Chapter 3
It was the start of the school year, and a series of fees-meal expenses, materials fees, class meeting fees, and so on-were all being collected one after another.
The Homeroom Teacher was a well-dressed woman in her thirties. Other students often whispered in private that she was snobbish: she always greeted students from wealthy families with a smile, but treated everyone else as if they owed her eight million yuan.
I happened to run into her just as she was talking to Yi Chao about this semester’s fees.
“You can’t pay the tuition every year, and the principal has only let you off because he pities you, but you still have to pay these basic fees. People above me have been urging me many times. Why do you keep dragging it out? It’s only a few thousand yuan, not tens of thousands. Why can’t you pay?”
She rattled off a long list of complaints.
After a long silence, the young man finally spoke: “I will pay, Teacher Ye.”
With her hands delicately raised, the woman took a small sip from her exquisite coffee cup, her tone dripping with sarcasm: “You will pay? How come I haven’t seen you pay? Yan Qingyue just transferred to our class, and even the arrangements up and down cost tens of thousands-did she complain at all? So what’s your excuse?”
Seeing her words now involved me, I-who had been hesitating at the office door-decisively called out, “Excuse me.”
When she looked up and saw me, the woman sitting in the chair instantly replaced her sharp and mean expression with a gentle one and asked kindly, “Oh, Qingyue, you’re here. Come in and sit down. Is there something you need?”
“I’m here to submit some paperwork for transferring classes.”
“Mm, sit over here, let me help you take a look.”
Then she waved Yi Chao away: “You can go back now.”
The young man turned to leave, his thin lips pressed tightly together, the messy hair falling over his forehead hiding his dark eyes so that his expression was unreadable.
As we brushed past each other, my arm holding the paperwork happened to graze the fabric of his school uniform at his waist.
Unintentionally, I glanced up and met his sidelong gaze.
A second later, he looked away.
He walked out expressionlessly.