Chapter 93

“Ji Qing?!”

The moment she reached the doorway of the teachers’ office, Gu Lingxue immediately noticed that tall, slender figure. Her fingers unconsciously clenched the hem of her skirt, and her expression turned instantly flustered. But before she could say anything, her parents’ arguing dragged her right back to reality.

Of all times, it had to be in front of Ji Qing...

Gu Lingxue had never expected things to turn out this coincidently.

She sincerely admired the Valedictorian of Class S, another commoner like herself, and she sincerely wished that none of her classmates would ever witness a scene of her arguing with her parents. She was so mortified now that she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole.

Did it really have to be in front of Ji Qing? Did they really have to start making trouble right now?

For no reason at all, a surge of anger toward her parents rose in Gu Lingxue’s heart. Yet her parents were in no state to notice their daughter’s embarrassment. After sweeping his gaze around the room, the stern middle-aged man with graying temples locked his eyes firmly onto Li Xuehua.

“You’re the homeroom teacher of Class S, aren’t you?”

Li Xuehua forced herself to remain calm. “Yes. May I ask what the problem is?”

Before the middle-aged man could say anything further, the woman beside him could no longer hold herself back and launched her attack first.

Mrs. Gu strode quickly to Li Xuehua’s desk and looked down at her from above as she accused, “What exactly is wrong with your school?! A school is supposed to have an obligation to protect its students! On what grounds did you promote her without informing us, her parents?”

“I sent her to your school to study, not to end up with her life and death unknown in a Danger Zone—”

By the end of that sentence, Mrs. Gu’s voice had risen involuntarily.

The shrill, piercing female voice stabbed through Ji Qing’s eardrums, making him frown slightly in discomfort. He gave the agitated middle-aged woman an odd look. She was elegantly dressed, with a gentle face and a few faint lines at the corners of her eyes.

She really did not look like someone with a violent temper.

Ji Qing mused to himself: Maybe she was furious because of her daughter’s actions... Most likely, she had only recently learned just how dangerous Class S at the Third Ability Academy really was...

“You never sent me here in the first place!”

On the other side, Gu Lingxue could not help raising her voice too. “Coming here to study was my own decision! I paid the tuition and travel expenses myself! I never troubled either of you, and I don’t need you arranging my future for me!”

“Is that supposed to be the attitude you take with your parents?” Mr. Gu reproached her disappointedly. “We certainly never taught you to shout at your parents like this. I’d say—it was this school, and that lower-class friend of yours, that corrupted you!”

“And where do you think the money for your tuition and travel came from?” her mother snapped.

“Then what exactly do you want me to do?” Gu Lingxue shouted outright, rage flooding her chest. “Even if I jumped from here right now, I still wouldn’t accept your way of thinking! Why did you follow me here? Stop embarrassing me! Out of everyone here, whose parents would come all the way to school just to make a scene like this?!”

Mrs. Gu was so angry that her hands trembled. “Do you think we wanted to come? If you hadn’t insisted on coming here to study, would we have needed to?!”

Mr. Gu’s face had gone red with fury. “They don’t have parents. Do you want to end up without parents too?!”

As the three of them argued louder and louder and the smell of gunpowder thickened, Li Xuehua, who still did not fully understand the whole story, hurriedly stood up and stretched out her hands with a strained smile.

“The three of you... please calm down first. Arguing won’t solve anything...”

Because of Li Xuehua’s interruption, Mrs. Gu predictably turned her anger toward her instead. Suppressing her fury, she shouted, “Teacher, you still haven’t explained—why didn’t your school notify us parents about the class promotion?”

Li Xuehua suddenly sucked in a sharp breath.

But years of teaching experience allowed her to steady herself again quickly, and she explained, “This was already mentioned in the waiver before enrollment. The promotion system has also been in place ever since the school was founded. The school did not deliberately conceal anything.”

“Doesn’t that just prove that your school’s system is fundamentally flawed?” Mr. Gu frowned.

“You unilaterally move children into Class S, unilaterally send them into Danger Zones, and then call it training. Heh... what exactly is there to train?” Mrs. Gu sneered. “What’s more, there isn’t even a single teacher accompanying them. If I hadn’t had the presence of mind to ask someone to investigate, would you still be keeping us in the dark right now?”

The questions from the two parents were sharp and relentlessly pressing.

Li Xuehua was caught between them, torn in both directions.

To be honest, this was the first time she had ever encountered a situation like this. It was already painfully obvious to her that Gu Lingxue’s parents had never had any contact with the Ability world, nor had they ever investigated it properly for their daughter’s sake.

Every one of their accusations was rooted in the ordinary things familiar to them.

But those words very clearly enraged the listening Gu Lingxue. It was already humiliating enough that someone she admired had witnessed her family arguing in public, and now every word from her parents was dripping with the fact that they had never truly cared to understand her.

Gu Lingxue shouted outright, “You never even tried to understand any of it!!!”

The moment those words left her mouth, Li Xuehua nearly blacked out on the spot. She could already tell with complete clarity that this was not something that could be resolved any time soon. But before that—

Lowering her head, Li Xuehua glanced at Ji Qing and said gently, “Ji Qing, why don’t you leave first for now? If there’s anything you need to talk to me about afterward, you can contact me anytime through the Terminal.”

Ji Qing nodded with feigned composure.

Out of the corner of his eye, he swept a glance over the other people in the office. When Li Xuehua spoke to him, the other two adults present finally restrained themselves slightly, perhaps because even they understood how undignified this was.

He absolutely could not become a teacher.

Ji Qing rejected Li Xuehua’s earlier suggestion in one breath. He knew perfectly well that his temperament was completely unsuited to scenes this extreme. If anything, it would be easier for him to go back to being a cadre in an Infected Organization. At least he could handle cadre work...

Click.

Ji Qing gently shut the office door behind him, sealing away the sounds of the argument inside.

Still... how should he put it?

Ji Qing thought absently that he could understand Gu Lingxue’s irritation. Mainly, it was the contrast that made it sting. Among the eleven students currently in Class S, only Gu Lingxue suffered under the torment of family discord. Although Gu Lingxue herself knew that her parents meant well, that “concern” of theirs genuinely bound her hand and foot.

If Zhou Que had been here, he probably would have started mocking her by name on the spot.

That would only have made Gu Lingxue feel even worse. But to be honest... Ji Qing truly had not expected the atmosphere in Gu Lingxue’s home to be that suffocating. He had already gotten a partial sense of it from the manga, but those fragmented bits were nowhere near as vivid as witnessing it in person now.

No wonder even the normally elegant Gu Lingxue had turned irritable in the way she spoke.

Her parents simply had never looked into the details of the Ability world, and now they had rushed over the moment they heard something dangerous and were trying to force her to transfer schools. Under circumstances like these, even if Gu Lingxue wanted to have a proper conversation with them, she would not be able to.

Ji Qing lowered his head and sighed softly.

What he was most thankful for right now was that he did not have to face this himself. As long as he was not the one dealing with it, Ji Qing felt there was still hope left for his world.

That said—

Ji Qing’s peripheral vision fell on Xie Chang’an, who was standing stiffly by the corridor. His eyes turned cool as he said, “You’re here to register too? And now you don’t dare go in?”

“Mo-more or less.” Xie Chang’an scratched his head awkwardly.

But he quickly realized that description was not quite accurate and hurriedly added, “Strictly speaking, I came with Lingxue. Then we ran into her parents on the way, and after that... it turned into this.”

Ji Qing fell silent.

A moment later, he looked at Xie Chang’an with sympathy and said in a complicated tone, “I understand. That really was hard on you.”

So Gu Lingxue’s parents had forcibly followed them over.

The moment he imagined Xie Chang’an being forced to listen to the three of them arguing all the way here, Ji Qing’s mood inexplicably improved quite a bit. Even though the Gu family’s domestic affairs had nothing to do with him, the things Gu Lingxue’s parents had said kept making anger flare in his chest.

A textbook Asian family—planning out your entire life under the banner of “it’s for your own good.”

Just being there in person had almost been enough to trigger Ji Qing’s PTSD. The words were too familiar, the manipulation too familiar, the whole blood-pressure-spiking scene too familiar. Ji Qing offered silent sympathy: once again, many thanks to Teacher Li for her heroic sacrifice.

Having sorted out the situation, Ji Qing turned to leave.

His school registration was already finished. What he still needed to do now was eat a meal at the cafeteria, go to the dorm and sort out his daily necessities, and then prepare to meet Emerald.

But after he had walked halfway down the corridor, Ji Qing could not help turning back.

“How long are you planning to stand around here?”

“Huh?” Xie Chang’an blinked blankly.

Ji Qing’s tone immediately turned disdainful. “Do you really think they’re going to settle this quickly and let the teacher handle your registration afterward?”

“Uh...” Xie Chang’an scratched his head awkwardly.

Because he knew perfectly well that was impossible. If Gu Lingxue’s parents had really been that reasonable, they would never have gone out of their way to follow her here in the first place. Just the fact that Gu Lingxue had a friend like Xie Chang’an—an orphan from the bottom rung of Spring City society—was enough to fill them with disgust.

So Ji Qing said smoothly, “Come eat first.”

After saying that, Ji Qing started walking toward the stairs again. And when he paused by the stair railing and turned back to look at Xie Chang’an once more, the Xie Chang’an who was so often criticized for not understanding what people meant instantly understood what the Valedictorian was implying.

Wait—the Valedictorian was asking him to come along!

Caught utterly off guard by the favor, Xie Chang’an hurried after him.

At that moment, he was so dazed he could barely tell east from west on campus anymore, and he could even shove Gu Lingxue—still arguing with her parents in the office—completely out of his mind. In shock, Xie Chang’an thought: So they hadn’t cut ties with him... no, that wasn’t it. They hadn’t grown disgusted with him.

Even now, Xie Chang’an still brooded over how he had performed during the Winter Break Practicum. What he had not expected, however, was that Ji Qing simply had not cared.

As they walked, Ji Qing asked, “How was your winter break?”

At once, the kindly smile of the Orphanage director Grandma rose in Xie Chang’an’s mind, along with the teasing remarks from the Spring City police about how much he had changed over the past half year. As those memories surfaced, a natural, open smile spread across his face.

“It was really good.”

Obviously, Ji Qing judged inwardly.

He naturally knew that Xie Chang’an had had a very good winter break. Not only had he resolved the cult-related knot that had long hung over his heart, he had also successfully helped the police officers who had urged him to enroll in an ability high school back in volume one of the manga, earning commendation from the Spring City government in the process.

...So why did the more he thought about it, the more miserable he felt?

Expressionless, Ji Qing came to a firm conclusion: it was absolutely because his own winter break had been far too bleak. He swore that if, next year, he still could not find anyone to ring in the New Year with him, he was absolutely going to invite himself over to Xie Chang’an’s home for dumplings.

Damn it. Stop tempting him already.