The bathroom has poor soundproofing, and the noise from outside can be heard clearly.
Liam Tang was standing in front of the sink washing his hands. Warm water flowed through his fingers, and he looked up at himself in the mirror.
Ethan Yang was right. Compared to Alexander Yang, he did look more like Grace Tang.
There was nothing wrong with what he said, but he didn't know why he suddenly felt an unprecedented irritation in his chest. This emotion rushed up his throat, and he couldn't help but yell at the people in the living room, "Shut up." He tried his best to suppress himself and didn't put this idea into practice.
He turned the faucet to the cold water side, splashed some water on his face, washed it, wiped it clean with a towel, and then opened the bathroom door.
A smell of cigarette smoke hit my face.
In his previous home, there would be no such pungent smell. Liam Tang once again confirmed that he didn't like it here.
The noise died down again. Some people still looked at him, but this time their eyes were no longer full of curiosity, but looked contemptuous, teasing, or something else... In short, they had bad intentions.
Liam Tang walked back expressionlessly, opened the bathroom window as wide as possible, then walked to the kitchen and did the same thing, pulling open the window. The edge of the aluminum alloy window rubbed against each other awkwardly, making a harsh "whoosh" sound.
Everyone in the living room stopped what they were doing and stared at him in amazement.
Liam Tang didn't look at them. He walked to several other rooms, opened all the windows as wide as possible, then returned to his room, closed the door and locked it.
It was the end of February and the weather had not yet warmed up. The cold wind outside blew in through the wide-open windows, making everyone in the room shiver at the same time.
Suddenly, there were shouts of curses in the living room:
"I'm Fcuking crazy!"
"Damn it, what's going on? Dad is freezing to death!"
"Fcuk you, cold, cold... Is your brother a lunatic, Ethan Yang?"
...
Ethan Yang didn't say anything. He just looked at the closed door, then stood up, walked to the window closest to him and stopped.
Everyone thought he was going to close the window and turned to look at him eagerly, but after a while they realized that he was just standing in front of the wide-open window smoking and had no intention of closing the window.
"Fcuk, I'm freezing to death, I'll go turn it off." Lucas Feng stood up cursing and closed the windows of several other rooms.
After taking a few puffs, Ethan Yang put out the cigarette, closed the window, and sat back.
"Brother Ethan Yang, I finally know why you want to move out," Lucas Feng pointed at Liam Tang's room and said angrily, "This is called taking advantage of someone's situation. Right?" After he said that, he looked at the other people, trying to find their approval.
"Yeah, we didn't do anything," Chen Hao said with an innocent expression, spreading his hands, "He was the one who started it first."
Seeing that Ethan Yang didn't react, Lucas Feng took the initiative to approach him and instigated him: "Hey, Brother Ethan Yang, when did you become so patient? Don't you want to teach him a lesson?"
Ethan Yang glanced at him: "What are you going to do?"
"What can I do?" Lucas Feng said timidly, shrinking his neck and bluffing, "If I don't kill him, he's a sissy."
"Don't get involved," Ethan Yang said, "I know what's going on."
"We feel relieved when you say that," Lucas Feng looked at him with a playful smile, "Hey, remember to ask us to watch the game and cheer for you."
"We'll talk about it later. As for you," Ethan Yang looked at Lucas Feng with a cold face, and then looked at the other people one by one, "and the rest of you, this mess in my family is not allowed to spread around after school starts."
"Hey, hey, hey, that's for sure," the other people nodded, "Don't say, don't say."
***
First day of school.
"Ethan Yang, I'm going to the garage to get the car first. You and Jun He should pack up and come down quickly." Alexander Yang put on his leather shoes, adjusted his tie in front of the mirror at the door, turned his head and said to Ethan Yang.
Ethan Yang didn't respond. He turned back and added, "Be quicker," then opened the door and went downstairs.
Liam Tang walked to the door to change his shoes, picked up his schoolbag and was about to go out when Grace Tang walked over quickly, took his arm and pulled him inside: "I bought you face cream, but you don't use it. Do you know that the weather is dry in spring?" She said this while holding the face cream in her hand, opened the lid, scooped a small piece of the cream with her index finger, and applied it to Liam Tang without saying a word.
Liam Tang frowned and tilted his neck back, obviously trying to dodge, but his arms were held by Grace Tang, so he could only let her put the sticky face cream on his face.
"That's enough," he protested. "That's all."
"You think I'm willing to serve you," Grace Tang said, "You're already this old, you should apply it yourself from now on."
Grace Tang was applying facial cream on his face when Ethan Yang came out of his room carrying his schoolbag. Seeing this scene, he twitched one corner of his mouth and made a slight "hum" sound, as if he was laughing.
Liam Tang was sensitive to the mockery in the laughter. He broke away from Grace Tang in annoyance and took the cream from her hand: "Don't apply it. You'll be late."
"Be more enthusiastic towards your classmates." Grace Tang urged, and then took the box of cream back from Liam Tang, "Why did you bring this to school? I put it in your room."
"I understand." said Liam Tang.
Ethan Yang was slowly changing his shoes behind him, and Liam Tang didn't know whether he should wait for him to go downstairs together. He unzipped his schoolbag and pretended to check if he had forgotten anything, while secretly observing Ethan Yang's movements from the corner of his eye.
Ethan Yang didn't seem to want to wait for him, so he changed his shoes and pushed the door open to walk out. His schoolbag was on his side, and their arms bumped slightly as he passed by.
"Mom, I'm leaving." After Ethan Yang left, Liam Tang shouted to the inner room, then pushed the door open and walked out. Ethan Yang just closed the door, but didn't close it completely.
The elevator was still six floors away from going down. There was no one at the door and footsteps were heard in the corridor. It seemed that Ethan Yang did not wait for the elevator and went down the stairs directly.
It was too slow. Liam Tang glanced at the number displayed next to the elevator door and turned towards the stairs on the side.
It was 7 o'clock in the morning, and the sky was not yet fully bright. The voice-controlled lights in the corridor were lit up by the sound of Ethan Yang's footsteps passing by, and were dimly illuminating the stairs.
Dong, dong, dong. Soon, the sound of footsteps came one after another in the corridor.
Liam Tang went downstairs and saw that Ethan Yang did not go to the garage, but was standing next to a bicycle near the corridor, bending over to unlock it.
"Hey." Liam Tang shouted at him.
Ethan Yang looked up at him, as if waiting for what he would say next.
"Your dad said," Liam Tang looked at him expressionlessly, "He sent us to school this morning."
"I'll go by bike." Ethan Yang said, unlocked the bike, and then without even looking at him, he rode out, put one leg over the seat, and quickly rode away.
Liam Tang exhaled and walked towards the garage.
Alexander Yang was standing by the car waiting for them. When he saw Liam Tang coming over, he asked, "Where's Ethan Yang? Still dawdling?"
"He rode away on his bike." Liam Tang walked to the car, opened the door and sat in the back seat.
If he didn't know where the school was, he wouldn't want to get in the car. But it didn't matter.
"It's getting more and more outrageous." Alexander Yang also got in the car and said while fastening his seat belt, "Don't mind Liam Tang, he---"
"No problem." Liam Tang interrupted Alexander Yang. He didn't want to listen at all.
***
As Alexander Yang said, Runcheng No. 1 Middle School is a key school in the city, and the science class 3 is a place where crouching tigers and hidden dragons are everywhere. In this class of top students where many students are competing for supremacy, a small group of poor students headed by Ethan Yang and Lucas Feng have become an out-of-place and particularly eye-catching existence.
"I understand the situation, don't worry," Qiu Li, the head teacher of Class 3, took Liam Tang from Alexander Yang and patted his shoulder, "Just tell me if you are not used to it. I have seen your previous grades in school. I don't need to say much about you being a good student---As for Ethan Yang," she changed the subject and looked at Alexander Yang, "I really can't do anything with this child..."
"That kid is stubborn. Thank you for your concern," Alexander Yang sighed with a headache. "Let's try both sides. I'll talk to him some time."
"Okay, I'll talk to him today too," the head teacher raised his wrist and looked at the watch, "class is about to start, I'll take Jun He to the class first. A bunch of kids are still wild after the holiday, I don't know how chaotic the class will be."
"You go, you go. It's time to take care of it." Alexander Yang exchanged a few polite words with the head teacher and turned away.
"Teacher Qiu." Liam Tang spoke when he was almost at the classroom door.
"What's wrong?" Qiu Li turned to look at him.
"Can I not introduce myself later?"
Qiu Li has been teaching for nearly 20 years. This is the first time she has heard such a request. She laughed and said, "What's wrong? Why not do it? You need to let everyone get to know you."
"There's nothing much to introduce," Liam Tang further said, "I hate introducing myself."
This was no longer a request. Qiu Li was stunned for a moment, and then thought with a headache that it seemed that Deputy Mayor Yang's youngest son would not be much easier to deal with than his eldest son Ethan Yang.
"Okay," Qiu Li said, having nothing to say, "Then let me briefly introduce you to everyone."
"Thank you, teacher." Liam Tang said politely.
Passing through the corridor, I saw that several classrooms were in an uproar, and Class 3 of the Grade 12 Science Department, which attracted attention for its academic performance, was no exception.
When Qiu Li led Liam Tang through the door, the classmates were huddled together and joking around. When they saw the head teacher coming in, everyone automatically fell silent and returned to their seats. Only Lucas Feng, the fool, had his back to the door and was still saying loudly, "Damn, I copied all afternoon yesterday and I'm so tired that my shoulder periarthritis is about to flare up. Hey, don't leave, you guys..."
"The teacher is here!" someone reminded him in a low voice.
Lucas Feng suddenly shut up, turned around to make eye contact with Qiu Li, then sat back in his seat dejectedly.
"Should I grant you a week's sick leave so you can go back and take good care of your frozen shoulder?" The head teacher glared at Lucas Feng, then adjusted his glasses and looked around the class, "There's only half a semester left before you're in the third year of high school. Look at you guys, do you look like second-year students at all? I just walked all the way down the corridor, and other classes were memorizing their lessons, but only our science class three had the same high voices, and they were discussing the content of copying homework. You guys are really good, making the new students laugh at you as soon as they arrive."
Nonsense, Liam Tang stood behind the head teacher, looking at the class full of pale students and thought, it was obvious that other classes were making more noise.
"Let me introduce him to you all," Qiu Li, who was half a head shorter than Liam Tang, put her hand on Liam Tang's back and took him a few steps towards the middle of the classroom. "There's a new student in our class this semester, his name is ---"
She turned around and looked at Liam Tang. She wanted to have a cordial and friendly interaction with this new classmate, but she didn't expect Liam Tang to have no intention of saying anything and just left her aside.
The students in the class also looked up at him curiously and kept whispering to each other.
"---His name is Liam Tang." The head teacher had to take up the conversation himself, "His grades are very good, especially in math. The new student is not very familiar with the class, so the class leaders should help him integrate into the environment. There is an empty seat over there, you go first." The head teacher pointed to an empty seat in the second to last row and patted Liam Tang on the back.
Liam Tang walked straight to the empty seat, put his schoolbag on the table, and sat down.
His desk mate was a girl with a crooked ponytail, who was making an excited expression to the classmate next to her.
Seeing Liam Tang sitting next to her, she turned her head and spoke to him in a low voice: "Your name is Liam Tang, right? How do you write it? Which Jun and which He?"
Liam Tang stuffed his schoolbag into the hole of the desk and said, "Jun means gentleman, He means illustrious." While speaking, he turned his head absentmindedly and saw the last empty seat in the middle row - that should be Ethan Yang, he thought. Alexander Yang said that Ethan Yang was also in this class, but he just glanced at the class and didn't see him.
"Oh, that sounds nice. My name is Yin Cong, which means gurgling water." said the girl sitting next to me.
She seemed to have something else to say, but then the head teacher called her name: "Yin Cong, I told you last semester that you can't wear crooked braids, right? My words will expire after the winter vacation, right?"
"I understand, teacher." Yin Cong quickly lowered her head, grabbed her ponytail with both hands, and symbolically moved to the middle.
"Okay, start reciting the lessons quickly, the teacher will be here soon." The head teacher glanced at the class again and walked towards the door. As soon as he walked out of the classroom, Ethan Yang came in from outside.
"What are you doing again?" The head teacher grabbed his arm and stopped him at the door, asking sternly.
"Is the school team having a meeting, teacher?" Ethan Yang looked at her innocently.
"You really think you're a sports student, don't you?" The head teacher looked at him with disappointment, "Come to my office after the second class."
"Oh." Ethan Yang looked down at her.
The math teacher hurried over, nodded and greeted the head teacher, then walked into the classroom.
"Go to class first," the head teacher was about to walk past, but then he remembered something and turned around and said, "By the way, please tell Liam Tang to come to my office after the second class to get the exercise book."
"I won't tell you." Ethan Yang refused as a matter of course, "My father has already told you about my family's situation."
The head teacher was in a state of panic: "Okay, call the monitor out. You little brats are causing me to have high blood pressure. Each class is getting worse than the last!"
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