NOVPUBThe dog, seeing that the two were about to take him home, resisted by pressing his paws down as if to brake, "Arwoo~"
"Stop shouting, I’ll buy you some pork buns later!"
At the mention of buns, the white dog instantly stopped resisting, grabbed the leash with his mouth, and dashed back into the yard, sitting down obediently and panting with his tongue out.
Xu Qingfan and Lin Wanning exchanged smiles, reattached the leash, locked the yard’s iron gate, and set off.
"It’s my first time coming to the old market this early!" Lin Wanning, holding Xu Qingfan’s hand, the two walked down the street like a pair of inseparable siblings.
"You’ll get used to it once you start middle school," Xu Qingfan said with a smile.
"After starting middle school, I can go to and from school with Brother Qing Fan and have breakfast together, that’s great!" Lin Wanning tiptoed to avoid a puddle on the ground, looking around at the various breakfast spots.
"You still have to go home to sleep at night, though. We’ll only sleep there during the noon break," he said as he tapped the girl’s head gently.
"Hmph~ I’ll just get mom and dad to move next door when I get home!" Lin Wanning pouted and grumbled.
"Then you’d have to move again for high school. You think it’s like playing Monopoly, huh? But in the winter, it would be possible to stay overnight at Yiyi’s place, since it’s so cold!"
"Hehe~ then let it be winter soon!"
The two stopped in front of a congee shop with stained chairs and tables at the entrance, ordered four portions of minced meat congee, paid, and said they would come back to pick it up before turning away.
A congee shop that looked very old and was filled with old folks and kids at the entrance was unlikely to disappoint, unlike those that looked clean and neat, which likely wouldn’t be around for long before a ’business transfer’ sign would be pasted at the door; hence, judging a congee shop’s quality was pretty straightforward.
He and Lin Wanning then went to a bun shop to buy soy milk and buns. By the time they returned to the congee shop, their four portions of minced meat congee were ready, and they headed home carrying a full breakfast.
"The streets have been much quieter lately—haven’t seen any of those racers around!" they chatted as they walked on the pedestrian sidewalk, occasionally seeing sanitation workers pushing garbage trolleys past.
"That’s true. Probably Uncle Zhang Chaoqun has started to crack down on these troublemakers," Xu Qingfan nodded as he realized.
"Yay, that means we won’t run into those annoying people when we start middle school!" Lin Wanning clapped her hands in delight.
"You know you’re starting middle school, yet you still sneak into my bed at midnight. You should know better now that you’re grown up!" Xu Qingfan worried that more awkward moments like this morning might happen and admonished her with a tap on the head.
"What! Brother Qing Fan isn’t even taller than me yet. How is he grown up!"
Xu Qingfan choked, restraining his urge to retort, and continued to admonish: "What does the book say? Look, I even have an Adam’s apple now. Once we’re grown up, guys and girls shouldn’t be too close!"
"Wow~ really!" Lin Wanning, as if she’d discovered a new continent, poked Xu Qingfan’s Adam’s apple, which was slightly protruding, then compared it by touching her own smooth neck.
"Brother Qing Fan, keep talking, it moves!"
Xu Qingfan: ...
He reluctantly gave up on further lecturing Lin Wanning and grabbed her hand that was fiddling on his Adam’s apple to get moving again. 𝖓𝔬𝔳𝖕𝖚𝖇.𝖈𝔬𝔪
"Brother Qing Fan, don’t be so stingy, let Ningning play a bit longer!"
"Be good!" Xu Qingfan snapped as he grabbed the tuft of her hair.
"Ouch~"
When they finally returned home, Xia Xiaoxiao and Zhang Yiyi had already finished washing up and were sitting in the living room. Seeing them enter, they both said:
"Morning!"
"What’s for breakfast?"
"Yiyi, you kicked me in your sleep last night!" Lin Wanning let go of Xu Qingfan’s hand and sprinted to tackle Zhang Yiyi on the couch while complaining.
"Sorry... it was an accident... not on purpose!" Zhang Yiyi, tickled by her, laughed uncontrollably, struggling to speak.
"Soy milk, baozi, and rice noodle rolls," Xu Qingfan said with a smile and a shake of his head, ignoring the closeness of the two beauties and placing the breakfast on the coffee table.
"Nice, all my favorites!" Xia Xiaoxiao’s mouth curled into a lovely arc, and the next second she exclaimed, "Ah~ Wanning, what are you doing!"
"Hmph~ Xiao Xiao, you snatched my blanket last night, take this!"
The three girls scrambled on the sofa, their skirts occasionally flashing, completely disregarding him as an outsider.
Xu Qingfan had grown accustomed to this, bit into a baozi after opening the plastic bag, and took the remaining two baozi outside for Little White to eat.
It wasn’t long before the girls ended their frolic, straightened their skirts, and each started eating a box of rice noodle rolls.
Xu Qingfan picked up the remote and turned on the TV, remembering that Jade Channel broadcast cartoons in the morning, but when he switched to channel 2, the news was playing.
It might have been too early, so he switched to channel 22, the Hong Kong Children’s Channel, which happened to be showing an advertisement for Goodi shampoo.
"The cartoons start at nine o’clock!" Lin Wanning, clearly a loyal viewer of the children’s channel, explained to Xu Qingfan.
"What about ’72 Tenants of Prosperity’?"
"That’s on in the afternoon!"
Xu Qingfan continued to flip through channels, soon landing on the Hong Kong Public Channel, which was airing a morning news report.
[A nearly one-month initiative to purify the school environment and prevent crimes by minors has recently achieved preliminary success; let’s hear from our front-line reporter.]
[Hello, dear viewers...]
"Isn’t this Li City?" Xia Xiaoxiao asked, recognizing the familiar streets on the screen.
"Yes, oh... Licheng First Middle School!"
No one else in the room spoke, everyone listening intently to the news report on the television.
[In this initiative, we’ve confiscated eighteen illegally modified motorcycles, in cooperation with the Bureau of Industry and Commerce closed down three maintenance companies providing illegal modifications, and seized numerous weapons such as metal rods and machetes.]
The camera flashed to the ground, where many steel rods and machetes among other lethal weapons were neatly displayed.
"Pfft~" Most noticeably, there was a Guan Gong’s Green Dragon Crescent Blade laid out, and Xu Qingfan simply couldn’t keep a straight face.
[Numerous criminal suspects were arrested in this operation, including both males and females, most of whom are still students. Some cases were particularly serious; the specific punishment will await the court’s decision.]
[Alright, thank you very much, Officer Chen, for your briefing. Please direct the camera here; you can see faint blood stains still on some of the metal pipes, it’s hard to imagine what they had been used for. The school is a place for education and should only be clean and pure. We believe that with this initiative, we can indeed provide a clean and pure learning environment for our students!]
"Hooray!" Lin Wanning, knowing the backstory, raised her hands for a high-five to celebrate.
Xu Qingfan and Zhang Yiyi both stretched out their hands in sync for the high-five, and Xia Xiaoxiao, though she didn’t understand why, also opened her palm.
Xu Qingfan explained the backstory to Xia Xiaoxiao, who then had an aha moment.
Happy to see this group of troublemakers kicked out of school, Xia Xiaoxiao felt glad as well. Those bad boys with emo hairstyles riding modified motorcycles just made her feel sick when she encountered them on the road, let alone imagine attending the same school.
Due to privacy protection for the criminals, the court hearings weren’t made public, but with Zhang Chaoqun around, they still got the decisive results the first moment they were available.
In the big list, those who had exceeded the age of criminal responsibility were sentenced to at least a month.
As for those below it, they were all sent to reform school, as Zhang Chaoqun told them over the phone.
It wasn’t long before Xu Qingfan found the former leader of the Mutual Aid Learning Group who had broken his hand in the previous life. The guy started school a year late and was seventeen now; if everything went smoothly, he would be out around 1617, just in time for the golden era of food delivery!
They all had bright futures, and it was believed that after this day, the youngsters could indeed establish correct life and value perspectives inside and would no longer stray on their future path.
