I have few friends, but many childhood sweethearts.

Chapter 148 148.2008 Please reply 2
"It's finally over! That dreaded double math class!" Lin Wanning slumped listlessly on the table, looking like his brain had gone mad.

Xu Qingfan reached out and flicked her ahoge (cowlick), which swayed on her head. "Get up and let's go. It's Friday, and the cafeteria has fried pork chops!"

"Pork chop, pork chop, fried pork chop!" Lin Wanning's eyes lit up. He didn't bother to tidy up the stationery and books on the table, and was about to leave with his schoolbag on his back.

The five-person team walked side by side down the aisle, just like they did back in first grade.

The only change is the formation. When Xu Qingfan stood in the middle, it was a "凸" shape. Now, the five of them are walking from low to high, which is exactly where the cell phone signal bars are.

"The swallows have gone, but they will return; the willows have withered, but spring will come again; peach blossoms, peach blossoms..."

“The peach blossoms have faded, but they will bloom again. But, tell me, wise one, why do our days never return?” Seeing Lin Wanning stumble over his words, Xiao Ruanwen continued reciting.

"Wow~ Class monitor, you can already recite it?" Lin Wanning said in surprise.

"Hehe~ My dad made me memorize this essay when I was very young!"

"Wow, that's amazing! I can only recite the first two lines!" Lin Wanning had just finished studying Zhu Ziqing's "Hurry" that morning, and the Chinese teacher required him to recite the whole text. This was a challenge for Lin Wanning, who was not good at memorizing.

"Fan Ge is amazing! He can memorize any ancient poem after reading it a few times!"

Xu Qingfan was secretly pleased with himself. Would he really tell them that he had memorized it in his past life?

When the group went down to the second floor, Wu Lingyu was already waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

"Brother Fan!" The girl ran after the small team as they came downstairs.

"How tall are you, Xiaoyu? Are you taller than Fan-ge?" Xiao Ruanwen asked, since the physical examination for classes one through ten was during the third and fourth periods.

"Huh? I'm 1.51 meters tall, so I should be about the same height as Brother Fan, right?" Wu Lingyu quietly moved closer to Xu Qingfan, glancing at their heights out of the corner of her eye.

"Hehehe~ Brother Fan is only 1.5 meters tall, Xiao Yu, you are 1 centimeter taller than him!" Xiao Ruanwen squeezed between the two and put one hand on one of their shoulders.

"Oh, it's nothing. The teacher said that boys develop later." As a qualified primary school, Experimental Primary School separated boys and girls at the beginning of this semester and popularized knowledge about gender to the sixth-grade students.

The boys in the class looked at the little illustrations in the sex education book as if they had found a treasure, but Xu Qingfan was very dismissive of it. He thought, "Isn't this beat-up car going to stall on the road?"
Even after being reborn, Xu Qingfan still feels that he is too pure to fit in with his classmates.

This semester, the teacher assigned a composition titled "Springtime on Campus" in Chinese class. As is customary, the boys in the class opened their browsers to search for compositions. As a result, they found a gateway to a new world: all sorts of autobiographical versions of Liu Bei were unearthed by the students and then brought back to school to circulate among themselves.

Xu Qingfan read a few of them with a critical eye, and they were simply rubbish. The long string of onomatopoeic words made him shake his head.

If it weren't for maintaining his innocent image, he would have shared information about Brother Tao, who had just returned from abroad by plane, and Brother Bin, whose high school grades were not ideal.

"Class monitor, you always say that Brother Qingfan is short. Be careful, he might jump up and hit your knee!" Seeing Lin Wanning pause, everyone subconsciously turned their gazes towards her. She continued, "Be careful, Brother Qingfan might jump up and hit your knee!"

"puff!"

"Hahaha~"

Xu Qingfan's face darkened, while the others burst into laughter.

It was his own doing. When he was taller than the other kids, he used to like to pat their heads. When they complained about him, he would say, "Who told you not to be as tall as me?"

Now the tables have turned, and being ridiculed is inevitable.

A group of people walked into the cafeteria laughing and joking, used their backpacks to reserve seats, and then lined up to get their food.

"Shall we go see Iron Man together tomorrow?" Xiao Ruanwen asked as she picked out some vegetables that she didn't like and gave them to Xu Qingfan.

"Aren't we going back to Xu Qingfan's hometown tomorrow?" Xia Xiaoxiao glanced at her and said.

"Oh, right, let's go see it on Sunday! Lots of classmates have already seen it!"

"Is Iron Man as good as CJ7? CJ7 is the best movie I've seen this year!" Lin Wanning said, recalling the scene of several families renting out a movie theater to watch a movie during the Spring Festival this year.

"I don't know what kind of movie it is, but I watched the trailer on my computer, and the mecha transformation looks super cool!"

"The King of Kung Fu!" Zhang Yiyi chimed in.

"Is it the one starring Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Liu Yifei?"

"Yes!" Zhang Yiyi nodded repeatedly. Influenced by Xu Qingfan, the girl became obsessed with Zhao Ling'er in the TV series Chinese Paladin 1, so she paid more attention to movies and TV series starring Liu Yifei.

"That's a terrible movie. I've heard a lot of people online criticizing it." Xu Qingfan had seen the movie in his previous life, but he was completely confused.

"What about Iron Man, Brother Fan? Is Iron Man a bad movie?" Xiao Ruanwen asked impatiently.

"Iron Man is alright, not good, not bad either."

"Yay! Let's go to Grandma Fan's house on Saturday and go to the movies on Sunday!!" Xiao Ruanwen had her weekend itinerary packed full. "I'm not going to pick tomatoes this time, no matter what!" she added, remembering her bad experience last time.

"Why are we picking tomatoes?" Wu Lingyu blinked, looking confused.

"She stepped on a snake while picking tomatoes last time. If it weren't for me, the grass on her grave would be over a meter tall by now, and she still dares to laugh at me for being short!" Xu Qingfan stood up triumphantly and gave Xiao Ruanwen a gentle pat on the head.

"Who knew there would be snakes?" the girl said, sticking out her tongue in frustration.

“That’s pretty scary.” Wu Lingyu nodded in deep agreement.

Since her family's situation improved, Wu Lingyu's introverted and sensitive personality has also improved. It turns out that people usually only feel inferior in one situation—when they have no money.

However, when interacting with their six-person group, Wu Lingyu would still subconsciously adopt a humble attitude.

"Did you guys watch Balala the Fairies last night? Yan Lili actually learned dark magic!" Lin Wanning said, recalling what she saw on TV yesterday.

"But she looks so beautiful after she transforms! Much prettier than those two sisters!"

"Haha, I think so too. I think Fairy Xiaoyue is prettier than those two sisters." Seeing that Xiao Ruanwen had the same aesthetic sense as him, Xu Qingfan chimed in.

"Brother Fan, what kind of taste do you have? That messy hairstyle is awful!"

"Yeah, Brother Qingfan, how could you like Fairy Xiaoyue? She's so wicked!"

"Because he was jealous of Xiao Lan becoming a guardian fairy, he secretly practiced dark magic and stole the fairy's colored stone. Brother Fan, you actually think this kind of person is good-looking!"

"Xu Qingfan was still at home saying that Xiao Lan's failure to protect the Magic Fairy Stone was due to her dereliction of duty, and she deserved to be stolen!"

"Speaking up for the Dark Fairy, brother is bad!"

Wu Lingyu watched Xu Qingfan eat awkwardly, being criticized by the four girls, and secretly chuckled with pleasure.

Having spent countless hours together, they had long since grown accustomed to this way of interacting.

"Whatever you say, I'm just here for the ride. Ladies, could you please be a little gentle with your words?" Xu Qingfan surrendered, raising his hands. He was exasperated by the elementary school students' aesthetic sense. The Dark Fairy Xiaoyue's features were clearly beautiful, weren't they? Even though her messy hair was a bit unsightly, it didn't detract from her overall beauty!

"Hmph~ Brother Qingfan, how could you speak up for the villain? The Dark Fairy is an evil fairy!" Lin Wanning pouted, looking very angry.

However, everyone knew she was just pretending, and they were amused by her cute little expressions and burst into laughter.

"Alright, alright, Xiaoyue is the ugliest. Yan Lili will eventually see through Xiaoyue's true colors and turn to the light!" Xu Qingfan subtly spoiled the plot.

"That's pretty much it!"

After chatting about things they planned to do back home the next day, the girls finished their meal, said goodbye to Xu Qingfan, and went back to their dormitory together.

Xu Qingfan returned to his dormitory with a piece of dental floss in his mouth. He was surprised by the number of people in the dormitory as soon as he opened the door.

More than a dozen boys from different classes crowded into their dormitory, discussing something loudly and enthusiastically.

"Brother Fan is back! Come and see, this is good stuff!" Wu Dongsong excitedly showed Xu Qingfan his color screen keypad phone.

"What's so interesting about a broken phone? Why are so many of you gathered here?" Xu Qingfan said dismissively.

"Hehe~ You'll see when you see it, Brother Fan, he's a big star!"

Xu Qingfan took the phone and glanced at it. Good heavens, isn't this Chen, the patriarch of private photos!

"Ahem~" He handed the phone back to Wu Dongsong, saying with exasperation, "Stop with this useless stuff. How old are you? Trying to show off all this will only hurt yourselves!"

"Hush—" The boys in the dormitory booed enthusiastically.

"Brother Fan, someone asked me to deliver a love letter to you. I put it in your closet. We'll eat the chocolate for you as usual."

"It's okay, you guys eat, everyone go away, you've made my dorm filthy, you all know it's my turn to clean today!"

"Hehehe~" A group of people filed out with grinning faces.

Five years have passed in the blink of an eye. The former sixth-grade students are now in their senior year of high school, and Xu Qingfan has become the veritable elder brother of this elementary school.

Whenever a classmate is bullied or there is an unresolved conflict between classmates, he, as the campus judge, will step forward and handle the matter properly.

If he were to bring Mimi from the convenience store over, he'd definitely be the godfather of a gang.

Indeed, just as the wandering poet recited in his jingle, "a whole bunch of love letters from fifth graders."

Xu Qingfan received so many love letters last year that they could almost fill up his dorm room locker. The most outrageous thing is that some male classmates even wrote him love letters!

Male classmates are absolutely terrifying!
Xu Qingfan left a message on his personal Baidu Tieba forum: Male classmates, don't write me love letters!

Who knew that this group would become even more enthusiastic about giving gifts, to the point that now he sees everyone as a male classmate.

"Elementary school students should act like elementary school students. Why are you writing love letters for no reason!" He shook his head helplessly as he looked at the pile of love letters in the closet.

"Fan Ge is at it again." The three roommates in the dormitory can't stand his arrogant Versailles-like behavior the most. Some of them are dying of thirst while others are drowning in it.

The girls were initially quite angry when they found out that someone had sent love letters to Xu Qingfan. They formed a united front and demanded that he hand over all the love letters he had received. However, as male classmates joined in, the situation gradually became bizarre, and the five girls stopped caring so much.

These days, sending love letters to Xu Qingfan at the Experimental Primary School has become a way to pray for good fortune. If there are midterm exams coming up, people send love letters to Brother Fan to pray that they won't fail; if they are going to participate in a competition, people send love letters to Brother Fan to pray that they will get good results; if they are going to confess to their crush, people write love letters to Brother Fan to pray that their crush will accept them.
It's only because Xu Qingfan has plenty of money that he could make a special letter paper for blessing, sell it for five yuan at a cost of one cent, and directly harvest a wave of leeks (a Chinese slang term for exploiting people).

"Little brother~ Little brother!" Before he arrived, his voice preceded his arrival. Xu Qingfan called out the name of the big white cat at the entrance of the convenience store.

"Meow~ meow meow meow~"

The big white cat that I picked up from the stinky ditch four years ago heard the noise and came out of the convenience store. It walked to Xu Qingfan's feet and stretched, its hind legs straight and sticking out like it was doing yoga. It looked extremely cute.

"Little brother~" Xia Xiaoxiao and Wu Lingyu squatted down and stroked the big white cat's head. The white cat raised its chin in great enjoyment.

"Yu'er, Xiaoxiao is back! Xiaoxiao, come help Auntie, the computer has no sound for some reason!"

"Auntie!" Upon seeing Yao Jinping come out of the store, the two women stood up and each took one of her arms.

“Eh~” Yao Jinping nodded, clearly pleased.

"Mom." Xu Qingfan waved awkwardly, letting Ms. Yao, who was ignoring him, know that her son was here too.

"Go back and cook. I've bought all the groceries. Your dad's keeping the little fish he caught in the bathroom. Fry them and bring them out for your little brother later." After giving these instructions, Yao Jinping turned and walked into the shop without looking back, carrying her two little cotton-padded jackets.

Xu Qingfan:
Under one roof

The Many Facets of Life

Some people risk their lives to survive on just two meals a day.

The theme song of "72 Tenants" was playing in someone's TV drama. Xu Qingfan shook his head with amusement, feeling helpless about his position in the family.

He kicked at the pebbles under his feet and whistled as he returned to the Lotus Courtyard.

The local dogs in the yard were born even earlier than him, and are now over ten years old. They have lost the vitality they had a few years ago and are now lazily lying on the cement ground, taking a nap.

Upon hearing Xu Qingfan's footsteps, the dog opened its eyes, glanced at them, then shook its head as if it were sentient, and got up to move away from him.

The Lotus Courtyard is much quieter than it was a few years ago. Many families have moved to new apartments in the new city area, and many unfamiliar tenants have moved in. People no longer feel comfortable leaving their doors unlocked during the day as they used to.

Xu Qingfan knew that after the few stray dogs in the yard passed away in a few years, the place would never feel the same again.

By then, he was already in high school and only went home once every two weeks, so he rarely noticed when his familiar neighbors had moved away.

Time flies!
Xu Qingfan tossed the few leftover meatballs from the afternoon meal to the dogs, then went upstairs and returned home.

He habitually picked up the apron hanging on the wall and put it on his back. Just as he was about to reach behind him to tie the rope, his hand suddenly touched a warm sensation.

Xu Qingfan was startled, and then heard a familiar voice behind him say, "Brother Fan, I'm here to help you."

"Xiaoyu, why do you walk so quietly? You scared me!" Xu Qingfan turned around and tapped Wu Lingyu on the head.

"Hehe~ I'll come back and cook for you!"

"Then go wash the vegetables."

"it is good!"

(End of this chapter)