The Girl Boss Becomes a Gangster's Sworn Sister

This week, she could also bring three persimmons. They had sesame stalks stuck in them, but they still needed a little longer to ripen, so she didn't share them with her pen pal.

They weren't ripe yet, and she was afraid he would think she had given him poisonous fruit.

When Lin Er left home, she wore her new schoolbag on her back and carried the old one. Halfway there, she dropped the torn fishing net into the Red Stone Pool before continuing to school.

There were two midday buses in town, both arriving on Sunday afternoons. An elderly man had set down his carrying pole outside the school gates and was tapping away with a small hammer, clang, clang, clang.

She felt the crisp new fifty-yuan note, but in the end she could only bring herself to spend the two yuan she had saved the week before on candy.

It had originally been two yuan and fifty cents, but she had given her younger sister fifty cents to buy spicy strips.

She had thought two yuan would only buy enough candy for her and her pen pal to have a taste, forgetting it was only 2009. In the end, the old man broke a palm-sized piece of candy into bits and divided it into two bags, and she gave one to her pen pal.

Whatever he thought, she had suddenly needed to use magic more times, and he had agreed without asking questions. She appreciated the favor.

It was only food; if she had some, he would too.

Lin Er arrived at school early, and there was hardly anyone in the teaching building. The whole school was on break, and few students came several hours early like her.

She had planned to note where the peanut fields in other villages were along the way, so she could scavenge there that night. The "old money" she had picked up yesterday was worth quite a bit, but as a student, she had nowhere to sell it for now.

For the moment, scavenging was the quickest and surest way to make money.

But when the blazing sun shone down on her, she suddenly remembered that what she had picked up yesterday was still half damp. She needed to find somewhere to dry it quickly.

The roof of the teaching building was an excellent place.

Unlike the dormitory roof, where teachers might go to air their quilts, the teaching building's roof was kept locked year-round. Hardly anyone ever went up there.

She had originally planned to come at night and spread them out to dry during the day, but on second thought, going up now would only take an Unlocking Charm. It was much less risky than flying up on a broom.

Even if someone discovered her, she could say the lock had broken on its own and she had merely been curious.

After all, a lock opened with an Unlocking Charm looked the same as one opened with a key.

The teaching building had four floors. At present, the only classroom in use on the fourth floor was the computer lab, so there weren't even any early arrivals up there.

Lin Er carried her old schoolbag upstairs without encountering anyone. There wasn't even a security camera by the stairs to the roof. There was only one at the end of the Third Floor Corridor, and she didn't know if it was on. In any case, she had never heard of the school catching anyone breaking the rules, climbing over the wall, or fighting on camera.

Once, when the class funds went missing, they learned that the classroom cameras were never switched on. Sometimes, though, a little red light could be seen glowing on the ones in the corridors.

"Alohomora!"

With a click, the large iron padlock sprang open. The iron gate gave a faint creak as it opened. Lin Er looped the lock back into place as a disguise before going up to the roof.

At one or two in the afternoon, the sun was at its strongest, and she could feel a wave of heat as soon as she stepped outside. She picked a cleaner corner and poured out all the peanuts she had gathered.

She had poured the rice into the chicken feed basin in the new house yesterday. She had previously thought the chicken droppings at home were from the neighbors' chickens, but on this trip home she discovered they had chickens of their own, quite a few of them too—at least twenty or thirty. Two chicken coops had been built of bricks in the space beneath the stairs.

She had always come back to bathe at eight or nine before, when the chickens were already in their coops, so she hadn't seen them.

It was more in keeping with her grandma's habits: she raised or grew whatever she could at home to save money.

She didn't raise pigs because they consumed too much. After raising one for a year, she couldn't bear to eat it herself, and selling it didn't earn much either. Chickens were better; their eggs could be saved up and sold.

Free-range chickens only needed to be fed once a day and could find their own food. Come New Year, the old hens that didn't lay often and the extra roosters could all be slaughtered for food. They couldn't very well have relatives come to pay New Year visits without a single meat dish to serve.

Lin Er hadn't given them that basin of rice for free. From now on, the drawer where Grandma Lin kept the eggs would be two eggs short every day. She didn't dare take more; that would be too obvious.

The clothes and other things from the schoolbag were all in her new one. Now it looked as though she were pouring an endless supply of peanuts out of a single schoolbag.

She had thought one corner would be enough to dry them, but they ended up taking up an area at least as large as two classrooms. There looked to be at least four or five hundred jin, and they were all very large. They seemed to be the sort that had ripened earlier or grown so big that excessive friction had left them in the soil when the plants were pulled up.

Now she had gotten them all for free.

After spreading out the peanuts, Lin Er locked the roof door and went to the dormitory to put away her clothes and water.

Only when more and more classmates arrived did she follow them to the classroom.

The uproar in the classroom noticeably died down a notch after she stepped inside, and barely perceptible gazes kept following her.

Shi Meng and Xu Duoduo, who entered the classroom with her, both seemed a little ill at ease. As soon as they returned to their seats, people pulled them aside to talk about something. Even Xu Duoduo was better liked than she was.

Her deskmate was squeezed in with friends behind her, chatting, so Lin Er made it to her seat without obstruction. The people around her instinctively turned away whenever their eyes met hers, and so she still didn't know what had happened by the time class began.

As for Li Xiang, she hadn't seen him come over to chat with the others in the back today.

One evening self-study period passed without incident, but as soon as it ended, the homeroom teacher called her to the office. She could clearly hear the noise in the classroom rise sharply after she left. As expected, they were probably talking about her.

She remembered clearly that the parents had been called in for Monday, and she hadn't seen any other parents come to school today.

"Permission to enter!"

"Come in!"

Lin Er stood in front of her homeroom teacher's desk as the overhead electric fan whirred. Gao Bo had weighed down the test papers with his lesson plan. Looking up at Lin Er's face, where the gentian violet hadn't yet faded, he felt a headache coming on.

"Li Xiang said that after school last week, you saw someone beating him up."

Lin Er frowned, finding the statement a little hard to believe.

"He said I brought people to beat him up?"

Gao Bo watched her expression, unsure whether to breathe a sigh of relief. Then Lin Er continued.

"Since he's already said it, wouldn't I be taking the blame for nothing if I didn't do it? I'll remember to do it after school this week."

"All right, all right." Gao Bo slapped the desk, his head aching. "I didn't call you here to lecture you. I know about what happened last week too. I've visited his parents, and I've also gone to speak to the teachers of those students from No. 2 Middle School. Just settle down!"

The teachers of the core subjects who had taught Lin Er since she enrolled had all found her timid and shy. Some had even wondered, because of Xu Duoduo, whether she was in the same sort of situation.

But looking at her now, she was practically a little devil.

Then again, no other girl could race between the classroom and cafeteria with gentian violet on her face as though nothing were wrong, or get two portions of food without caring what anyone thought.

Never mind avoiding people; they had hardly ever seen her even lower her head. If a classmate looked at her, she looked right back. Rather than someone with gentian violet on her face, she looked like everyone else was making a fuss over nothing.

Teachers from other classes had even heard that someone in the cafeteria had given her a nickname and told him to pay attention to her mental state, and to look after her by giving her any spare meal tickets he had.

Now it seemed that, apart from the last part, none of it was necessary. This child was mentally tough!