Living Only For Myself: Make Those Who Hate Me Regret It-Chapter 21: It’s Only the First Day of Freshman Year
After swallowing her mouthful of rice, Xu Su said, "Dad, my school has a two-hour lunch break. It takes an hour to bike there and back. The break between the end of classes and evening self-study is even shorter, so I don’t have time to come home to eat. I’d like to just eat at school."
Chen Shulan suddenly asked, "How much of that 50 yuan I gave you is left?"
"..." Xu Su fell silent for a moment before pulling five yuan from her pocket. "School meals cost one or two yuan on average. I’ve had three meals a day for ten days, and this is what’s left."
Chen Shulan stared at the five yuan, her expression unreadable.
Xu Weiping was the one who did a quick mental calculation. "If you want to eat at school, then eat at school. From now on, your mom will give you twenty yuan a week. Don’t complain that it’s not enough. It’s what our family can afford, so spend it wisely."
"Don’t compare yourself to your classmates. If they eat well, let them. Just eat simply at school. If there’s anything you want to eat on the weekends, we’ll have your mom make it for you."
He had said similar things in her past life. Xu Su nodded obediently, not uttering a single word of protest. "I understand."
City No.1 High School also held classes on Saturdays, with only half a day off on the weekend. This meant the twenty yuan had to last for six days.
’If I hadn’t been reborn, I would have forgotten.’ Before she met Zhou Mochen in her past life, she could barely afford to eat. She had to stretch twenty yuan for a whole week, sometimes skipping breakfast just to afford a full lunch. She had been living a truly pitiful existence.
It wasn’t until after the New Year, when her family moved and she met their new next-door neighbor, Zhou Mochen, that things changed. Perhaps her parents sensed his interest in her, or perhaps Zhou Mochen pulled some strings behind the scenes. In any case, her weekly allowance was raised to fifty yuan after that.
’Thinking about it now,’ she mused, ’if it weren’t for everything that happened later, Zhou Mochen could have been considered my benefactor.’
He had rescued her from a family that favored sons over daughters, only to weave another cage to lock her in—one with no freedom, no respect, only his nauseating love.
As Xu Su washed the dishes, she thought to herself, ’Since Zhou Mochen has shown up early in this life, I have to stay far, far away from him. Even if it means I don’t get enough to eat, even if I have to go hungry for all three years of high school, I will not be controlled by that paranoid madman.’
~~~~~~~~~~~
「The next day.」
Even without an alarm, Xu Su woke up right on time on the sofa. She glanced up at the wall clock. It was 5:40.
After quickly washing up, Xu Su glanced at the wall clock again on her way out. The hour hand had yet to reach six.
On a summer morning, the 6 AM sun was already hot enough to sting the skin. She pedaled along the familiar road until she reached the gates of First High School. Seeing many day students strolling inside with breakfast in hand, she figured she wasn’t late.
There were a few breakfast stalls near the school gate. After a moment’s hesitation, Xu Su bought a meat-filled bun for fifty cents.
She parked and locked her bicycle in the bike shed, finishing the last bite of her bun just before walking into the classroom.
A single glance revealed the classroom was packed; there wasn’t an empty seat in sight. Not long after Xu Su took her seat, the bell for the morning reading session rang. The school year had officially begun.
On the first day of school, every teacher followed more or less the same routine, using the first half of the period to get to know the students and introduce themselves.
Looking at these familiar yet foreign faces, Xu Su was flooded with a mix of emotions. Many of these teachers had continued to teach her for three years even after she left the Rocket Class. They were the venerated mentors of her high school years.
Her physics teacher, Mr. Zhao, was the homeroom teacher for Class 12. He had a classic bald spot on top, and combined with his unique lecturing tone, many students found him amusing and approachable.
The English teacher was Teacher Li. She was visibly pregnant, looking about five or six months along. She had been busy with her career when she was younger and hadn’t wanted to have children right after getting married. After putting it off again and again, she was now having a child at an older age.
Xu Su then remembered that in about two months, Teacher Li would go on maternity leave and give birth to a healthy baby boy. Her overjoyed husband would bring bags of sweets and cookies to the school to pass out.
Teacher Li’s husband was also a teacher at First High School. He taught politics and was the homeroom teacher for a second-year class, Class 4. Although he didn’t teach the first-year Rocket Class, when he passed out sweets to his own students, he made a special trip to give some to the students in his wife’s classes as well.
’Why do I remember those sweets so clearly?’ It was because she had taken the two packets she received home to appease Xu Yang, and Chen Shulan had actually praised her for it.
’Back then, I was so desperate for my parents’ approval, I’d practically brainwashed myself into submission. Mentally and physically, I was the very definition of a pitiful existence.’
~~~~~
She had lunch with Huang Feng. Xu Su bought a plate of fried noodles for one and a half yuan, and Huang Feng ordered the same.
Having entered the class with the fifth-highest exam score, Xu Su found her desk surrounded by classmates asking questions during every break. Huang Feng waited all morning for a moment alone, and when she finally got it, she whispered to Xu Su, "This morning, I’ve finally seen what this Rocket Class is really about..."
Her tone was full of awe. "The academic atmosphere is terrifyingly intense, and the teachers are one more impressive than the last. Let me put it this way: in the entire Chang City education system, not a single teacher in our class is a nobody."
’She’s right, none of them are nobodies,’ Xu Su thought. ’To put it dramatically, every student in the Rocket Class was the top prodigy of their respective middle school. An ordinary teacher’s pacing probably couldn’t keep up with how fast these kids learn.’
That was why the core subject teachers in the Rocket Class were either provincially-recognized master teachers or veteran instructors from First High School. Many of them were even qualified to write questions for major standardized exams.
Excellent students naturally required a different teaching approach. Without any prompting from the teachers, the entire class quickly fell into a studious rhythm. By the time Xu Su and Huang Feng finished their meal and ambled back to the classroom, intending to take a nap at their desks, they saw that many students were already busy grinding through practice problems.
Huang Feng sighed. "This is just like the atmosphere in my class right before the high school entrance exams... And it’s only the first day of our first year!"
Xu Su was speechless.
’Even my memories of the entrance exams are a bit fuzzy.’ All she could remember was her determination to get into a school in Chang City so she could be with her parents again.
Her classmates were all caught up in a competitive frenzy. With the memory of being forced out of the Rocket Class in her past life, Xu Su didn’t dare to be complacent.
But as she glanced around at her classmates’ desks, she realized that some of them had apparently already taught themselves the first-year curriculum over the summer. Her own deskmate, for instance, had somehow gotten her hands on a few first-year practice exams and was already grinding through them.
Noticing Xu Su’s gaze, Huang Feng leaned over from across the aisle. "Remember that milk tea shop from before? There’s a bookstore about ten meters past it with lots of study materials. My dad got me a set with math, physics, Chinese, and chemistry. Which subject do you want? We can share."
Xu Su didn’t refuse. She took a math worksheet, but instead of writing on it directly, she copied her answers into a notebook as she worked through the problems.
