The Class Teacher of Class One was a young woman named Chi. In this era where everyone was tall, the Class Teacher, standing at 1.7 meters, was considered petite. Accompanying the petite Teacher Chi was a robot carrying her bag, indicating she was enjoying her shopping time.
Zhou Ping stood under the large internet cafe sign, and his eyes met those of Teacher Chi, who was looking around. She had been very relaxed, in a state of leisure, but as soon as she saw Zhou Ping, her expression immediately turned sharp.
"Zhou Ping, what's going on?! What are you doing at an internet cafe?"
Zhou Ping's expression didn't change. "Doing homework, researching. It's more convenient at an internet cafe. Is Teacher Chi here shopping today?"
"Yes. Have you finished your homework?"
"Almost," Zhou Ping said, scratching the back of his head with a simple, honest gesture.
Teacher Chi's expression softened, and she chatted amiably for a while. "There are many bad youths in internet cafes now. Don't learn from them. And don't associate with those people from other schools, understood?"
Zhou Ping was touched. "Thank you, Teacher. I understand, of course I understand."
"Good. You should head back to school now. Don't be late for evening self-study."
"Goodbye, Teacher."
Zhou Ping smiled brightly and openly. The concern shown between teacher and student made him feel very warm. This warmth lasted for three bus stops. After getting off the bus, he looked at the gloomy sky. The weather in Jiangnan was truly annoying; the sun had been blinding at noon, but now it looked like it was going to rain.
He ducked into a roadside home-style restaurant. The cook was a real person, which was quite rare. He ordered a bowl of shredded pork and vegetable noodles. He saw some glistening, tempting braised cooked food in the counter, so he added a plump chicken leg to his noodles. The wrinkled chicken skin was tucked at the base, revealing the beautiful muscle. Zhou Ping secretly thought, this chicken must have been a good chicken in its lifetime.
It cost a total of seven yuan. As the saying goes, processing fees are expensive. If the cook were a robot, this bowl of noodles wouldn't cost three yuan, and the cost would be negligible. It's said that the food in orphanages is also very good, thanks to the developed productivity of modern society.
Zhou Ping ate this bowl of shredded pork and vegetable noodles with a chicken leg. To be honest, a real human cook didn't necessarily make food taste better than a robot. In other words, his bowl of noodles might not be much better than the food at the orphanage.
The seven yuan spent on labor was for a homey atmosphere, knowing that the noodles were indeed made by a human, whom he could see in the kitchen.
He heard that rich people could spend thousands or tens of thousands of yuan on a meal, all for the cook. They wanted to watch them transform ingredients into food step by step, the entire process filmed and edited into exquisite videos, perfect to watch while eating.
When did eating become a performance?
Zhou Ping didn't know what people used to seek when spending money on food, but his seven yuan today was truly for the service. Seeing someone busy for him gave him a particularly base sense of superiority. He guessed that the cook's social credit was only level two, or even level one.
Actually, he wanted to add a chicken leg to his noodles because he was thinking of his mother. Although he could video call every week, he hadn't seen her in person for a long time, nor had he returned to his own home. Neither the familiar environment nor familiar people were there; only a chicken leg could awaken Zhou Ping's memories of his mother.
Mom said to study hard; she worked very hard.
Thinking of this, Zhou Ping felt warm again. How great his mother was! He wasn't studying for the rise of China; he was studying for his family, so they could enjoy a good life in the future. He wanted to study and become a person of status.
This warm feeling lasted for a while. After he finished his noodles, gnawing the chicken leg clean, he went to a nearby unmanned convenience store and picked out a bottle of orange-flavored sparkling water. He guzzled down most of the bottle, burped, and then fine drizzles of rain began to fall. It was cool. Zhou Ping pulled up his hood, and the rainwater slid along the curved surface of his clothes, not wetting the boy beneath.
Back at school, Zhou Ping went to the classroom to get his textbooks and practice questions, then headed to the self-study room. At 6:03, some people were already studying there.
Zhou Ping studied diligently for a while, tackling his assignments for each subject in order from easiest to most difficult. Finally, he got stuck on a math problem, a conic section. He spent half an hour on it, couldn't solve it, and his determination immediately deflated.
After some thought, he pulled out his student tablet and started reading some selected extracurricular materials.
He read several exquisite short articles from the National Youth Magazine, praising natural beauty and criticizing the rampant anti-intellectualism, but he still wasn't satisfied. Zhou Ping had a favorite author, but he couldn't find his articles in the latest issue. The author's pen name was very strange, called Xiang Feihai. Zhou Ping knew that xiang was a traditional dried fish from the Jiangnan region, which he had also eaten. Xiang sounds like 'want' (think), so Xiang Feihai actually meant 'want to fly to the sea' (Want to fly over the sea).
This gentleman's articles weren't actually that good. When Zhou Ping read the author's introduction, he saw that he had written some literature, but it had no real reputation.
Authorship these days was truly a relatively high-risk profession. To be as stable and unremarkable as this gentleman was quite rare.
Zhou Ping liked Xiang Feihai's short stories. This author would describe some very magical and surreal scenes, especially some cyberpunk literature. One story, in particular, left a deep impression on him: it was about a rich girl falling in love with a poor boy from the slums. Together, they thwarted an artificial intelligence conspiracy, but in the end, the rich girl married a rich man, and the poor boy was convicted of damaging state public property and hanged himself in prison.
Zhou Ping thought that if this gentleman changed the ending of his works, they might sell better than they did now.
People in the world were already tired of tragedies; if they couldn't find comedy in literature, they would be even sadder.
Zhou Ping flipped to past issues, found Xiang Feihai's article, and finished reading a tragedy. After savoring it for a while, he suddenly felt tired.
He muddled through until the end of evening self-study, then returned to his dorm. His friends asked him how his game went.
He said it was awesome.
His friends then advised him not to go for the next few months, as things were getting tight.
Zhou Ping agreed, but when it came to his own Zhou Ping, he was caught red-handed by the Class Teacher at the internet cafe.
The Class Teacher slapped him, in front of so many people at the internet cafe, and someone even secretly recorded it with their phone. He believed it wouldn't be long before he saw a GIF of himself being slapped on the forum.
It was truly shameful.
Zhou Ping was suspended for a week to reflect at home.
His father asked him if he still wanted to study. If not, he should go find a job.
Becoming a welfare worker meant his life was over. Zhou Ping was terrified. He swore to repent and called the Class Teacher three times a day.
Finally, he was allowed to return to school.
The humiliation forced him to study, but this feeling quickly dissipated in the comfortable campus life.
Even faster, his few troubled friends found a new, safe, and hidden place to go online.
In the end, nothing changed.
Until the day the Youth Mode patched the simulator loophole, that was a "Zhou Ping" from the third year of junior high.
Zhou Ping was disappointed.
Strangely, during the period he was addicted to games, he was still in the top class. After he stopped gaming, he was actually dropped. The day he left, the Class Teacher shook her head at him and sneered.
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