Brother! This is the adoption certificate. I don't want your sister-in-law!

After school in the afternoon, in the office.

The English teacher held up Su Xiao's dictation book, flipping through it several times, her brows furrowed in worry.

Finally, unable to bear it any longer, she stood up, walked over to He Shaojun, and slammed the notebook on the table.

"Old He, you need to keep an eye on Su Xiao in your class. He's gotten 100 on every dictation test lately, and he doesn't even bother to act, he just copies directly from the book. If he doesn't want to study, just send him home!"

The name Su Xiao is quite a frequent visitor to the teachers' office.

Several teachers who were grading homework nearby looked up when they heard the name and chimed in with their own comments.

"Su Xiao, the one from Class 12, wasn't he the one who broke the window of the class next door last time?"

"The guy who climbed over the wall and got chased by security for half the playground, he slept through several of my classes before."

He Shaojun listened to his colleagues' chatter without responding.

He was grading the quizzes from his class, and Su Xiao's quiz was right in front of him.

Fifty-six points.

I barely passed.

The quizzes all tested the content he had covered in class over the past few days.

A score of 56 at least proves that Su Xiao was listening in class.

He Shaojun put down his red pen, picked up the exam paper, and looked at it again.

The equations were written crookedly, but the balancing was all correct.

He got three multiple-choice questions wrong and left two fill-in-the-blank questions blank, but he wrote out all the steps for the essay questions, even though he stopped halfway through. At least that proves he didn't hand in a blank paper.

The English teacher was still talking when He Shaojun suddenly spoke up, his voice not loud, as if he were talking to himself.

"Maybe the kid went home and memorized vocabulary words tonight."

The English teacher scoffed and said, "Don't I know what kind of person he is?"

He Shaojun did not refute, but picked up a red pen and scanned the paper again.

My gaze fell upon a challenging problem.

Because in the past, students like Su Xiao would just write whatever came to mind when answering essay questions.

So He Shaojun habitually marked it with an X when he was reviewing it, but upon closer inspection, he found that Su Xiao's writing was correct.

He crossed out the cross on the question and changed it to a checkmark, then added the points back to the original score.

Fifty-six became sixty-one.

You passed.

He Shaojun stared at the number that had been altered in red pen and fell silent.

He flipped the test paper over and over, and then picked up Su Xiao's quiz paper and compared it with last week's.

Seventeen points last week, twelve points the week before last.

He put down the test paper and suddenly said something.

"What if Su Xiao really is a good student?"

The office fell silent for a moment.

The English teacher turned to look at him, her expression as if she were looking at someone who had suddenly started talking nonsense.

He Shaojun didn't explain further. He placed Su Xiao's paper on top of the stack that had been graded and capped it with a red pen.

……

Su Xiao had no idea that her diligent study attitude had impressed her teacher.

He was taking a taxi to the Guochu Computer City, his backpack filled with the cash he'd earned from selling mobile phones that day, ready to buy another batch of goods.

Walking into the secondhand mobile phone stall on the third floor, the owner was sitting with his legs crossed, reading a newspaper.

She looked up and saw it was him, paused for a moment, put down her newspaper, and asked, "Sold out so quickly?"

Su Xiao didn't explain much. He squatted down, scanned the goods on the counter, and asked for four old models and five best-selling brands.

The old ones are 40 each, the best-selling ones are 80 each, the same price as last time. The money has already been counted and placed on the counter.

Seeing how efficient he was, the boss didn't waste any words and turned to go to the back warehouse to move goods.

The machines that came out this time were in significantly better condition than the last one.

The boss watched as Su Xiao inspected each machine one by one, neither urging him nor showing any signs of nervousness.

Having learned from his previous experience, he wouldn't dare to try to fool people with the hidden disease machine again.

Cash on delivery, a straightforward and efficient cooperation.

After buying the phone, Su Xiao stuffed it into her backpack and casually asked where she could buy a USB flash drive.

The shop owner pointed towards the escalator on the second floor and said, "Those shops over there are the same, but business hasn't been good lately, and prices have been dropping. If you want to buy in bulk, you should wait a bit longer; maybe the prices will go down even further in a few months."

Su Xiao went down the escalator to the second floor and found the stall.

Just as the boss said, every store had signs hanging outside saying "Clearance Sale," "Sold Out," and "Super Low Prices."

The USB drives in the counter range from 128MB to 512MB, and the prices are so low that you might suspect there's a printing error.

Even so, not many people came to the stalls; the stall owners were either playing cards or dozing off.

Su Xiao stood in front of a stall, picked up a USB drive, flipped it over to look at the label on the back, and quickly searched her memory of her past life.

In 2005, the price of flash memory chips plummeted, and although the supply of USB flash drives in China was tight, the price also dropped again and again.

However, in another month, around mid-November, due to capacity adjustments by upstream chip manufacturers, flash memory prices will suddenly surge, increasing three or four times, and will continue to rise until January when they fall again.

If I remember correctly, this is the time when prices have hit rock bottom.

He stood in front of the stall, not daring to take out his money on the spot.

Memory is memory, and reality is reality. What if I remember it wrong?

He put down the USB drive, turned around, and walked out of the computer mall.

I bought several of the latest science and technology newspapers and electronic information weekly from the newsstand at the entrance, folded them, and stuffed them into my schoolbag.

I need to go back and study this matter carefully for a few days.

He's no longer someone who's only concerned with his own livelihood.

He also has Su Wanning and a small business that's just starting out; this little bit of wealth can't withstand any setbacks.

As he put the newspaper away, he suddenly remembered something.

Su Wanning will be back tonight.

He stood at the entrance of the computer mall, looked at the sky, turned around, and went to the nearby vegetable market.

I need to cook her a nice meal tonight.

……

On the other side, the bus slowly came to a stop at the gate of Jingcheng No.1 Middle School.

Su Wanning dragged her suitcase out of the car, stood on the sidewalk at the school gate, and took a deep breath.

It's been three days.

She looked up at the sky, then at the road in front of the school gate that she had walked countless times.

I don't know if he has been eating, getting up, and going to school on time during these three days.

My mind wandered through a lot of thoughts, but halfway through, I realized I was overthinking things.

He's not a child anymore, why are you worrying about him?

I won first prize in this math competition, with a prize of one thousand yuan.

He should be very happy, right?

With this money, he wouldn't have to drop out of school to work.

As she walked, she slowed down when she passed the large supermarket near her home. After thinking for a moment, she turned a corner and went inside.

Let's buy some snacks to eat at home.

It wasn't bought for him; I just wanted to eat it myself.

Su Wanning picked up a bag of cookies and thought for a moment.

"He used to fight me for this every day, it must be delicious, I have to try it too."

He picked up another bottle of fruit juice.

"He buys this every time we come to the supermarket. This time I'll just buy one bottle and drink it in front of him so he won't drink it."

She walked back and forth in front of the shelves, and finally carried a bag full of things.

Actually, these were all foods that Su Xiao liked to eat, but Su Wan Ning insisted that she liked them too when she bought them.

As she walked out of the supermarket, carrying a bag of snacks in her left hand and dragging a suitcase in her right, she was about to quicken her pace to go home when raindrops suddenly began to fall from the sky.

She leaned her suitcase against the wall, looked down and rummaged through her bag for an umbrella, then stopped after a couple of flips.

She remembered that she had left her umbrella with Su Xiao.

She had no choice but to retreat to the eaves of the supermarket entrance, where she stood, staring blankly at the rain.

Just then, a person walked over in the rain.

A sky-blue folding umbrella with several little white rabbits printed on its surface.

Su Wan Ning's gaze was immediately drawn to the umbrella.

Could it be him?

She took half a step forward and stood on tiptoe to look at the people under the umbrella.

The hair wasn't Su Xiao's; it was colorful and tied in pigtails.

The girl walked to the eaves, folded up her umbrella, shook off the water, glanced at the barbershop across from the supermarket, and went inside.

Through the glass, Su Wan Ning saw her say a few words to the hairdresser, and point to her hair, probably wanting to have it dyed.

Su Wanning slowly retreated under the eaves and leaned back against the wall.

She looked at the sky-blue folding umbrella that had been put away and was leaning against the glass door of the barbershop, and couldn't help but mutter something to herself.

"It really looks so similar..."

……

(Ratings are now open; two extra chapters will be added if the rating exceeds 6.0)