Chapter 39

The parent-teacher meeting required parents to be seated by 2.30pm. At about 2pm, my form teacher came over to ask for two students to go act as ushers at the school entrance. I naturally raised my hand.

My form teacher laughed as she patted my shoulders, saying I was so happy just because I had scored well once. But of course.

The old woman pointed at me and Jiang Xue to go and welcome the parents when they came. She said we were the faces of the class; once we were put at the entrance, our class would look like we shined more than other classes.

At the beginning, I had thought the same too. However, ten minutes later, someone who shone even brighter appeared. A red Ferrari came in a whirlwind, obediently slowing down in front of the sign that indicated that there was a school ahead. Lastly, it accurately stopped right in front of me.

The car door opened. My Ge stepped out, dressed in casual attire. I immediately pulled Jiang Xue’s hat off her head and covered my face with it. What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t get irritated by.

My Ge came up to me under the gazes of everyone like he was walking on a red carpet, draping an arm over my shoulder. He took off his aviator sunglasses and moved close to my ear, asking, “Is this showing passable?”

“Passable my ass, holy fuck, do you know how striking this car is? The engine roars, and this colour is like that of the national flag; you were like a flag rising all the way here. Why didn’t you just drive a whole team of wedding cars here?”

“Oh, then I’ll go and contact a wedding organising company right now, they should be able to make it in time.”

“Fuck off.”

We entered the classroom. There were still a few parents who weren’t seated yet. My Ge sat in my seat and sat in the position he was used to when listening in class -- his head was propped up by his right hand, his left hand spun a pen and his eyes were on the big Chinese scholar tree outside the window. I finally knew where my habit of not listening in class had come from, feeling a bit touched as though I had found my soulmate.

I bent down and elbowed him lightly, “Hey, when you were in school, is this how you listened in class?”

My Ge spun his pen as he said, “Fuck, this is called distracting myself, otherwise I won’t be able to hold back from picking out the teacher’s mistakes and everyone will .”

Tsk.

Soon, all the parents were seated. My form teacher passed down fifty folders, one for each table. Inside were the students’ answer cards for the end of semester exam and each subject teacher’s comments.

My Ge first flipped through the mathematics and general science paper, quietly muttering to me, “Didn’t I teach you a question similar to this before? You don’t even know how to apply concepts in different scenarios.”

“You can shut up.” In my eyes, applying concepts in different scenarios meant the teacher had taught me one plus one and I hence knew how to calculate two plus two. In my Ge’s eyes, it meant the teacher had taught him one plus one, then he immediately mastered calculus.

On the multimedia screen, everyone’s score and extent of improvement was reflected. I was first. This time, I was 362nd place in the cohort and had entered the top 600[1]. Actually, this time, a big part of why I had been able to score well was luck. Other than a couple more correct guesses for a few multiple-choice questions, that essay had been lucky too. If it had landed in the hands of a more rigid marker, it would have immediately been judged to have gone out of point.

My form teacher enthusiastically invited my Ge to speak, asking him to talk about why my improvement had been so great. Duan Rui was an arrogant person. A lazy smile played on his lips as he replied, “He just got extremely lucky; it’s all thanks to the teachers for teaching him well."

This time, he became modest, pissing me off. I had painstakingly studied for so long, and when I got a question wrong I even had to be pinned on the exam paper and fucked fiercely by him. It was seriously difficult for me to have been able to get this kind of result; how could it be called getting extremely lucky?

My form teacher said my Ge was good at teaching children. As they say, young people have a common language. I saw Duan Rui look down and smile, appearing very happy.

I took advantage of this to secretly peek at his phone. Duan Rui had actually changed his lock screen to my report card. This old pervert, I didn’t have a single common language with him.

My form teacher talked endlessly at the teacher’s table, praising this and pointing out that. As I stood beside my Ge, I slowly started to zone out. When I finished zoning out, I suddenly realised the seat next to me was empty. My Ge had gone missing.

I pulled Jiang Xue’s braids and asked her if she had seen my Ge. She pointed in the direction of the washroom outside the classroom.

I originally hadn’t planned to chase after him, but when I looked down, I saw that it was my Chinese answer card on the table, the side with my essay on it facing up. A few words had been smudged by a small water stain.

I quietly left the classroom and went to the toilet to find my Ge. He was inside, leaning against the windowsill as he smoked. Tiny beads of water hung from the ends of his lashes. Under the sunlight, his eyes turned from pitch black to light brown.

I stood beside him. I swallowed my saliva, then took out a piece of tissue from my pocket and handed it to him, softly asking if he wanted it or not. I saw the tips of his ears immediately flush red. He suddenly turned and embraced me, half a cigarette clasped between his fingers.

"Ge, kissing you here isn't a good idea, right? How can I comfort you so that you'll be okay?"

"I'm very okay."

We couldn't see each other's expressions. I could only hear him quietly ask me, "In your heart, how am I like?"

I patted his back, "Very good at raising children."

Duan Rui laughed, his laughter nasal. I pulled out a tissue and helped him to wipe his tears, "Shit, if my classmates see this they'll think you've gotten so worked up just because I scored well once."

After the parent-teacher meeting had ended, most parents went to chase my form teacher to inquire about their child, but my Ge wasn't the same. He sat on a rack made from school desks outside the classroom and chatted with my brothers about the dynamic performance of sports cars.

My group was responsible for cleaning up the classroom's miserable state. I wiped the blackboard while Jiang Xue swept the floor. Through the window, I saw my Ge surrounded by a circle of boys and girls, all staring at him like they were looking at a celebrity, especially Ren Yingying from Class Four. The previous month she had even passed me a bottle of water red-faced, but now she was almost going to squeeze into my Ge's chest. Women were truly changeable.

I gave Jiang Xue a light push and asked her to comment on my Ge's ability to attract so many people with me. She ignored me, mesmerised as she poked the broom around and gazed at my Ge, transfixed. She asked me, "Where did you get your Ge from, I want to go get one too…"

"Apologies, it was allocated by the country." We had minimally been together for eighteen years more than normal couples; no matter how you looked at it, it was earned.

My Ge drove me and my luggage home. Throughout the drive, we didn't talk. I secretly fiddled with the velvet ring box in my pocket, preparing to find an opportunity to give it to my Ge to wear. Even though I had used my Ge's money to buy it, I had saved up for a long time too. Aside from that time he had given me fifty thousand yuan, I had used the allowance I usually got and spent eighty thousand yuan[2] on a wedding ring. Although I hadn't entered the top fifty this time, perhaps once my Ge was happy he would let me fuck him.

We first went to eat a meal. I said to eat western food, but my Ge said he didn't want to eat that, he wanted to eat hotpot. The hotpot restaurant was very lively, and the waiters and waitresses were an enthusiastic bunch too. Just because my Ge had congratulated me for scoring decently as we clinked glasses, the waitresses immediately pulled out a banner to congratulate me. I was afraid that if I took the ring out, they'd set up an archway[3] for us on the spot.

This meal made me a bit anxious. I was thinking about where I could propose that would feel ceremonial. I had prepared everything already. The roses were in my school bag, wrapped in my exam papers by Jiang Xue and her friends. It was original and ingenious; there was only one in the whole country.

After eating our hotpot, I suggested that we go to a KTV. Those places were dark, and there were separate booths too. After I proposed, I could even sing him the song 'A Good Day'[4]. But my Ge was really thoughtless; I wanted to go to a KTV, but he simply had to drag me to go play billiards. I thought to myself that if we played Chinese 8-ball for just two rounds it would be fine, but unexpectedly, this old man started a game of snooker and happily competed for points one by one with me.

By the time we left the club, the sky was already dark. He said he wanted to go to a bar. I thought that was not bad, it was a peaceful place and after proposing we could get a glass of Martini. It was still somewhat romantic.

But who knew that Duan Rui was going to a disco. The blinding strobe lights covered the place and the whole place was filled with groups of demons dancing wildly. It wasn't my first time coming here and soon, my energy was brought to a high by my Ge and I forgot everything.

In here, everyone was very unbridled, making my Ge and me seem neither special nor dirty. Mixed into the crowd, we were normal and insignificant. At this sort of place, you could basically forget about morals. I couldn't help but reach a hand into my Ge's shirt and touch him. He gave my butt a pinch and laughed faintly as he kissed my ear.

Explosive hormones were stirred within the thick smell of alcohol and tobacco. Before we knew it, we were in a cubicle in the toilet kissing passionately, our breathing heavy as our erections grazed against each other through the fabric. Duan Rui nibbled at my neck and collarbones, gripping my skin so hard that he left marks. I moaned, leaning against the door, uncaring of how many people outside the door were secretly listening to us making love. My head was so unclear that I even wanted to let them hear that my Ge was fucking me heavily. I wanted to let them hear us kiss until we had swallowed all of each other's saliva and become dry in the mouth, our voices hoarse.

At two in the morning, there were barely any people out on the main streets. We came out of the bar, our bodies covered in the musky smell of sex. I finally remembered that there was still some proper business I had yet to do.

When we walked beneath a street lamp, I took out the flattened roses and velvet ring box from my school bag and got down on one knee in front of my Ge.

Before my knee had even touched the ground, my arms were suddenly pulled up by him. I stared at him, stunned. After he straightened up my body, he immediately got down on one knee and grabbed my hand firmly as he took out a diamond ring from his pocket.

"Fuck your mother! You're even fighting with me to propose first?! You're doing it on purpose, aren't you!" How could I let him take advantage of me like this? I tossed the roses aside and grabbed his hand, yanking him up. As expected, the two of us fell down and rolled on the street that was covered in scattered petals, trying to put our rings on each other.

"Piss off! Let me put it on you first, whoever bought flowers gets the final say."

"No, whoever's ring is more expensive gets the final say."

"You're doing it on purpose, you grandson[5]…don't curl your fingers in, open up, don't make me pry them open…"

"Whoever pries it open first gets to put the ring on the other person first."

"Ge--!"

"Be good."

Footnotes:

[1] - Top 600: Because this is not an exam taken only by the people in his school. I’m not sure if it’s only a few other schools participating in this examination as well, or the whole city.

[2] - Fifty thousand yuan, eighty thousand yuan: 7800 and 12500 USD respectively.

[3] - Archway: To congratulate them on their wedding. Pic

[4] - A Good Day: It's a song by Song Zuying. https://youtu.be/kBq8I0BuQvs I don't know if Duan Yan can reach those notes though

[5] - Grandson: just an insult