Chapter 47: Change
On a weekend evening, the classroom was a scene of clamor. It wasn’t evening self-study yet, so everyone was talking and laughing, the air filled with cheer.
Because it was the Mid-Autumn Festival, the moon tonight was exceptionally round.
With half a month left until the mid-terms, the students had enjoyed a rare good holiday. The popular ones started handing out small mooncakes to their friends in the classroom. Then, someone suddenly shouted, “The teacher’s here!”
Even though it wasn’t class time, the classroom instantly fell silent. Those with comics put them away, those with novels hid them.
The front door opened, and Ruan Xi and Yin Jiali, each holding a box, looked at the quiet classroom in confusion.
“What’s wrong? Not going in?”
Tong Yao said from behind them.
Everyone in the classroom let out a collective sigh of relief.
“Tch~”
“Oh, it’s just Teacher Tong.”
“Which son was it that scared us just now?”
“Teacher Tong, what are they carrying?”
Finally, someone got to the point.
“Mooncakes,” Tong Yao smiled and opened the box lid. “For you all to eat.”
“Oh!”
“Long live Teacher Tong!”
The enthusiastic atmosphere made Ruan Xi a little flustered. She wanted to step down from the podium but was held back by Tong Yao.
“Where are you going? Hand out the mooncakes.”
“I… I’ll hand them out?”
“You and Jiali can do it together.”
Ruan Xi swallowed. Since realizing her feelings for Teacher Tong, she had become more and more flustered around her. Every time she interacted with Teacher Tong, her heart would race and her face would flush.
She carried the box and walked down the aisle between the groups, handing out mooncakes one by one. Everyone was a well-mannered child and would say thank you after receiving a mooncake. She gently pursed her lips, feeling like a thief who had stolen their gratitude meant for Teacher Tong.
If Teacher Tong knew about my feelings, what would she think?
After one round of mooncakes, everyone had a deeper understanding of their Teacher Tong’s wealth. Even the packaging of the mooncakes looked more expensive than their ordinary ones.
“Whoever marries Teacher Tong can struggle for 20 years less,” someone lamented.
“I want to marry Teacher Tong. Can I struggle for 20 years more?” someone quipped.
Ruan Xi heard this, her face sour. She switched the lotus seed paste and egg yolk mooncake she was about to toss him for a five-nut one.
After doing this, she felt a little guilty—wasn’t this a personal vendetta? And using Teacher Tong’s things for her own vendetta.
But Chairman Mao had once said, treat your comrades as warmly as spring, and your enemies as ruthlessly as the autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves.
She also wanted to marry Teacher Tong, so she and these classmates were enemies.
“Hey, Ruan Xi, I don’t eat five-nut! Do you have any lotus seed paste?”
“Nope.”
It was the first time she had lied without blushing or her heart skipping a beat.
Tong Yao stood for a while, watching the more cheerful young girl, the corners of her lips curling into a beautiful arc.
Time to go to Class 4 to hand out mooncakes.
**
Class 4, which hadn’t started its evening self-study yet, was also orderly.
“Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, Sister Yao Yao!” Xu Yin took out a box of mooncakes in the hallway. It was a rather exquisite box, as if in exchange for her mooncakes.
“Thank you.”
Tong Yao accepted it with a smile.
“Sister Yao Yao, you don’t like to eat eggplant, do you?” Xu Yin had her hands behind her back and reached out to scratch her hair.
“Eggplant, I’m not a big fan…”
Tong Yao said honestly.
Xu Yin’s cheeks puffed up slightly, and she lowered her head in frustration.
“But I’m very happy that you have this thought,” afraid of discouraging her, Tong Yao quickly said. “Really.”
The girl gave a “mhm.” After a while, she looked up and smiled.
“Then I’m going in to do my homework. Bye-bye, Sister Yao Yao~”
“Mhm, bye-bye.”
Tong Yao stood at the door and looked around inside. When her gaze swept over Chen Mo, her heart sank a little. That child seemed even more lifeless. She was hunched over, grinding through problems, like a robot, or a manipulated puppet.
Chen Mo was not among the 40 participants in Class 4’s horse-riding dance. She seemed to have undergone some change. In the colorful campus life, she lived only for studying.
Or for her father.
She went in through the back door, tapped Shen Yumin on the shoulder, and signaled for him to come out.
Outside the office.
“How are you and Chen Mo now?”
“…We broke up.” The boy looked at the ground, his eyes lifeless. “Teacher, please don’t push her.”
“We’re not pushing her.” Tong Yao rubbed her temples, her head aching. “I’m afraid she’s suffering in silence and something will happen. Is there anything unusual about her?”
The boy lowered his head, thinking.
“She’s never been talkative,” Shen Yumin’s voice was full of helplessness. “With a father like that, I don’t dare to chat with her on QQ anymore.”
After asking her questions, Tong Yao let him go back.
She had gained nothing.
Middle school students’ psychology is the most prone to problems. Children of this age are easily influenced by the outside world. Whatever they are taught, they become. It is a thousand times harder to become good, but it only takes a moment to become bad.
She wasn’t worried that Chen Mo would become bad. A child with such a gentle personality was unlikely to have a mental breakdown and become a delinquent. Instead, she was more likely to collapse from being too tense.
A broken string, no matter how you reconnect it, is hard to restore to its original state.
**
A new week, the school held a teacher’s meeting. Tong Yao was so sleepy she could barely stay awake.
Until the school leader dropped a bombshell.
On the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, a third-year boy from the neighboring Changya Middle School had jumped off a building. He couldn’t be saved.
Hearing this news, the entire venue buzzed.
Changya and No. 1 High were both top high schools in the province, national key schools. When something like this happened, the news was tightly suppressed by the officials, but it couldn’t stop the wagging tongues, and eventually, all sorts of details leaked out.
It was said that he was a student who had taken a year off due to illness and had jumped because of excessive pressure. His parents had rushed over from out of town and had cried until the walls were about to collapse.
“Tsk, tsk, you see these students now, they just jump whenever they feel like it,” Lu Bingjie shook her head repeatedly. “How sad must their parents be.”
To end one’s life like this was indeed so rash that it was both infuriating and heartbreaking.
Death is just a moment.
In the instant of taking that leap, would one still think of the people and things they cared about?
Tong Yao couldn’t imagine one of her own students losing their life.
“Quiet!”
Vice Principal Tong Jiansheng roared into the microphone. “Misfortunes never come singly. I’ll show you a piece of surveillance footage. This is from the overpass, from last week.”
The lights in the venue dimmed, and a video appeared on the screen.
A car was stopped in the middle of the road. A boy suddenly opened the door and rushed out, vaulting over the bridge. The woman who got out of the car after him was frantic. She looked down, then collapsed onto the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.
“This was a mother who scolded her child. The child, in a fit of pique, used suicide as revenge,” Tong Jiansheng said gravely. “He died on the spot. What do children know? They haven’t even figured out the meaning of death, and they just end it so rashly, without even a chance to regret. What is there that can’t be solved, that you have to commit suicide? For a child to commit suicide is the adult’s dereliction of duty!
“From today on, we must pay special attention to the students’ psychological counseling! Depression is not a joke. If something happens, the school will be held responsible!
“Finally, there is one more important matter.”
Tong Jiansheng paused and changed to another document.
“The year after next’s college entrance examination, which is for the current second-year students, may have some changes. The higher-ups haven’t confirmed it yet, but it’s very likely that we will no longer take the Hunan provincial exam, but will uniformly switch to the National Volume I. We must be prepared to adapt at any time.”
If the previous news of the suicide had only made people sigh, then this topic, which was directly related to their interests, was what really made the teachers explode.
