Chapter 39: Parent-Teacher Conference (Part 1)

After parking the car, Li Yuan looked at the pouring rain outside the window and sighed.

She leaned over, reached under the front passenger door, and retrieved the long black umbrella. Then, opening the door and unfurling the umbrella, accompanied by a crisp electronic lock beep confirming the car was locked, she stepped into the rain.

The raindrops were slightly cool. Despite having the umbrella, she couldn’t help but huddle tighter into her Snoopy hoodie. Yu Mi had once remarked that her taste in clothing was terrible. Apart from the Investigation Team uniform, her regular wardrobe consisted almost entirely of cartoon-emblazoned shirts, hooded sweatshirts, casual trousers, and canvas sneakers—rivalling the engineers emerging from polytechnic universities. Li Yuan had wanted to retort, but after checking her closet, she realized Yu Mi was stating a fact.

Rain had been falling one after another in Pingjiang these days; the humid air seemed perpetually tinged with a musty scent. Li Yuan squinted slightly, looking into the distance at the high school gates where the school flag hung. The vivid red flag surface shuddered wildly in the rainstorm’s onslaught, with eight characters written in a vigorous, flourishing script upon it: Pingjiang No. 1 Normal High School.

Li Yuan took out her cell phone, snapped a picture of the flag, then opened her contacts, found “Mother,” tapped send, and patiently awaited a reply. Before a few seconds passed, her mother’s question mark had already arrived. Her lips curved up slightly as she typed her reply, the words short and simple: “I’m going into Normal No. 1 for a parent-teacher conference.”

As she hit send, her smile involuntarily widened a bit more. She could already imagine her mother, on the other end, seeing those brief words—heartbroken and beating her chest in anguish. Sure enough, the message had barely been sent when her mother’s call came through. But it was a little different from what she’d imagined; the first sentence her mother greeted her with was, “Whose child is it?”

Li Yuan nearly choked on this question, completely unable to figure out how to answer it for a moment.

Her mother threw out several names in rapid succession, even including her high school deskmate from a decade ago, whom she had mentioned once. Even Li Yuan herself couldn’t remember who those names corresponded to anymore. Li Yuan could only cover her face, sigh, and interrupt her mother’s wild speculation: “How could it possibly be my child attending high school? Gossip and guesses need to stay within the realm of reason, Ms. Li, okay? Sixteen years ago, I was less than ten. How could I possibly have a child already in high school?”

Her mother choked awkwardly, a bit embarrassed, and said, “I was just worried you might follow my path, you know! You’ve always been quite like me… just like how you also missed getting into Pingjiang Normal No. 1 by a few points.”

Now it was Li Yuan’s turn to be speechless, because Ms. Li had hit a perfectly accurate truth. Their family’s troubled karma with Pingjiang No. 1 Normal High School was truly deep. Her mother had missed the cut-off for this top-ranked key high school in Pingjiang by just a hair back then, a fact her grandmother had complained about endlessly. While still in middle school, Li Yuan had joked with her grandmother about her mother’s near miss, claiming that if it were her, she’d surely get in… Then when her own high school entrance exam results came out, Li Yuan looked at the score and was stunned. Exactly like her mother, she had missed this school by three points.

When other kids didn’t get into their ideal high school, their parents mourned as if the world had ended. When Li Yuan didn’t get in, her mother was practically ready to pop open champagne. That very night, she even took Li Yuan out for a nice meal, under the noble pretense of consoling her for the exam failure. In reality, the corners of her mouth never dropped, and she even hypocritically squeezed out a couple of crocodile tears. Fifteen-year-old Li Yuan, seeing her mother’s petty satisfaction, was burning with fury but could only vent by eating and drinking wildly.

Angry as she was, she and her mother were indeed alike in every way, appearance and personality both. As her grandmother put it, they were cast from the same mold. Both were equally scatterbrained, casual, and unreliable. However, Li Yuan always believed she was probably slightly better than her mother, since she had no interest in marriage, whereas her mother in her youth was a complete lovefool, only coming to her senses after giving birth to Li Yuan, firmly resolving to stop believing a scumbag’s ghost talk and focusing entirely on raising her daughter.

Truth be told, that “focusing entirely” needed air quotes, because in Li Yuan’s memory, her mother was never a reliable mother. To this day, she still remembered the incidents from her childhood: like when Ms. Li, finding babysitting troublesome, directly put her into the washing machine to play by herself and nearly turned it on; or when Ms. Li, still childlike at heart, took her to touch still-wet paint, and neither of them could wash the paint off their hands afterwards, forcing them to seek help at the Police Station in tears; or when Ms. Li took her to learn swimming, and both ended up sinking together in the deep end, being scooped up one in each hand by the lifeguard… Countless such examples. Even Ms. Li had to admit that for Li Yuan to have grown up alive, her fate was truly extraordinarily tough.

She explained to her mother: “Remember the daughter of that target I told you about before? She’s a student at Pingjiang Normal No. 1. Team Leader Yu asked me to pose as her aunt for the parent-teacher conference… Better than having the seat empty, with all the other parents in the class present, leaving just her spot alone.”

Her mother seemed to recall. “That little girl surnamed Qi you mentioned?”

“Yeah,” Li Yuan sighed. “She’s doing incredibly well in school—usually steady within the top ten of her grade. This time in the five-school joint exam, she apparently really outdid herself, scoring a bare 706 and getting first in the five-school joint exam, practically first in all of Pingjiang City. So promising, yet ended up with parents like that. Truly bad luck.”

Her mother seemed to empathize, also sighing along: “It is tough, and she got stuck with an aunt like you too…”

Li Yuan’s face darkened as she hung up the phone. She found that she truly couldn’t hold a serious conversation with her mother; the topic would always get derailed.

After hanging up, she switched her phone to silent mode and walked toward the school gate. The roadsides were packed with parents’ cars. Li Yuan spotted many expensive, luxury vehicles among them. It was clear many parents knew each other, chatting as they walked alongside, politely and courteously exchanging business cards. It felt less like a parent-teacher meeting and more like a business networking event. Watching this, Li Yuan suddenly felt a pang of regret: Why had she worn the Snoopy hoodie? Mingling among this crowd of “social elites,” she was even more conspicuous than a lighthouse.

Nervously, she took the slip of paper from the front pocket of her hoodie and handed it to the Security Guard standing at the entrance. The fierce-looking guard, upon verifying the paper, cast another suspicious glance at the Snoopy on her hoodie. Li Yuan smiled somewhat stiffly, mentally cursing her earlier self for that morning’s wardrobe choice. “I’m Qi Xin’s aunt. Her parents are busy with… a business trip, so they asked me to attend the parent-teacher conference on their behalf.”

She couldn’t exactly tell the truth— “Qi Xin’s father is in prison, Qi Xin’s mother is a fugitive”—so she had to use the business trip excuse.

The Security Guard nodded. “Please register your name and contact info. You can go in.”

The glances cast her way from the surroundings made Li Yuan feel like her face was on fire. She perceived a hint of disdain within those looks: Busy with business? Which parent here hadn’t set aside a hundred pressing matters to attend their child’s parent-teacher conference? What could possibly be more important than a child’s education?

It was truly strange. She wasn’t even Qi Xin’s real aunt; what did she have to feel embarrassed about? Li Yuan couldn’t figure it out. She simply signed her name and contact information quickly on the paper and then entered the campus.

Once inside the school grounds, she finally let out a sigh of relief, lightly patting her cheeks for encouragement. Only then did she realize something that left her even more bewildered: the slip of paper stated that Qi Xin was in Grade 11 Class 1, but the question was: which building? Which floor? She really didn’t have the nerve to set aside her pride and ask other parents this question. She could only look toward the distance, where a young girl who looked like a student was sitting near the playground. The girl noticed her stare and glanced back with some curiosity.

The girl appeared well-behaved and quiet, her chestnut-colored pupils clear like a spring. It was that pristine quality unique to students. Seeing her own reflection within them, Li Yuan couldn’t help but feel a sense of inferiority.

“Um, classmate, sorry to bother you… Can you tell me where Grade 11 Class 1 is?” Li Yuan asked hesitantly.

The girl pointed toward the second teaching building not far behind her, speaking in a soft, gentle voice: “Grade 11 Class 1 is on the third floor, the innermost room… May I ask whose parent you are?”

“Thank you,” the girl’s politeness let Li Yuan breathe easier. She repeated the cover story she’d prepared earlier. “I’m Qi Xin’s aunt. Her parents are away on a business trip, so they asked me to attend the parent-teacher conference for them…”

Before she could finish her sentence, she suddenly saw the well-behaved, quiet girl before her spring up abruptly, her expression reserved and nervous, speaking with a slight stammer: “You’re Qi Xin’s aunt? H-Hello Miss! My name is Lu Changya, from Grade 11 Class 2, Qi Xin’s friend. I don’t know if she’s mentioned me, but we’ve been rehearsing recently for the year-end celebration…”

Her voice grew quieter and quieter, her fair cheeks, which looked so obedient, flushing bright red. Li Yuan couldn’t bear to let her continue babbling incoherently, so she gently interjected: “What are you performing?”

The girl’s eyes suddenly lit up. “Clair de Lune, the third piece from the Suite Bergamasque. Moonlight.”

Li Yuan nodded, her face wearing an expression that said “I totally know what you’re talking about,” “Ah, yes, that thing, of course.” In truth, she knew absolutely nothing about musical instruments, her sole understanding of such matters stopping at Beethoven’s deafness. She suddenly felt a pang of regret that Yu Mi wasn’t here; he might have been able to chat quite enthusiastically with this artistic, literary girl.