Chapter 6
Edit: IlkonEbi
As to what this strange event was, naturally he was exaggerating. However, to be able to see Huang Haobing and the group of kids not play outside during summer vacation and be stuck in the dining room writing an exam, that was something Jiaming would consider as a mysterious event.
There were around seven or eight children that were around Jiaming’s age in the Huang family. Some relatives came by during the summer vacation and brought their children to the big city to play, so there was a total of around ten children now. At this moment, all the children were sitting at the dining table writing what looked like to be an exam paper of some sort. There were three adults supervising on the side and one of them was Huang Bingxing (he insisted Jiaming call him ‘Third Elder Uncle’). The other two were a male and a female around their twenties, the male was Huang Bingxing’s son, Huang Haoyun. He was considered as the Huang family model child; he would often not be at home as he would be spreading the family’s prestige by getting together with other similar young masters.
However at this moment, it seemed that Huang Haoyun was being relatively well-behaved as his face was full of smiles. This was likely because of the young lady next to him, she did not seem older than twenty and was wearing a pair of narrow glasses, giving her a knowledgeable aura. She was smiling faintly, but from what Jiaming could observe, he could tell that she was disgusted with the young master blabbering away next to her. Mentally smiling to himself, he was about to return to his room when Huang Bingxing called out to him.
“Jiaming, wait a minute.”
“Third Elder Uncle?”
“You put your things down, then come and take this exam as well.”
“Ok.”
Jiaming placed the items he had bought for the vacation in his room, then when he came back to the dining room, he learned that the beautiful lady was called Zhang Yahan; in Jianghai City, her family also had some status. It was said that she had just returned from studying at Cambridge and was preparing to teach at the newly constructed aristocrat high school in Jianghai City. She was currently assessing the abilities of the children that would likely enter this aristocrat school; at the same time, because Huang Haoyun had taken a liking to her, Huang Bingxing would naturally use this opportunity to try and boost the relationship between the two families.
In terms of matters between aristocratic families, Jiaming was able to make his own deductions just from listening to these conversations. Zhang Yahan asked him when he graduated from elementary school and then passed one of the exam papers to him. At the same time, Huang Haoyun quietly said on the side, “His grades have never been that good…”
Jiaming could only smirk internally as he pretended that the exam questions were very hard by biting on the pen and taking at least half a day to answer it. He generally controlled his grades within the sixty and seventy points range and this time was no different. He just barely passed it by getting around the sixty-something point range.
When the time came to leave, Lingjing came by to look for him. He turned in the exam paper and then the two of them left for the martial arts hall. During the exam, Jiaming caught Huang Haoyun eyeing Lingjing several times. At this time, Lingjing is already thirteen years old and as girls hit puberty sooner, she was already taller than Jiaming by half a head and could be considered a beautiful young lady. Jiaming naturally knew what type of thoughts Huang Haoyun was thinking when he was looking at Lingjing. Even though nothing happened, he was darkly contemplating whether he would need to drug this guy tonight to stop him from ever getting it up ever again, thus preventing any future calamities.
After they ate dinner at Lingjing’s place, when they watched television, Jiaming casually asked Lingjing a few questions from the exam and she was only able to answer a few. This was not reassuring at all because for Jiaming, controlling his exam scores was really simple, but he had trouble determining the difficulty of the exam. He had secretly looked at the middle and high school lessons, however regardless of the material level, he did not feel that there was any difficulty. Was it possible that the exam questions this time were difficult? With that thought, he suddenly felt that this situation might not be too good.
When he returned to the mansion, it was already nine in the evening and the living room was still brightly lit. The few Huang family elders that were living in the mansion were entertaining the great student who returned from Cambridge. When he asked caretaker Bai, he found out that this young lady Zhang was staying over for the night and including Huang Bingxing, the other elders were interested in the potential marriage between the two families as well.
When he passed by the living room, that Zhang Yahan happened to catch his eye and Jiaming knew that the situation was going to be troublesome. Not long after he returned to his room, someone knocked on his door.
“Who is it? I need to sleep.”
“It’s Sister Yahan from today, they mentioned that you would not be sleeping so early… Did you sleep already?”
Sister Yahan… who refers to themselves like that, so gross…
Jiaming helplessly sighed and went to open the door, “Is something up?”
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah.”
He turned and looked around at the things in his room. He could feel a slight headache coming on because his room was really too plain – a chair, a writing desk, his bed, a pile of books against a corner, the baseball bat Huaisha had gifted him and a broken open radio which was making his desk a mess. These past few years his wariness had decreased and he did not hide any of his things. However the broken radio on his desk was only half completed and he did not think that anyone would guess he was practicing on how to make a bomb.
Zhang Yahan noticed the radio in his desk and said with a smile, “Jiaming you know how to repair these things? Very impressive.”
Jiaming’s heart skipped a bit when he closed his room door, then he decided to mischievously laze on his bed, “It’s just something small, I just opened it to take a look. Can you please not talk to me like I’m a baby, it’s really gross.”
In this time period, hooligans were not yet common in Jianghai City, so when Jiaming acted like that, it caused Zhang Yahan to wrinkle her brow. However she still smiled and said, “I asked around and they said that you like to hang around hooligans and your grades generally weren’t that great as they would be barely passing. However you were still able to pass this time… This is your exam paper, I originally gave you the wrong one because it was tailored for students that had graduated middle school…”
Jiaming secretly smiled as he took the exam. He only glanced at it and then threw it to the side, “If a punk like me can pass, then why would you give it to high school students? Also, with us hooligans it is all about honor; you said bad things about my friend, I don’t want to talk to you! Get lost! Brother Haoyun is waiting for you before he sleeps, isn’t he?”
“What would a child like you…” Zhang Yahan flushed red, “There’s nothing between me and Huang Haoyun, you…”
“That has nothing to do with me.” Jiaming mumbled to himself. Zhang Yahan was obviously affected by his words and was no longer in the mood to investigate him and only said, “Good night,” as she left in a huff.
The next day, when Zhang Yahan left the Huang mansion, Jiaming had already gone to the martial arts hall and avoided further looks. Then, after a few days, the start date of the summer camp arrived and that morning the three of them did not go out for a run. All of them gathered at the entrance of the Ye martial arts hall, carrying large camping backpacks.
During the summer vacation, Liu Huaisha cut her hair short and when combined with wearing a neat short-sleeved shirt and climbing pants, she looked like a tomboy. Lingjing was wearing something similar, but appeared much more adorable. The girls had hit puberty sooner so the both of them were currently taller than Jiaming by half a head. Because Jiaming looked so plain, when he was standing next to these two ladies, he looked like their servant. Jiaming’s goal was to be as unremarkable as possible and this was the result he wanted.
The summer camp was designated as a student summer camp, however when the group gathered, the three of them discovered that they were basically all middle or high school students. There were a total of twenty two participants including the three of them; apart from three other high school girls that showed up together, the rest were all boys.
The camp leader was a twenty year old reliable looking male; his personality looked like the sunny and outgoing type, and once he counted everyone and did a roll call, a bus arrived. When they were preparing to get on the bus, Jiaming discovered that a male and female pair on the bus greeted the camp leader and they just so happened to be Zhang Yahan and Huang Haoyun.