Ten-Year Loyal Dog’s Road to Chasing Her Wife (GL) - Chapter 11

Chapter 11

News of the new school uniform design spread quickly, and students wailed in despair, wondering why the school couldn’t leave well enough alone. They questioned what was so wrong with the original uniforms that they had to be redesigned and in a way that felt like a total “regression.” As the saying went: “If you’re going to change them, at least let us evolve into Magical Girls!”

But then again, the Magical Girl idea didn’t seem very feasible either. In the end, they could only resign themselves, remarking that the “flour sack” style was actually quite decent; at least it could be used for many things. The quality was good so it wouldn’t tear easily, and of course, if it got dirty, they wouldn’t feel bad after all, since the clothes were ugly anyway, it was lucky they weren’t being used to mop the floor. Moreover, they firmly believed that Qiao Wan’s beauty would definitely be enough to pull off the “flour sack” look.

If even Qiao Wan couldn’t pull it off, it felt like no one else could possibly look good in it.

After the students finished comforting themselves, someone came to the classroom that very night during evening self-study to measure heights for the uniforms. The homeroom teacher walked in with two men and instructed: “When your name is called, come up to have your height measured. Everyone else, continue your self-study. Stay quiet; anyone who makes a noise will be thrown out.”

The men quickly drew a simple height scale on the blackboard and fixed a measuring tape with a magnet. When a student stepped up and stood against the tape, they would call out an approximate number and the student could leave it very fast. Naturally, heights measured this way weren’t particularly accurate, though they were slightly better than the students’ own exaggerated claims.

When the uniforms were eventually handed out, it was normal for them to be too big or too long. If a student really cared, they could take them to be altered themselves; there was a tailor shop right at the school gate, and the prices weren’t expensive as they were familiar with the students. However, while students might have the desire to alter a sailor suit, they wouldn’t bother with the “flour sack.” No matter how you altered it, it would still be ugly, so they might as well save the money.

“Ao Manshan,” the homeroom teacher read from the seating chart.

“165. Just fill in 165 directly on this form.”

“An Xiaolei.”

“167,” the man reported the height and then tapped on the paper placed on the podium. “Fill it in yourself. There’s a pen next to it.”

“I’m not blind, I can see it,” An Xiaolei said coldly, her mouth twitching downward, looking thoroughly displeased. The man just shrugged and didn’t argue with her, assuming the student was just having a bad day.

After An Xiaolei stepped down, the teacher called out again: “Bi Bowen. Bao Shengrui, get ready; it’s your turn after Bi Bowen. Those whose names haven’t been called, shut your mouths and study hard. Do you need to use your mouth to do homework?” Consequently, the humming and whispering in the classroom vanished at the beginning of the semester, so the teacher’s authority still held weight. In another month, it would be gone.

Since the teacher had spoken, they naturally couldn’t go “plucking the tiger’s whiskers” and had to stay cowed. The Qiao sisters’ numbers were very far back, but since the measurement was basically just going through the motions, it went very quickly. Twenty minutes later, the teacher finally called Qiao Wan’s name.

If the classroom had been noisy, going up wouldn’t have been a big deal; that string of numbers would have been called out and quickly drowned out by other sounds, and in the end, no one would have heard it. The problem was that after the teacher spoke, the classroom was now exceptionally quiet to the point of creating the illusion of being at a funeral.

Qiao Wan bit her lower lip, finally adopting a heavy “do or die” mindset as she walked onto the podium. When she heard the man call out the height “153,” Qiao Wan quickly scanned the rest of the class with it being so quiet, she was certain everyone heard this number, which was enough to set a new record for the shortest in class, and that they had plenty of reason to mock her. But the atmosphere was exactly the same as it was before she was measured; nothing seemed to have changed. Qiao Wan breathed a sigh of relief, retracted her “thorns,” and filled in the number “155” in her column on the form.

The last of her stubborn pride.

The result of this was that when Qiao Mo finished her measurement and walked back to her seat, she gave Qiao Wan a long, deep look: “One meter fifty-five?”

She had clearly seen the fake height.

It wasn’t that this wasn’t allowed; after all, with so many people in the class, no one would remember exactly how tall anyone else was, and the teacher certainly wouldn’t. The so-called confirmation step was just the teacher glancing at the form for show and signing it. Generally, as long as you didn’t fill in something like “two meters seventy,” you wouldn’t be caught.

“Don’t cry when the uniforms are handed out,” Qiao Mo said flatly, her eyes showing no malicious teasing; it seemed she was simply reminding Qiao Wan.

The purpose of measuring height now was self-evident: it was for making the uniforms. Seeing Qiao Wan’s calm expression, Qiao Mo assumed she was used to custom-tailored uniforms and smiled slightly to explain: “Maybe you’re too used to being a little princess to understand how we do uniforms in a backwater place like this. The heights being measured now correspond to a size for every five centimeters. If you fill in 153, it’s a size S; if you fill in 155, it’s an M. You’re likely going to have to wear a size M.”

Size M, medium.

Since she had worn that before, Qiao Wan felt relieved: “It shouldn’t be that much bigger, right?”

Qiao Mo smiled without saying anything, and only after a long while did she say, “Perhaps.”

When the day actually came to see the uniforms, Qiao Wan might just burst into tears.

“I’m not afraid! My mom is great at altering clothes!” When Qiao Wan spoke of her mother, the corners of her mouth instinctively curled up, revealing her sharp canine teeth briefly before they were hidden behind her red lips again. “She’s amazing. She made many of my clothes when I was little; they weren’t inferior to store-bought ones at all.”

Qiao Mo remained silent, waiting for her to continue, but Qiao Wan said nothing more.

However, she didn’t sigh either.

She just stared quietly at the textbook on her desk as if she could see a flower blooming from it.

Qiao Mo didn’t ask.

From then until the end of class, Qiao Wan didn’t speak another word to her, nor did she intentionally call her “Qiao Mei” to take advantage of her. Qiao Mo knew Qiao Wan needed some time alone, so she stayed quiet with her for the entire evening. During that time, Qiao Wan kept her eyes fixed on the book in front of her, though she didn’t turn many pages all night.

Ten minutes before school ended, Qiao Mo pushed her homework over without looking away and preempted Qiao Wan: “There’s physics homework tonight, all multiple choice. If you start copying now, you can finish before school lets out.”

If it were any other subject, Qiao Wan could have stubbornly countered with “I’ll do it myself,” but it happened to be physics. She knew almost nothing about physics; a problem Qiao Mo could solve in ten minutes might take her an hour. Moreover, this was work Qiao Mo had spent an entire self-study session on; if it were left to her, she might not finish it even if she worked herself to death.

To get the homework turned in, Qiao Wan obediently took Qiao Mo’s exercise book and copied the answers.

For these types of exercise books, the questions and answers were separate. To prevent students from peeking at the answers, teachers usually withheld the answer keys and only distributed the exercise books.

Since the start of the term, there hadn’t been a physics test yet, but as Qiao Wan copied, she began to feel: Is this desk mate of mine some kind of super genius overachiever? Even though it was just multiple choice, Qiao Mo had briefly written out the general problem-solving logic in the blank spaces of every question. For the simpler ones, she had even meticulously written out the steps, including the principles and formulas needed for each stage.

It was just like a genuine, original “Answer Key.” Regardless of whether they were correct, didn’t this way of doing problems take up an immense amount of time?

But because it was written so densely, Qiao Wan couldn’t help but look at it while copying. Although it eventually took her a full thirty minutes finishing twenty minutes after school had ended Qiao Wan still felt it was worth it. After looking through the logic for so many multiple-choice questions, she actually felt like she could take on five people at once.

When she finished handing in the homework and returned from the office feeling relieved, she was very surprised to see that Qiao Mo hadn’t left yet: “You haven’t gone home yet?”

Longting No. 1 High School’s evening self-study ended at 10:00 PM. It was late, and Qiao Mo was a commuter, the kind of student who traveled between home and school every day. It wasn’t safe to be out too late. Even walking wasn’t safe, let alone Qiao Mo, who reportedly rode a bicycle; if she got separated from the crowd in the dark, she might be more likely to run into bad people.

“Hurry home.” Qiao Wan also began packing her things, preparing to go back to the dorm to shower.

She had an uncle in Longting, but an uncle wasn’t a parent after all, and Qiao Wan didn’t want to be a bother. So, she ultimately decided to live at the school; her parents also considered it a way for her to interact with peers and build relationships. Unfortunately, after staying in the dorm for so long, she still wasn’t close to anyone and was always a loner.

Usually, she came by herself, and now she prepared to return to the dorm by herself. Those who left early were either commuters in a hurry to get home or poor students sneaking off to the internet cafe. Boarding students usually weren’t in a rush and would wait until 10:30 to leave. Only Qiao Wan’s style was different, coming and going in a hurry, as if she had something urgent to get back to.

Qiao Wan gathered her books into her arms. Seeing that Qiao Mo was still sitting in her seat motionless, she thought for a moment and said, “Thanks for the homework.”

Qiao Mo seemed to suddenly snap back to reality, staring at her blankly for about three seconds before giving a faint smile: “Don’t let it happen again.”

Qiao Wan once again unhelpfully stared in a daze. This person was plain-looking, but her smile was more effortless and beautiful than anyone’s. She was very much like a pink lotus swaying slightly in a cool breeze; as for “emerging from the mud unsullied,” in Qiao Wan’s eyes, there was only one word for it:

Sultry.