Gong CaiCai’s father wasn’t really someone who left an impression on others. He also didn’t have much resemblance to Gong CaiCai other than the face he was also short.
He rolled down the car window and called for his daughter to get in, while looking at me, who was standing next to her with suspicion (to avoid suspicion, Gong CaiCai had stopped pulling on my uniform).
“Since you’re Cai Cai’s classmate, get in the passenger seat, I’ll give you a ride.”
He clearly assigned me a seat in the car to avoid me sitting together with his daughter in the backseats. Letting me sit next to him also made it kind of like an ‘interrogation’.
I couldn’t blame him for being suspicious since Gong CaiCai has never been close to any boys. If I ever saw Ai Mi getting close to a male, I would also have to interrogate him.
My home was pretty close to the school and I didn’t want to get interrogated by Gong CaiCai dad, so I rejected his offer.
Gong CaiCai thanked me multiple times again before getting on the car. After the car drove away, she looked back at me through the window and waved goodbye.
As they drove further and further away, the old security guard couldn’t catch the kid and came back to the school entrance. It looked like Gong CaiCai, who couldn’t really see clearly which person was me, was waving at the old security guard towards the end.
The old security guard, who couldn’t catch the kid that broke the streetlight, saw me send Gong CaiCai away and he asked: “Did you change girlfriends again?”
Change my ass, can you stop creating weird rumors about me? Do you want me to put on a red scarf and break the windows in your house with a slingshot?
That’s how the first day of school passed relatively peacefully.
The next day, the unconventional, empty and cold, chalkboard art that didn’t have a single Chinese word became the focus of discussion among the students and teachers.
“It’s very three-dimensional! As expected, Zhuang Ni has impressive skills, she can already go and draw 3d sidewalk art.”
“The English words on the top are written by Gong CaiCai, right? The font is still as beautiful as ever, but ‘New semester, there is still hope’ sounds a bit pessimistic…”
“Shhh… It must have been Zhuang Ni’s idea, it’s good enough that she didn’t write ‘Life is meaningless’.”
“The dark blue chalkboard… It feels like it could relieve some visual fatigue when I look at it.”
At the end of class, there were many people from other classes who came to visit.
“Wow, class 3’s blackboard is unbelievable. It was drawn with chalk, it wasn’t done with watercolor.”
“I want to take a picture of it and post it on the internet, so that everyone can worship it and it will show them that there are capable people in 28 Middle.”
“Don’t you think the starry sky makes people feel a little… bit cold.”
A certain teacher with poor vision saw the blackboard at the back of the classroom and asked in shock, “Why are you guys putting on a slideshow.”
Although it attracted a lot of views, the blackboard also received a lot of criticism, mainly focusing on “not conforming to the school norms and not having Chinese words”.
In comparison, all the blackboards of other third year classes all conformed to the norms. All of them had either two people on it or a few animals drawn on them with inspirational slogans written on them:
“New semester, new image, let’s set sail and fly together.”
“Success = hard work + the right approach + speak less empty talk.”
Then there is the cheerful, but super-fake phrase made up of short two to three word sentences:
“New semester, new look, new pursuit, new goal, in the early morning, the sun shines, super excited, enter the school…”
Who enters the school super excited? It should be more like entering the school with a face of suffering. Any bookworms who want school to start again will all get beat up by their classmates.
It didn’t matter if it was praise or criticism, Zhuang Ni turned a deaf ear to them and only cared about what the class leader said.
“I don’t have any more to say about the appearance.” The class leader stood in front of the blackboard and chose her words carefully, “Shouldn’t we add a few words at the top to encourage everyone to study harder.”
“It’s useless.” Zhuang Ni said coldly while sketching a side portrait of the class leader, “People who know to work hard have already been working hard for a long time, and even a hundred slogans are useless for people who aren’t willing to work hard. Also, the people who win in the end are either super hard-working geniuses, or super geniuses who only puts in a normal amount of hard work. As for people with average intelligence, no matter how hard they work, will only become subordinates.”
“Hey.” The class leader felt that Zhuang Ni had gone too far with her words.
Xiao Qin also heard what she said and it seems she was enlightened.
“Hey, it turns out that I can succeed in manga if I just put in a normal amount of hard work…”
What, do you think you’re a “super genius” in manga? Where the hell did you get your confidence from? Don’t you know that “Cthulhu also wants to fall in love” has become a negative example for some people to attack Chinese manga because of its poor drawings?
From time to time, you would see these kinds of comments in the discussions related to ‘Cthulhu also wants to fall in love’:
“It’s ridiculous that even this manga can be serialized, even if it’s only a web serialization.”
“That’s right, ‘Celery-sensei’ claims to be a 14-year-old female middle school student to attract views, but who knows if it’s true or not. I bet they are actually an uncle who picks his feet.”
“Japanese manga are better, I will never read Chinese manga in my life.”
“Hello traitor, goodbye traitor.”
“Is there something wrong with you? I never watch the Chinese soccer team, are you going to call me a traitor for watching the Brazil team?”
“Chinese manga aren’t good because the system isn’t democratic, and there are traitors everywhere. Long live democracy, put the traitors in a deep fryer.”
The discussion often gets derailed halfway through and then becomes a post about something else. There are certain people who say they haven’t even read “Cthulhu also want to fall in love” and only came to join the fun.
“What, Celery-sensei, is a traitor sent by the Japanese to corrupt the reputation of Chinese manga?”
“Has the OP above taken his medicine yet. Wash up and go to sleep after you take your medicine. Why don’t you say that the Brazilian team sent traitors to corrupt the reputation of the Chinese men’s soccer team?”
“That’s enough. Have the commenters above even read the manga? ‘Cthulhu Love’ is a good manga with rigorous plot, it’s beautifully drawn and very touching. I’m looking forward to chapter 5 every day. At the end of the 4th chapter, Dagon found out Cthulhu and Hydra had an adulterous relationship and was about to hire a killer to kill Cthulhu. I want to know the ending!”
“I think you’re the one who’s not even following the manga. The 5th chapter was posted last night. It didn’t contain a lot of information, but it talked about how Dagon hired a cross-eyed killer. He was a bit off with his shot on a sniper rifle, so it hit Cthulhu’s anus when he was coming out of the hospital and so he had to enter the hospital again…”
“Damn, don’t spill the plot, I’m going to read it right now.”
Zhuang Ni said to the class leader that if she wasn’t satisfied with the blackboard, she would redraw it tonight as long as the class leader supervises her.
The class leader hesitated for a while. On one hand, she felt that the starry sky on the blackboard was the fruit of Zhuang Ni’s labor and it was too bad to destroy it, on the other hand she probably wanted to go home on time to get pampered by her mother (I’m guessing), so she reluctantly agreed to use Zhuang Ni’s design to enter this week’s blackboard competition.
Nothing noteworthy really happened in the morning. In the afternoon language class, old man Zhang praised the artist after seeing the blackboard, but Zhuang Ni didn’t appreciate it since she didn’t want to hear praise from a man.
While he praised it, he also realized it didn’t contain any words of encouragement, so he specially told us the story of “Su Wu Herding Sheep” to use Su Wu’s hardships as an example to encourage us to study hard.
“Do you know, back then Qiedihou said: ‘Su Wu can only return to Han if ram can produce milk. Rams are male sheep, so it was basically saying if Su Wu wants to return to the Han Dynasty, he has to make male sheep produce milk…”
“How can male sheep produce milk, the chanyu is awful.” some students sympathized with Su Wu.
But Eunuch Cao laughed: “Jie Jie Jie Jie, actually if Su Wu just used his brain, he can also make a bowl of ‘ram’s milk’ for the chanyu to drink. If I was Su Wu’s assistant, history would have been rewritten…”
Rewrite my ass, if chanyu drank that “ram’s milk”, they absolutely would have immediately started a war!
“Hahahahahahahahahaha.” Xiong YaoYue laughed so hard after listening to Eunuch Cao’s dirty joke that her stomach cramped up and she banged on her own desk. She was called up by the language teacher and told to stand at the back of the classroom with Eunuch Cao as punishment.
The two of them were standing quite close to the blackboard, so they could appreciate Zhuang Ni’s masterpiece.
In order to prevent the two of them from whispering to each other, Xiong YaoYue was told to stand to the left of the board, behind me and Xiao Qin, while Eunch Cao was told to stand to the right of the board, behind the class leader and the chameleon.
Xiong YaoYue was bored of standing and didn’t dare to play with her phone right in the open, so she quietly talked to me and Xiao Qin.
“Ye Lin, Xiao Qin, have you two seen Ai Mi’s robot, the one called ‘B-2’? The other day, it fired an anesthetic needle at a homeless person. How did it do that when it violates the Three Laws of Robotics?”
I would like to know how you know about the Three Laws of Robotics as a girl? It seems like your hobbies are very masculine.
“I thought B-2 was ordered by Ai Mi to buy potato chips, but then it almost got broken by a homeless man and turned into scrap metal, so it attacked them.”
Xiao Qin used her language textbook as a cover and whispered to Xiong YaoYue.
“But the first law of the Three Laws of Robotics, is ‘A robot may not injure a human being’! How did B-2 violate the first law and hurt the homeless person.”
I cleared my throat.
“Didn’t you hear from Dr. Yu? B-2 abides by a modified version of the Three Laws of Robotics. The modified first law says B-2 cannot harm its masters and cannot watch its masters be harmed. It doesn’t have any restriction towards anyone else.”
“I think I heard about it…” Xiong YaoYue recollected, “I think Ai Mi is master number one, Dr. Yu is master number two, Ye Lin is master number three, and I’m master number four, in order of decreasing importance…”
“Huh, in that case, if I push you down when I’m joking around, then B-2 might attack me, but if you push me down, B-2 wouldn’t care.”
“Do not use ‘push down’, it’s easy to misunderstand. Also B-2 is an idiot anyway. Two days ago, it attacked a homeless person, one reason was to protect itself, but on the other hand, it might have thought that Ai Mi would die if she doesn’t eat any chips. So anyone who prevents it from getting chips would be an enemy who is trying to harm master number one.”
“By the way, it still seems to think that humans will die if they leave a wifi signal for ten minutes. So I guess even robots can be retarded…”
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