When Jiang Zhi woke up and felt someone beside him, he thought it was just a hallucination because he hadn't fully woken up. He turned his head away from his prone position and froze.
"Why is you?" His voice was still hoarse from a long sleep.
Chi Wan glanced at him, continued packing her schoolbag, and zipped it up. Before leaving, she tossed back a reply: "Borrowing your turf for a month, thanks."
Then she left the classroom without looking back.
Yan Xu, who was so engrossed in playing a game that he hadn't even heard the bell ring for the end of class, suddenly took a kick to the shins and leaped up in fury, "Who the fuck..." He instantly clamped his hand over his mouth.
Jiang Zhi wore a cold expression as he leaned back in his chair, looking down his nose at him and waiting for him to keep swearing.
"Bro, you're awake? Fuck, I must be completely deaf not to have noticed class was already over, heh heh." Yan Xu put on a flattering smile, only now noticing that the two of them were the only ones left in the classroom. That explained why it had suddenly gotten so quiet.
Jiang Zhi couldn't be bothered to argue with him. He just shifted his gaze slightly to the extra desk that had appeared beside him after his nap.
Yan Xu caught on immediately and explained, "Bro, our class got a new kid. I checked, and she's a transfer student—definitely not someone from Fu Zhong before. And she's a pretty girl, too." As if afraid Jiang Zhi wouldn't appreciate feminine beauty and might scare her into crying, he added, "I think she looks even better than campus belle Lu."
Jiang Zhi asked lazily, "What's her name?"
"Chi Wan." Yan Xu spun his chair around. "What an interesting name, Chi Wan—like being lagging and late."
Jiang Zhi moved his lips, silently reciting it to himself: "Chi Wan."
"Let's go. Time to eat, and when we're done I'm going back to sleep." He stretched his waist, stood up lazily, and walked out with his hands in his pockets.
"You're going to sleep more? Are you even coming back to school this afternoon?" Yan Xu asked in utter astonishment. This brother of his had already slept the entire morning—was he addicted to it now?
Jiang Zhi didn't break his stride. "I'm not coming. After class this afternoon, find me at the martial arts hall."
"Brother Zhang's place is practically your second home." Yan Xu instinctively went to sling an arm over Jiang Zhi's shoulders, then awkwardly dropped it. "Brother Zhang even bugged me to go to class last time, crying that his landlord was about to sweep him out onto the street."
Jiang Zhi chuckled derisively. "I already paid half a year's rent for him."
When the two of them walked into the mouth of the alley, they saw Zhang Lei from a distance, up on a ladder and tinkering with something over the doorway.
Yan Xu hurried his steps until he could see clearly, and couldn't help tilting his head back with a laugh. "You're finally willing to fix up this plaque? Weren't you afraid it'd fall on your head one day when you walked out?"
He had never met a martial arts master lazier than Zhang Lei. Too lazy to go out and recruit students, he just sat at home waiting for willing fish to take the bait. In the year he and Jiang Zhi had been coming here, they hadn't seen more than five people total. The original characters for "Yangwei Martial Arts Hall" on the front gate were even missing pieces, leaving just "Wei Wu Guan," and the character for "Wei" was missing a stroke to boot. The plaque itself was on the verge of falling off.
Zhang Lei used one hand to steady the dust-covered plaque and the other to brace himself against the door frame for fear of falling. Looking down and seeing the two of them as if they were his saviors, he blurted, "Quick, quick, help me steady the ladder. Scared the crap out of me. It didn't look like much from the ground, but up here I didn't think it'd be this high."
Yan Xu stood with his hands on his hips and laughed unceremoniously. "A big tough guy like you is afraid of heights? Hahaha... Oh mother, I'm dying."
"You little brat, stop laughing," Zhang Lei scolded in exasperation.
Jiang Zhi raised his foot and gave the uninhibitedly laughing Yan Xu a light kick, a smile in his own eyes as well. "Hold the ladder."
Yan Xu finished laughing, rubbed his hands together, and gripped the ladder. "Alright, alright, I've got it."
Looking up at Zhang Lei, who was swaying up there just like the plaque, he couldn't help laughing again and teased, "Is Grandmaster Zhang planning to open the doors for business?"
Zhang Lei straightened the plaque with both hands, glanced at the youth leaning leisurely against the iron gate, and let out a heavy sigh. "Sigh! I'm planning to turn it into an inn."
"Pfft, haha... ptui ptui ptui..." Yan Xu had just opened his mouth to laugh when a mouthful of dust blew in. He quickly retreated a few steps, continuously spitting, "Ptui ptui..."
Seeing that no one was holding the ladder, Zhang Lei panicked and grabbed the door frame with both hands. "Hey, kid, hold it! Don't take your hands off."
Watching this flurry of panic, Jiang Zhi had no intention of stepping in to help. He covered a yawn behind his hand and lifted his foot to head inside.
Yan Xu periodically spat out dust as he grabbed the ladder again.
"Over the summer, I recruited a little junior sister for you two. Too bad you weren't here, so you missed out on meeting her," Zhang Lei said cautiously, letting go of the frame once he saw Yan Xu was holding it again.
Hearing this, Yan Xu instantly perked up. "Little junior sister? How young is she? What's her name?"
Seeing Yan Xu's unruly expression, Zhang Lei glared at him before continuing. "She should be around the same age as you guys—also in high school, though I didn't ask which school she's from. Her name is Chi Wan."
Yan Xu was astonished and pressed, "Chi Wan? Which *chi* and which *wan*?"
Meanwhile, the person about to step across the threshold pulled her foot back down and turned around.
"The *chi* of a pool, the *wan* of salvation. Quite a pretty little girl, just has a rather cold personality and doesn't like to smile." Zhang Lei reminisced, realizing that in his memory he hadn't really seen that girl smile much.
"Oh, that Chi Wan. Don't know her." Yan Xu assumed it was just someone with the same pronunciation and didn't suspect for a second that he had been wrong from the start.
As for the Chi Wan whom Zhang Lei described as cold and unsmiling, she was currently smiling radiantly as she counted her savings.
Chi Wan smoothed out the curled corners of the banknotes and tucked the five hundred odd yuan she had skimmed from the grocery money into the hidden compartment of her schoolbag. She felt not a shred of guilt about what she had done. Song Xuan, an elementary school student, got a thousand yuan in allowance every month, while she got zero. Moreover, Fu Ping gave her a hundred yuan for groceries every day, and she bought exactly what was requested; the money left over was merely what Fu Ping would have wasted anyway.
She considered it her hard-earned labor fee, and she took it with a clear conscience.
Chi Wan looked at her spread-out, completed summer homework, and a flash of inspiration hit her.
Perhaps she could be a ghostwriter for hire. The teachers in Class 17 didn't care how their homework got done anyway; in fact, they'd probably be even happier if the students actually handed anything in at all.
Yet Chi Wan had a slight doubt: "Would that bunch of spoiled brats even need that?"
With that thought, she shouldered her schoolbag again and prepared to make a trip to the internet café. She needed to register a messaging account first so she could get into the class group or school group to find "clients."
Before leaving, she didn't forget her dutiful responsibility to remind Song Xuan, who was engrossed in cartoons: "Don't forget to go to school at one-thirty."
The boy lying on the couch didn't move an inch, acting as if he hadn't heard a thing—or perhaps simply not wishing to deign her with a response.
Chi Wan let out a derisive chuckle and said leisurely, "If you're late, your head teacher will call Dad directly. And if Dad is disturbed, there's a very high probability your allowance will be gone."
The little boy who had just been playing deaf and dumb immediately sat bolt upright and shouted loudly, "Impossible, I only left Mom's number!"
Chi Wan hooked her lips into a malicious smile. "Oh, then I'm terribly sorry. When school let out, I happened to be passing by and sought out your head teacher, and supplied her with an extra number."
"Chi Wan, you..." Before he could hurl an insult, Chi Wan slipped out the door, and the only response left for him was the "bang" of the front door slamming shut.
In an exceptionally good mood, Chi Wan skipped lightly down the stairs. *Hmph, little brat, you thought I couldn't handle you?*
The keychain in her hand swung back and forth at her fingertips, mirroring her current mood.
Days without inner friction were truly wonderful.
The tranquil stairwell echoed with the girl's cheerful hum.