Chapter 8
Watching Yan Lu gently reason with a dog, Jian Xin gradually accepted the fact that she had turned back into a duck.
My understanding of this world is far too shallow, she thought.
Since this situation had befallen her, being negative and breaking down was pointless. Besides, her “main body” wasn’t dead yet, so she might just pop back into it at any time.
At this point, striving to maintain her mental health and not letting this paranormal event drive her crazy was more important than anything.
Actually, looking on the bright side, what’s so bad about being a duck?
At least the duck’s owner was quite gentle and would never mistreat a little duck.
Although there was a naughty dog in the house that always liked to bully the duck, considering the duck and dog had been living together for a long time before she arrived, the family dynamic probably wasn’t as disharmonious as she imagined.
Taking a huge step back, transmigrating into this duck was at least better than the protagonists in many transmigration novels, who were snatched by a system like a human trafficker and sent to another world to do dangerous and difficult tasks, not even allowed to go home until they were finished.
After a good round of self-consolation, the sense of collapse in Jian Xin’s heart lessened considerably.
First time’s a learning experience, second time’s a habit. With the experience from last time, she could even walk more steadily.
That dog named Xin Xin was currently lying quietly in the corner of the room, its short legs curled up, its pointy ears drooping, receiving a gentle lecture from Yan Lu.
This won’t do.
Jian Xin believed that a naughty dog that liked to bully ducks could not be reformed with words!
As a living, breathing adult, even if she had always been afraid of dogs, and even if she was a duck now, she absolutely could not be looked down upon by a Corgi!
A duck’s revenge must be taken now.
With Yan Lu watching, she refused to believe this Corgi would actually eat her alive!
With this thought, Jian Xin stood up from the floor.
Her beady eyes locked onto the target in a second. She puffed out her round duck chest, swaggered with an “I-don’t-recognize-my-own-kin” gait, and strode confidently to Yan Lu’s feet—tilting her head, she glared at Xin Xin.
“Quack!” So you’re the one called Xin Xin, huh?
Xin Xin tilted its head in confusion.
The next second, the duck suddenly shot its neck forward and, with the speed of lightning but the form of a chicken pecking at rice, furiously pecked Xin Xin’s forehead several times!
After half a second of stunned silence, Xin Xin suddenly leaped up and pounced forward.
Jian Xin had anticipated this. She flapped her wings, turned, and scurried behind Yan Lu, playing a game of cat and mouse around her for the next few seconds.
With the great mountain of an owner in the way, the dog couldn’t catch the duck no matter what, and it yapped anxiously.
The duck was not to be outdone, flapping its wings and quacking taunts.
Crouching on the floor, Yan Lu couldn’t help but rub her slightly throbbing temples.
It was a good thing her apartment had good soundproofing. Otherwise, with these two little ones making such a racket at night, she would definitely get complaints from the neighbors.
“You two…”
Can’t hear, can’t hear—
The duck and the dog continued their frantic chase.
Ten minutes later.
The duck was once again stuffed into the duck cage.
Looking at Yan Lu’s back as she typed, Jian Xin felt a little indignant.
“Quack?” Why am I always the one getting locked up?
“Quack ah?!” Is a duck cage cheaper than a dog cage?
“Woof woof, wooo~ woof!”
Xin Xin crouched outside the cage, barking at the duck.
“Quack…” What are you barking at? It’s not like I can understand you!
Jian Xin curled up and turned her head to look out the window.
Sigh, I’m suddenly a little hungry.
Although she had eaten a full meal in the afternoon, she was the one who ate it all. It had nothing to do with this duck named Cauliflower.
She was genuinely afraid that her frequent transmigrations would ruin this little duck’s health from starvation.
But as a human, she really couldn’t bring herself to eat things like worms.
Even though she knew mealworms were high in protein and a duck’s taste buds were surely different from a human’s, she still couldn’t get over that mental hurdle.
Fortunately, the duck had eaten a little before she transmigrated, so it should be able to hold out until she left.
The next time she saw Yan Lu, she had to find a way to completely solve this issue of worms in the duck feed—this was a matter of a duck’s life and must be taken seriously!
The clatter of Yan Lu’s keyboard was crisp, accompanied by a series of gentle, purely instrumental songs. Listening to it, Jian Xin gradually felt drowsy.
She looked back. Xin Xin had once again fallen asleep by her cage.
The floor outside the cage was hard. It seemed this little dog really liked to sleep next to the duck.
The clock in the living room chimed once. She didn’t know what time it was, or how much longer Yan Lu would write before resting.
Jian Xin came back to her senses and let out a soft sigh.
In a very distant memory, she too had once lain in bed with her phone, listening to the sound of a keyboard as she fell asleep.
—That was not a pleasant memory.
With this thought, Jian Xin closed her eyes in annoyance, letting sleep slowly wash over her.
In a half-awake state, Yan Lu turned off her computer and walked over to the duck cage, crouching for a while.
Through her slightly squinted eyes, she saw Yan Lu gently stroking the Corgi’s fur, muttering something.
“She woke up today… still the same as before, talking so much and so fast… doesn’t care if you’re familiar with her or not…”
“If you don’t play along, she just gets awkward by herself…”
“Sometimes… she… seems to have changed… and yet she seems the same…”
Jian Xin tried to perk up her ears to hear more clearly, but she was too sleepy. Both her vision and the sound became increasingly blurry in her drowsiness.
Forget it, it’s probably nothing good anyway. Just from the beginning, I can tell it’s most likely not praise.
In a daze, a fleeting, blurry thought crossed her mind.
If a person can transmigrate into a duck, why can’t they go back to their childhood?
If I could, I would definitely tell my younger self a truth about how to navigate the world!
—Life is hard, and the world is unpredictable.
Yan Lu and alcohol, avoid them if you can.
***
The bell for evening self-study rang.
Jian Xin kept her head down, finishing the last of the potato chips with her deskmate.
When she looked up again, their head teacher, Old Li, was already sitting at the podium.
Today was the day the mid-term exam results were released. Most of the class hadn’t done well, and Old Li’s face was much grimmer than usual.
He didn’t have any classes during the day, so he had specifically asked the English teacher for today’s evening self-study session just to give them a good lecture.
“Why did you all do so poorly this time?”
“Especially in math. The lowest score was 12.5, the highest was 137—look, just look! Second to last in the grade!”
“Is it Teacher Mo’s problem? Why is it that with the same Teacher Mo, someone in Class 3 got a perfect score, and Class 3 can be second from the top?”
“There are eighteen classes in this first year of high school, and our Class 8 is second to last in math in the grade! Aren’t you ashamed?!”
The head teacher’s fingers rapped on the podium, and the classroom below was silent.
After more than ten minutes, he finally tired of scolding. He slapped the grade report on the desk and sighed deeply. “Same old rule, let’s switch seats.”
The so-called “same old rule” was that after every monthly exam, the seating arrangement would be slightly adjusted according to the test scores.
The rule for changing seats was simple. The top ten students in the class could choose a classmate to switch seats with, one by one. After the top ten had chosen, the top three students with the most improvement in their grade ranking could also choose a classmate to switch with.
Because of the seat changes, many people started whispering, and the quiet self-study session gradually became noisy.
Jian Xin’s grades had always been mediocre, her class and grade rankings always somewhere in the middle. This seat-choosing business never had anything to do with her.
She buried her head behind a tall stack of books, sharing a pair of earphones with her deskmate, secretly listening to some music she had been enjoying recently.
But as the music played, her deskmate, with whom she got along quite well, was chosen by someone else.
In that instant, she stared with wide eyes, reluctantly watching her old deskmate move all her books away in several trips.
The new deskmate had a single ponytail, the ends cut bluntly like a small broom.
She wasn’t tall, her small, thin body swallowed by an autumn school uniform that was clearly two sizes too big. Her face was small, her skin very pale, the kind that lacked color, looking somewhat malnourished.
This classmate was named Yan Lu. Her academic performance was not outstanding, she was not active in answering questions in class, and she always kept her head down, not liking to talk to people. She was an almost invisible presence in the class.
This time, her grade ranking had improved by more than five hundred places. Even Old Li couldn’t help but praise her a few times when he announced her improvement.
Looking at the new deskmate who had just moved her books over, Jian Xin took off her earphones, lowered her voice, and proactively said “hi” to her.
The other girl glanced at her and mumbled a response, “Uh-huh.”
She lowered her head and continued to organize her desk.
Faced with a cold new deskmate, Jian Xin didn’t give up on communication right away.
She waited patiently on the side. When her deskmate had finally finished setting up her new seat, she leaned over again. “You’re amazing, improving so much. How did you do it?”
“…”
“If I could improve by two hundred places, my mom would be ecstatic!”
“…”
“Theoretically, I have a lot of room for improvement, but in reality, my test scores only go down or stay the same—”
“…”
“Are you listening to me?”
“I’m listening,” Yan Lu replied without looking up, her eyes on the “5-3 Mock Exams” book on her desk.
“You’re so quiet!” Jian Xin couldn’t help but be curious. “This seat is pretty far back. You can’t see the blackboard clearly if you’re even a little nearsighted. Why did you choose to sit here?”
“…”
“I know, you want to mess around in class too!”
Jian Xin talked for a long time without getting much of a response. After some thought, she took out a Wo Wo milk candy from her schoolbag and offered it to Yan Lu. “Want some candy?”
In her experience, there was no classmate who couldn’t be won over with snacks. But this new deskmate actually just shook her head at her snack bribe, not even bothering to say a word.
This reaction was a bit of a blow to Jian Xin, who had always been quite popular.
After a brief silence, she said, “Oh—” and stopped trying to make a fool of herself.
Jian Xin put one earphone back in, held a pen, and propped her face up with one hand, pretending to look at the untouched math homework on her desk.
An unknown amount of time passed when suddenly, a small note was pushed in front of her by her deskmate.
There was only one sentence on the note—Hello, my name is Yan Lu.
What is this?
She doesn’t like to talk, only likes to pass notes?
Jian Xin hesitated for a moment, then wrote a reply on the note and pushed it back.
—I know that. Why weren’t you talking just now?
—I didn’t know what to say.
—In that situation, you could have just made a sound. Otherwise, it’s very awkward for me to be talking by myself.
—I’m sorry!
—I didn’t mean to blame you, don’t be nervous! Since we’re deskmates now, we should look out for each other in the future!
The note passed back and forth to this point, then suddenly stopped.
Jian Xin propped her chin on her hand and waited for a while. Her gaze unconsciously drifted towards Yan Lu, only to see that the note was gone, and the person she had been passing notes with was already doing her Chinese homework. She couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed.
Growing up, she had always been the one ignoring others. When had it ever been her turn to not even get a reply to a note she passed?!
Couldn’t this person at least reply with a single particle word?
The more Jian Xin thought about it, the angrier she got. She couldn’t resist tearing a small piece of paper from her notebook, writing a new note, and passing it over.
—How can you be like this? I’m going to get angry!
When I get angry, it’s super scary!
How scary?
That night, even after receiving a note that said, “I’m sorry, I thought the conversation was over,” she never said another word to Yan Lu, nor did she ever reply to another note!
The evening self-study for day students was an hour shorter than for boarding students.
The moment the bell rang, her new deskmate seemed to want to say something to her, hesitating.
She just put on a cold face, slung her schoolbag over her shoulder, and quickly walked out of the classroom.
The car to pick her up was parked at the school gate. As soon as Jian Xin got in, she started telling her mom about her new deskmate who was not easy to get along with at all.
Her mom listened for a long time and then laughed. “I actually think your new deskmate is pretty good. It’s right not to chat with people during evening self-study. If you ask me, it’s good to have a deskmate who ignores you. It’ll save you from not studying properly.”
Jian Xin was momentarily speechless, and it took her a long time to squeeze out a sentence. “I’m an art student, okay? I don’t need a high academic score!”
“But it can’t be too low either.”
“Just you watch. I’ll definitely improve a lot next time and get a new deskmate!”
Jian Xin said with great determination. As soon as she got home, she made a study plan.
It included, but was not limited to—waking up early every day to memorize vocabulary, reciting texts during the long break between classes, taking half an hour from her lunch break to do practice problems, taking notes seriously in class, and not copying anyone’s homework before she got a new deskmate!
Looking at the plan in her hand, Jian Xin nodded with satisfaction.
Next month, she would definitely be able to get rid of this deskmate!
Her determination that night was as clear as day, as was the 6:20 AM alarm she named “Memorize Vocabulary”!
However, the next morning…
The moment the alarm rang, Jian Xin rolled over and turned it off without a second thought.
—Memorize vocabulary?
Memorize my ass.
