Fake Boy

Chapter 2 – Long Time No See

Two years later, Yizhong Provincial High School.

“Hand in your homework!”

The literature class representative was a glasses-wearing four-eyed boy. Every time he called out to hand in the homework, he would shout out until breathless.

He collected homework as a dance, jumping from the podium and tapping on everyone’s desk with his own textbook.

When he arrived before Li Mingzhu, he stopped.

He didn’t dare to knock on Li Mingzhu’s desk with his notebook.

“Hand in your summer homework.”

Li Mingzhu took out a thick stack of books from her schoolbag, took out the literature exercise book, and threw it to the class representative.

She sat sullenly and taciturn, she hadn’t cut her hair during summer vacation so it grew to the tips of her ears. She had a handsome profile and her clean jawline slipped into the school uniform. She had a very good-looking appearance, but she didn’t have an interesting soul.

Li Mingzhu’s soul was gloomy, the cold feeling brought from the depths of her soul affected her from making friends. 

In the eyes of her classmates, she was a cool guy.

From the first year of high school, she had been a loner who didn’t make friends, didn’t stay in the dormitory, didn’t participate in club activities, and only knew how to study.

Not talkative and with a bad look in her eyes.

After one year, they didn’t know anything about her except that she was called ‘Li Ming’.

The four-eyed class representative didn’t dare to speak to Li Mingzhu.

On the first day of the new semester, when the morning class ended, Li Mingzhu stayed in the classroom and didn’t go to the canteen.

Yizhong had two canteens, one is the regular large canteen which had three floors, first-years and second-years ate together, while third-years ate on the highest floor.

The other was a western restaurant allocated on the northern side of the school, to get there one must walk across the basketball court and the sports ground. It sold junk food such as grilled sausage burgers and fast food, and regularly launches special meals with fancy names but bad taste. It was more popular than the school canteen, especially for couples.

Li Mingzhu usually didn’t eat in the canteen or in the restaurant. She was a day student, she generally brought something herself, sat near the restaurant and ate in the open space behind the sports ground stands.

The things at school were expensive, and she didn’t have spare money to buy food.

The first day of school was no exception. Li Mingzhu brought a few things and went straight to the stands: after all she cared about her face and didn’t want to eat in class.

On the way to the sports ground, Li Mingzhu met Erpao.

It wasn’t known what Erpao’s brother did, but he earned a fortune and paid for Erpao to get admitted to the art class. So he unexpectedly entered Yizhong Provincial High School.

Whenever he met someone, Erpao’s brother bragged about how his brother made great progress and had a promising future, directly omitting all the disgraceful means he used.

Meeting Erpao here wasn’t surprising at all to Li Mingzhu.

Erpao saw Li Mingzhu and greeted her.

Li Mingzhu only had this one friend. Moreover, Erpao was very faithful.

Therefore Li Mingzhu put away the dead face he often put on, and rarely relaxed his expression.

But this time when Erpao saw her, he wasn’t as enthusiastic as usual, instead, he looked as if he met a formidable enemy.

As soon as he saw Li Mingzhu, his face turned pale, and he said to Li Mingzhu, “Li Ming’er, you should transfer to another school!”

Li Mingzhu smeared his face, “What happened?”

Erpao was so panicked that he couldn’t speak clearly, “Li Ming’er, I’m telling you this, I didn’t believe it at first, listen to me…”

He spoke incoherently, “Do you still remember the year you graduated from junior high school, didn’t I steal a Qinghua University certificate for you, the summer vacation when you pretended to be a teacher and gave remedial lessons!”

When Li Mingzhu heard him mention this matter, her expression also got bad.

When she graduated from junior high school, her brain may have not grown well, and she came up with this idea on a whim. The point is, with her ability to speak the human language with humans and speak the ghost language with ghosts[1], she really managed to fool an old woman.

During that summer vacation, Li Mingzhu met that old woman’s grandson, Lu Yao.

He was a lawless, arrogant brat.

On the first day of class, Li Mingzhu and Lu Yao had a grudge, but the price per lesson given by his grandmother made Li Mingzhu covet.

Li Mingzhu was blinded by money, so she bit the bullet and gave her grandson remedial lessons.

Lu Yao can be said to be a lost cause, his grades were so poor that Li Mingzhu couldn’t look at them. But Lu Yao didn’t take it seriously, he still skipped classes, played games and had new injuries every day.

As soon as he came home, Li Mingzhu would stand at the door with a cold face and ask him if he had done his homework.

He didn’t do a sh*t!

Lu Yao would be annoyed whenever he saw her, annoyed at Li Mingzhu’s good student airs.

Lu Yao had a bad temper and a bad personality. Every day he acted very arrogantly and cockily as if Li Mingzhu owed him more than 100 million yuan. But he had a handsome face that attracted many girls, he changed girlfriends every week. He always brought home a different one, never repeating, Li Mingzhu bumped into four or five of them.

Dating in junior high school was just for reputation, they wouldn’t do anything. At most, they went home and ate popsicles together, an extremely innocent love.

Especially for people like Lu Yao, who was the big brother, how can he not have a girl beside him.

Lu Yao’s family was well-off, his father was an official and his mother was a renowned artist. He recharged Yellow Diamond on QQ[2], he ate steak with red wine, he wore brand-name shoes worth more than a thousand, and he went to sing at H City’s most expensive KTVs. He just needed to wave his hand and a dozen of disreputable friends would come one after another to carry his shoes.

However, Lu Yao himself didn’t want to make progress, he purposely went against Li Mingzhu.

A wild and unruly second-year junior high schooler, the thing he liked to do the most was to improve his image in his peers’ hearts by going against the teacher.

Although Li Mingzhu was a home teacher, she could also be considered a teacher.

Lu Yao liked to torment and bully her. Therefore, every day Li Mingzhu would be in conflict between chopping Lu Yao to death with a knife or bending her back and bearing Lu Yao for the money.

Finally, she held on until the end of the summer vacation, she took the money and said bye-bye to Lu Yao.

But Li Mingzhu was the type of person that bore grudges. She remembered all the times’ Lu Yao made her suffer and was definitely going to take revenge.

Therefore, before leaving she did a world-shaking thing that made Lu Yao lose face in front of his disreputable friends.

Thinking of Lu Yao’s face back then, it looked like he was going to jump up and slash her with a knife ten thousand times to relieve his anger.

To Lu Yao, who gave a lot of importance to his reputation, this was enough to gross him out for several years and become his indelible black history in junior high school.

Li Mingzhu added his number and QQ to her blacklist in one fell swoop. From then on, she and Lu Yao would never see again and forget each other.

If Erpao hadn’t brought up this matter, she had completely forgotten that summer when she and Lu Yao had a fight of wits and bravery.

“Why are you bringing this up?” Li Mingzhu held her lunchbox, walking while talking to Erpao.

Erpao’s forehead was covered in a cold sweat, “It’s related to this matter!”

Li Mingzhu said, “Oh, I almost forgot about this matter, what’s wrong? Your brother found out I pretended to be a university student?”

“It’s not about whether my brother knows or not.” Erpao hurriedly walked in front of her, “Li Ming’er, have you seen this year’s freshmen’ name list!”

Li Mingzhu composedly bypassed him, not knowing that danger was waiting for her.

“Why should I read that? I’m not the principal.”

In other words, ‘It doesn’t concern me.’

Li Mingzhu sometimes was just so indifferent.

But this time he was too indifferent, Erpao urgently told her, “Your student, that Lu Yao, his name is on the freshmen name list! He’s in art class, I saw it when I was helping old Yuan sort out the freshmen list!”

Old Yuan was the second-year art class home-room teacher, but he also taught art to the first years.

“Hey, you’re making a fuss about nothing, there are many people with the same name and surname in this world.” Li Mingzhu was surprised only for a moment, then answered.

Erpao disputed, “Damn! Li Ming’er, there are photos on the freshmen list! Are there people in the world that have the same name and surname and look the same!? You have to believe me… I tell you…”

Li Mingzhu suddenly stopped walking.

On the concrete road to the canteen, the trees on the two sides were rustled by the wind.

On the sports ground stands in front, surrounded by a group of scoundrels, who messily wore their uniform, the leader was a handsome student, male, a new face, he was eighty-ninety per cent a freshman. With a cigarette in his mouth, very arrogantly, he was holding his head up basking in the sun, beside him was a female student with a thin waist and long legs, who was gently leaning on his arm.

The group was made of four or five people, talking and laughing, on the ground seven or eight cigarette butts were thrown.

Li Mingzhu stood still and her pale face under the sunlight reflected a gloomy light. One of the students in the stands jumped off from the top and came in front of Li Mingzhu.

“Senior, I see you are pleasing to the eye, do you want to come up for a talk?” He said rascally with no good intentions.

Li Mingzhu calmly replied, “We have nothing to talk about.”

The student looked back, he saw the handsome freshman, whose arm was being held by a girl and had his uniform tied around his waist, spit out the cigarette in his mouth and came down.

A drop of cold sweat fell on Li Mingzhu’s forehead, the more she looked at the boy walking down from the stands, the more familiar he became until he stood completely in front of her.

The boy who stopped her spoke, “It’s okay if you don’t have anything to say, brother Lu has something to talk to you about.”

Li Mingzhu’s heart was shaking terribly, but on the surface, her face remained indifferent, and even thought, ‘Talk my ass.’

Lu Yao already got in front of her, looking at her with interest.

Li Mingzhu was face-to-face with him, they were scanning and discerning the micro-expressions on each other’s faces, trying to see something.

Erpao was shocked, “Lu, Lu, Lu Lu… Lu Yao!”

Lu Yao seemed to have been waiting there for a long time. As soon as he opened his mouth, he showed his canine tooth and smiled maliciously. He said, “Teacher Li, long time no see. After graduating from Qinghua University, you are now teaching at Yizhong?”

He pressed the tip of his tongue on his palate, “You’re really hard to find, aren’t you?”

Li Mingzhu, with a complex expression, immediately… ran away!

Little theatre

Lu Yao: “I finally fucking found you.”

Li Mingzhu: “The heavens want to kill me!”

Author: “An eye for an eye… a tooth for a tooth…”

Notes

1. ‘Speak the human language with humans and speak the ghost language with ghosts’ is an idiom meaning to be flexible and know what to say in different situations and to different people.

2. QQ is a messaging app very popular in China and Yellow Diamond is a premium package of the app.