CH 8.1

Chapter 8.1 - About Lu Yue Ming Part 1

The next day, Yang Han got up and went for the morning exercise run.

Liu Zuo Ye was at the end of the line; her stature not that much different from the boys around them, making her stand out like a thorn among the group of girls.

It was quite hard for Yang Han not to notice her because of that.

She tried to stop her attention from drifting towards Liu Zuo Ye and eventually finished the run without any issues. But just as she was about to return to class, someone called out to her from behind.

Yang Han stopped in her tracks and stood upright, searching her entire brain for a suitable action to respond to the shout but she found nothing.

Liu Zuo Ye tapped her on the shoulder.

I don’t know how to fight, Yang Han thought to herself.

Liu Zuo Ye raised an eyebrow at the sight of Yang Han’s cowering look, the corners of her mouth curving up into a mocking smile. She threw something into her hand.

Yang Han fixed her gaze on it and blinked.

“You dropped your meal card,” Liu Zuo Ye snorted at her, “No matter how rich the little princess is, you still shouldn’t throw your meal card around for fun, right?”

Yang Han felt uncomfortable all over and reluctantly said, “Thank you.”

Liu Zuo Ye walked past her and only then did the imaginary talisman that froze Yang Han in place got peeled off.

She took in a deep breath before looking at Liu Zuo Ye’s back. A slap on her own back from Xu Jia completely knock the air out of her again.

Xu Jia: “What are you foolishly standing there for?”

Yang Han: “?”

Xu Jia’s voice gradually became distant, “If you don’t start running now, you won’t be able to grab a good meal—”

Yang Han: “???”

The flow of people around them was surging violently and everyone’s eyes glinted with a light filled with extreme longing and yearning. As if polished by the hunger occupying their minds, it almost looked like they were emitting an eerie green coloured aura.

They were like hundreds of birds flying towards the cafeteria in a frenzy, completely different from the group of people who were in a hazy daze upon waking up just now – as though they had regained new life.

That day, Yang Han finally remembered the true horror of human beings being controlled by the ‘law of going to the cafeteria early’.

What kind of worldly misery is this?

That was what Yang Han thought to herself as she held on a bowl of white rice.

It turned out that massacres didn’t occur in the classrooms, but the cafeteria instead. She had never been involved in such a huge-scaled, cruel competition since she was a child.

Why did a place – where there was a huge gap between the rich and poor– like the school cafeteria still exist in this day? Looking at Xu Jia’s breakfast feat of soybean milk, youtiao1 and eggs, Yang Han scooped up a mouthful of white rice. Her mind was filled with a small thesis of eight hundred words on this thought.

Xu Jia elegantly sipped a mouthful of soybean milk and asked, “Your Highness, you should have known, what kind of place it is and what kind of rules there are here. After morning exercise, the cafeteria is the fiercest battlefield. It’s not that I didn’t want to bring you a meal, but there are unspoken, deadly rules here that ‘you can’t get an extra meal’ and ‘no cutting in line’. If I broke the taboo, there will be ferocious gazes and verbal abuses to the point of death by self-abasement awaiting me in the future.”

Yang Han: “……”

Xu Jia picked up a napkin and wiped her mouth a little, making a show out of it. “This time, I’ll treat it as I taught you a lesson, so that you’ve learned—”

Yang Han: “You wanted a signature, right?”

Xu Jia immediately switched up her tone and expression, “…Your Highness has such a noble status, how could I even think of lecturing you? I have some pickled vegetables and egg here, please put up with it a little.”

Yang Han was just about to reply to her, but a soft chuckle came from the side.

She turned his head to take a look – it was Lu Yue Ming.

Lu Yue Ming thought it was quite amusing, smiling politely at them, “Are the two of you role-playing?”

Xu Jia pulled him in and said, “Xiao Lu, come over quickly and greet the eldest princess.”

“Alright,” Lu Yue Ming smiled and shrugged his shoulders, then pointed at the empty seat beside Yang Han and asked, “Can I sit here?”

Yang Han: “Oh, sure.”

Xu Jia stopped drinking her soybean milk and quietly watched Lu Yue Ming sit down instead.

Yang Han took a bite of Xu Jia’s pickled vegetables and egg as she chewed on her plain, tasteless rice.

Lu Yue Ming looked at her, pursed his lips together and pushed his soup over. “Isn’t that really dry? You can have some of my soup.”

Having just heard of Xu Jia’s lectures a while ago, Yang Han realized this soup wasn’t obtained easily, so she replied, “No, no. It’s not easy for you to acquire this too.”

Lu Yue Ming smiled, “It’s okay, I can’t finish it.”

Yang Han immediately said, “Oh, okay then.”

Xu Jia: “……”

Lu Yue Ming tried his best to look for a topic to talk about, “Is this your first time staying in a dorm?”

Yang Han: “Mhmm.”

Lu Yue Ming: “Are you used to it?”

Yang Han poured some of the soup over her rice, leaving more than half for Lu Yue Ming. “Yeah, I slept pretty well.”

Lu Yue Ming smiled again.

Xu Jia finished drinking her soybean milk, looking at Lu Yue Ming’s spring-like smile and the way he was staring at Yang Han: “……”

Why did she feel like she was a little too bright here?

Although in the eyes of the silly Yang Han, all she could see was the soup and rice.

The best time of the day to get to work was in the morning hours. The weather today was great – every national flower bathed in the sunlight, overflowing with vigour and vitality due to the warmth.

Then came the 9th period, mathematics.

The national flowers all wilted.

The math teacher announced the results of their first monthly exam. Lu Yue Ming topped the highest rankings with a score of 148. The class rang out in applause despite the fact that their whole class took the second-last spot as a whole in the entire school.

The math teacher also said, what the students in this class do best was finding joy and fun in the midst of sorrow and adversity. No matter what kind of difficulties they run into, they had the optimistic spirit that no enemy could possibly tear down.

A large part of the reason for their low ranking was due to the underperformance of the students who usually did well, especially Yang Han who got named by their teacher with a score of 108. Staying up to read fanfictions led Yang Han to suffer the consequences today. She deeply regretted it now and vowed to study hard in the future. Their teacher told her that she and Lu Yue Ming would be the math representatives of their class from now on.

The class applauded with enthusiasm.

Yang Han: “?”

She noticed that Lu Yue Ming was quite close to her recently.

Yes, even Yang Han, who was as dense as piece of log had realized it. Xu Jia, who was watching on the sidelines, shed tears like an old mother.

The timing of her realization was really coincidental.

The math teacher knew that Yang Han’s parent was a programmer, so he persuaded her to enrol in the programming class. During their conversation, she found out that Lu Yue Ming had been subtly but persistently praising her in front of the teacher all along. And it was also him who proposed to elect her as a math representative.

Yang Han: “?”

Also, Lu Yue Ming would sometimes walk beside her during morning exercise and tried hard to find topics to chat about.

Since his looks were considered to stand out quite a lot in the crowd, a number of girls who had a crush on him found the sight of them walking side by side and smiling gently as an eyesore.

Yang Han finally blurted it out when Lu Yue Ming came to ask her a question, “Do you have something to say to me?”

Xu Jia who was at the side, sprayed out the milk tea in her mouth. Fang Jia and Shang Xue who were sitting behind them also had their attention attracted to her blatant question.

Lu Yue Ming only smiled back at her and said, “I really don’t know how to solve this question.”