Chapter 53

Chapter 53 – Aristocratic School

TL: Milaryn

Edit: IlkonEbi

“So… you guys really decided on not staying in the residence?”

Yahan turned to look at the three of them as the car passed through a spacious street. She was looking at Jiaming who was sitting in the front, next to her, when Lingjing spoke up from the back seat, “Yeah, sis Yahan. We have also decided that starting from today, we will not ask our families for a single cent. The three of us will be taking care of ourselves.”

“Yeah, that’s correct.” Shasha nodded her head.

“But… don’t you guys feel that it’s a bit early? I mean, it’s good to want to be independent, but you all are still in high school. If you wanted to experience what it is like to worki, shouldn’t you at least wait until university?”

She felt uncomfortable with their decision. She did not doubt their ability, or at least she knew about how capable Jiaming was, but… to become completely independent… She felt that they were still too young for that. If they wanted to continue living together, even though the relationship between the three of them was very good, they were no longer children…

After all, she had lived with the three of them for a short while and did not want to pry into the three’s relationship. She felt that these relatively sensible and precocious children decided to mature early, just like her when she had ran away to England. She was a bit puzzled about why Jiaming was accompanying the two girls though. This type of independence exercise that the two girls were going through was absolutely meaningless for him.

“Oh, that’s fine then. I am living in a house off-campus as well. The house is quite big and I’m living alone, so would you like to live with me? We can discuss the rental fee if you’d like.”

Jiaming looked out the window, trying to hold back his laughter, while Lingjing and Shasha looked at each other, before resolutely saying, “No, thank you!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, because…” Lingjing smiled brightly, “Because we want to be independent! If we live at sis Yahan’s place, we’ll definitely be taken care of by you. That’s why… hehe… we would rather rent our own apartment.”

“Ok.” Yahan nodded as Lingjing hurried to add, “If we do run into trouble, we’ll ask our families for money, so sis Yahan, you don’t need to worry about us.” Yahan saw Jiaming secretly laugh at her, so slightly frustrated, she reached over and bopped him on the shoulder. Jiaming winced as Shasha and Lingjing laughed at him from the back seat.

Sacred Heart Institute was funded by foreign investors as well as the few big families of Jianghai City and was located in the southern part of the city, in the prosperous Shaohua District. This flourishing district could be considered as one of Jianghai City’s newer districts, as it had all sorts of high-end shopping malls, supermarkets, hotels, etc. The suburbs of this district were famous and known as the “rich district”. Its hillside was full of villas and mansions facing the beautiful scenery of the ocean. Also, two of the five large families, the Dongfang family and the Lui family, had large amounts of property there.

Sacred Heart Institute covered quite a large area and was built several years ago. As a large amount of wealthy children studied at the school, there was a lot of school affiliated merchandise. There was even talk about expanding Sacred Heart Institute to include a university. At that time, this new district could become a university town.

When they went through Sacred Heart Institute’s gates, Lingjing and Shasha were in awe of the surrounding scenery. Even though they had been to Shaohua District before, they had not yet visited Sacred Heart Institute. The lake, the pavilion, the gardens, the scenery…everything was beautiful. The aristocratic school was surrounded by a beautifully tended garden full of lush green trees and a clear blue lake. Man-made pathways snaked across the lake and between the trees, leading to an octagonal pavilion. The whole landscape was a harmonious combination of man-made construction and breathtaking natural scenery.

Once one walked further past the trees, one would see an elegant European-style living area. The basketball and badminton courts in between the villa-style buildings seemed like a scene right out of a television show.

“Sacred Heart Institute was actually constructed based on a university in mind, so the area is quite large. This location is the living district, while the other side is the housing for teachers and employees. However, since this is only a high school, there are definitely less people than one would expect. One villa normally houses four students, and each of them has their own room. However, according to school regulations, male and female students are not allowed to live together. Since you three plan on living together, you can only rent a place outside of school grounds. There are several school employees that rent their own places, so I can help you ask for some details…”

Yahan drove slowly and introduced the various facilities of the school. One could occasionally see expensive cars such as Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, Alfa Romeo… It was difficult to imagine that there was a financial crisis happening at that point in time. The school looked like a scene from the United Nations as Lingjing and Shasha eagerly looked out the window and were discussing which cars looked better. Jiaming was also looking around. Yahan thought that it was natural for men to be interested towards famous brand cars, but she did not realize that Jiaming was actually estimating how long it would take him to disable the various cars’ anti-theft systems so he could own them. He previously had training in this area, but after settling in his new life, he was out of practice.

A short while later, Yahan, in her small car that could not be compared to the fancy ones, arrived at the gates of the education area.

“The school usually arranges for the senior students to welcome the new students, but since I have already handled the procedures in advance for you guys, I’ll be showing you around. Oh, but Lingjing and Shasha, you should be careful, since you’re both such adorable new students, you’ll be very popular.” Yahan smiled, “Also Shasha, you didn’t bring your baseball bat today, so I’m worried that Lingjing might be stolen by others.”

“No worries.” Shasha smirked, then took out a small can of pepper spray from her pocket, while Lingjing also took out the exact same thing. Yahan rolled her eyes, “Children nowadays…”

“We’re being prepared, just in case.” Lingjing said, “This is Jiaming’s gift to Shasha for her birthday. It’s a mix of some specific substance and pepper, if it gets into the eyes, water won’t wash it away, and the person sprayed with it would have to go to the hospital.”

Yahan groaned internally, as she eyed the innocent-looking Jiaming, before saying, “Next time, you should gift me a can too.”

It was quite lively in the school’s small public square outside of the car as various clubs and associations had gathered to welcome new students. Many welcome banners could be seen, such as: “Martial Arts Research Society Welcomes New Students of 1997”, “Culinary Society Welcomes New Students”, or “The Chinese Chess Club Welcomes New Students of 1997”. When Yahan stopped the car and Lingjing opened the door to exit, a glasses-wearing male student who caught sight of her, hurried over, “Hello, are you a new student joining today? Do you require my assistance?”

“Haha, no thank you.” As Lingjing exited the car, she waved him away, “We are new students, but we’ve already registered.”

“No worries, since you two are new students, I can show you around, so you can familiarize yourself with our campus. Our school grounds are quite large, so it’s very easy to get lost when you are a newcomer…”

Seeing that Lingjing and Shasha were both beauties, one calm and one animated, but both exceptionally enchanting, a few male students wanted to run over as well, as they stepped out of the car. However, something seemed to change their minds as they turned around halfway. The originally eager male student suddenly stopped and said, “Oh, haha, greetings, Teacher Zhang.”

“Mm, these three students have already registered. I will be showing them around campus, you should should go assist other new students.”

“Ah, understood… ok, fellow students, good… goodbye…”

Seeing the male student escape in an instant, Lingjing, Shasha and Jiaming all stared dumbstruck at a very stern-looking Yahan. Not long after, Yahan brought the three of them to a less busy corridor, and after looking around sneakily to make sure there was no one around, her face slowly relaxed into a smile, “Hehe, did I scare you guys just now?”

“You did scare us.” Jiaming said directly as he held back his laughter, and took a smack to his head for his efforts. Lingjing also looked around before smiling curiously, “Sis Yahan, so you’re like this at school?”

“Of course, Lingjing! You don’t know how naughty students are nowadays. If I want them to listen to me, they need to be afraid of me! Oh, you guys shouldn’t act too familiar with me at school, otherwise the other students will reject you. Also, don’t be in a rush to join the clubs or societies. Those fellows just want to show off to each other and there aren’t a lot of clubs with genuinely interested people. You should familiarize yourself with them first before actually joining.”

“Why’s that?” Lingjing asked doubtfully.

“Well you know, there’s so many rich kids at this school. When they grow up, they’ll be taking over their family businesses, and these clubs are just a place for them to train their leadership skills. They’re only interested in proving their ability in building a successful club and increasing the amount of members. They are not interested in what the club is actually about. You’ll realize that these clubs are mostly there just for these young masters to drink and party. Ok, let me show you around the school campus now.”

After Yahan finished, she put on her stern face again and took Jiaming and the girls to various locations around the school such as the office building, the cafeteria, the library, etc. Any students they bumped into, as soon as they saw Yahan, would be afraid and would take a detour. Other students would look on from afar and discuss within their group, “Oh, those three students couldn’t have done something bad, right? They just started school and they already got caught by that old witch.”

“Such a pity…”

“Look, they’re laughing! Are they so scared that they went crazy?”

“…”

Those discussions they had overheard combined with Yahan’s spinster look was really hilarious to the three of them. Whenever they reached a location where there was no one around, they would howl with laughter, and a somewhat embarrassed Yahan would chase after them. By the time they visited the main locations, it was around 10:30 am, so Jiaming requested to go to the bathroom, while motioning for the three ladies to return to the car first.

After using the bathroom, he walked through the crowd of registrants at the school plaza and took in the busy scene around him, finding it somewhat interesting. He saw Lingjing wave at him from the car, however, just as he was about go over, a taxi stopped near him and blocked his view.

The taxi door opened, and a girl in a blue dress, carrying a big pink suitcase came out. The girl had a short ponytail and her face was completely covered by a white wide-rimmed sun hat as her head was lowered. As the taxi left, a male student rushed over to help her with the large suitcase and said, “Hello fellow student, you’re new, right? I’m He Ting from the International Finance Research Society, registration is over here, please follow me.”

A brief glance at the girl’s appearance caused a chill down Jiaming’s spine and gave him an eerie feeling. The girl’s porcelain doll-like features, her indifferent expression and her detached ice-cold aura made her seem like she did not belong to this world.

She stood there with her brow furrowed, as she looked at the enthusiastic person in front of her. Her gaze then silently turned to the suitcase that had fallen into the other person’s hands, looking like she was thinking if that was her suitcase or not.

Stopping to consider the matter, she lifted her head and briefly saw Gu Jiaming who was standing nearby and looking around with no intention of greeting her. On the other side, the fellow student He Ting saw that the beauty did not make any movements and smiled reassuringly, “Don’t worry, I’m not a bad person. Sacred Heart Institute has a regulation where the senior students have to show the new students around, so please do follow me.”

“She obviously doesn’t want to follow you, you’re being too pushy. Get lost already! Fellow student, my name is Lui Fang, is there anything I can help you with?”

Another boy’s voice suddenly interrupted, as he came over, acting proudly like a knight in shining armor. As he barged over, the two of them obstructed her view and the boy she was gazing at earlier could no longer be seen. Lowering her head, she looked down and frowned again…

——-

Sorry this chap was a bit late, I was so tired I forgot the schedule it last night.

I’m waiting for a bunch of chaps to be edited right now, so as soon as they’re done, I can release them over the course of next week XD

Next chap release on April 23rd!