Chapter 96: Used to Be Ugly—Now It’s Good-Looking
Qin Mochen felt that the little girl today was especially sharp-tongued. More than once, she had him so blocked he couldn’t find a comeback.
“Uncle, your smile is getting better-looking and better now. You don’t have to hide it.”
Qin Mochen caught the implication and asked, “So my smile didn’t look good before?”
Su Keke nodded, looking completely serious. “Yeah. Like the first time I met Uncle—I told you a joke, and when you smiled it was kind of… ugly.”
She burst out laughing, then immediately added, “But now it’s really good-looking. I especially like seeing Uncle smile!”
Qin Mochen’s mood at that moment was a bit complicated.
“Uncle, it’s late. Let’s wash up and go to sleep,” Su Keke suggested.
Qin Mochen ruffled her hair. “Come with me—run two kilometers on the treadmill, then sleep.”
“Ah… no.”
“Objection overruled.”
—
As soon as Class Three’s score sheet was posted, the students swarmed over.
“Oh my god, Keke, look at your grades!” Qin Xing suddenly shouted to Su Keke.
Su Keke squeezed her way over with difficulty.
Luo Man also saw Su Keke’s score and couldn’t help smiling. “Keke, your score is way higher than what you estimated.”
Su Keke’s total score was more than twenty points above the class average, ranking twenty-fifth in the class.
Su Keke herself was so surprised her eyes went round.
How was she so amazing?!
Then Su Keke thought again—not that she was amazing, she was just lucky.
“Daxing, Manman, looks like I guessed quite a few questions right. This is really ‘a blind cat running into a dead mouse.’”
Qin Xing said, “That’s still your skill, okay? How come others don’t guess as well as you do?”
Probably because she’d memorized so many question banks, when Su Keke did multiple-choice questions, she had a kind of intuition. That intuition meant that even if she guessed, her chance of guessing right wasn’t low.
“It’s just that your English is a bit weak,” Qin Xing said regretfully. “Otherwise Keke could’ve easily made it into the top twenty.”
“Is it that weak? 105 points—hehe. I think that’s really high. I’m very satisfied.”
Luo Man said, “Keke, the class average is already 125. Your English really is a bit weak, but at your learning speed, catching up to everyone is only a matter of time.”
At Yuehua Elite High, eighty percent of the students were there for the high overseas-study rate. The school’s English classes were basically all taught by foreign teachers, so an English score of 105 really did count as low.
Su Keke shook her head. “I like the other subjects. Even if I have to memorize question types, I’m willing to use my brain and remember them. But for English, I’m purely doing rote memorization, and in my heart I don’t even like it. This time was completely just good luck—there were lots of multiple-choice questions, and I guessed a lot of them right. Next time, whether I can even pass is hard to say.”
“Keke, you’re already very good. Next time, keep it up.”
In this exam, Luo Man was the forever-unchanging first place. Even across the whole school, she was still number one.
Qin Xing had never dropped out of the top five; this time she was second.
Jiang Yueyue—who could occasionally even surpass Qin Xing—unexpectedly fell out of the top ten this time, landing at eleventh, right next to Zhao Kexin in tenth.
To Jiang Yueyue, this was simply a humiliation.
Qin Xing didn’t care how awful Jiang Yueyue felt. Smiling brightly, she reminded her, “Student Jiang Yueyue, our Keke’s score isn’t just above the class average—it’s more than twenty points above it. If she pushes a bit harder, she’ll be catching up to you.”
“Qin Xing!”
“I’m right in front of you. Why are you shouting so loud? I’m not deaf. A bet is a bet—honor your loss. Apologize.”
Jiang Yueyue pressed her lips together. After a long while, she mumbled a sentence at lightning speed, the words slurring together: “Su Keke, I’m sorry.”
Su Keke blinked. “Huh? What did you just say?”
Qin Xing couldn’t hold it in and gave Su Keke a thumbs-up.
Luo Man and Zhao Kexin also couldn’t help laughing.
Su Keke truly hadn’t heard what Jiang Yueyue said. She was still soaked in happiness.
“Jiang Yueyue, you promised you’d apologize in front of the whole class. When the class bell rings and everyone’s here, you’ll stand up and apologize to Keke again.”
“Qin Xing, don’t push people too far!” Jiang Yueyue snapped.
Qin Xing laughed. “How am I pushing you too far? Didn’t you agree to it yourself? What, can’t afford to lose?”
Jiang Yueyue clenched her teeth and said nothing.
When the class bell finally rang, Jiang Yueyue sprang up before the teacher even entered and shouted, “Last time I shouldn’t have looked down on Su Keke. Now I apologize to her. From now on we’re classmates.”
After saying that, Jiang Yueyue quickly sat back down, her face flushed red from holding it in.
People in the class were whispering. She kept feeling they were laughing at her.
Why? Why is everyone bullying her?
Jiang Yueyue’s eyes couldn’t help turning red.
At noon, the “four golden flowers” who had won their battle went to the cafeteria, booked a small private room, and celebrated properly.
Jiang Yueyue happened to see them go in laughing and chatting, and the fire in her chest surged again.
“Yueyue, don’t be mad. Next time you’ll definitely beat Qin Xing,” Jiang Yueyue’s deskmate, Lu Renjia, comforted her.
Jiang Yueyue kept a dark face and didn’t respond.
“Yueyue, if it weren’t for Jiang Fangfei’s issue, you wouldn’t have been affected. But… that senior Xu Hao really is your boyfriend?”
Jiang Yueyue snapped her head toward her. “What, even you think Xu Hao is Jiang Fangfei’s boyfriend?”
Lu Renjia quickly shook her head, smiling awkwardly. “No, Yueyue. It’s just… why have you never said anything? Now everyone thinks Senior Xu Hao and your sister are a couple. Yueyue, are you sure your sister has nothing going on with him? I even saw Senior Xu Hao talking to her yesterday—she was all smiles. That doesn’t look like ‘nothing.’”
Jiang Yueyue’s face turned even uglier.
She also wanted to know whether this gentle, considerate “sister” of hers—who wasn’t related by blood at all—had stolen her boyfriend.
Jiang Fangfei said she hadn’t. Said it was just rumors, said people had mistaken her for someone else. But if that was true, why was she the only one who believed it?
Lu Renjia suddenly leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Yueyue, if you’re not sure yourself, then after school we could…”
Jiang Yueyue frowned. “No way. You guys actually believe that?”
Lu Renjia said, “If it works, great. If it doesn’t, we’ll just treat it like a game. That whole ‘pen spirit’ thing is outdated—we’ll try another kind. Bao Chen already found people. With the two of us, it’ll be three boys and three girls.”
“He still has the nerve to ask me—because of his big mouth, the whole thing…” Jiang Yueyue stopped halfway.
The whole thing… what?
If it was real, would she be kept in the dark forever?
Irritated, Jiang Yueyue said, “Fine, I’ll go. I don’t want to go home that early today anyway.”
After school, when most people had already left, the six remaining in the classroom hurriedly shut and locked the windows and doors.
“Everything prepared?” Bao Chen asked.
“I brought the rice. You said the older the bowl the better, so I brought a chipped old bowl from home,” one of them said.
“I’ve got the rooster blood too—today’s cock was just slaughtered in the cafeteria. Fresh as it gets,” another person said.
