Qiao Hua’s eyes immediately flared with anger upon hearing this.
“Damn it, Ma Lisheng, if you dare bring that up again, I’ll really get mad at you! Her snot only sprayed my face; it didn’t go into my mouth!”
“Really? You were ‘ooh-ooh-ooh’-ing so loudly last night that people from the next class came to ask, all knowing that Zhang Wanbai’s snot was just too delicious.”
Ma Lisheng was purely trying to disgust them, clearly enjoying the drama, while Fang Bixian found it amusing and chimed in.
“Who was it? Qiao Hua’s cries weren’t that loud, were they? Who from the next class asked? Was it someone from Class One?”
“Yes, Huang Dahai from Class One; he was in my middle school class. He’s overly familiar, and I barely want to acknowledge him. I hardly spoke to him in middle school. He loves to take advantage of others, often having people bring him breakfast without paying.”
“I remember he lives in the dorm next door, doesn’t he? Room 311?”
“That’s right. The last time the dorm next door had a midnight quarrel, they were cursing out Huang Dahai.”
Ma Lisheng poked his head out from the top bunk, a look of schadenfreude plastered across his face, clearly well-informed about all sorts of gossip.
“Do you guys know why they started arguing?”
“Tell us, don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Huang Dahai likes to throw used tissues under his bed. Since he sleeps on the top bunk, he’d roll the tissues into balls and toss them down from the wall side. They’d often get stuck in the mosquito net by the bottom bunk.”
“What kind of tissues?”
“Hua Zi, you’re playing dumb, aren’t you? What are the tissues by your pillow for? Wiping your nose?”
“Those are for Qin Zixin! Hehe!”
Qiao Hua’s tone was indescribably lewd, but Ma Lisheng merely found it amusing, seeing Qiao Hua’s cowardice for exactly what it was.
Qiao Hua was the type who only dared to boast about Qin Zixin behind her back, yet became an honest, timid mess whenever he actually saw her. Fang Bixian, on the other hand, had even managed to get Qin Zixin’s QQ number, while Qiao Hua remained as foolish as ever.
Not to mention Yang Qichao from Class Four. Qin Zixin had been eating with Yang Qichao these past two days, and they even went home together, with her riding on his bicycle.
Yang Qichao, thanks to Qin Zixin, had become famous, not just within their first-year grade, but throughout Nan Shi High School.
Many of the girls at Nan Shi High School seemed cast from the same mold: greasy hair, round-framed glasses, and round faces, with less than ideal figures—many had hunched backs, and most were flat-chested. Qin Zixin, with her devastatingly beautiful face and figure, was a cruel dimensional reduction attack on the scrawny girls around her, and her looks alone had made her the dream girl for countless young boys.
Threads about her appeared almost daily on Nan Shi High School’s Tieba and BBS, covering every aspect of her life, from her fashion style to the dishes she ordered in the cafeteria. At that very moment, Dorm 313 was certainly not the only one discussing Qin Zixin, nor were boys the only ones talking about her.
The more these young boys adored Qin Zixin, the more they envied Yang Qichao.
Numerous posts about Yang Qichao circulated within Nan Shi High School, with the most persistent topic of discussion being his infuriatingly perfect life.
Why wasn’t it *them* who were childhood sweethearts with Qin Zixin, but rather this utterly unremarkable fellow, Yang Qichao?
Because, judging by her behavior at school these past few days, Qin Zixin only displayed genuine affection towards Yang Qichao. Their relationship had long been revealed by informed classmates: childhood sweethearts.
This almost cliché character setup and plotline quickly aligned with the vulgar tropes of certain otaku-oriented Japanese anime in the shallow minds of these young boys. To outsiders, Qin Zixin appeared to be the impossibly perfect childhood friend, and her current affectionate gestures even seemed to suggest she was pursuing Yang Qichao.
Her beauty and s*x appeal were self-evident. As a member of the elite class, Qin Zixin was undoubtedly an exceptional student, and her personality was certainly poised, graceful, lively, and adorable.
Even though most of them had never exchanged a single word with Qin Zixin, and some might even hesitate when writing the character “馨,” adolescent infatuation and the yearning for intimacy in teenage minds invariably conjured a false image of perfection.
“Old Ma, are you saying Huang Dahai still wants to pursue Qin Zixin?”
“Yes, he didn’t care about Qiao Hua eating snot; after a few words, he immediately switched the topic to Qin Zixin. Just this evening after school, when Qin Zixin went to wait for that annoying guy from Class Four, Huang Dahai’s eyes were glued to her. His eyeballs practically wanted to stick to Qin Zixin. When I spoke to him, he just grunted, ‘Mm-hmm, mm-hmm,’ the worthless piece of trash.”
Ma Lisheng spoke with a hint of disdain.
“Oh, by the way, do you guys know anything about Huang Dahai’s family?”
“What is it? Just say it.”
Ma Lisheng deliberately cleared his throat with two dry coughs.
“Huang Dahai and I went to the same middle school, and our hometowns are close. We used to live in three adjacent villages. After the villages were demolished, the government provided resettlement housing, and our three villages were split between two different communities. My next-door neighbor has a daughter who’s pretty decent-looking, about the same level as a slightly fairer-skinned Zhang Wanbai.”
“I wasn’t very familiar with Huang Dahai before, though I’d played basketball with him once; he played very dirty. If my impression of him stopped there, then this next topic wouldn’t exist. His family situation is very strange: not a single male in his lineage has ever met a good end. Everything I’m about to tell you was shared by the girl living next door to me. She used to be Huang Dahai’s neighbor in the village when his father was still alive, back when they were very young.”
“What? Huang Dahai’s father died?”
“What’s wrong? Hua Zi, you’re always interrupting. Didn’t your beloved Qin Zixin’s father also die?”
“What? Qin Zixin’s father died too?”
“Shut up and let me continue. Huang Dahai’s father was disliked in the village because he often tricked people into gambling, yet he himself was an avid gambler who owed over 130,000 to 140,000 yuan. Think about what 130,000 to 140,000 yuan meant in the early 2000s. Back then, my dad had just started driving trucks, earning just over a thousand a month, sometimes reaching over two thousand. And that was for hauling cargo! If you were doing odd jobs, even if you went to Shanghai as a migrant worker, that kind of income would be considered pretty good.”
“But Huang Dahai’s father owed 130,000 to 140,000 yuan and was a complete good-for-nothing. Forget finding a job that paid one or two thousand a month; he couldn’t even find one for five or six hundred. So, he came up with a scheme: luring people into gambling. One New Year’s Eve, two villagers who had gone to Shenzhen to work on construction projects returned, driving cars.”
“What were those? Cars! How many families had cars back then? Especially in the early 2000s? Huang Dahai’s father set his sights on them. Colluding with his creditors, he invited those two to play cards. Those two had been away for years; they had no idea about the Huang family’s reputation. What happened next, you can all imagine. Can you outplay the dealer? Can you beat a cheater? Within a few days, those two villagers not only lost all the money they’d earned that year, but even their company funds were gone.”
“Logically, swindling a few tens of thousands for an emergency might have been acceptable, but Huang Dahai’s father was different. He was greedy; he dared to covet over a million yuan. Those two men were in construction, and their hands were not clean. You cheat them out of money? Aren’t you afraid of earning a fortune only to lose your life before you can spend it?”
“And then? Come on, Old Ma, spill it.”
“It was a year later that Huang Dahai’s father’s body was found. Both his and his creditor’s bodies had been thrown into a dry well. Because he owed so much money, the police initially assumed he had simply run away to avoid his debts, as his father often did that.”
Fang Bixian clicked his tongue in silent astonishment, unable to resist speaking.
“Old Ma, didn’t you say no male in the Huang family ever met a good end? What’s the story behind that?”
“Ah, what I’m about to say is common knowledge in their village, and we pretty much all knew it in middle school. It’s just that now that we’re at Nan Shi High, no one’s brought it up yet. His grandfather, wanting to eat beef, stole the commune’s oxen, led them up the mountain, and caused them to fall to their deaths. The commune only had two oxen, and he killed both of them. The entire commune, without large livestock, had to resort to people pulling plows. But when the oxen died, every household got a few mouthfuls of meat. One day, the higher-ups sent another ox, and not long after, his grandfather hanged himself right in front of the commune cafeteria.”
“What the hell? Why did he just kill himself?”
“Who knows how Huang Dahai’s grandfather died? It looked like a suicide, it was reported as a suicide. If the orphans and widows believed it wasn’t a suicide, they could have certainly reported it to the authorities, couldn’t they?”
Ma Lisheng spoke with an affected air.
“That was his grandfather. Huang Dahai’s great-grandfather was even more remarkable; he was reported as a traitor after the founding of the PRC and was taken away and executed by firing squad.”
“Holy cow, this Huang Dahai’s entire family is ‘loyal and righteous,’ aren’t they?”
“Indeed.”
Qiao Hua winced, his teeth grinding.
“So this Huang fellow still dares to think about Qin Zixin? I haven’t even dared to.”
“Qiao Hua, just save it. Don’t bring up such unrealistic notions. If you ask me, we should talk about other girls. Even if Qin Zixin broke up with Yang Qichao, with her background, wouldn’t she easily find some rich second-generation heir?”
“What do you guys think of Zhang Tingxue from Class One?”
Zhou Dahong asked.
Zhang Tingxue was the class monitor of Class One. She had previously come to Class Two to talk to Liu Tanxiong about student council matters. She was a rather charming young beauty, tall and slender, standing at least 1.75 meters. Her features were somewhat delicate, and coupled with her preference for neutral clothing, she often appeared more like a boy.
“Her figure has too many flaws. Her chest is like a washboard. Although we said not to mention Qin Zixin, have any of you ever seen her ‘bunnies’ placed on a tabletop?”
Feng Yizhong was not impressed with Zhang Tingxue, speaking in a muffled, booming voice.
“Don’t put them on the tabletop, put them on my face, and I’ll change my name to Table right now.”
Qiao Hua, as usual, delivered a steady stream of lewd comments.
“Comparing Zhang Tingxue to Qin Zixin is just too cruel. Let’s not talk about her, let’s not talk about her. Honestly, that figure is truly unscientific. How can a girl with ‘bunnies’ that big have such a slender build? Besides her, no other girl in our class is probably bigger than a C-cup, right?”
“Right, only Li Jinjin in our class might have a C. It just goes to show, Qin Zixin’s figure is truly amazing, the way she sways when she walks.”
“Ahem, ahem, does Li Jinjin have a C? I can’t tell.”
Noticing the conversation veering back towards Qin Zixin, Fang Bixian promptly reined it in. If they continued, several more of them would likely be ‘jerking off’ tonight. On the first day of school, the moment Qin Zixin appeared, they had talked until past two in the morning. Everyone in the dorm had suffered from insomnia that night.
“What can you tell? She definitely has a C. During the summer, Zhao Jiajun was constantly pestering Li Jinjin. Now that Qin Zixin is here, Zhao Jiajun doesn’t even go to talk to Li Jinjin anymore, afraid that Qin Zixin might misunderstand.”
Ma Lisheng said with a grin.
“If you ask me, Li Jinjin and Zhao Jiajun are a perfect match. That woman isn’t a good sort; she has boyfriends from other schools, and more than one at that.”