After the bell rings, the teacher still does not come

She turned to look at me, noticing the fierce expression on my face. Yet, facing Mr. Wang, she had no choice but to say, "Copying homework is a perfunctory act. Not only does it fail to impart knowledge, but it also implicates others!"

Mr. Wang nodded, looked around, and called out, "Ma Pipi, stand up and answer!"

I shifted my gaze to his face, glaring with fierce blue eyes to warn him against talking nonsense.

Cringing, Ma Pipi stood up, looked out the window, and replied, "I'm sorry, I don't know!"

Mr. Wang wasn't angry. He waved his hand for all the students to sit down and said, "Copying homework is a manifestation of irresponsibility toward oneself. What are we here for? Aren't we here to learn? Every day we must increase our knowledge! Homework is a test of what you have learned. Copying someone else's homework means learning what someone else has mastered, which has nothing to do with yourself! To prevent students from copying homework, Zhengtai, please come up and stand by the door!"

This was the first time I had ever heard such a rationale about copying homework. I remembered that previously, students copying from one another was extremely common, and I had never heard a teacher nag about it. "How annoying! If I have to go, I'll go. What's the big deal?" I left my seat, noticing that the gold-digger boy looked particularly relaxed, and blindly stood by the door as Mr. Wang had instructed.

The students stared at me with their eyes. Some didn't dare to meet my gaze directly, hiding and dodging as if they had done something shameful, but I didn't care at all.

Mr. Wang focused his attention on the students, glanced at Jiang Meili, and shouted, "Stand up and explain why you let her copy your homework!"

Jiang Meili sprang to her feet with a "whoosh" and uttered words that left everyone stunned: "It wasn't she who copied my composition; I copied her homework."

The students broke into a buzz of discussion, unsure who was right and who was wrong. Even Mr. Wang was reduced to a complete fool, furrowing his brow for a long time in sheer incomprehension. Could it be that people actually fought for the responsibility of copying homework? He had no choice but to ask, "Tell us about it so everyone can hear."

Jiang Meili had thought it over just moments before: she could not let Zhengtai get implicated. Therefore, she recounted the entire process of how the composition was copied.

What she said made complete sense. After pondering for a long time, Mr. Wang asked me to explain how I went about copying someone else's homework.

Since I hadn't copied anything, any answer I gave would be full of loopholes...

Mr. Wang had a few words for the class: "Whether you copy homework or let others copy yours, both parties are responsible and will face the same punishment." He called Jiang Meili up to stand beside me.

To my surprise, far from being angry, she was overjoyed to be standing next to me again.

The matter wasn't over yet. Mr. Wang went on and on about the evils of copying homework, such as: "When your academic performance is poor and you don't know how to do the work, you resort to copying others. Or you are lazy and waste the time meant for doing homework, using someone else's work just to get by. Either way, it ruins your academic performance!"

The bell rang. Having wasted an entire class period in vain, Mr. Wang told Mimi Ni to hand out the notebooks, gathered his books, and walked out of the classroom...

Most of the students headed out to play. Jiang Meili tightly linked her arm through mine and said in a spoiled, sugary voice, "I've missed you so much! From now on, ignore Mai Huatang; she's too shameless, trying to take my place!"

I wasn't interested in being lesbians; the crucial thing was to make everyone fear me. So I said, "I don't really feel one way or the other about Mai Huatang, but don't take things too seriously and start fights with people over nothing!"

Jiang Meili retorted, "I learned it from you! I used to be too scared to fight, but now I see that if you don't fight, people will just bully you!"

The students were quietly discussing the homework incident. I draped an arm around Jiang Meili's shoulder, stood by the podium, banged on the desk, and shouted, "So what if I copied homework? Keep babbling, and see if I don't punch you out!"

That shout stunned the students into silence. I had more to say: "Classmates, I didn't know copying homework was wrong, and I don't expect you to be like me. My Chinese is terrible; my compositions always go off-topic. Who can tell me how to write properly?"

There were actually people raising their hands, especially the class monitor, whose hand shot straight up into the air and waved vigorously, terrified I wouldn't see her.

Imitating Mr. Wang, I called out, "Stand up and answer."

Standing by her desk and looking at the students wandering in and out, Mimi Ni said, "Going off-topic happens because there is no central theme and you didn't prepare beforehand. Therefore, you must think it through clearly before putting pen to paper."

Some students shouted out, "Yeah! Let me answer!"

Four or five students spoke at once, resulting in a cacophony where not a single sentence could be clearly understood.

Gazing intently, Jiang Meili yelled, "Wei Jinglan, you speak!"

The name was entirely unfamiliar; it was the first time I had heard it, and I was quite curious to see who she was.

The person standing up to speak was a fifteen-year-old female student, about one meter fifty-eight tall, wearing twin ponytails and a white school uniform. Her appearance was quite ordinary.

She said, "The so-called off-topic means you don't know what you want to write about. Before writing a composition, you must first draft it mentally so you have a clear plan, which guarantees you can finish it in one breath."

I still had many questions, but the class bell rang. The students sat down, waiting for the teacher... I had no choice but to part ways with Jiang Meili and return to my own seat.

What annoyed me most was still the sight of that gold-digger boy. Someone so obsessed with money simply had a punchable face...

The students waited and waited, but the teacher never came in. I couldn't help asking, "What class is this?"

Not a single student answered. Even the class monitor walked out of the classroom, and everyone began observing from the windows...

Like a fool, I followed them outside, looking left and right...

Jiang Meili came over, grabbed my right arm, and shouted loudly, "There's no teacher for this class!"

The second-floor corridor outside was completely empty. Could the teacher have forgotten about the class?

Hearing Jiang Meili's voice, the students rushed out of the classroom, looking around everywhere...

An unfamiliar teacher walked up the stairs, saying as he approached, "Get into the classroom!"

Taken aback, the students watched as the strange teacher walked in first, leaving them with no choice but to follow closely behind...

He was a male teacher, around forty-five years old, one meter seventy tall, with a plain hairstyle and ordinary features. Standing before the podium, he waved for the students to sit down, looking as though he had something heavy on his mind.

I sat up straight in my proper seat, and the classmates did the same. Mimi Ni looked around restlessly...

The male teacher wanted to tell us a story that had just happened, right there last night, concerning our mathematics teacher...

After hearing the story, the students broke into a noisy discussion. I found it particularly incomprehensible: those people must have been blind as bats, what was the point of robbing a poor teacher? If they had any backbone, they should go rob wealthy people! For instance, Moli Ping and her eighty-year-old husband...

What he said made no sense at all. What on earth had happened? We would have to wait for the math teacher to come and tell us personally.

In the end, the male teacher said, "For today's class, you will have a self-study period! You must stay in the classroom; no one is allowed to go out and disturb others."

He had simply come to deliver a message and was not our substitute teacher. We didn't even know his name before he hurried away.

The students buzzed like a boiling pot of water. Some male students gathered around the podium, talking loudly about how to subdue an enemy, while female students clustered in groups of three or five to discuss how to prevent perverts. Even more imaginatively, someone said, "Are there any perverts among the boys in our class? How do we spot them and how do we deal with them?"

It was unclear who had raised this point, but it provoked a strong reaction from the boys, with the tall guy shouting the loudest: "There are perverts among the boys? Don't tell me there aren't any among the girls..."

The more I listened, the more ridiculous it got. From chatting about this and that, it had turned into an attack right here in our own class! With no teacher present, not a single student was reading a book, and they were constantly at each other's throats! My bad temper flared up. I pounded heavily on the desk with a "thud-thud," faced everyone, and shouted, "Stop talking nonsense! How could classmates do such things? We aren't the scum of society!"

The tall guy, completely forgetting the heavy kick he had taken to the neck earlier, screamed at the top of his lungs, "Hey boys! Whoever is a pervert, raise your hand, or else Zhengtai will twist your head off!"

I didn't say anything, but Ma Pipi was shouting even more ferociously than me. I didn't dare to beat people casually—what if someone actually died? I could only keep it bottled up inside, watching to see who would raise a hand.

The tall guy yelled for a long time, but no one paid him any attention. Shifting his gaze to the girls, he rambled wildly, "Are there any green tea bitches? Stand up and let everyone have a look!"

Class monitor Mimi Ni truly couldn't stand it any longer, deciding that a good scolding was the only way: "Idiot! Would anyone who is a green tea bitch ever admit it? If you're a pervert, would you admit it yourself?"

This hit the nail on the head. Both boys and girls fixed their eyes on the tall guy...

After blustering for a long time, he couldn't come up with a single sensible word. The whole class burst into gales of laughter, making a complete fool of the tall guy.

Jiang Meili climbed high up onto her desk and shouted, "Sisters! Even if you're a lesbian, don't be a green tea bitch—I hear it's filthy and gives you diseases! Look at these stinking men, each one smells worse than the last. The moment they take off their shoes, the stench rolls out. Disgusting!"

Several female students chimed in with deep resonance: "Oh! Tsk tsk tsk! Jiang Meili is right! I agree!"

The bell rang for the end of class. Many boys and girls rushed out, while others remained seated in their places.

The tall guy walked up to the blackboard and, heaven knows where he got a piece of chalk, scrawled a few giant characters with his clumsy paw: "Class monitor, I love you!"

When Mimi Ni saw it, her eyes turned red with anger. Wad of paper clenched in her hand, she stood at her seat and hurled it viciously at the tall guy's thick skull—only to miss him entirely.