[STARTER UNIT 1 - Hello!]
[SECTION A - How do you greet people?]
In the English lesson for second-year Class Five, the English teacher went over the monthly exam papers at the front of the room. Chen Shi'an, meanwhile, opened his first-semester seventh-grade English textbook and tapped away with his reading pen, happily touching anything he didn't know.
Lin Meng Qiu: "..."
The girl beside him, who had scored 140 on the English exam, watched him slide his reading pen back and forth over the textbook. For a moment, she couldn't quite work out where she was...
Aaah... Having a desk mate was one thing, but why did hers have to be so completely different from everyone else's?
Having already been through all this material, Lin Meng Qiu looked at the seventh-grade English textbook, which seemed practically like a beginner's primer, and didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. It was as though Chen Shi'an had appeared here specifically to shatter her usual cool, aloof image...
Chen Shi'an, engrossed in studying English, suddenly turned and caught her eye. Lin Meng Qiu felt the embarrassment of someone caught red-handed peeking at him.
"Class monitor, why are you looking at me?"
"...Keep it down."
"Hm?... Oh, sorry."
Chen Shi'an paused, then turned the reading pen's volume down a little further.
The thing could connect to Bluetooth earphones, but he didn't have any, so he had simply used its speaker. The volume was already very low and shouldn't really have disturbed anyone, but since Lin Meng Qiu said it bothered her, he would turn it down a little more!
[Look...]
Now that Chen Shi'an had lowered the volume again, Lin Meng Qiu genuinely couldn't hear a thing-even when she strained her ears, the tiny bit she could make out was quieter than a mosquito.
"...What's wrong? Is it still bothering you?" Chen Shi'an turned back. Lin Meng Qiu was staring at him again.
"No." Lin Meng Qiu couldn't help asking, "Can you actually hear it with the volume that low?"
"I can."
"..."
Whether his hearing really was that good or he was just boasting, Lin Meng Qiu decided she wasn't going to look at him anymore.
Strangely enough, she normally cared so little about other people, yet she kept getting curious and wanting to see what he was doing...
Perhaps his eager look, so ready to beat her and take first place, had unnerved her. She wanted to know where on earth he got the confidence to think he could beat her.
What a joke... How could that possibly happen!
If someone who hadn't even finished compulsory education really took first place, wouldn't that make a laughingstock of all the Yunqi No. 1 High School students who had spent twelve years studying so hard?
In the end, Lin Meng Qiu couldn't resist sneaking another glance at him.
Chen Shi'an had already entered a state of flow, sliding the almost inaudible reading pen over every word in the seventh-grade English textbook, line by line. In the short time she had spent lost in thought, he had already finished half a page.
Deep down, Lin Meng Qiu didn't believe he could absorb anything while reading that fast... Yet, inexplicably, it actually gave her a sense of pressure and urgency.
She finally stopped paying attention to him, turned back, and immersed herself in her own studies.
The two consecutive English lessons ended, and the bell rang for the lunch break.
"All right, everyone, go eat~ Remember to hand in your essays tonight."
"Thank you, teacher-!"
"Thank you, Mom-!" some little monkey shouted, only to be swiftly drowned out by everyone's enthusiastic clamor to get food.
Never keeping them past the bell-that was another thing everyone loved most about Teacher Ye, besides her gentle, kind manner.
If Old Liang taught the last lesson, he wouldn't let anyone leave without keeping them another three to five minutes!
Because he was their homeroom teacher, he never discussed class management during his own Chinese lessons. Instead, he deliberately saved it for after the bell and kept them late. His devious intentions were plain to see!
Anyone who wasn't eager to eat had something wrong with their priorities!
Students really did get hungry!
How hungry? The sweets, biscuits, and nuts piled on the coffee table during the Spring Festival went untouched at home, but bring them into the classroom and they became gourmet delicacies.
At home, they dawdled over their mothers' cooking and complained about this and that, but pack a lunchbox of crispy fried pork and take it to the dorm, and everyone in the room would take turns calling you Dad.
After more than half a day of intensive mental exertion, anyone who wasn't hungry really had to have something wrong with either their body or their mind.
Just look at Lin Meng Qiu beside him. In the classroom, she never budged from her seat except to refill her water or use the bathroom. Now that the lunch bell had rung, even she had started moving quickly.
Her movements weren't as frantic or disorderly as those of the monkeys, but she was still quite different from her usual self.
Chen Shi'an was hungry too. Like her, he packed his things in an orderly fashion, but at a quicker pace.
Though he possessed magical power, he still needed food and water like any ordinary person. His master said that, according to legend, some people could attain the true grain-breaking realm.
[Master, if you reach the grain-breaking realm, does that mean I can cook for one less person from then on?]
[...No, that won't do. You'll still have to cook my meals.]
[Tch, I thought you could go without food and water. So in the end, you still have to eat and drink even after reaching that realm?]
[Being able to go without food and water is one thing; eating and drinking is another. Joy, anger, sorrow, pleasure, hunger, thirst, sight, and hearing are all real sensations through which we connect and interact with the greater world. That is life. Without feelings, desires, fears, or wants, how would we be any different from the dead?]
[All right, all right, I'll go cook. What are we having today?]
[The Chinese toon is growing nicely this year...]
A Chinese toon tree grew beside the courtyard wall of the Taoist temple.
Every spring, as the gentle breeze blew, the tree woke from winter, and clusters of dark red shoots edged with green emerged on its branches. At that time of year, scrambled eggs with toon shoots became one of the few seasonal delicacies master and disciple both craved.
Fat Ink, plump after hiding away all winter, would nimbly climb onto the tree's branches and hook down the tender green shoots with its paws. Chen Shi'an's job was to stand beneath the tree with a bamboo basket and collect them. Once they had enough for a meal, he would fetch a few eggs laid by the chickens raised in the mountains. Meanwhile, his uneducated master sat cross-legged on a large rock, gazing at the distant mountain peaks turning green and reciting his own spring poem. He looked very busy, but really, he was just waiting to eat...
Thinking about it made Chen Shi'an crave scrambled eggs with toon shoots again.
Unfortunately, it was already September, so there were no toon shoots. Even if there were, the school cafeteria probably wouldn't serve them. And even if it did, they might not taste the way he remembered.
"Have you gone to the cafeteria to get a meal card?" Lin Meng Qiu asked without looking up as she put her water bottle into her schoolbag.
"Uncle Lin gave me one. He said it was a staff meal card."
Then Chen Shi'an asked curiously, "Do you have one?"
Lin Meng Qiu: "..."
The girl was speechless. Whose dad was he, anyway?
She still remembered Lin Ming telling her when she first started high school that people might gossip if she used his meal card. Yet he had turned around and given it to Chen Shi'an?
Luckily, she was already living in the room in the Teachers' Dormitory that the school had assigned to her dad, and it only had one bedroom. If there had been another, wouldn't he have invited Chen Shi'an to live with her too?
If this were ancient times, would he be trying to marry me off to this little Taoist as well?
Lin Meng Qiu wore a strange expression, increasingly convinced that something was off about her dad...
Her dad had always repaid kindness. When he went to university, the villagers had pooled their money, five or ten yuan at a time, to help him. Now that he had made something of himself, it was one thing for all the cafeteria staff, cleaners, and security guards at the school to be people from his hometown, but had Chen Shi'an's master saved his life or something? Why was he treating him so well?
At that thought, Lin Meng Qiu couldn't help asking Chen Shi'an curiously, "Can I ask you a question?"
"Please do."
"Do you know what happened between your master and my dad back then?"
"No."
"You've never asked my dad?"
"If my master hasn't told me about something, either he doesn't want me to know, or it was too minor for him to think it worth mentioning. If you're curious, you could ask Uncle Lin."
Chen Shi'an paused, then added, "And remember to tell me afterward."
Lin Meng Qiu: "..."
I thought you weren't curious! If my dad would tell me, would I need to ask you?
"Uncle Lin said you live by yourself in the Teachers' Dormitory?"
"Yes."
"Then where does a day student like me rest at lunchtime?"
"In the classroom. You're the only day student in our class."
"Want to eat together?" Seeing that she had packed her things and was about to get up, Chen Shi'an stood too, pushing his chair under the desk to make room for her to get past.
"I get mine to go and eat in my room."
Lin Meng Qiu got up and left the classroom first.
Lessons didn't end until noon, and afternoon classes began at half past one, leaving only an hour and a half to eat and rest.
Since day students could only rest in the classroom, Chen Shi'an left his backpack behind. He took out his meal card and headed out.
With everyone dismissed at the same time, the staircases at both ends of the school building were completely jammed. No wonder everyone in class had rushed off to eat so quickly...
Fortunately, Class Five was only on the second floor, so even queuing and making his way down slowly wouldn't take Chen Shi'an long.
Yunqi No. 1 High School was large, and the cafeteria was some distance from the classroom building. Once he reached the spacious grounds, he saw lots of people running.
If you swapped their school uniforms for disaster victims' clothes, Chen Shi'an thought, even the imperial court handing out relief grain wouldn't look any more spectacular than this.
He wondered whether Fat Ink had finished its cat food. Letting it go hungry for half a day to lose some weight wouldn't be a bad thing...
As he was thinking, a small hand tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
"Hey! Taoist!"
Chen Shi'an turned, and a smile naturally spread across his face when he saw the girl-
"Little Cicada, it's you again!"
Before you continue