The Villain and the Cannon Fodder’s Mother

“Shanshan told me over the phone yesterday that she wants more fish. Since I happened to get a few today, I thought I’d bring them over.” He lowered his head and took a sip of the coffee. With a look of enjoyment on him, he said, “Even coffee tastes better at your house than mine.”

Xiao Qian, who had always received compliments about his coffee from Mr. Lu: Meow, meow, meow???

Lin Yiyi took a look at him, then at Meng Shanshan who was docilely playing with her cat.

“Since when do you two talk to each other privately?”

Meng Shanshan waved her little chubby hand and said, “I asked Uncle Lu for his number last time. He said I can let him know anytime when I want to eat something.” Having said that, she looked up in excitement and said, “Uncle Lu is like my Doremon. Uncle Lu is the best!”

The little girl has five fruit-brand smart watches… When this high-end watch came out, it came in five different colors – white, pink, blue, yellow, orange. And they were extremely popular among students.

Meng Shanshan asked for one of each. Meng Yuran was the one who bought them for her.

The way nouveau riche Meng Yuran put it, having all the colors make it easier to mix and match with her clothes.

Alright. That wasn’t a bad reason. When she was able to make more money than she could spend, she would also buy herself a set of every color!

Lu Xun smiled happily. Then he couldn’t help but start looking around the house.

“Where’s Little Yuran?”

He felt that something was lacking without the little wolf cub there staring at him. Normally, that pair of cold eyes would follow him around as soon as he walked inside the door. His sense of presence was impossible to overlook.

Even Lin Yiyi could feel the hostility that her instant son has against him, so she was genuinely surprised when Lu Xun brought up Meng Yuran. She assumed the two of them were just natural enemies who would never get along!

“School is about to start and his classmates asked for his homework. He already left to go to his classmate’s house.”

***

Meng Yuran also hadn’t expected that he had just walked out of the door when the Lu guy showed up.

And, it was his fool of a sister who let him in again!

Xie Ning’s room was pretty massive. On top of one desk, two young men were frantically copying while complaining in between.

“Hot dang! We were supposed to write journal entries or our language class? One a day? Are they crazy?!” Xu Jie tossed away his pen viciously, slammed his language textbook shut, and pulled out his mathematics one.

“We are about to start junior high school. Why do we still have to suffer under our grade school teachers?” Li YueBin wasn’t faring much better.

School would be starting in a week, but he had just started on his summer homework assignment two days ago. There were already dark circles under his eyes and he wished he’d just drop dead.

Xie Ning, sitting over by the bay window and just finishing up a game with Meng Yuran, said cheerfully after hearing his friend’s words. “Fun during the vacation, not so fun when school’s starting. That’s because the two of you hadn’t touched your homework at all during the entire summer vacation. Who do you have to blame?”

Both him and Meng Yuran have good grades, but they couldn’t handle their two leg-pulling friends. There had been non-stop phone calls from the two of them every day…

Xu Jie put down his pen, stretched, and said, “I can’t help it. I went on a vacation with my family as soon as the vacation started, then I was pulled into playing basketball by the team after I got back.”

“Speaking of, didn’t Little Yuran go on a two-week vacation too? When did you find time to work on your homework?” asked Li YueBin.

Meng Yuran, poking at his screen, didn’t even look up, “I finished it before my trip. It only took me a week to finish them all.”

Xie Ning made fun of the two again. “You think everyone is like the two of you? Little Yuran is a true cum laude. This bit of homework is like nothing to him, okay?”

Having two cum laude as their buddies. What more could they ask for?

Finding a hole in his story, Xu Jie said, “What about the daily journal entry requirement? Are you telling me that you’ve written 60 diary entries all over 7 days? I don’t believe you!”

As they were talking, they finished up another round in their game.

Winning in a landslide, Meng Yuran put down his phone and looked over at his friend with sarcasm. “We have spent 6 years in grade school and have written at least hundreds, if not over 1,000 essays. All I needed to do was to copy from 60 of them.”

All of his friends were shocked by how resourceful he was. That method had never occurred to them!

“Plus, do you really think our instructors would read all of the dairies? At 60 entries per person, that’s 2,400 per class. Even at 500 words each, that’s over 1.2 million words…”

He curved his thin lips a bit and snickered, “No instructor would have the patience to read them all.”