Chapter 159 – 1992-2020
Following RenDong’s proposal, Lian Qiao went to investigate the disappearing police station. The answer he got was surprisingly simple: it had moved.
As for why it moved, the people in the neighborhood gave various guesses, most which sounded unbelievable. Anyway, the conclusion being that the police station had just moved away.
The residents are not very happy about this. They thought that, without the police station on the block, the level of law and order will be seriously reduced. What’s more, there was also OO School on this street!
It was not the first time that Lian Qiao has heard residents complain about OO school. To put it simply, the school was too broken, the student management was extremely inadequate and a lot of hooligans have been trained and all the school leaders eat sh**. {As in they turn a blind eye to the schoolkid’s bad behavior}.
OO school WAS the worst school in this area. The teachers don’t want to teach, the students don’t want to learn, everyone was here only because they needed to complete the nine-year compulsory education. It was also true that the blame cannot be fully placed on the school leaders.
The more Lian Qiao listened, the more disturbed he became. Pretty much, he had left little RenDong in a wolf’s den!
Just when he was getting restless and couldn’t help but want to go to school to bring RenDong back, Little RenDong came home by himself.
“The teacher said I can come home to nap at noon.” Little RenDong stood at the door with his school bag on his back, looking cute and sensible. {China has the tradition of a midday siesta. They work later into the night as well.}
Lian Qiao hurriedly welcomed him in and asked: “How is the school?”
Little RenDong said: “It’s nothing, it’s just an ordinary junior high school.”
Lian Qiao: “Your classmates and teachers didn’t bully you, did they?”
RenDong laughed: “Why are you so anxious? Like a helicopter parent. Why would they bully me on the first day? And this school doesn’t pay attention to teaching, even if I can’t finish my homework, the teacher won’t punish me.” He raised his little hand and patted Lian Qiao’s head as if to comfort him. “You can rest assured.”
“That’s good.” Lian Qiao breathed a sigh of relief.
“By the way, there was a physical education class this morning. After class, I found a lot of envelopes in my table drawer.” RenDong took the schoolbag, unzipped it and it was full of letters, “I opened two and they were confession letters. You help me with…”
Before he finished speaking, Lian Qiao’s eyes widened: “Confession?! Is that the confession I’m thinking of? Didn’t you only go to school for half a day? And isn’t this a junior high school? You’re only in the first year of junior high?!”
“Yeah.” RenDong was very calm, “I also thought it’s strange that someone confessed to me so quickly but the time here goes by fast. Half a day should represent half a semester and it makes sense that way.”
Lian Qiao: “…”
RenDong poured out those pink envelopes, opened them and said: “Help me take a look together, maybe there are some clues inside.”
Lian Qiao: “…Don’t you think you are a bit of a scumbag like this? Who am I to you? You actually want me to read the confession letter with you?”
RenDong: “Huh?”
Lian Qiao looked at his innocent and pure big eyes and thought: Forget it. RenDong is always slow like this in this respect. So, with a self-inflicted sourness, he began to read the letters with RenDong.
These junior high school girls were surprisingly bold and there are many bold statements in their confession letters. However many of them are also quite innocent. The central idea was basically that I noticed you when you first came to school and I have been secretly in love with you for a long time and I don’t know if I can get together with you.
This “long time” is about half a year for them, but it is only half a day for RenDong and Lian Qiao. So these letters are awkward to look at.
In order to find clues, the two still bit the bullet and read all the letters.
Unfortunately, apart from knowing that RenDong was a heartthrob at school, the two of them couldn’t find any other useful information at all. They didn’t even know who sent the letters.
Lian Qiao couldn’t help complaining: “Why do these people get together to confess their love? Could it be that they were queuing up to stuff letters into your drawer while you were in PE class?”
Little RenDong imagined the scene and was amused.
“Forget it, let’s treat it as a food subsidy for the instance.” He opened a piece of chocolate and stuffed it into Lian Qiao’s mouth.
It was a small gift placed in an envelope. The two opened more than a dozen letters,and two pieces of chocolate rolled out of one of them.
In the past few days, the two of them lacked food and clothing and they were both very hungry. Even though RenDong didn’t like sweets, they couldn’t resist the temptation at this time, and ate another piece of chocolate.
Lian Qiao ate the chocolate given by his love rival, feeling that he had lost the principle of being a human being and was quite depressed.
RenDong noticed his frustration and changed the subject: “By the way, how is the police station investigation going?”
Lian Qiao told him the results of the investigation. RenDong pondered: “Just moved away? Don’t even know where it moved to? …Why?”
Lian Qiao: “Did the police station move when you were young?”
RenDong said: “I don’t remember.”
“En.. That is very strange.” Lian Qiao frowned, “I always feel that it is not a good thing that the police station has moved.”
“Well, we can only take one step at a time,” Little RenDong looked at the time, got up and said, “It’s getting late, I have to go back to school.”
Lian Qiao hooked his hand, reluctantly said: “Didn’t you say that the school rules are very loose? Can’t you go later?”
“The teacher said that there is a math competition in the second year of junior high. If you get good grades you can represent the school in the competition and there will be bonuses. I don’t think other people are interested in the competition and there will definitely not be many people who sign up. I will take the test casually and I might be able to enter the school team. If I get some type of scholarship, I can use it to supplement the family income, okay?”
“Mathematics competition… hsss…” Lian Qiao shuddered just hearing it, as if recalling the fear of being dominated by mathematics when he was a child, “If it is too difficult, you can give up, the competition training class is terrible…”
RenDong sighed, poked his cheek and said, “You can’t do it if you don’t work hard. Who made you not be able to ‘feed me until I’m full’?”
Lian Qiao: “…don’t say such things with a child’s body!”
RenDong was surprised : “What kind of thing?”
Lian Qiao: “…”
Sometimes he really doubts whether RenDong is born slow in this respect, or if he is a tiger pretending to be a pig, pretending to be innocent after flirting.
If it’s the latter, then it’s really…too…too…
Too exciting!
Lian Qiao covered his face, too excited to think about it.
RenDong looked at him blushing to the base of his neck inexplicably and suddenly wondered whether he really had a generation gap with Lian Qiao. Why was it that he always couldn’t understand what he was thinking?
After RenDong went to school, Lian Qiao stayed at home and didn’t know what to do in the afternoon. The table was covered with torn letter papers, which were an eyesore to him and he stuffed them into the trash can.
Although he felt a little sorry for the girl’s heart by doing this-but, fuck it! A mere NPC, how dare you think of our RenDong! You’re way too brave!
The more Lian Qiao thought about it, the more unhappy he became and he decided to chat with the monk to discuss the concerns of adolescent boys and girls.
He took the garbage with him when he went out. The garbage recycling station was at the end of the street. When Lian Qiao was walking towards the recycling station with a garbage bag, he overheard the laughter of several girls.
The laughter was presumptuous and wild, without the restraint of a girl at all. Lian Qiao couldn’t help but glance into the alley and saw a group of girls gathered together. There seemed to be someone squatting on the ground in the middle of them. The standing girls kicked the person on the ground from time to time, giggling at the way the person was stumbling around.
…school bullying?
Yo, finally there was a subplot.
Lian Qiao was eager to go up to save someone but when he walked in, he suddenly found that two of the girls were wearing what looked like RenDong’s junior high school uniforms.
There are bad girls in his school?!
……All right. This is no surprise either.
Just when Lian Qiao was in a daze, the girls had already noticed him and they all turned their heads and asked with hot eye makeup, “Uncle, what are you doing?”
Lian Qiao: “???”
Uncle?!
Lian Qiao suppressed his anger and said kindly: “I’ll give you a chance to do it again. What did you call me?”
The girls said in unison: “Uncle.” They looked at each other again, chirping and laughing. They discussed whether or not Lian Qiao was stupid right in front of him.
Lian Qiao: “…” Where is my crowbar?
Forget it, just a few unscrupulous girls, why would he need to use a crowbar! Just when he rolled up his sleeves to prepare to give them a slap, he felt his pants being pulled.
Looking down, it was a girl with a blue nose and a swollen face.
This girl was also wearing a school uniform but she had delicate features and no makeup. She was obviously a child of a good family.
The girl knelt on the ground, raised her little face and said sadly, “Please go, I’m fine, I’m really fine…”
Lian Qiao: “…” Girl, you misunderstood, I want to beat them for myself, not to save you!
At this time, one of the group of bad girls stepped out. It seemed to be the Queen Bee {literally “big sister”, basically the girl boss of the group.}
Lian Qiao looked at her, and really didn’t want to call her “Queen Bee” because she was too young!
Judging by her figure, she is probably only in the first or second year of junior high school. Girls at this age, no matter what features they are born with, will be youthful and lovely. But because she put on heavy makeup that was extremely unsuitable for her and forced herself to be coquettish, she looked like a monster instead.
Lian Qiao had to lower his head slightly to meet her gaze. He thought helplessly: Hey, I’m already twice her age! In this way, it seems that it is not wrong to be called uncle by her.
The little monster didn’t seem to like the angle of looking up and asked viciously: “Are you here to save her? Don’t you know that this bitch…”
Lian Qiao interrupted her: “No. I don’t know. You misunderstood .”
The little monster: “…?”
Lian Qiao held up the garbage bag to prove his innocence: “I just came out to throw garbage, I was just passing by.”
He blocked the mocking words that the little monster had prepared and she suddenly became furious. She slapped the garbage bag away.
Lian Qiao was caught off guard and dropped the garbage bag. The envelopes and letter papers flew out one after another. This scene looks quite beautiful, like a bloody romance drama. Lian Qiao and the little monster were stunned in the paper rain.
Lian Qiao thought to himself, you really dare to do something, what if my garbage bag is not letter paper but toilet paper? !
As for the little monster… she was probably stunned by the huge number of pink confession letters. She stood there for a long time without reacting.
Several other unscrupulous girls were also shocked and they were dumbfounded. Lian Qiao coughed in embarrassment and was about to drag the little girl away first. When he turned around, he was shocked to find that the girl had slipped away!
Fuck! So you really are a bitch! {it’s more like ‘ungrateful wretch’ but writing that in a modern spoken sentence sounds a bit off.}
It was unknown where Lian Qiao’s anger came from. It just so happened that those bad girls also came back to their senses, surrounded him and looked at him maliciously.
Two of them were bold enough to even take out fruit knives with an expression of “Don’t you think I’m vicious?”
Lian Qiao: “…” Why are you girls of twelve or thirteen years old trying to gang up on me, a twenty-five-year-old “uncle”?
Lian Qiao silently clenched the watermelon knife hidden behind his waist. Just when he was seriously thinking about whether “beating a female NPC” counts as “beating a woman”, the irritable little monster suddenly kicked over the oil drum on the roadside, making a loud bang.
“Go!” She gave an order and the group of unscrupulous girls followed her away resentfully.
Lian Qiao scratched his head, not knowing why.
Was the female monster sensitive? Did she know that he had a 40-meter sword hidden in me? {This is netspeak, from a news headline incorrectly published by Tencent which put ‘meters’ instead of ‘centimeters’ resulting in some funny pictures drawn of people with 40m swords lol.}
Or, she thought it was boring to beat me up in a group, so she decided to catch the little bitch first and beat her up again?
…According to the routine, Lian Qiao should save the little bitch here which may trigger some hidden plot. But he already called the little bitch a little bitch in his heart. He was so disappointed in that girl’s character that he really didn’t intend to be such a fake good person.
Lian Qiao sighed at the confession letters scattered on the ground, finally bent down, picked up the envelopes and letter papers one by one and put them into the bag.
When picking them up, his attention was attracted by one of the letters. It was a confession letter written with a fountain pen with glitter. The handwriting was ugly and wild, but the ink is beautiful and shines brightly in the sun.
Lian Qiao was impressed by the letter. It seemed that there had been two pieces of chocolate hidden in this envelope. He and RenDong ate it together.
Recalling the scene when RenDong stuffed the chocolate into his mouth, Lian Qiao couldn’t help but curl the corners of his mouth, revealing a gentle smile.
RenDong…sometimes he is very slow, unable to detect other people’s thoughts but sometimes he can accurately hold his heart tightly.
With just one movement, all his dissatisfaction and sorrow were resolved. His heart fell from the jar of vinegar into honey again.
Why was his RenDong so cute?
