Ten-Year Loyal Dog’s Road to Chasing Her Wife (GL) - Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Longting No. 1 High School had a class assignment system that was strict to the point of being harsh. The standards for which kind of person went to which kind of class were very clear: rankings. There were three experimental classes holding 150 people, and two elite classes holding 100 people, totaling 250 students. These were the geniuses selected from the 3,000 students of the entire grade.

By the second semester of the first year, an additional experimental class and elite class would be expanded, selecting the most outstanding individuals from the ordinary classes to enter. According to the logic of Longting No. 1, those with good grades simply shouldn’t stand with those with poor grades. What if they were led astray?

However, now, in Class 11 alone, there were already two people who should have gone to an elite class but had ended up in an ordinary one. One wondered if there were other “displaced princes” in other classes; if every ordinary class was calculated to have two such wandering princes, that would be 50 people! Equivalent to an entire elite class!

If the people who should have been in the elite classes were assigned to ordinary ones, then who was sitting in the seats that belonged to them?

The more Ao Manshan thought, the more she felt the matter was not simple. A chill rose from her heart, traveling straight to the crown of her head. “So, the ones currently sitting in the elite classes in our place are also those who bought their way in, right?”

“It’s not exactly like that; connections aren’t omnipotent…” Xiaolei said slowly. The more Ao Manshan wanted to know something, the less willing An Xiaolei was to say it easily; she had to keep Ao Manshan’s appetite hanging.

Ao Manshan added chillingly: “You also need money.”

An Xiaolei couldn’t help but burst into laughter: “As expected of being classmates for so many years; you really do understand me.”

“Who understands you? Move aside, stop bothering my studies, okay? There are two chances to enter the elite class in the first year; I don’t want to miss them,” Ao Manshan said with a stiff, somewhat chubby little face. So what if it was unfair? She was determined to prove to these people that relying on connections and money was no real skill. Even in a grass nest, she could turn into a golden phoenix and fly into the phoenix tree where she truly belonged.

“Do you really dislike sitting with me that much?”

Perhaps Ao Manshan didn’t even hear An Xiaolei’s question; at any rate, she didn’t answer. Her attention was entirely drawn to the person outside the window. It was a tall, large boy with a very dark complexion, the kind of deep yellow skin. The ferocity of his facial features could rival Gongxi Bitong’s, but he lacked her beauty, so he inevitably looked frightening. However, his tone was very kind and polite: “Classmate, sorry to bother you.”

Ao Manshan sat by the window, but An Xiaolei did not. She used her feet to prop up the four-legged stool, tilting it back on its two rear legs, looking like a total delinquent all she lacked was something to dangle from her mouth. “What’s up?”

A slight blush actually appeared on the boy’s face: “Can Qiao Wan from your class come out for a moment? Just for a bit.” It was visible that many people were following behind him, all boys, following timidly from a distance with smirking expressions.

Xiaolei was a “little delinquent” who had seen many storms. Seeing this formation, she understood that this boy was eighty percent likely to be pushed out to lead the charge because of something like “Truth or Dare” or losing a bet. Regardless, the final result was that his brothers wanted to see what the legendary school beauty Qiao Wan actually looked like, so they pushed him out to lure her from her den.

As for what they planned to do after luring Qiao Wan out, An Xiaolei didn’t care to manage that much. She was merely a messenger: “Qiao Wan, someone’s looking for you.”

Xiaolei always had a loud voice. Resounding during the drowsy morning reading break, it practically had the effect of a refreshing tonic. In an instant, half the class woke up, grumbling and calling An Xiaolei a psychopath. Accustomed to being free and easy, An Xiaolei didn’t care about others’ opinions; she shrugged, sat back in her seat, folded her arms, and began to sleep soundly.

Ao Manshan glanced at her and said nothing. Without a doubt, she had likely sneaked out to a net café again last night. She didn’t know what time she had crept back to sleep; in Ao Manshan’s view, it was likely no earlier than four in the morning. To dare to sleep while sitting in the first row she didn’t know what to say about this person other than having a “big heart” (fearlessness).

Outside the window, Qiao Wan and those people also parted on bad terms. Looking at Qiao Wan’s stiffened face, Ao Manshan could guess roughly what those boys had said to her. It was nothing more than “How did your chest grow so big, what did you eat, or was it plastic surgery?” and such. They were already in high school, yet these boys were still as childish as if they hadn’t been weaned. Their methods of getting attention were always the same few types, and all of them were malicious with no improvement no wonder they had remained “Solo since birth” (single) for so many years.

Ao Manshan felt a bit of sympathy for Qiao Wan. Being beautiful should originally have been a good thing; how was she so unlucky to encounter this trashy school? Just as Ao Manshan was “baptizing” Qiao Wan with sympathetic gazes, a tall, slender figure swayed past her, and then Qiao Mo appeared before the boys. Unquestionably, once Qiao Mo appeared, the boys’ attention shifted entirely. Qiao Mo’s ugliness was simply too eye-catching.

“Holy crap! So ugly! How did you grow like that!”

“Big sister, your ugliness is truly very… distinctive…”

The words were so unpleasant that even Qiao Wan couldn’t help but frown. Qiao Mo, however, was calm. Without fear or surprise, she stared into the eyes of the leading boy and said: “Whether I am ugly or not, and how I grew, what does it have to do with you?”

The tone of her voice, in the ears of others, sounded as if she weren’t angry at all. Not only was she not angry, she was even polite. If it were Qiao Wan, she would have felt she had been excessive and meddled where she shouldn’t have, but this group of boys, who didn’t understand the word “respect” even if it were written for them, wouldn’t feel they were being excessive.

“You’re so ugly, you’re polluting my eyes,” they said loudly. “Ugly people shouldn’t come out and wander around. Isn’t it better to stay home? No one would think you’re ugly then.”

“Hey!” Qiao Wan’s brow pressed down, looking a bit fierce. However, for such a cute girl, even when fierce, she was still more cute than scary. “You talk as if you’re all so good-looking. At best, you’re just not quite as good as those above, but better than…”

“Those below?”

“To put it bluntly, your features are just located where they’re supposed to be.”

Qiao Mo let out a “pfft” and laughed. “Forget it, there’s no need to argue with such people. Let’s just go back to the classroom.” She turned back and asked the boys, “Am I ugly?”

The boys were very honest: “Extremely disgusting.”

“But I happen to be in this class. If you don’t want to see someone as ugly as me, you’ll just have to not come to this class.” Qiao Mo looked at them with an innocent face. “Dropping out is impossible. Since I’m this ugly, I can only study hard so I can earn a meal in the future. The ‘brothers’ (guys) in this school are handsome, eloquent, and super interesting—I super like it here.”

Who knows where she found those internet memes, but delivered with her playful and innocent expression, it truly had a bit of a comedic effect. Qiao Wan was pulled inside by her, and the corners of her mouth couldn’t help but curl up. Once back in her seat, the curve of Qiao Wan’s mouth slowly vanished. She wrote a note, quickly passed it across the boundary line, and frantically signaled with her eyes for Qiao Mo to open it.

Qiao Mo didn’t know what she was up to. Opening it, she saw written on the note: “You went out of the classroom to fish me back, right? Thanks.”

Qiao Mo smiled and picked up her pen to write back: “Those boys are very boring. In the future, if they call you out again, don’t foolishly go out. Over time, they’ll find it uninteresting and disperse on their own. The best way to deal with them is to ignore them.”

To deal with such childish mindsets, one must treat them like crying brats, letting them jump around there while you act as if you’ve never seen them. Once they’ve played out their tricks and realize you won’t fall for it, they naturally won’t pester you anymore.

No one is ever always smiling or born “Buddhist-style” (indifferent), liking to ignore everything. People with good tempers like Qiao Mo usually have a past that wasn’t very good, which allows them to look lightly upon others’ mockery and malice. Because she knows that mockery and malice will never disappear, and the more she shows she cares or becomes hysterical, the more those people find it fun, and the next time they see her, they will use even greater malice against her.

So, within a certain limit, Qiao Mo chose to ignore the mockery. It wasn’t that she was truly that magnanimous; she just didn’t have that much malice to continue wasting on such boring people.

Even with such a “disgusting” face, Qiao Mo still firmly believed that her future would definitely be very beautiful. She would meet a soulmate; he wouldn’t necessarily be the best-looking one in a crowd, but in Qiao Mo’s eyes, he would certainly be the cutest, the kind of cuteness she could recognize at a single glance among thousands. He would be the only one in her eyes.

No matter how many people were in the world, the only one she would see would be this one person, even if in others’ eyes he might just be someone whose “nose and eyes are located where they are supposed to be.”

Currently, she was wading through the tide of time with difficulty, all for the sake of getting closer to that person. Every step she took would inevitably lead her to that “cutest person” and, one day in the future, become the capital for them to live together without fear.

If that person is rich, Qiao Mo needn’t feel inferior. If that person has no money, Qiao Mo needn’t separate from him because of wealth.

Exactly how cute would that person be? Qiao Mo tilted her head and looked at Qiao Wan beside her. Suddenly, she had a vague standard of measurement in her heart, probably someone as cute as Qiao Wan. When they smile, they might also have two tiny tiger teeth, looking like a lazy cat that has finished eating its canned food and runs to the balcony to sunbathe and yawn.

How could someone in the world be this cute?

“What are you looking at me for?” Perhaps her gaze was too direct; Qiao Wan quickly noticed. “Is there something on my face?”

Qiao Mo pursed her lips and turned away: “Nothing.”

“Hey.” The person sitting beside her suddenly called her softly again. “Gaze crossing the boundary counts as crossing too, you know. There has to be a punishment.”

Qiao Mo didn’t need to turn her head to imagine Qiao Wan’s eyes slightly squinting as she said this, like crescent moons with a sparkle inside. At that moment, she thought: How can there be someone this cute in the world? If the Heavens don’t send the destined man to her soon, she might just have to ‘make a move’ on her desk mate.

She wondered how many years one would get for pursuing an underage girl. Perhaps based on Qiao Wan’s face, it would be “three years as a starting point.”