I turned reality into a romantic comedy.

Chapter 8: Action A means being ruthless and taciturn (two-in-one)

On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, most shops on the street began to reopen one after another, including a subway milk tea shop that had just opened in Guoning this year.

Girls are indeed more enthusiastic about these new things than boys. In fact, Chen Junqian first learned about this from Lin Mu, and then Mu Mu asked him to go with her to buy it.

Since today was the day he organized the four of them to study or do homework together, Chen Junqian asked Xu Youwei and Zhu Wenyun on QQ what flavor they wanted to drink, planning to bring them a cup on his way.

Unlike the Hong Kong-style milk tea they had at the Shanghai World Expo last year, the first subway store to open in Guoning is a Taiwanese-style bubble tea shop, located near the Guoning Center, seemingly targeting middle school students.

At that time, the types of milk tea were not as fancy as they would be more than ten years later, to the point that you couldn't tell what they were just by looking at the names. They were just simple types like pearl milk tea, red bean milk tea, and pudding milk tea. Most of the products were priced between four and six yuan, which was within the range that students could barely afford.

After all, the price is about the same as a cup of Xiangpiaopiao or Youlemei milk tea, and it saves you the trouble of brewing it yourself.

Looking at the familiar subway sign, Chen Junqian subconsciously glanced at the shops next to him, but he didn't see the sign of another shop he remembered from junior high school. Only then did he belatedly realize that fried chicken shops such as "Zhengxin Chicken Cutlet" and "Haoda Chicken Cutlet," which had become popular due to the popularity of "bursting chicken cutlet," had not yet officially arrived in Guoning at the beginning of 2011, and had not yet had time to form a classic duo with the milk tea shop next door for students.

What would Qianqian like to drink?

Lin Mu's words brought Chen Junqian's thoughts back to reality. Another year had passed, and Mu Mu felt that her height had changed very little. She felt that she could change the target next to the height record ruler on the wall of her room from 1.65 meters to 1.6 meters. That seemed more likely.

"I'll have red bean milk tea. I just asked Wenyun and Youwei, and they both drink pearl milk tea with standard sugar."

"Then I'll have red bean milk tea too."

Lin Mu happily ordered the same milk tea as Chen Junqian, and generously handed one of her New Year's money to the clerk, saying:

"I'll treat you to dinner today, since everyone came to help me."

As the one with the worst grades among the four, Lin Mu was well aware that Chen Junqian organized this study session mainly to help him. So he tried his best to put aside his desire to play around during the holiday and put it back into studying.

Okay, it's still a bit difficult.

Perhaps because of the little incident at his hometown a few days ago, Lin Mu started to pay special attention to Chen Junqian's appearance and clothing when he saw him again. Then he saw Chen Junqian wearing the gloves that Zhu Wenyun had knitted and given to him, politely thanking the milk tea shop clerk and accepting all four cups of milk tea.

When the two of them were about to go back hand in hand, Chen Junqian noticed that Lin Mu had started to misbehave and was putting her fingers inside his glove, where a small bump had formed.

Is it too cold?

"No, because if Qianqian is wearing gloves and I'm not, it feels like I'm holding hands with yarn and gloves, which doesn't count as holding hands at all, so I have to put my hand in."

"...What kind of theory is this?"

Clearly, Lin Mu didn't have the subtle and methodical approach of her best friend Xu Youwei, who could casually say "wearing gloves makes it difficult to set off firecrackers" and then quietly remove the gloves. So, she simply stuck her fingers in as well, tickling Chen Junqian's palm in a rather unconvincing manner.

Although Chen Junqian took the initiative to organize today's study session, considering that his room was definitely not big enough for four people to sit and do their homework together, they had to temporarily move it to Lin Mu's house.

"But I remember that Qianqian's family is also buying a new house, right?"

"Well, my parents have saved up some money after working for so many years. If we borrow a little more from relatives and friends, it should be enough. After all, I will be starting junior high school next year, and they still want to buy a house in the school district of Ningzhong. Also, renovations will take time, so they probably will pay for the house this year."

Before Chen Junqian was reborn, his family had bought a new apartment this year. Now, with his help, his father's career is even more outstanding than in his previous life. Considering his salary and benefits, it seems that this progress can be accelerated. He just doesn't know if this butterfly effect will cause his second home's address to change.

"I wish it could be in my neighborhood, then we could become neighbors."

"...That would be too much of a burden for my family. The housing prices in Mu Mu's area are very high, and we don't plan to buy such a big house. Our current target is probably between 80 and 100 square meters."

Carrying the milk tea, Chen Junqian chatted as he walked, and easily found himself at Lin Mu's house, the place he visited most frequently since his rebirth, besides his own. After putting on the indoor cotton shoes that Lin Mu's mother had prepared for him as his shoe size increased, he went inside. Not long after, he heard the doorbell ring.

Perhaps they bumped into each other at the entrance of the residential area. Zhu Wenyun and Xu Youwei came together, and Lin Mu found two pairs of her mother's shoes for them to wear.

Of the three, only Zhu Wenyun was visiting Lin Mu's house for the first time. However, perhaps because Chen Junqian was there and Lin Mu's parents were not home, she didn't seem too nervous. After the four of them shared the milk tea, she even wanted to pay for her share, but Lin Mu politely declined.

The four of them sat at the four corners of the square table in the living room and first checked each other's progress on their winter vacation homework. Chen Junqian and Zhu Wenyun were basically in sync, since they had always been a self-disciplined person who consistently completed their daily homework tasks. Xu Youwei had done almost everything she was supposed to do, leaving only her Chinese weekly journal and a few English essays temporarily unfinished.

Lin Mu... Mu Mu owes quite a lot. Rather, it's more accurate to say that this child's homework is characterized by a haphazard approach. When she encounters a question she knows how to do, she will do it first, and skip the ones she doesn't know how to do or that require thinking. As a result, she said that she had completed about half of her winter vacation homework, but when you open it, you can see that she had only written about half of each page in a scattered manner. It would probably make someone with OCD want to die.

In fact, during the period before Chen Junqian's rebirth, his way of dealing with winter and summer vacation assignments was to form a group with Zhong Yu and a few other boys, agree on which part each person would write, and then copy each other's work after finishing their own part. The efficiency of group work was even higher than that of college students doing group assignments.

However, the homeroom teacher seems to have noticed this trend among the students recently. In order to prevent it as much as possible, an additional plan has been introduced this year that the students must submit the draft notebook for each page and each question of their math winter vacation homework. Just a couple of days ago, Zhong Yu was complaining about this to Chen Junqian. After all, given their relationship, it would be an easy thing for him to borrow homework from Chen Junqian, who is the top student in the grade, to copy it.

Faced with Lin Mu's situation, Chen Junqian, who had quickly completed his tasks for the day, could only temporarily move to the bench where Lin Mu was sitting and began to teach her the questions one by one.

As someone who had also spent some time working in educational institutions during his university years, Chen Junqian was quite aware that teaching someone to learn a knowledge point and learning a knowledge point yourself were two completely different things. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many cases where teaching one's own children to do their homework resulted in the destruction of one's own Dao heart.

Even though you often feel like you've broken down the knowledge point into the smallest possible pieces, the next second the other person forgets what you just said, and with clear, foolish eyes, asks you a loud "Why?" or "I didn't understand" when you ask for your obvious "So, shouldn't we change xx to xx here?"

However, Chen Junqian was relieved that, firstly, Lin Mu's learning ability had not deteriorated to that point; he could still absorb the knowledge points after they were broken down and fed to him.

Then, Mu Mu's attitude was excellent, and she never hesitated to give him positive feedback. She would often say things like, "I feel that Qianqian teaches really well," "Yes, I understand completely," and "If Qianqian continues to teach me, my grades will definitely improve as much as Weiwei's." At least she wouldn't let him, the temporary substitute teacher, get upset or upset because of external factors.

...But isn't the last sentence a little off?

So you really do care about Xu Youwei being my deskmate, huh?

As expected, the moment Lin Mu uttered those words, Xu Youwei, who had suddenly been called out, completely lost the mindset she had had a year ago when she was willing to come to Lin Mu's rescue. Instead, she smiled and said, "..."

"Yes, I also feel that being Junqian's deskmate has been a great help to me, after all, the homeroom teacher said so."

It felt like a speech challenge where no one could fall behind, and Zhu Wenyun quickly spoke up again:

"I owe my improved Chinese language grades to Chen Junqian."

"Ahem... There's no need to give all the credit to me. It's mainly thanks to everyone's hard work. After all, we're all learning for our own benefit."

Chen Junqian quickly tried to control the situation, but Xu Youwei, his former wingman and now a master of backstabbing, showed no intention of letting go. She immediately raised her hand again, smiling at him, and said:

"Hello, Mr. Chen, I also have some questions I don't know how to answer. Could you come and teach me?"

"Don't you only have Chinese weekly journal entries and English essays left?"

"I just don't know what to write."

It seemed she had specifically practiced; Xu Youwei deftly twirled the pen in her right hand between her fingers, not even glancing at it, and leisurely used her free hand to prop her chin up, raising the corners of her mouth towards Chen Junqian:

“Maybe once you come over, I’ll suddenly remember what to write again, right, Wenjun? You should understand what I mean, right?”

Unlike a certain silly girl who was still immersed in the fact that her story with Chen Junqian had been written into a book and published, Xu Youwei also bought a copy of "My Nine Yuan and Fifty Yuan Survival Challenge with My Deskmate" and easily realized what the author of this story, Zhu Wenyun, was writing and thinking.

The other party was just using Lin Mu's story to express her own thoughts, and it was obvious that she wanted to write about her own story with Chen Junqian later, which is what she just said, 'as soon as someone comes over, they will know what to write.'

When Xu Youwei, whom Zhu Wenyun had known for over a year but with whom she had little interaction, pointed at her in such an ambiguous way, Zhu Wenyun's attitude also became somewhat subtle. However, in the end, she chose not to get involved any further. She shook her head while chewing on the pearls in her mouth, did not reply, and continued to do her homework while pretending not to see anything. After all, this was ultimately a matter between Lin Mu and Xu Youwei, so why drag her into it?

"Today we'll mainly focus on teaching Mumu. As for the problem of not being able to write her weekly journal, if all else fails, she can just copy a couple of entries from her own diary. Anyway, the teacher definitely won't notice."

Whether it was because they didn't want to escalate the topic further in front of Chen Junqian, or simply because they heard him say "copy two entries from your own diary," Lin Mu and Xu Youwei, who had been a little annoyed with each other just moments before, turned their heads away in unison, their faces flushed with embarrassment.

After all, their diaries were indeed not suitable for others to read.

One type starts with some genuine emotion but ends up being purely for the sake of being sensational, half-true and half-false, written for a specific audience. The other type is so bad that even the writer feels embarrassed when looking back on it, and can't even touch it with their mother. Submitting it to the teacher as a weekly journal would be even more likely to expose their own mistake.

Taking a quick glance at the achievement list, even though Chen Junqian felt it was a bit awkward, the system stubbornly stuck to its bottom line of strict quality control over the Shura Field, and so far only the achievement "Let's have a study session together" has been unlocked.

However, children's emotions come and go quickly. After calming down for a while, with Chen Junqian's active guidance, Lin Mu and Xu Youwei made up again.

Of course, this could also be related to something else.

It was noon when Lin Mu suggested having another meal cooked by Chen Junqian. Seeing Zhu Wenyun naturally follow him into the kitchen and skillfully help him, the two people in the living room looked at each other in unison, then stared at each other blankly.

Chapter Nine: Please Take My Song Back to Your Home (Part Two)

During the last ten days or so of the winter break, Chen Junqian held several study sessions in the same manner, but the location was basically fixed at Lin Mu's house. After all, there wasn't enough space at his house or Zhu Wenjun's house. Xu Youwei's house had more than enough space, but she herself didn't like staying at home. In addition, there was a possibility of awkward situations, so Chen Junqian, knowing her difficulties, didn't suggest it in the first place.

However, the atmosphere was never as tense as the first time in the subsequent times. Lin Mu and Xu Youwei never had similar arguments again, and they could even often be seen whispering to each other.

What Chen Junqian found a bit of a pity was that, apart from the fact that the achievement of "Shura Field" where he was still stubbornly holding on to his bottom line and refusing to admit defeat to elementary school students was still not unlocked, it was also that the weather was not cooperating and it rained on the Lantern Festival this year. Otherwise, he would have planned to go to the city government square to see if he could trigger the scene requirement of the fireworks festival. For now, he could only give up and wait until next year.

However, because everyone's free time on weekends conflicted after the start of the semester, the four-person study group also came to a temporary end. Chen Junqian returned to his familiar routine of going to after-school care with Lin Mu after school at noon, going to find Zhu Wenjun after class, and walking around with Xu Youwei after school in the evening.

As March arrived, two more important events occurred at the school that were closely related to Chen Junqian, or rather, to those around him.

First of all, the young writer, who in a sense has already written and published a book, was successfully recommended by her Chinese teacher and will soon represent her school in the city-level essay competition. It is said that if she wins, she will have the opportunity to be recommended to participate in the provincial competition.

Chen Junqian was also recommended, after all, his Chinese language scores were also among the best, and his use of words and allusions in his compositions exceeded the level of elementary school students. After each midterm and final exam, his compositions were used as model essays and circulated in the office and other classes.

Chen Junqian initially didn't want to go, just like before. However, his homeroom teacher had a sudden inspiration and went to tell Zhu Wenyun that they might have to take a bus to Xuancheng to participate in the provincial competition. Then Zhu Wenyun eagerly came to find Chen Junqian.

After all, this child looks quite big, but she hasn't really traveled far from home much. Although Xuancheng isn't far from Guoning, she would definitely prefer to have someone familiar by her side rather than go with other students she doesn't know at all. Chen Junqian is the best candidate for that.

Well, it seems that both the homeroom teacher and Zhu Wenjun are convinced that the two of them will definitely advance to the next round.

However, since Zhu Wenyun had already put it this way, Chen Junqian didn't intend to refuse anymore. He had always held a nurturing attitude towards Zhu Wenyun's writing career, and he could understand her nervousness about participating in this kind of essay competition for the first time. If accompanying her would make her feel more relaxed, then he would accompany her.

The city's essay competition was held in their school's lecture hall. As expected, Chen Junqian and Zhu Wenyun, whose writing skills were significantly superior to their peers, stood out and won the first prize in the essay competition along with three other students. They also qualified to go to Xuancheng to participate in the next round of the provincial competition, which was scheduled for May, two months later.

However, before the essay competition in May, another school event came to Chen Junqian: the 20th anniversary celebration performance of the Experimental Primary School he attended.

Actually, this matter had nothing to do with him, but it probably happened to coincide with the first anniversary of last year's stampede. When the school leaders were doing related publicity work, they suddenly remembered this brave young man and took the initiative to arrange a "poetry chorus" program for him.

As for why Zhu Wenyun wasn't included, it can only be said that little Zhu really couldn't handle this kind of performance in front of others. It was as if she was saying, "Even if you choose me, I'll still skip it to show you." Therefore, the head of the teaching department had no choice but to give up.

Poetry chorus, as the name suggests, is a combination of poetry recitation and choral singing. Chen Junqian was in charge of reciting at the very beginning, followed by the school's choir. The two were interspersed. However, unlike him, who was only in charge of this one program, Chen Junqian, as the only choir in the school, was responsible for several choral programs from the beginning to the end. It looked quite tiring.

It was precisely because of this that Chen Junqian's after-school time was taken away. Starting from the next day, he had to report to the music classroom on time to participate in rehearsals. Xu Youwei, who was stood up again, originally wanted to go to the scene with him, but since she was not a member of the school choir, she was turned away again. She could only watch Chen Junqian walk in alone, feeling a little angry.

Aside from the fact that the weekly music class often inexplicably turned into other main subjects, this was the first time Chen Junqian had come to the music classroom at any other time. The students' seats—dozens of square colored blocks—had been stacked in advance in the corner, clearing a large open space in the classroom. On the wall, there was a picture of a musical score and a quote from Hugo: "Music is the sound of thinking."

However, Chen Junqian did not wait there for long. About two minutes later, twenty or thirty students from various grades and classes walked in with practiced ease, chattering as they put their schoolbags aside. They must have been members of the school choir.

Because Chen Junqian saw his sister's figure in it.

"Ah, brother, what are you doing here?"

But before he could even go to find her, Chen Xi, who hadn't even put her schoolbag down yet, had already skipped and hopped over to him, her face showing a hint of surprise:

"Are you here to perform with our choir? But I remember you singing so-so, and you like to change the lyrics, which has led me astray."

"Well, the second half of the sentence can be omitted."

Since there were a lot of people watching, Chen Junqian resisted the urge to habitually pat his sister's head. Instead, he reached out and helped his sister unpack her schoolbag while explaining something to her.

"Oh, so you're the one who's going to recite the poem, brother."

"That's right. Actually, I didn't want to participate in this program at first, but since the poetry and chorus program included a chorus, I figured I would be performing with your choir, so I agreed in the end."

Although Chen Xi knew perfectly well that Chen Junqian was just teasing her, she was clearly quite pleased and nodded confidently.

"That's definitely no problem. Our choir is very good; we've participated in city-level competitions and won awards."

"Okay, Xixi, go to rehearse first. Look, you guys are all lined up on the steps over there."

"okay."

Watching his younger sister squeeze into the third row at the top of the stairs, quietly laughing and talking with another girl next to her, Chen Junqian couldn't help but think of Shen Nianqiu, who was said to be the lead singer in the choir. He wondered if she had rejoined the choir after entering junior high school. He would ask her next time they chatted.

Although they said they came to rehearse together, in reality, Chen Junqian and the school choir only performed one song together, "Learning from Lei Feng," and spent most of their time rehearsing other songs.

For example, the song "Farewell" was probably added specifically for the sixth grade graduation season. When listening to the tune of "Outside the long pavilion, along the ancient road, the fragrant grass stretches to the horizon," Chen Junqian naturally thought of the book "Old Tales of South City" that he had read before. He remembered that when he was in the first year of junior high school, he learned the story "My Father's Flowers Have Fallen" in his Chinese textbook, and his Chinese teacher showed them the movie of the same name from that year.