These leisurely days of accompanying Cheng Lele every week to study and watch movies continued until ninth grade, when some changes occurred.
Strictly speaking, Taixi only had one key high school. The others were all vocational technical schools and third-rate rural high schools. Cheng Lele’s grades were neither high nor low, hovering around the minimum admission line for the key high school. Chen An didn’t count on Cheng Lele achieving academic success, but he was afraid that if Cheng Lele went to those schools, she’d be led astray—people who were too well protected were most easily abducted by bad men. On this point, one could reference the various princesses and young ladies throughout history who fell into the dust and ended in tragedy. Chen An felt that Cheng Lele’s mind was still unenlightened. No matter what, he had to get her into Tai High to live under his watchful eye.
As it happened, Cheng Lele also had this grand ambition. This wasn’t because she suddenly developed enterprise. She had simply never left Chen An’s side and had the self-awareness that she’d be a useless waste without Little Brother himself. So at Chen An’s single command, she halted her movie-watching plans and began studying hard with the intensity of hanging from beams and stabbing thighs, or reading by the light of fireflies and snow.
Beside her was also a crown prince companion for studies—Chen An.
Chen An used to always think that Cheng Lele’s brain was only as big as a pine nut, with half of the pine nut cut away for her idols. Only now while reviewing coursework did he discover that the pine nut assessment was too optimistic—at most it was a grain of salt.
Chen An’s tutoring made him so frustrated that his whole body radiated an aura of “living people keep away.” Even his godfather and godmother had to look sideways when they saw him coming and going. There was no choice—their own daughter was dim-witted. They’d tutored her a few times when she was small and nearly had heart attacks. That Chen An could persist until now—didn’t that require superhuman willpower to tough it out?
Still, Ye Xiaomei felt sorry for her daughter and consoled her that if it didn’t work out, just take any high school exam casually. Cheng Lele looked at a wall of sticky notes and said: “Then Little Brother would still have to carry me to school and return to Taixi High afterward. How troublesome.” In recent years, Taixi County’s infrastructure development speed had been decent—from Buxi Town to Tai High only required a twenty-minute bicycle ride.
Ye Xiaomei had the frustrating feeling that her own daughter was rotten wood that couldn’t be carved: “Can’t you learn to ride a bicycle yourself? Learning to ride a bicycle has to be easier than you studying like this, right?”
Cheng Lele said: “No, my sense of balance has the fighting power of five trash. I’d die before riding a bicycle. My butt can only grow on the back seat.”
Chen An just happened to come in at this moment to deliver test papers. After hearing these words, he didn’t mock or ridicule coldly. He said to Ye Xiaomei: “Yes, better to study steadily and honestly.”
Ye Xiaomei thought, these two siblings, one willing to hit and one willing to be hit—she wouldn’t interfere anymore.
Sometimes seeing the two of them with their fuzzy heads huddled together under the lamplight, Ye Xiaomei would once again feel the wish rise up that childhood sweethearts would eventually walk toward the marriage hall. She and Cheng Dong had been married for many years, and their love was as sweet as ever. Naturally she hoped her daughter could also be cherished and loved for life. Looking from any angle, Chen An was the perfect candidate to consider. If one had to pick bones from an egg, it would be Chen An’s parents. Although Ye Xiaomei and Wang Liting had once been as close as sisters, under the carving knife blade of years, the two had unknowingly drifted further and further apart. The year before last on Chen An’s birthday, Wang Liting couldn’t rush back for the celebration and transferred ten thousand yuan in celebration fees to Ye Xiaomei, which she transferred back. Last year she transferred twenty thousand again, which was once again transferred back. In Taixi, even the most extravagant birthday party couldn’t use up this amount. Wang Liting was undoubtedly using this method to thank the Cheng family for their care. However, Ye Xiaomei was a sensitive person. She regarded Chen An as her own child, and her devotion was also willing and voluntary. In her eyes, Wang Liting’s crude practice of brushing people off with huge sums, without any preamble before or after, was commodifying friendship and showed great disrespect to her, making her feel like a nanny hired by Wang Liting. There was already growing discord between the two.