Chapter 46: Stranded

Ma Guojun was somewhat dumbfounded, pushing up his glasses. "Brother, could that person really be you?"

"What kind of talk is that? What kind of talk is this!" Jiang Nian deflected evasively. "What person? It has nothing to do with me at all... I want to see my lawyer!"

"Brother Nian, you truly are a man among men, so fierce?" Li Hua gave a thumbs-up. "As expected of you, the king of men among all bastards."

"Awesome, awesome, awesome, the king of kings. The NBA won't be worth watching without you, bro." Ma Guojun also gave a thumbs-up. "Brother, hold back a bit when you play games; I'm afraid you'll elbow LeBron to death."

Yao Beibei walked past and joined in the commentary.

"Fighting is one thing, but what was up with taking off their shoes and throwing them in the toilet? Just thinking about the way they went home with only one shoe makes me want to laugh."

Zhang Ningzhi also nodded, her face full of worry.

"You really shouldn't fight. Fighting makes it so easy to get hurt, doesn't it?"

Looking at the dozen or so gazes coming from all directions, Jiang Nian wore a proper smile. He would never admit to this kind of dark history.

"No, it really wasn't me. (Earnest face)"

The group instantly burst into laughter, drawing the attention of others in the class who cast curious glances. Li Qingrong, the monitor sitting in the first row, frowned slightly.

Rin-rin-rin, the bell for the third class rang, and the crowd dispersed accordingly.

Jiang Nian casually pulled a biology textbook from his desk belly, feeling a wave of relief in his heart. That was close, he thought to himself. "Shoe-Thrower Brother" almost followed him through his entire senior year of high school.

Actually, it wasn't entirely his fault, given the environment of the No. 2 High School. The strong adapt to the environment, while the weak die rigidly. He also wanted to be a good person, but nobody gave him the chance.

A small fraction of middle schoolers were arrogant and acting tough for no reason, bullying others just to establish dominance. It didn't have much to do with playing basketball; preexisting conflicts naturally led to fights.

Three or four people fighting until emotions ran high was completely normal, right? Throwing their shoes was getting off light; not shoving them back into their mothers' wombs was proof of his immense benevolence.

They were all a bunch of idiots. Of course, he was an idiot too, picking fights for no reason. Tier 3 Power Cultivation was invincible, but once pocket money got docked, he would instantly become well-behaved.

Past events were too painful to look back on, consigned entirely to social death.

Censored, heavily censored.

The biology teacher was a young woman in her mid-twenties, wearing a small "little bee" megaphone tied around her waist during class. Her voice was sweet, and her name was quite sweet too.

Zhong Qing.

Scarcely had a few minutes of class passed when seven or eight boys stood at the back of the classroom to listen to the lecture.

Even Li Hua went over.

Very good, very good. The physics teacher was a middle-aged man, and you'd rather die of sleepiness than stand in the back. But now during the third class, you suddenly get energetic and wander around the back just to catch the biology teacher's attention, right?

The seat next to Jiang Nian suddenly became vacant, and Ma Guojun smoothly slid over to fill the spot.

Faced with the gossip-loving big guy, Jiang Nian was as tight-lipped as gold.

"Lymphokines are proteins and are transported via exocytosis." Zhong Qing's voice echoed in the classroom. The rain that had been falling all day outside the window finally stopped.

After school in the afternoon, the students trickled out sparsely, and Jay Chou's "Stranded" played softly over the campus broadcast.

"The sky that hasn't cleared for a long time still holds your smile. Having cried but unable to bury the guilt, the kite is stranded on an overcast day, and the longing is still waiting for rescue."

Jiang Nian rather liked listening to school broadcasts because he spent the weekdays reading books and doing problems. Hearing a song that matched his wavelength gave him a sense of having found a bargain.

Home was different. That was time meant for playing; would you really use it just to listen to songs?

Couldn't you listen while playing video games? However, when games got intense and he was squatting on a stool hurling curses at people, the music tended to blur away.

Zhang Ningzhi seemed much better by the afternoon and went to the cafeteria with Yao Beibei to grab a bite. Reluctant to trouble Jiang Nian, she left right after school.

Jiang Nian lay on his desk and slept for half an hour before going to eat. When he returned, a bottle of pulpy milk was sitting on his desk.

He paused slightly and looked at Zhang Ningzhi, who was bent over her desk writing problems in the front row. Back in the examination room, the pulpy milk he gave Zhang Ningzhi was the exact same—too easy to recognize.

There was no need to even attach a sticky note with a drawn smiley face; one look was all it took.

Jiang Nian sat down smoothly, unhurriedly unwrapped the straw, and poked it in. Ma Guojun happened to enter the classroom, originally intending to head straight to his seat, but caught sight of Jiang Nian inserting the straw.

Heaven-sent ingredients, wild milk.

People who love jungling won't have terrible luck. Of course, he didn't mean any disrespect—people who love jungle warfare had equally decent pregnancy luck!

"Hey, give me a sip of that milk!"

Unfortunately, he was a step too late; Jiang Nian had already bitten onto the straw.

"What?"

Ma Guojun looked full of regret and waved his hand. "Forget it, forget it."

Milk was completely different from iced red tea, Sprite, or Cola; before drinking directly from the carton, it was premium nourishment, but once lips touched it, it turned into Ganges water.

"When did you buy milk?" Ma Guojun tossed him a small packet of White Rabbit creamy candy.

Hearing this, Zhang Ningzhi in the front row felt her heart leap into her throat. Her heartbeat accelerated slightly, her face grew warm and stinging, and her grip on the neutral pen was tighter than usual.

"Didn't buy it, found it."

"Damn it, next time you go jungling, call me." Ma Guojun returned to his seat.

Jiang Nian's single sentence instantly plunged Zhang Ningzhi, who had just been riding the peak of a roller coaster, heavily down into the valley. I was the one who gave it to you, you're the one who "found" it!

Just a moment ago, she had clearly been hoping Jiang Nian wouldn't tell the truth.

After all, although the class wasn't fully gathered yet, a fair number of people were around. Giving milk for no reason easily aroused suspicion, and actually speaking it out loud was far too embarrassing.

Yet hearing him say he found it...

Rin-rin-rin, the twenty-minute evening reading session began. Seizing the moment to stand up, Zhang Ningzhi turned around and glared fiercely at Jiang Nian, who simply curled the corner of his lips.

Evening self-study was fine, but by the second period, Jiang Nian felt like dying.

He wanted to play a game to relax.

Jiang Nian tossed his pen onto the thick math review workbook and leaned back against the desk behind him. Looking at the dense array of mathematical symbols, he couldn't help letting out a long sigh of relief.

The classroom was brightly lit and dead silent, save for the sound of turning pages and writing homework.

His current grades were neither good nor bad, sitting squarely in the middle of the class. The room for upward progress was quite small, and the room for falling backward... wasn't particularly large either.

Only one-seventh of senior year had passed, and the college entrance examination would be even harder. He estimated his scores for next summer... a Tier 1 university as a baseline, a top-tier key university depending on luck, and scraping into a 'Project 211' university would be pure profit.

As he was daydreaming, his gaze accidentally met with monitor Li Qingrong's.

Eye contact was a form of advanced communication, and Jiang Nian had no desire to communicate with the monitor. Thus, he proactively muted himself, looked away, and then instinctively searched a second time.

Subconsciously glancing back over, huh? Why is she still looking at me?

Damn it, not doing homework during self-study must be a capital offense or something!

Two seconds later, Li Qingrong looked away.

Oh, oh, she must have been looking out the window. Jiang Nian narrowly escaped a fright. Anyone else was fine, but the female monitor's gaze genuinely carried a sense of oppression, like a spitting image of Violet.

Jiang Nian even noticed that some girls blushed when they saw Li Qingrong. Damn it, what kind of lesbian-core class is this!