Far away in Moscow

Chapter 1 Good Mood Stationery Store
There was no one in sight on the playground, and the warm spring breeze was mixed with the chaotic English reading aloud in the classroom not far away.Hu Yi stood at the door of the toilet at the end of the playground, tightened his belt, hummed a little tune and quickly slipped to the wall, stepping on a broken iron bucket in the corner and climbing up the wall with ease.

There is a height difference of nearly one meter between the ground of the playground and the street outside the wall. It is not difficult to climb inside, but it is still slightly dizzy to look down on the wall.Hu Yi sat on the top of the wall, supported his hands lightly, jumped down, tore off a piece of toilet paper, carefully wiped the dirt on the leather shoes, arranged his hair, put his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders, and went to the bun shop at the intersection in front of him, and bought it for a dollar. He picked up four meat buns, turned around and swaggered towards the main entrance of the school.

The school is on the edge of the old town, very close to the moat.During the Ming and Qing dynasties, many government agencies gathered nearby, and the surrounding streets were mostly named after Yamenkou, which has been used until now.

There is an open space in front of the school, and the small street facing it is the seat of the Salt Transport Envoy in the Qing Dynasty. The street is dilapidated and narrow, barely enough for a bus to pass through, and both sides are crowded with various small restaurants and small shops.

There is a small one-story house tens of meters away from the school gate, and the sign on it says "Good Mood Stationery Store". Just after 07:30, the shutter door was closed tightly. Hu Yi glanced in the direction of the school, reached out and slammed on the door several times: "Boss! Get up!"

"Who is it? Here it comes!" A confused male voice came from inside the room.After a while, the rolling shutter door was pulled halfway up with a "crash", and a middle-aged man in disheveled clothes muttered sleepily while pulling up his pants: "It's you boy, it's really early today."

Hu Yi nodded, bent down and got into the house.The room was not too big, with a single bed placed against the innermost wall, and a few computers tightly placed next to the other two walls.The good mood stationery store couldn't last three months after it opened, and was leased to the current owner. The sign of the stationery store still hung on the outside, but a computer room was operated inside.

The computer room is an early form of Internet cafes. All computers are connected to the same local area network, which is convenient for playing games online, but they cannot access the Internet.The boss of Good Mood is in his thirties, white and fat, his eyes often flash with innocence and confusion that Hu Yi doesn't take seriously, and occasionally reveal a few traces of cunning that Hu Yi can't understand.

The boss yawned, picked up the toothbrush and squeezed some toothpaste, then bent over and squeezed to the back of the bed to turn on the main power switch: "I just installed a few new games last night, it was very exciting, but unfortunately it was a little stuck."

Hu Yi casually pulled a chair and sat down, stretched out his toes and pointed to the computer case next to him: "It's the 21st century, these broken machines of yours are still Pentium 166, can you play new games without getting stuck? You can get on the Internet, and you have to keep up with the times, otherwise who would want to play in the future?"

"I know, surfing the Internet is popular now." The boss echoed with a smile: "Currently, funds are limited. When I have more money, I will immediately replace it with a new machine, and then find a way to connect to the Internet—you play first, and I will brush your teeth."

Hu Yi raised Erlang's legs and took a bite of the steamed stuffed bun: "I don't play anything today, just sit here with you for a while."

The boss blinked: "Huh? You beat me up early in the morning just to come in and sit and eat buns?"

Hu Yi looked stern: "That's right, I just don't like to stay in the classroom, it's annoying. What's the matter? Can't you come here to eat buns?"

"Okay, of course." The boss grinned and said, "It's all here, what are you doing idle? Let's play for a while."

"I...forgot to bring money today." Hu Yi blushed slightly: "I gave you 30 yuan on credit before."

"Then what's the matter? If you don't bring any money, you can keep the account first." The boss winked at him: "I will give you an hour, and the billing will start at nine o'clock. How about it?"

"Okay." Hu Yi hesitated for a while, pulled out a cigarette from the crumpled cigarette case and threw it over: "I will settle the account with you next Monday."

"No hurry, no hurry. These student customers in the No. [-] Middle School will count on your good credit, so it doesn't matter if you are a few days late." The boss smiled and clamped the cigarette to his ear, and tugged at the badly shrunk white hurdle vest on his body. With messy hair, he walked to the faucet outside the door and squatted, and casually stuffed the toothbrush into his mouth and poked it around.

Two hours passed in the blink of an eye, and a few more students slipped in from outside the door. Seeing Hu Yi, they smiled and shouted: "Damn it? No wonder this kid disappeared early in the morning, so he is hiding here and working hard again!"

Hu Yi knew that they must have run out after finishing exercises between classes. He raised his face and said proudly with a cigarette in his mouth: "I came here after putting down my schoolbags for self-study. You all love to study!"

"Student, the first two classes belong to the head teacher, so I dare not escape." The students chattered a few words, and couldn't wait to take their seats and turn on their computers.Seeing that there was another person standing at the door, Hu Yi stretched out his hand and said, "Dongzi, what are you doing in a daze? Turn on a machine and play together!"

Dongzi took out a handful of change from his pocket and counted it, walked up behind Hu Yi and smiled shyly: "No Brother Yi, I'll just watch you play."

"It's okay, it's fun to play together." Hu Yi pushed Dongzi to sit on the chair next to him, and reached out to turn on the computer for him: "Play for two hours, credit it to my account."

Dongzi happily agreed, and just put his hands on the mouse and keyboard, the door opened again, and an old face poked into the room, it turned out to be the teaching director.Several students froze like wooden sculptures and clay sculptures for an instant, and the atmosphere in the room became extremely awkward.

Good mood stationery store has been secretly operating the computer room for more than half a year, and no school teacher has ever walked in. The store owner does not know the dean, but seeing the students all stunned, he guessed in his heart that this must be the school leader, so he had no choice but to bite the bullet Asked: "You... are you okay?"

The dean's face was cloudy and uncertain, his eyes swept over every student in the room, and finally fell on the face of Hu Yi, who was smoking a cigarette.While everyone was feeling uneasy, Hu Yi suddenly puffed out his cigarette, took off his earphones and stared impatiently at the dean: "What are you looking at?"

The whole room was silent, the dean's face turned blue and red, and he said in a low voice, "What did you say?"

"Don't say good things twice." Hu Yi chuckled: "Why, getting old? Are your ears not working well?"

The dean stared at Hu Yi and took a few deep breaths, then put on an expression of extreme disgust, held back the words "hopeless" in his stomach, and backed out with a sneer.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and someone next to him laughed and said, "Hey! Brother Yi is awesome, last time I was caught smoking at the gate and he scolded me a lot and fined me five dollars. Look at Brother Yi , send him away with two words!"

Dongzi looked a little nervous: "He just left? He won't come back to trouble you, will he?"

Hu Yi showed off his prestige in front of everyone, and he was very proud in his heart. With half-twitched lips, he said grinningly: "Don't worry, I will graduate in a few months. If you trouble us at this time, aren't you afraid that you will be punished later? He Not stupid."

Talking, laughing and playing games, it was time to leave school at noon.Hu Yi bought two biscuits and a bottle of mineral water, and squatted at the door of the good mood to eat and drink.From time to time, students passing by the door greeted him, some affectionately, some respectfully.

Hu Yi enjoys this feeling very much. In the words of the students, this is called "playing well", which means that he knows many people and everyone usually gives face.As a scumbag among scumbags, this is the only way for him to find a sense of presence in school.

In fact, Hu Yi has not always been a scumbag. Although he is a bit rebellious in his natural bones, he has been taught very strictly since he was a child, and his academic performance is not bad.Unexpectedly, after being admitted to high school, the rebellious period that had been accumulated for many years suddenly broke out, and an extremely strong sense of weariness followed. From then on, he threw away his homework and spent every day with the little gangsters inside and outside the school.

Playing cards, playing football, playing games, drinking, smoking, falling in love, and fighting from time to time, Hu Yi feels that his life is very "full", but he has no interest in studying.Skipping classes is commonplace for him. The only fun in class is picking up on the teacher, and other than that, he spends time with martial arts novels and sleeping.After realizing his change, the parents exhausted all discipline methods but to no avail, so they had to pray to God for their son to wake up as soon as possible and the prodigal son to turn around.

However, the wishes of the parents did not come true.Hu Yi is now a bad student registered in the Academic Affairs Office due to violating the school rules twice in three days. Trying to save this young man who has gone astray, unexpectedly, Hu Yi not only still goes his own way, but also pays less and less attention to the school leaders.Now that the college entrance examination is coming, he knows that he has no hope at all, so he is not in a hurry, and only plans to find a job after graduation to dawdle.

On the opposite side of the street, two groups of first-year high school students got into an argument for some unknown reason.Hu Yi saw a few familiar faces on each side, so he got up slowly and walked over, pocketing with one hand, pinching sesame seed cakes in the other, frowned and scolded, "What are you doing? What are you making?"

Several students scrambled to accuse each other to Hu Yi, Hu Yi was too lazy to listen to the love and hatred between them, and pulled his face impatiently: "Okay, they are all from the same school, what can't we talk about? Why are you arguing at such a young age?" Then he took two steps forward, and whispered with concern: "Even if you want to do something, you have to stay away from the school, what if you get caught and punished? Hurry up, hurry up !"

The two groups of students parted ways and left. Hu Yi was very satisfied with his successful mediation. He stuffed the last bite of meat biscuit into his mouth, turned around and was about to go back to play games, when the pager attached to his waist rang stand up.He looked down at the calling number, frowned slightly, went to the small shop next to him, picked up the public phone and dialed it: "Mom, are you calling me?"

Mother Hu's voice was a little tired: "Have you eaten yet?"

"have eaten."

"Go home early tonight, your dad and I have something to tell you."

"What's the matter?" Hu Yi lazily took out a cigarette and knocked it lightly on the table a few times.

"Let's talk about it tonight. Next night, go straight home after self-study, don't go out crazy."

(End of this chapter)