Chapter 48: Walking to the Cafeteria Together

The afternoon sun was just right, and there was no younger sister upstairs.

The fourth-floor classes were all in session, making the corridor seem spacious. A set of desks and chairs was placed outside the door of each classroom, commonly known as the special seats for evening self-study remedial lessons.

These were generally used by students with good grades but severe partial subject imbalances to make up for lessons during evening self-study.

Jiang Nian held his breath, straightened his back, and walked past the doors of other people's classrooms. He tried his best not to appear too out of place to avoid being scrutinized by the gazes from other classes.

Uh... he felt a bit like a covert operative.

Class A403 was quiet, with seven or eight classmates scattered around. Their desks were piled high with books; they looked up at him for a moment before lowering their heads to continue writing problems.

Jiang Nian didn't see anyone he knew. He returned to his seat, calmed his mind, and began solving math problems.

He hadn't looked into the system tasks carefully yet, nor had he thought much about them. Work is work, and study is study; he could clearly distinguish the priorities between the two.

First, the system task had no time limit, nor did it have legs to run away by itself. Second, as long as he didn't get married, in a sense, he had fundamentally and crudely completed the counterattack.

Finally, the so-called counterattack of his thirty-eight-year-old self in another spacetime was essentially using the system to correct mistakes in a life that had taken many detours.

No matter how much he lost weight, re-established contact with the lingering regret of his childhood sweetheart and ex-girlfriend, and constantly made corrections and attempts at redemption—no matter how hard he tried, whatever had happened could only amount to stop-loss.

Jiang Nian hadn't experienced any of those things at all, so he didn't need the system. Merely by doing nothing, he had already won against his thirty-eight-year-old self from another spacetime.

To him, the system was just the icing on the cake.

To reiterate, he had always treated the system as a fan-fiction mini-game. For him, this was a management mini-game that periodically dropped gold coins and gave rewards.

Studying was different. Xu Qianqian was right: past faults cannot be reprimanded, but future deeds can be pursued.

The memory bread helped him brush up on the basics. If he wanted to maintain his grades in the end-of-month exams, and if he wanted to get into a better university next summer, he still had to rely on his own efforts.

Without a brain, even a fortune of money would eventually scatter.

He was eighteen, right at the age where he felt capable of anything. There was no need to choose between completing system tasks to make money and studying—he wanted both.

He would make money with one hand and study with the other, possessing both the fragrance of knowledge and the power of money.

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

The phone alarm rang at 11:50. Jiang Nian instantly put down his pen, stood up, and walked out.

Are you kidding me? No matter how fragrant knowledge was, it couldn't fill an empty stomach. The college entrance examination wasn't decided in a single moment, and fake diligence was useless; it was time to sleep when it was time to sleep, and time to eat when it was time to eat.

Besides, he truly loved the cafeteria auntie and always ran when he saw her. Moreover, the younger students had an even deeper passion; if you didn't run, you really wouldn't get any food.

He bolted the moment class ended, his legs longer than his life. Romance had to be put aside for a moment—a person could be single, but they couldn't go without food. Getting to eat two minutes earlier could even move your ranking up in the family lineage chart.

Physical education, that rare and endangered curriculum of the senior year, was actually scheduled as the fourth period of the morning, which was essentially a freebie. If he lost the priority to grab food, it would simply be a heavenly waste.

Just as he stepped out, he bumped right into monitor Li Qingrong.

The two of them crossed paths, and Jiang Nian's gaze locked with hers for a fleeting second, making him feel quite awkward. He proactively shifted his gaze away and greeted her.

"Monitor, are you... going home?"

Jiang Nian knew that Li Qingrong's family was well-off and she generally didn't eat in the cafeteria. He had learned this from Yao Beibei, a flirtatious girl who seemed to pay extraordinary attention to Li Qingrong.

He had no time to figure out Li Qingrong; he only wanted to eat.

"Going to the cafeteria." Li Qingrong's eyes were calm, her tone unhurried. "I haven't finished my problems, so I'm not going home at noon."

"Oh, oh." Jiang Nian's mind was on the cafeteria, and hearing her say the word "cafeteria" made him feel hungry. "Me too. Monitor, you'd better hurry, otherwise there won't be any food left."

He was just offering a kind reminder, though Jiang Nian wasn't usually known for being so benevolent. Today was a special case: it was 11:52, leaving exactly eight minutes until the noon dismissal.

From the fourth-floor classroom to the cafeteria took six minutes of walking or two minutes of running. With time to spare, Jiang Nian could even afford to spend six minutes being a good Samaritan.

When all was said and done, he was just being polite.

Who would have thought that Li Qingrong would nod and say, "Okay."

Jiang Nian thought to himself, *I am truly a motherfucking saint*, and then started walking down the stairs. After taking a few steps, he suddenly felt something was amiss. He turned his head, and Li Qingrong was following right behind him.

"Monitor, aren't you going back to the classroom?"

"Um, not going back. I ran out of tissues," Li Qingrong nodded. "I originally wanted to go back and get some, but what you said makes sense."

???

Jiang Nian suspected that the monitor had an antennae-like cowlick on her head, but it didn't matter anymore.

Things had reached this point; let's eat first.

The two of them walked down the stairs one after the other, and once they exited the teaching building, they fell into step side by side. As dismissal neared, the students from the few classes having PE on the basketball court had mostly dispersed.

Day students went home or to the cafeteria, while boarding students returned to their dormitories. The girls were busy washing their hair, and the boys headed to the cafeteria near the north gate of the dorm building.

For a day student like Jiang Nian, the north gate dormitory cluster was an entirely new map. It belonged to a forbidden sect territory, with only a few day students entering the school from the north gate.

At the end of the day, it was because the north gate connected to the bus station leading out of Zhennan County.

The street outside was pitch black and the roads were dilapidated. Auto repair shops, late-night barbecues, and old rental houses formed a stark contrast to the prosperity of the school's front gate.

The small alleys were dark, with tangled wires crossing the sky, possessing a sort of small-India aesthetic.

Bang!

A yellowish basketball flew high into the air, tracing an elegant parabola and accurately falling into the hoop, instantly sparking a burst of cheers on the court.

The remaining eight or nine boys were covered in sweat. Li Hua ran around the half-court, and a three-pointer made him extremely excited.

Turning his head, he saw that scene and his jaw almost dropped to the ground.

"Jiang Nian! The monitor!"

"Are you crazy? Do you want Jiang Nian to be the monitor that badly?" someone teased. "Though our monitor is indeed a bit rigid. If it were Jiang Nian..."

"No, what the hell, look at this yourself!" Li Hua said with tears in his eyes.

The three-pointer was great; he wouldn't shoot another one next time!

On the nearly empty sports field, Jiang Nian and Li Qingrong walked side by side. From afar, they looked like a young couple, yet Li Qingrong didn't feel like anything was wrong.

Her expression remained as usual, as if they were simply walking the same path.

True, after all, she was the monitor.

"Holy shit! Why is Jiang Nian walking with the monitor?" another flat-topped boy said. "Didn't... didn't he go upstairs to do problems? Is he trying to hit on the monitor?"

"Don't get so excited, you guys act like NPCs every day," the tall sports committee member waved a hand. "They're probably just walking the same way. Didn't you notice the monitor didn't have much expression on her face?"

The few of them were speechless all at once. *Not gonna lie, bro, do you have to look into it so closely?*

The next second, Li Hua exclaimed "Holy shit!" again, his finger trembling. "She smiled! Damn it, how can she smile at Jiang Nian! Such a bastard! What a motherfucking bastard!"