(Arch-N) Chapter 4
It's been a while, actually I have unedited chapters of this up to C30 but I need to edit them which is why they haven't been posted TT
Back in Shen Shicang’s freshman year before they separated according to subject streams, his results had already been outstanding. As for the three arts lessons, due to the fact that they would be taking the CAP (Comprehensive Assessment Program for Junior High School Students) in their sophomore year, he diligently paid attention in class, which was a stark contrast to the other students who had resorted to directly copying each other's answers.
And this was the reason why although the level of difficulty of the arts subjects in their senior year was high, for Shen Shicang, he didn’t have to struggle that much.
As Shen Shicang was paying close attention to the teacher’s lesson, out of the corner of his eye he noticed Song Mingyan facing the blackboard and diligently taking notes in front of him.
The urge to blindly take notes during class was a bad habit most arts stream students had, but Shen Shicang had never thought that even rebellious youths would also have such a habit.
When Shen Shicang noticed the piles of small blue, yellow and green notebooks scattered across Song Mingyan’s desk he couldn’t help but frown.
After the lesson ended, Shen Shicang tapped Song Mingyan’s shoulder with a ballpoint pen.
Song Mingyan turned around quickly and said, “Yes boss! What is it?!”
Shen Shicang was startled by this.
He still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that the boys in Class 12 had such a close relationship with Chen Yueyang.
Although the three boys had been so kind to him in the morning, mainly because they thought he was the real Chen Yueyang, he still felt he didn’t want to owe them any favours.
“Song Mingyan.” Shen Shicang said, “If you are finding it hard to keep up during class, don’t listen and take notes at the same time.”
Song Mingyan never expected his boss to be interested in anything related to academics, thus he was a bit confused at first when he heard this but then he answered with a tinge of distress, “But… But Boss, if I don’t take notes, the minute class ends I’ll forget everything, how can I revise then ah.”
To which Shen Shicang replied, “You can copy mine.”
Song Mingyan was shocked, “What?! Boss, I thought you never take notes in class?”
Shen Shicang was lost for words...
Now Shen Shicang was really stunned by this revelation about Chen Yueyang, who would have thought that he never took any notes in class? If that’s the case, then where on earth did his good results come from?!
Song Mingyan continued, “Boss, I know you want us to do well in our studies, and it’s for our own good, but not everyone has your brains, just making it to our current standard is already tough enough for most of us.”
After hearing this, Shen Shicang had confirmed his suspicions.
It seemed like Chen Yueyang’s current top grades were most likely a result of his innate abilities. Generally speaking, as long as an individual’s language proficiency was sufficient, they could probably manage those three arts subjects, add that to the fact that Chen Yueyang’s mathematics results were good enough to defy the heavens, he was practically scoring full marks every time, which was why he was leagues ahead of any other arts stream student.
Alas, his studying methods were primarily dependent on solely relying on his natural gift of intelligence, without an ounce of systematicness or logic, which was why his methods were not suitable for the students of Class 12.
Deep inside, Shen Shicang let out a sigh, then said, “From the beginning of senior year, I will also start taking notes in class. If you can’t keep up during class, then you can have a look at my notes, but when the teacher is teaching during class, you must make sure that you listen and understand every single sentence.”
The first thing would be to try keeping up with the teacher’s pace during lessons, then details during class, and to just take a few bullet points for notes. Luckily they still had 300 days until their NCEE (National College Entrance Examination), if he rectified his studying methods now, then it would be just in time.
Initially, Shen Shicang had a bad impression of the students in Class 12, and you can’t blame him because in any school, nobody would ever have a good impression towards the students of the last class.
Before this he had heard many rumours about the students of Class 12, all of them quite unpleasant. Yet, since some time ago, the negative news about Class 12 gradually decreased, oh right, it was probably from the moment when Chen Yueyang’s results improved by leaps and bounds.
Shen Shicang was usually a quiet person but when facing hardworking and diligent students, he was more than willing to lend a helping hand. This was one of the reasons why although quite introverted, his charisma and popularity in school was hardly inferior to that of Chen Yueyang’s who always seemed to be able to call out a friend wherever he went.
After Song Mingyan took the history notes from Shen Shicang, he discreetly shuffled a few steps backwards.
He wasn’t tall, just about 1.7 meters, allowing him to sit in the front row, while Guan Zhe and Lu Jiping who were well over 1.8 meters tall sat behind him.
Song Mingyan poked Guan Zhe who was playing Arena of Valor and whispered, “Hey hey hey stop playing!”
Guan Zhe shrugged his shoulders, reluctant to answer him, “Quit sticking to me, I’m about to make a comeback win! Go, go, go, go play somewhere else.”
“Stop playing will you!?” Song Mingyan grabbed Guan Zhe by the collar of his uniform and said softly, “Just look at Boss, don’t you think he’s acting strange?”
Guan Zhe completely ignored him, continuing to play his game. Oddly enough it was Lu Jiping who was sitting beside him that stuck his head forward and said, “It’s more than just strange, he’s practically gone mad! I seriously think our boss has been bewitched somehow by that Class A’s Shen Shicang! Forget him helping that guy yesterday, today boss even gave him a hot drink, almost as if Boss is trying to win the attentions of Shen Shicang!”
Song Mingyan kicked Lu Jiping’s chairlegs and softly scolded him, “Stop talking trash, the one things Boss hates the most are those white-faced idiots who can’t carry anything on their shoulders nor fight with their fists, if boss hears what you just said, he’ll hammer you into stupidity and throw you into a rubbish bin!”
Lu Jiping’s chair was kicked sideways and almost fell onto the ground, but luckily he had fast reflexes and managed to stabilize himself and cursed back at him, “Do you want me to hammer you into stupidity? Plus, weren’t you the one who brought this up in the first place!”
Just then Guan Zhe successfully made a comeback victory in Arena of Valor and leaned over to say, “What, what, what are you guys talking about?”
“We’re talking about how your brain has a hole in it,” Song Mingyan retorted, then he continued, “Actually, I just wanted to let you guys have a look at boss’s notes, they’re... really strange.”
Lu Jiping asked curiously, “I thought boss said that taking notes is something only dumb people do, he has never taken notes before ah.”
Song Mingyan nodded, “That’s right, I also thought this felt weird, and Boss usually hates writing, his homework is usually littered with his horrid handwriting, but in the notes he just gave me…” Song Mingyan flipped the notebook open, “Here, look for yourselves.”
Lu Jiping and Guan Zhe both leaned in closer and looked at the words on the notebook, each simultaneously letting out complicated reactions.
Lu Jiping, “What the hell…”
Guan Zhe, “Holy shit!”
The two of them couldn’t be blamed for such a reaction because the handwriting on the notebook and the handwriting they were used to seeing from their boss were poles apart. Chen Yueyang had 2 main styles of handwriting, one was for dealing with exams and one was his normal style.
Everyone knew that for the exam papers of Art subjects, one could score 20 marks higher solely based on the neatness of one’s handwriting, and this was merely a conversative estimate at best. So, in order to gain higher marks, Chen Yueyang would force himself to avoid any form of cursive during exams, which resulted in his papers having characters that looked like they came from the notebooks of a primary school student——he couldn’t help it, after all ever since graduating from primary school Chen Yueyang had not been studying seriously.
His second handwriting style was his normal style, which he usually used for pop quizzes and homework, and it was absolutely atrocious. It was as messy as it possibly could be, and as unbearably ugly, almost to the point that it couldn’t be viewed. If it weren’t for the fact that his results were so good, the teachers would probably have fed his homework to the dogs, because merely looking at it was enough to frustrate them.
And now, what was currently on display in front of the three of them was practically a completely different style of handwriting to Chen Yueyang’s. Guan Zhe couldn’t help himself and said, “This is just too bloody beautiful.”
Truthfully speaking, this wasn’t just visually pleasing, when looking at the characters written like this, the neatness wasn’t even the main plus point, just take a look at this regular script (of Chinese characters), every single character was beyond beautiful! They could literally self-destruct then and there!
Just as the three of them were pondering over the thought of their boss being ‘drugged’ by a certain person, someone knocked on the door to Class 12.
It was recess time now and there weren’t many students left in class, the person who knocked was a student from next-door, Class 11 .
The boy carefully leaned in and asked, “Uhm… is Chen Yueyang here? Someone is looking for him at the back gate, it’s someone from the Shiyan High basketball team.”
The mind’s of rebellious teens were quite sensitive, usually, when they heard the words “back gate” then they knew that it was time to start searching for baseball bats, metal rods, wooden sticks or any sort of weapon they could use.
Lu Jiping flexed his biceps, walked up to Chen Yueyang and asked, “ Boss, are you ready?”
Guan Zhe presented a whole bag full of baseball bats and iron rods, “Boss, take your pick!”
And the extremely quick-witted Song Mingyan took out his phone and made a call, “Hello? Is this 120 (Emergency Line), in about half an hour’s time come to the back gate of the Yi High, next to the fried noodle stall, yes, just come and pick up the bodies.”
Watching all these motions in sequence had Shen Shicang in quite a daze...
Then he frowned slightly, this bandit-like method of dealing with things was just completely unacceptable for him.
He stood up and said, “We’re already seniors, we need to be more mature about how we deal with things, keep all this stuff.”
Upon hearing his words, his cronies quickly hid all the weapons.
Shen Shicang looked at the notebook beside Song Mingyan and said, “You guys continue revising, I’ll be back before you know it.”
Lu Jiping asked out of concern, “Boss at least bring me along!”
Seeing that Chen Yueyang’s face had darkened and he didn’t reply, Song Mingyan hastily slapped Lu Jiping over the head and said, “Look at you, do you think just ‘coz you’ve grown two chunks of muscle that you’re suddenly invincible? Don’t forget that boss can take 10 people on by himself, he’s way better than you!”
Lu Jiping rubbed the spot that Song Mingyan slapped and said aggrievedly, “Ok then, boss just take care of yourself and come back soon.”
Shen Shicang looked at the tall young man and nodded.
Actually Shen Shicang wasn’t completely clueless about how to fight, in fact the truth was quite the opposite, if he put his mind to it, then maybe even Chen Yueyang would be no match for him. It was just because when he was young, his father had physically abused his mother, and that resulted in some serious traumatic experiences, causing Shen Shicang to greatly despise violence as a method of solution, he strongly felt that violence alone could only ever cause problems and never solve them.
After Shen Shicang left the classroom, barely a few moments later, Chen Yueyang stopped by.
In Shen Shicang’s body, he strode into the classroom, grabbing Guan Zhe by the collar of his shirt and asked in a panicked tone, “Where is Shen.. I mean Chen Yueyang?
Guan Zhe was in a daze, he completely disregarded the fact that he was being held by the collar and dazedly answered, “Boss... boss has gone to the back gate ah.”
Chen Yueyang shoved Guan Zhe aside, then heavily smacked his own head, cursing something under his breath before opening his mouth and shouting at them, “How could you all let him go by himself?!”
Lu Jiping answered, “Boss said he’ll be back before we know it.”
“Back before you know… Forget it,” Chen Yueyang struggled to subdue his urge to swear profanities, let out a long breath and began to order them, “Go bring out all our supplies of baseball bats, and steel rods.”
Lu Jiping retorted, “Boss said he wanted to solve the problem in a mature manner, and that he wouldn’t use such violent methods anymore.”
After hearing this Chen Yueyang completely lost it.
He lifted his leg up and kicked Lu Jiping, sending him flying to the side of the table. Then he propped his leg up onto the chair and snarled, “If one more stupid thing comes out of your mouth, then I’ll use violent methods to end you first!”
Everyone was in shock.
Most likely because having spent long periods in the commanding presence of Chen Yueyang, the students of Class 12 were all too familiar with this sort of atmosphere.
Even if he had swapped his body, Chen Yueyang’s impact was still extremely influential.
Chen Yueyang said, “All boys who can fight, pick up a weapon and follow me to the back gate, that bastard Lian Yuxin and his guys are back for more!”
End of Chapter
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