Doing It Over Again [Rebirth]

4: School begins

As a teacher, Li Lu really didn't want to see any of his students living in that kind of home situation. He looked over at the half-grown child in front of him. Everything about the boy looked neat and clean. No one would have guessed he didn't have an adult at home to look after him. However, it wasn't likely a child would tell a lie that was so easy to expose, and it was true that even after getting such a good score and taking first place on the admission exam, not a single family member came with him to register. There really seemed to be no adult taking care of him.

After recording the boy's information, Li Lu handed Shen Shao an enrollment form. "Take this to the payment office to pay the tuition. After you get the receipt, bring it back to me to sign." Then Li Lu asked, "Are you going to apply to live at school?"

The experimental junior high's dormitory really wasn't very good. As a class teacher, he didn't want the highest-ranked student in his class to endure those conditions. A child's living environment inevitably impacted his academic performance. But the boy was in a unique family situation. Even if Li Lu wanted to discuss things with the parents, he couldn't.

"I'm not going to live on campus." Shen Shao gripped the enrollment form and lowered his head. "My mother left me some money for school."

Seeing the boy with his head bowed like that, Li Lu couldn't ask for details. He gave Shen Shao some helpful advice before school began, then told him to go pay the fee.

"Mr. Li, is that child a relative of yours?" The teacher of Class 2 was sitting to the side. When he saw Li Lu speaking especially gently to the student who'd just signed up, he said jokingly, "What a clean-cut young man. He looks like a good kid. If all of our students were like that, we'd have it easy."

"You think we're related?" Li Lu smiled, but he couldn't just say the student had no mother and his cheating father ran off. "He's just a student with good grades. His situation at home is a little special."

"Isn't he the one who got first place and a perfect score on the math exam?" When the other teacher saw Li Lu smile without giving any details, he felt a little jealous. The school had two experimental classes. When the top four in the admission exam were randomly assigned to classes, the first and third place students were taken by Lao Li, while his class only got second and fourth.

A lot of people were at the payment office. Shen Shao waited in line for a long time to pay the fees. By the time he got back to the registration room, there were several parents and students at Mr. Li's desk. He stood to the side and listened to them talk.

The parents were saying polite things to the teacher. After asking a few questions about the school, they began to introduce their children, talking about how serious they were about school and how hard they worked, hoping to make a good impression before school began.

"Mr. Li, my boy is plenty sturdy. If he doesn't listen to you teachers, go ahead and teach him a lesson. We parents will always back you up." A somewhat grandiose parent said this, then hit his son's back with a loud smack of his beefy palm.

Shen Shao listened to the sound and felt a pang on the child's behalf. Seeing the boy, who was somewhat short, stagger towards him, Shen Shao silently stepped back.

"Look at that kid, now look at you." The grandstanding parent pointed to Shen Shao, then looked at his own child with disgust. He patted his son's head with his big hand and said curtly to Li Lu, "Mr. Li, even if my boy doesn't say anything right now, it's the truth. He won't cause you any trouble."

Li Lu had been a teacher for years and seen all kinds of parents, so the bold demeanor of this father didn't faze him. He just looked at the child again. "Your name is Yang HongQiang, right?"