Chen Hang suddenly gave a thumbs up, his admiration conveyed perfectly through his amazing acting skills: "Brother Ning is awesome."
"Brother Ning gets first place in every exam!" Song Wenmiao solemnly performed a Young Pioneers salute.
However, Su Jinning's face was already a mixture of black and white.
"You know what, it really rhymes." Shen Moyu didn't stop writing, her tone tinged with laughter.
Su Jinning hissed and kicked Chen Hang's chair hard, gritting her teeth as she said, "If you want to go home early after school, you two should shut up."
Chen Hang didn't dare to say much, he just gave a timid reply and then expressed his dissatisfaction with a "tsk".
Song Wenmiao, on the other hand, made a gesture as if he were zipping up his mouth.
Shen Moyu smiled helplessly, watching Chen Hang and Song Wenmiao being completely controlled by Su Jinning, who wouldn't dare to say a word if he said east. He wanted to laugh a little, so he asked, as if making a joke, "Didn't you two ever think about rebelling?"
Su Jinning glared at him, giving him the look of a general looking at a deserter, and said, "They dare!"
"Brother Ning, if you keep treating me like this, I might just switch sides." Chen Hang raised his eyebrows smugly.
Su Jinning narrowed her eyes, then immediately laughed, giving them both a look of exasperation: "Treason? Who can you two possibly turn to? Who would want you two?"
"I...we..." Chen Hang stammered, unable to get a clear answer, before suddenly pointing at Shen Moyu and saying, "We'll team up with the top student!"
"Me?" Shen Moyu pointed to himself, his smile filled with disbelief.
"Bullshit, you two! Do you think they want you? Idiots." Su Jinning rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair, her disgust practically overflowing.
Chen Hang blinked his fairly large eyes at him: "Hey top student, want us to run errands for you?"
Song Wenmiao also went over to try and get closer to him.
Shen Moyu looked left and right, and the two people's gazes almost made him die of embarrassment.
"I don't need to run errands," Shen Moyu said with a slightly apologetic smile, declining their sincere invitation.
Seeing that her words had been proven true, Su Jinning sat up straight and began to mock them: "See? Just look at the two of you..."
“I have Su Jinning.” Shen Moyu smiled, then turned to look at Su Jinning with a hint of provocation.
"Oh~" Chen Hang rubbed his hands together, looking at the two of them with an "I understand" expression.
"There are always people more capable than you, and there's always something beyond your understanding." Song Wenmiao gave Shen Moyu a thumbs up. Then he watched the two of them from a detached perspective.
"..." Su Jinning looked at Shen Moyu with a "don't wash your dirty linen in public" expression, trying her best to negotiate: "Let's talk less."
"Who told them to ask?" Shen Moyu spread his hands innocently, laughing heartily like a mastermind who had been acquitted.
Su Jinning shifted her gaze to her two brothers in the audience: "Oh, then I'll have to beat you two up." She turned around and picked up two textbooks.
"Something's not right." Chen Hang cracked open the last sunflower seed.
"Yes." Song Wenmiao nodded.
After another chaotic scene, Su Jinning got up to go to the toilet, but because of his injured leg, he couldn't take care of himself and dragged Chen Hang, who had been beaten the worst by him, along with him.
Shen Moyu kept writing on the test paper, occasionally muttering formulas to herself. Song Wenmiao was dumbfounded.
"A top student is indeed a top student. The way you are reminds me of someone." Song Wenmiao said without pausing, as if he was very interested in telling him about this person.
Shen Moyu looked up at him, also somewhat curious, and simply asked, "Who?"
"You probably won't believe it," Song Wenmiao said, rubbing his hair. "You look a lot like Ning when he was in the top three in junior high."
Shen Moyu's hand trembled, and the mechanical pencil he was using for drawing broke instantly. He looked up at Song Wenmiao again in surprise, his brows furrowed as if urging him to continue.
“I was his classmate in junior high. Ning-ge was about the same as you in junior high, studying hard and being a model student.” Song Wenmiao looked at the pile of formulas on Shen Moyu’s test paper and continued, “Later, something happened in his family in his third year of junior high, and he became depressed. He failed the high school entrance exam and was scolded by his father.” He pursed his lips for Su Jinning and then stopped talking.
Shen Moyu watched as the broken pencil lead slowly rolled to the ground, his eyes somewhat unfocused.
“Brother Ning probably would never tell you these things.” Song Wenmiao stood up, seemingly unwilling to reveal anything more, and took out his phone from his pocket to look at it.
"Because of his mother?" Shen Moyu asked Song Wenmiao, staring at the pencil lead stuck in the brickwork.
He seemed to have already guessed it. After all, even with a strong family background, they wouldn't have been able to transfer to this school if Su Jinning hadn't scored high enough. He had been wanting to ask Su Jinning if she had gotten in through the entrance exam, but he didn't know how to bring it up. It would seem like he was looking down on her abilities.
"You know?" Song Wenmiao froze for a moment, then suddenly smiled. "He would tell you these things?" He found it somewhat unbelievable. After all, the Su Jinning he knew would, if he wasn't a true friend, immediately tell others that he was an orphan when they talked about their parents.
"Yes, I mentioned it before." Shen Moyu pursed his lips, picked out the pencil lead from the crack in the brick, blew off the dust, and the pencil lead that was just perfect a moment ago was broken in two in the blink of an eye.
Shen Moyu felt a pang of sympathy, but not for the pencil.
He simply couldn't imagine what kind of blow Su Jinning, who might have once worn a clean school uniform and stood out in school, had suffered to become the school bully who made people tremble at the mere mention of her name.
He had never seen Su Jinning like that before, but he was somewhat eager to meet her.
"Brother Ning is pretty good to you," Song Wenmiao said to himself.
"What do you mean?" Shen Moyu pulled himself out of his thoughts and forced a smile.
Song Wenmiao scratched his head, somewhat puzzled, and said, "I don't know, I just feel that he treats you quite specially."
Shen Moyu paused, her thoughts completely in disarray.
He wanted to ask something more, but the bell rang for class. Song Wenmiao returned to his seat, and Su Jinning's figure slowly appeared in Shen Moyu's field of vision from outside the door. He looked Su Jinning up and down with an expression he couldn't quite describe.
His proportions are practically perfect; he would look amazing in a school uniform. With his sleeves rolled up, revealing strong, fair arms, and paired with pure white sneakers, he would look incredibly well-behaved sitting in the sunlight reading a book.
He didn't know anything about Su Jinning and his mother, and based solely on Song Wenmiao's simple account, he wasn't qualified to claim that he could empathize.
But he didn't want to see Su Jinning continue down this path of despair, and he dared not think about Su Jinning's future three years from now.
His ideal wasn't just to bring his mother back. Perhaps there was another ideal that no one knew, one that even he himself would regret.
What if I could lend him a hand?
A cool breeze suddenly drifted in from outside the window. Su Jinning, who was lying on the table, felt comfortable in the breeze. She smiled slightly and found a comfortable position to continue sleeping with her head buried in her arms.
"Alright, let's announce the results of the monthly exams from a few days ago." Jin Shuoshuo brushed her short hair behind her ear and kept flipping through the textbooks to find the grade sheet.