It really was almost time for cla.s.s, and I was feeling rushed. I remembered the time Xiao Ning had come running back to rescue me in the middle of the night. I could trust him.
So I gave him some advice: "If he goes too far you should call the police. Don"t let yourself be dragged into a fight, or he may be able to put the blame on you."
Looking at the dead insects on the ground, I said, "If the insecticide isn"t very harmful towards humans, use it as much as you can. You have to kill all those bugs."
"Don"t worry." Ning Tiance"s expression was earnest and solemn. He really was trustworthy.
Xiao Ning stood between us and Tian Bowen with his insects. I took Duan Youlian and Teacher Liu up the side stairs to avoid Tian Bowen. A few insects crawled over to us. I was just about to raise my foot to crush them, but the insects climbed onto Duan Youlian"s raincoat and were drowned by the water on it.
"Nicely done, Xiao Duan!" I praised.
Xiao Duan still hadn"t shaken the water off her raincoat. When I was cutting her nails on the school bus the water had gotten all over me, and I still felt cold from it. In fact, I wanted to pull her raincoat off and shake the water off, but I was afraid she wasn"t wearing anything under it and didn"t dare to act.
Even if I wasn"t interested in women, I was a man, after all, and determined to be a gentleman. Naturally I couldn"t go around pulling off girls" clothes.
The three of us quickly got to the cla.s.sroom. It was already full of students. I counted quickly: there were still twenty-three. Tian Bowen had left and Duan Youlian had returned, so the number was the same.
Mu Huaitong really was a good student. Like last time, she was sitting in the center of the front row, looking fixedly at me with her chin in her hand.
When she saw Duan Youlian, her smile stiffened. Mu Huaitong stared at Teacher Liu and said, "Why is she back?"
Xiao Duan seemed to have some problems with her personal relationships. Tian Bowen didn"t count, he was an expelled social element who was still around hara.s.sing the students. Xiao Duan could be forgiven for having a poor relationship with him. But Mu Huaitong...
Duan Youlian didn"t speak. She just sat down next to Mu Huaitong. The water dripped off of her, spreading until it nearly reached Mu Huaitong"s red high-heeled shoes. Mu Huaitong shrieked and stood up to avoid it. She said to Duan Youlian, "Get the h.e.l.l away!"
Mu Huaitong was a child who liked cleanliness. Seeing the water, she was so scared she grabbed at her hair. Her long, long black hair floated around as if it was full of static electricity. It was about to wrap around Duan Youlian, but when it touched the water on her raincoat, the moisture dispersed the static and the hair smoothly fell back down.
Before cla.s.s, I first had to establish harmonious relations between my new student and the other students. Teacher Liu huddled in a corner watching from the sidelines, as if he didn"t want to get involved in the women"s war.
But I couldn"t let my cla.s.sroom become the battlefield of a catfight. I stood between the two of them, grabbed Mu Huaitong"s hair, and gathered it together. "Who has a rubber band? If you tie up your hair, there"ll be no more static electricity."
Mu Huaitong was nearly about to cry. Her eyes were bloodshot. She stared at me and said, "You dare to tie my hair?"
"Your hair is long and beautiful, but if it"s too long it will block your eyes and make it harder to attend cla.s.s," I said. "When a girl"s hair is so long, isn"t it nice to put it up in a pretty hairstyle? What if I got you a bottle of hair gel?"
Hearing about the hair gel, Mu Huaitong shivered all over and obediently braided her hair. She deftly tied the end with a strand of hair to keep it from coming loose.
"Good child." I nodded in satisfaction, and said to Duan Youlian, "Xiao Duan, it"s time for cla.s.s, and it"s not raining in here. Shouldn"t you take off your raincoat? There"s so much water, it"ll affect the other students" ability to pay attention in cla.s.s."
Duan Youlian laughed scornfully and said, "Liu Sishun!"
"All right!" Teacher Liu replied at once.
Teacher Liu got out a large water bottle from somewhere, one of the 1-liter types. Duan Youlian took the bottle with her pale fingers, unscrewed the cap, and poured it over her head.
"I like pouring water on myself. How about it?" Duan Youlian approached me, malice in her face. "You"re powerful. You can cut my nails. But can you get the water off me? After they knocked me unconscious, they threw me in the water. I was still alive then. The water poured into my ears, my nose, my eyes, my mouth. My stomach, my lungs were full of river water. Can you get the water off me?"
Ah, Xiao Duan also had a painful history.
The water from her body dripped onto my clothes, making me colder and colder. I even felt as if it wasn"t summer anymore, but the dead of winter.
It must have been that Xiao Duan"s heart was cold, and she was pa.s.sing on that coldness to me.
Although a teacher ought to mind his image while teaching cla.s.s, faced with the grief-stricken Xiao Duan, I had to do something.
Because lecturing for a long time made me thirsty, I had put a bottle of c.o.ke in my backpack. I resolutely took out the bottle of c.o.ke, opened it and poured it over my head. The sticky c.o.ke trickled down my face. I stuck out my tongue and licked it. It still tasted pretty good!
The carbonated drink bubbled on my head. I said to Xiao Duan, "I can"t go back there to save you, but I can keep you company."
My heart was steady. I had only one thought: even though Xiao Duan was dripping wet, I couldn"t push her away. She had already gone to the edge, and showing any disgust now would push her into the abyss. But if I reached out to her, I could still pull her back.
This steady conviction warmed me. As my temperature rose, my clothes gradually dried.
With the c.o.ke covering my head, I walked towards Duan Youlian, but she took a few steps back and shook her head. "No, you won"t. The whole worlds despises me. You"re only pretending."
I answered her sincerely. "If all of you were only people pa.s.sing me in the street, I might say something like, how can this girl be so careless? But today I am your teacher, and you are my student. As a teacher, I would never despise any student."
I held out my hand to her. She looked down for a moment and calmly said, "Who"s going to shake hands with you when your hand is covered in c.o.ke?"
Then Duan Youlian turned her head away and went to sit down beside Teacher Liu. She even took out the one yuan notebook I"d given her.
The students in the cla.s.sroom didn"t speak. They had been looking attentively at us all along.
I went up to the lectern, a little embarra.s.sed, and said, "Although it has been a little eventful, we still need to have cla.s.s. Everyone clap your hands to welcome Duan Youlian back into our group."
The cla.s.sroom filled with the sound of clapping.
Mu Huaitong, her hair in a long braid, put her chin in her hand and looked at me. Smiling, she said, "Teacher Shen looks very cute when he"s wet."
"Ahem, don"t make fun of the teacher." I hunted around in my pockets. I had run out of tissues. It was embarra.s.sing to lecture when I was so wet.
That was when Ning Tiance walked into the cla.s.sroom.
As soon as he came in, the atmosphere thickened again. I quickly introduced him. "Students, this is Ning Tiance. He… Although he has already graduated and started work, he is also eager to learn. He"s attending my cla.s.s in his spare time. He won"t disturb you. I hope you can get along well with each other. "
"Huh. Is he here in his spare time, or is he here to work?" Mu Huaitong"s manner wasn"t friendly.
I didn"t know how to explain. After all, I had brought Xiao Ning to cla.s.s from my own selfish motives. Fortunately, Teacher Liu was there, and he stood up to help Ning Tiance explain. "Ning-tianshi... Ning Tiance is a good person. He saved me a few days ago. He isn"t one of those old-fashioned types."
Teacher Liu had status among the students. After his intervention, the other students raised no objections.
Mu Huaitong just snorted.
"How"s Tian Bowen?" I asked.
Ning Tiance said lightly, "He won"t be coming back."
"And the insects?"
Ning Tiance shook the empty can of insecticide. "All dead."
"I hope you didn"t break the law." I wasn"t sure. Xiao Ning was a good person, but he could be a little free-handed. Before, he had done things like jumping over the wall of Benevolence Middle School and smashing the mall"s doors with a brick. He was a bit like a knight in a wuxia novel. He had a chivalrous heart but didn"t attend to details.
"I didn"t," Ning Tiance shook his head. "Don"t worry."
With him so resolute I couldn"t keep asking. I could only suppress my doubts. After cla.s.s I would ask Princ.i.p.al Zhang. Princ.i.p.al Zhang had connections. She would know what had happened to Tian Bowen.
After showing Ning Tiance to a seat in the corner, I turned around to start the lecture, but Ning Tiance called me back. "Wait."
I turned my head back. Xiao Ning gave a helpless-sounding sigh. "How did you get yourself covered in c.o.ke?"
He took out a handkerchief and wiped my hair and face. Although it was still sticky, it would no longer impact my image while lecturing.
Twenty-three students and one Teacher Liu made forty-eight eyes trained on us, but I had no attention to spare to feel awkward. All I saw was Xiao Ning"s focused, handsome face.
He was so gentle...
My heart was deeply moved.
I didn"t know when I would be able to say to my students, This is Ning Tiance, your teacher"s boyfriend, who"s come to pick me up after work.
While he was wiping, his fingertips brushed against my face. They felt so warm.
"You"ve warmed back up?" He felt my clothes and said wonderingly, "And your clothes have dried this fast?"
"Of course!" I smacked my chest proudly. "I said before, I have enough body heat, so the water will evaporate soon. You don"t have to worry."
"I really don"t need to worry, do I," he said, smiling and shaking his head. "I thought you were in danger this time. But after all you"re still you."
"That"s right, I"ve hardly ever had a cold in my life." Xiao Ning was making too big of a deal out of this. How could catching a cold be dangerous?
After getting cleaned up, I went with a turbulent heart to teach my second lesson: how to set up a correct world view.
Today I mainly talked about the first important point: the necessity of learning. It was necessary to establish a positive att.i.tude towards learning, and to arm yourself with an abundance of knowledge.
"Only by increasing our store of knowledge can we form a theoretical system of our own and explain things through scientific means when we encounter them, rather than through self-deception. I"ll use myself as an example. The students in our cla.s.s are very free-thinking and dress in a rather avant-garde ways. Now, of course I"m not saying you aren"t well dressed. This is a free cla.s.s. As long as we don"t expose too much and affect others, we can even dress up as a mummy, like this student. What I mean to say is that another person might view you all as ghosts. Because I"ve been learning for many years and can see the world correctly and scientifically through the lens of chemistry, philosophy, psychology and other disciplines, I won"t be impacted by common views and led to be biased against you.
"Therefore, students, you should learn as much as you can. Keep up that att.i.tude and be understanding towards others. After cla.s.s I"ll recommend some books to everyone. Anyone who is interested can read them."
After I had recommended The Wisdom of Life and other books, I announced that cla.s.s was over.