Half an hour passed in no time... After Wang Songhai finished talking about the blind date, he left Wang Yiyang with a final instruction: "Call him later and arrange a time."
Then he brought up Wang Yiyang's sprained elbow from before and told him to go to the hospital for a follow-up. After that, he told him to drink less and gave him tips on how to pretend to be sick or make excuses at business dinners to avoid drinking contests.
They went through one topic after another, and more than an hour passed... The parent-teacher meeting was about to start at three.
Only when he saw how late it was did Wang Songhai finally put down the phone, still reluctant to stop talking. He told Wang Yiyang not to waste any more time and to hurry to the meeting.
Wang Yiyang finally breathed a sigh of relief. He hung up, quickly got up, changed clothes, and prepared to leave.
He had attended a few parent-teacher meetings before. Since his distant cousin's performance at school was "pretty good," he didn't have to worry about being picked as the parent of the top student to give a speech.
Nor did he have to worry about being singled out as the parent of the worst student, only to be criticized by implication.
Usually, he just sat through the whole thing, doing nothing as he watched the parents of good students share their experiences in educating their children.
After changing, Wang Yiyang bought a bottle of water downstairs, hailed a taxi, and headed straight for his cousin's school—Qinghang Affiliated High School.
Qinghang Affiliated High School ranked among the top key schools in Yingxing City. Its annual admission rates were among the highest, and it had an excellent reputation among the public.
As for that unfamiliar cousin, Wang Yiyang remembered meeting Xue Ruihua once, at the banquet her father had held to celebrate her admission to school.
The girl had stood at the entrance welcoming guests. She had a cold expression, a tall figure, and fair skin. Even from a distance, she gave off the air of a rebellious girl.
Especially the uniform she'd worn that day. Qinghang Affiliated High School's uniform was white and green, and quite plain, yet Xue Ruihua had somehow turned it into a crop top with a tight-fitting chest.
But now, when Wang Yiyang tried to picture her, he couldn't remember what Xue Ruihua looked like at all.
As he recalled it, her features seemed rather ordinary, with the peculiar effect of making you forget her five seconds after seeing her.
Sitting in the taxi, Wang Yiyang checked his phone from time to time, making sure every task had been arranged perfectly and that all the forces involved were simply waiting to take their places.
Only then did he relax. He quietly steadied his breathing and cleared his mind.
To be honest, as an ordinary person, this was the first time he had experienced so many forces being set in motion by his every word and action.
The illusion that the whole world was turning around him left him feeling strangely unsettled and stifled.
Maybe it's because all the money I'm using this time is my own? Is that why I feel so stifled? Wang Yiyang wondered, uncertain.
Qinghang Affiliated High School was about a half-hour drive from his home.
By the time the car arrived, plenty of parents' cars were already parked outside the school gates. Students stood by the entrance holding signs, directing parents from different grades to different venues.
The parent-teacher meeting seemed to be a large-scale, whole-school event.
Wang Yiyang got out and looked over Qinghang Affiliated High School.
The school grounds weren't large. Through the fence, he could see four buildings, two basketball courts, and a large playing field between them.
The Federation's national flag hung high above the field.
Two students were standing beneath the flagpole, adjusting the flag's height. It looked like they'd raised it only recently.
Wang Yiyang followed the walkway into the school alongside several other parents who had gotten out of their cars. At the entrance, they registered their names and the names of the students they represented.
Everything went smoothly and quietly. The students handling registration were polite, and the security guards nearby smiled at every parent entering the school.
As he walked through the gates, Wang Yiyang tried to recall what his cousin Xue Ruihua looked like.
He'd last seen her over a year ago, when she'd come to visit with her father. Wang Yiyang had happened to be home from work for the holiday, visiting his parents. He remembered her only vaguely.
Her appearance was blurry in his memory, but her personality was still the same.
Cold and quiet, seemingly uninterested in everything. But if someone provoked her, she'd blow up like a powder keg, with a temper fiercer than most girls'.
"You're Xue Ruihua's family, right? This way, please. Take the seat with your name on it."
A student led Wang Yiyang to a classroom on the second floor. He didn't know whether the students would be attending the meeting with their parents.
To his surprise, all the students were in the classroom.
Many were whispering with their parents.
There were parents scolding their kids, others chatting, and one parent was even showing a cartoon to a child...
They were already in their third year of middle school...
Wang Yiyang grumbled inwardly as he walked over to Xue Ruihua's seat.
Someone vaguely familiar was already sitting there. It was his long-unseen, dear cousin, Xue Ruihua.
The girl had a phone in her hand. When she saw Wang Yiyang arrive, she put it down and stood up.
"Cousin, sorry for the trouble," she said politely.
"Students have to attend too?" Wang Yiyang asked as he sat in the seat beside hers.
"Yeah." Xue Ruihua looked indifferent. Her long hair fell casually over her shoulders, one sleeve rolled high, and her knee bounced rapidly and rhythmically.
Her expression was cold, but her posture made it obvious she was extremely nervous.
She was an ordinary girl with a nice figure but an unremarkable face.
Or, to put it another way, she was a back-view beauty.
From behind, nine out of ten people might think she was beautiful, but in reality, she was plain.
That was why Xue Ruihua had wanted plastic surgery since she was little.
She wasn't interested in studying; she was only interested in making money for plastic surgery.
After sitting down, Wang Yiyang looked toward the stage, where preparations were underway.
The projector screen was slowly coming down, which meant they would be showing everyone some materials later.
"Come to think of it, it's been a long time since we last met. If your dad hadn't asked me to come this time, we probably wouldn't have seen each other even over the New Year," he said casually.
"You just happened to miss us. You hadn't come back yet when we went home," Xue Ruihua replied calmly.
"I was busy with work," Wang Yiyang said with a smile.
Xue Ruihua looked at her mysterious cousin. Her dad had said he worked in the internet industry.
But internet companies covered such a huge range of businesses; it was basically a catch-all term. Who knew what he actually did?
So she had always found her cousin's job rather mysterious.
That had made her curious to find out what he did.
She had no idea that even her father had only heard a little about Wang Yiyang's work from his parents.
In fact, outsiders didn't know anything about the details of Wang Yiyang's job.
Wang Songhai had always thought his son didn't earn much, so whenever anyone asked, he'd fob them off with a broad term like "the internet industry."
As a result, nobody else had the slightest idea what Wang Yiyang did for work.
"By the way, Brother Yiyang, what exactly do you do? What part of the internet industry are you in? Could you explain it a little?"
After waiting for a while and getting bored, Xue Ruihua struck up a conversation by asking the question she'd been curious about.
"I just deal with network security. There's nothing much to explain; it's all simple, routine work," Wang Yiyang replied casually.
"Routine work?"
"Yeah. Manual labor, the repetitive, monotonous kind."
"Then... do you know anything about programming?" Xue Ruihua suddenly thought of something and asked.
"I know a bit. What's up?" Wang Yiyang seemed to sense that Xue Ruihua had something on her mind. He looked away from the stage and at his unfamiliar cousin.
"Well, I joined a small group. We're working on something together, and we need someone to help with a website and a small internal program. I'm not sure how much it would cost. Do you know the going rate?" Xue Ruihua briefly explained what she meant.
"A website? That's easy. You can find a freelancer on a shopping site for a few hundred yuan. They can make changes too, though it'll be a basic version.
"For a small program, you'll need to negotiate with them. The price depends on what features you want."
Xue Ruihua nodded in understanding and said nothing more.
She wasn't the type to talk much with people she didn't know well. She'd already said quite a lot for her.
It seemed the needs of her little group had been troubling them for some time.
By then, a teacher had gone up to the stage and started the meeting.
First, they announced the previous semester's rankings, then called up the parents of the top ten students to share their experiences in educating their children.
After that, they explained how the class funds had been used and reminded everyone which fees they needed to pay.
Some parents listened attentively. Others were half asleep, looking at their phones, or even answering calls. A few kept getting up to go out, either for a smoke or to use the restroom.
Several parents sitting beside Wang Yiyang were quietly talking about their children's behavior at school.
Wang Yiyang looked young, and sitting beside Xue Ruihua, he clearly wasn't her father. He was also a lot younger than the other parents, so nobody had much to talk to him about. No one approached him.
After a while, Xue Ruihua started quietly chatting with two girls sitting to the side.
Wang Yiyang vaguely heard them talking about cosplay, photo editing, and how expensive the clothes were. They also used some technical terms he didn't understand, apparently related to photography.
From then on, he checked his phone every so often to make sure every task was progressing smoothly. Then he organized the steps of his upcoming plan.
Even the most thorough plan could fall apart because of one unexpected detail.
Besides, this was the first time he had planned an operation this large on his own.
It also concerned the lives of his grandfather and himself, so nothing could go wrong.
Wang Yiyang repeatedly ran through the possible scenarios in his mind and made contingency plans for each one.
Meanwhile, the classroom grew increasingly subdued as one parent after another finished speaking.
One parent had even prepared slides, charts, short videos, various international theories, and quotations from famous education experts...
More than an hour passed in boredom.
Finally, the homeroom teacher went up to the stage. He was a chubby man with black-framed glasses and the greasy air typical of middle-aged men. He announced where everyone should go to pay various fees.
Before you continue