Change

Lin Er had been delayed at home that week, and by the time she got to school, many of her classmates had already arrived.

By now, Lin Er could control her habit of wanting to use up all her daily curse uses.

At first, she had been afraid her golden finger would be taken back, so she treated every use as though it were her last, feeling that she would lose out if she failed to use it even once.

Now she was used to it. Or perhaps the money she had earned with her own hands made her feel that even if her golden finger were taken back, she could still live another life just fine.

At the very least, she could support herself.

As she went upstairs, she happened to see a group of teachers and workers coming down from the roof.

"So that's why the drainpipe got blocked when it rained before. The whole roof was covered in these things. I wonder which bird's nest they raided!"

"Looks like every single one was handpicked, too. They're big and fresh, and they look like this year's crop. It's a wonder the rats didn't steal them all!"

"Yeah, there are so many. Who knows how long it took to carry them all up here!"

"Send them to the cafeteria to be shelled for an extra dish!"

"Hey, we're in for a treat, then. We ought to thank that bird!"

The teachers spoke with great enthusiasm, while Lin Er was speechless.

When she saw what the teachers were carrying down, she realized they were the peanuts she had last left out to dry. There weren't many, only a dozen or so jin.

Later, other things had caught her attention, and she had forgotten to collect the peanuts she'd left up there.

As for the blocked drainpipe, she really hadn't known about it. There had been a lot of clutter on the roof before, though, and she had cleared it away to dry the peanuts.

Those teachers really did have vivid imaginations, putting the blame for the peanuts squarely on a bird. If they had really been a bird's food stores, its wings would have broken from all that flying.

But from an ordinary person's perspective, if peanuts suddenly appeared on the roof, there didn't seem to be any explanation other than a bird.

That evening, she paid her living expenses, and her sixty yuan was instantly reduced to five. The class monitor gave Lin Er a couple of curious looks.

After all, both her clothes and her demeanor were vastly different from when she had first enrolled, and it was only the third week.

Back then, everyone had assumed that Lin Er either had no parents, came from an extremely poor family, or had a family that didn't want their daughter going to school.

Her clothes had clearly been hand-me-downs from other people, ill-fitting and unsuitable for a child her age.

The main reason was that two students who had attended the same primary school as Lin Er had spread quite a bit of gossip about her.

Much of the reason people had thought she was intellectually disabled on her first day of school was what those two classmates had said.

Lin Er's appearance had fit the image, too: poor, withdrawn, timid, and cowardly, always keeping her head down as though she were frightened, and she had been admitted in last place.

But within two days, she seemed to have changed. Her clothes fit her, she seemed a little more confident, and in the end, she had even gotten into a fight.

Those two classmates could hardly believe it. At first, they had just been running their mouths, telling people when asked; they really hadn't meant to spread malicious rumors.

If anyone was most surprised by Lin Er's change, it was probably the two of them.

They had gone to the same primary school and studied together for six years. Their good friend was also from the same village as Lin Er, so while they couldn't say they knew her extremely well, they had paid her more attention than their other classmates did.

Whenever they played together, Lin Er would watch them longingly, but when they called her over, she wouldn't dare come.

She always made it seem as though they had bullied her. At first they had pitied her, but later they no longer wanted to interact with her.

She was also always dressed in filthy clothes. In the six years they had studied together, they had never seen her wear a single outfit that fit.

Not every child in the countryside had new clothes to wear growing up, but it was still rare for someone to wear such ill-fitting clothes all the time, as Lin Er did. Gradually, they stopped inviting her to play.

They had come to school in this town because their parents worked here. To their surprise, Lin Er had come here too, along with another girl from their school who had an intellectual disability.

At first, they had said Xu Duoduo had an intellectual disability, not Lin Er.

But Lin Er had scored zero on both subjects of the primary-to-middle-school entrance exam, and the two of them hadn't spoken up for her when people started speculating.

Others took their silence as confirmation, and the rumor that Lin Er was intellectually disabled spread further and further, until even the teachers believed it.

Lin Er hadn't known about any of this in her previous life, and naturally, she didn't know about it in this one either. She had always thought the rumor about her intelligence was due to her entrance exam scores.

After all, she had only regained her senses on the second day of school in this life. How could she have known that in just one day, word about her previous six years had already spread to everyone?

After collecting her meal tickets and returning to her seat, Lin Er paid no attention to the surprised look the class monitor had given her.

Only a few people in their class ate special meals, and their classmates had questioned nearly all of them about it. Their families were all well-off.

Hardly anyone from an ordinary family ordered special meals.

Everyone knew how hard up she had been when she enrolled, so it was only natural for her sudden change to surprise people. She didn't look into it any further.

Quite a few people were reciting the text to the group leader. It was homework assigned the previous week, so Lin Er flipped through her book and joined the line.

With a subject like Chinese, she retained a little of what she had learned. She certainly wouldn't have been able to recite it before, but after reading it a few more times, memorizing it was easy enough.

When it was Lin Er's turn, the group leader gave her a couple of extra looks. Lin Er lowered her eyes and began reciting, then watched the group leader check her name off the list before leaving.

The group leader was someone she knew. They had attended primary school together for six years, and she was one of the few former classmates at this school.

Unlike Lin Er, they had nearly all entered this school with rankings similar to their previous ones, and their grades were excellent.

Apparently, the middle school in their own town had even visited their homes, but because their parents all worked here, it hadn't managed to persuade them.

She and a boy in the neighboring group were cousins, and she was also one of the people Lin Er had only dared look at from afar in primary school. Perhaps it was the natural awe a poor student felt toward a top student.

Because of that connection in her previous life, she had felt a natural bit of closeness to the two of them, so she had always gravitated toward them without thinking.

Sometimes, when classmates bullied her, the two of them would lend her a hand. They were among the people who had helped her come out of her shell and taught her to say no, though in the end, they had never become friends.

In this life, apart from Shi Meng, who approached her either of her own accord or at the teacher's request, she hadn't grown close to any of the people she used to know.

She would let things take their course. If they could become friends, they would become friends eventually.

Their homeroom teacher had taken the day off because something had come up, so the English teacher took over evening study at short notice. Lin Er was singled out for scoring over 110 on last Friday's in-class test, and her whole face turned a dark red that took half the lesson to fade.