li Yingqiao, that stubborn mule.

Li Yingqiao wasn’t the least bit anxious about being the only one left, while Gao Dian was more nervous than the emperor’s eunuch, scratching his neck and glancing at Liang Mei’s expression.

She waved at Yu Junyang, pen still clamped under her nose.

Both were on the same side; Yu Junyang stood in his spot, glanced down at her, while Li Yingqiao’s mouth puckered like a sparrow with a worm, as lazy as could be, slouched in her chair.

Rather than putting the pen down and speaking properly, she mumbled, “Your dad… that car, how much does it cost?”

Before Yu Junyang could answer, Liang Mei’s sharp ears caught it all.

She snatched the notebook she’d just collected and smacked Li Yingqiao on the head: “Li Yingqiao! The next hundred days, not the next hundred years!”

“Fine!”

Li Yingqiao yelped, finally unclamping her mouth and tossing the pen on the table, deciding to go big.

She held up three fingers, “Three thousand, for the next three months, a thousand a month. That’s reasonable, right!”

Yu Junyang calmly picked up his cup and took a sip of water, just about to swallow—

When Liang Mei made the final call: “Deal. I’ll double it for you. If you get into Tan High, I’ll give you ten thousand.”

Huh?

Li Yingqiao was stunned, staring at Liang Mei in disbelief, but the others couldn’t sit still.

“Then what about me—” Gao Dian pointed at himself, eyes shining at Liang Mei.

Liang Mei named the price: “You and Miaojia, a thousand each.”

She turned to the one drinking water: “Yu Junyang, ten yuan.”

She just thought of it as buying fish fry.

At least one of them might swim out.