Chapter 19 "A spring dream?" Perfect oblique muscles...

The girl before him could definitely, unconditionally, not be Du Yuanshan's illegitimate fan.

What illegitimate fan would piss off their idol's son?

Chen Che tried to calm down, but couldn't say anything.

"Scalpers aren't good," she grumbled, her righteous heart burning in her chest. "You have to make money honestly. Using unscrupulous methods might work once or twice, but it's not a long-term solution."

"..."

The breath he'd just calmed down was backed up in his chest.

No, no, no, this girl was a hater. Not only was she illegitimate, she was illegitimate to the core, even darker than Du Yuanshan's favorite FL-clarity black diamonds.

The working emperor patted his chest with pride, "My work experience could circle the world. Just follow me. If there's a good job, I'll find you one."

Suddenly, Chen Che had the illusion that he'd been recruited as her henchman.

He didn't bother to prove his identity; they were just casual friends.

Even if she was just a diligent little bee collecting honey, she inevitably revealed the exact location of the flower/nectar.

To fulfill her mother's mission, and to avoid the two "troublemakers," one large and one small, about to arrive in Maple Leaf Country,

Chen Che hummed softly, "Please ask for crosstalk tickets for me, thanks."

Chi Leyou replied cheerfully, "Sure."

Accepting her kindness, he returned the favor: "Shall I take you?"

"No need." Chi Leyou patted the pony. "We're not going the same way, you should hurry home."

The horror of the zombie performance had overwhelmed him, and instead of taking a break, he rushed straight home to be with his sister.

Mentally exhausted during the day, physically exhausted at night.

Chi Leyou offered a sympathetic look, "Get some rest."

Chen Che: "?"

Was she concerned about his health?

Sunlight filtered through the dead branches, casting a halo around his tall figure. A hint of fatigue lingered on his handsome face in the shadows.

Chi Leyou spoke earnestly, "Your health is the foundation of revolution!"

The rush hour was winding down, and students gathered in groups of three or five.

Hearty laughter filled the air, and the youthful energy was too high.

Easy homework, no extra time to practice.

Someone, eager to show off, gripped the school stopping sign with one hand and spun in circles like a merry-go-round. Classmates, not wanting to spoil the fun, gagged and whistled.

Dog whistles rang out.

"I envy them so much," the girl said, her tone like an old woman.

Chen Che glanced sideways, assessing her calmly. "What are you jealous of? Freedom?"

Chi Leyou: "No sea of test questions, no argumentative essays, no evening study sessions. It's a heavenly life!"

"That's it?" Chen Che didn't understand.

"Aren't you jealous?" The girl glanced at him, then suddenly realized, "Oh, someone hasn't experienced the hardships of Hengshui." Chen Che

shrugged, noncommittal, "I went to a private school."

Tsk, that's not good enough! Chi Leyou's lips moved.

The laughter of students surged up ahead, and the girl's sneer filled his eyes.

The man raised his eyelashes and glanced at her. "Is going to a private school against the law?"

The busted girl suddenly shut up. Did he know lip reading?

A few local high school boys approached.

They all wore leg-baring shorts, down jackets wrapped around their upper bodies, cauliflower curls, and headphones.

"Come, I'll show you the truth about a free country."

As soon as he finished speaking, Chen Che raised his hand and waved to a cauliflower.

The cauliflower was a little confused, but who would refuse a handsome guy with a supercar?

"Classmate, I have a math question for you."

The cauliflower cultists singled out the one with the roundest skull. "He has the best GPA in the class!"

The Bose headphones slid down to the base of his neck, and the green cauliflower's face shone with a "Bro, you asked the right person!"

He excitedly put down his lunch box, opened his shrunken schoolbag, and rummaged through it.

"With my luck, I could easily get first place in the class just by shaking anyone," the man said, leaning slightly 20 degrees toward the girl, like a bamboo stalk tilted by the wind. "Meeting you is a lucky 6+1."

He teased her about what she'd said, and Chi Leyou retaliated: "Yes, you're a master at claw machines. Mr. Chen is amazing."

As he spoke, Green Cabbage Head handed her a pen and paper, his eyes eager, like a cream-colored golden retriever waiting for a Frisbee.

Chen Che didn't rush to write, but simply asked, "What's 21 + 139?"

Green Cabbage Head's left eye twitched, and he remained silent for a second.

The other cauliflowers in the vegetable patch were silent.

"Brother, I want to calculate with a pen."

Chen Che handed him the pen and paper.

Green Cabbage Head calculated and wrote in his notebook.

...160?

He held up the answer pad.

Bingo, Chen Che nodded.

160! The cauliflowers high-fived.

Green Cabbage Head's amber eyes gleamed, as if he'd won the Jackpot. He

then solved a few more math problems at a snail's pace.

He barely passed the three-digit addition and subtraction test, but Green Cabbage was stuck on two-digit multiplication, unable to get it right no matter how hard he tried.

He scratched his head, "Can I use a calculator?" Shen Che asked the male contestant to leave

the competition. "People here can't do mental arithmetic, and even written arithmetic struggles," he announced to the lone female audience member. "Our country's basic education is very solid."

Chi Leyou hadn't expected high school students to be so poor at math.

This round, she was completely defeated.

"I remember two-digit multiplication was a fourth-grade problem," she recalled. "Do you remember?"

Thinking of Shen Che attending a private school, the conversation shifted: "Are the textbooks the same for public and private schools?"

"Yes." The topic opened a rift in his memory.

He attended a private elementary school.

At the time, Du Yuanshan was a rising star, and the paparazzi, incredibly patient, kept following her for three months.

Finally, on Shen Che's birthday, the paparazzi captured Du Yuanshan taking Shen Che to an amusement park.

The young master sat on the carousel, feeling hopeless.

On a hot day, Du Yuanshan was wrapped thicker than a rice dumpling, with half of her body lying on the ground, holding a CCD camera in her hand, framing her handsome son from the best angle: "Xiaoxi, smile for Mama and say 'eggplant~'"

The carousel that the girl loved to play on made Shen Che dizzy, and he half-smiled: "Bitter melon."

Du Yuanshan did not abandon or give up, and urged her son to grin and say: "Whisky~"

The big boy straightened his mouth corners and said: "Shaoxing rice wine."

"..."

The skill of singing a different tune is world-class.

The candid photos were ultimately not published, and Shen Dahe personally led the team to apprehend the paparazzi.

This incident served as a wake-up call for Du Yuanshan.

A

girl called out, "You went to a public elementary school, didn't you?"

Chen Che replied, "Yeah, I went for a week, then transferred again." To another exclusive elementary school.

"Why?"

"I was blackmailed," he said, indignantly, yet reluctant to elaborate, keeping the main point vague. "It wasn't a big deal, but my family was a bit sensitive during that time."

A strange female classmate had forced her to buy Ultraman Puka, causing Chen Che to lose ten yuan in pocket money.

Having finally resolved the paparazzi incident, her son was blackmailed again by a classmate. Du Yuanshan's nerves were flaring, and desperate to protect her son, she hurriedly arranged for Chen Che to transfer schools.

"Is that person really that bad? They'd even cheat a child out of their money?" As a child, he was too clueless to save face in front of girls. Now, he had grown up and was no longer a pushover.

Through Chi Leyou's eyes, he saw another pair.

Time and space shifted, and her clear gaze met his, merging with the gaze of the little girl in his memory. She was tiny, like a lush, luxuriant wood sorrel in the morning mist. Closer, tiny rose-pink flowers dotted her like ticking trumpets. The

proud little trumpet, hands on her hips, presumably decided his preference: "Classmate, you must like running Teman, right?"

Chen Che's story was short, but Chi Leyou's heart skipped a beat, as if he'd been scolded from afar.

Chi

Leyou analyzed the transfer from a private to a regular public elementary school as a sign of a family falling into poverty.

As for the blackmail,

it must have been the fault of Chen Che's gambling father. Unable to pay, the creditors turned on his son.

At such a young age, he'd experienced the immense psychological difference between attending an aristocratic elementary school and a small one in a market.

Damn her! Chi Leyou wished he could go back in time and smack himself for his nonsense.

Chen Che quickly ended the conversation. If he continued, the manga would reach its finale.

His first readers would undoubtedly read about Du Yuanshan's heated argument with Shen Dahe, and his insistence on changing their son's name.

Realizing he'd been talking too much, Chen Che lowered his gaze, his gaze fixed on the girl devouring the melons with relish. "Aren't you in a hurry to leave?" A

badger, hopping around in the melon patch, regretfully retreated.

A certain badger: "Then I'm leaving. Bye."

The girl expertly hopped onto the scooter and sailed away.

"..."

Leaving behind them, a man and a tree, disheveled in the wind.

That

night, Chen Che sprawled out on the large bed.

The cotton-like touch of his bed plunged him into a dream.

The studio lights were dim, his tripod and various painting supplies lost in the shadows. Light from outside filtered in.

"Take it off,"

someone said in a deep voice.

The man sitting in the center, legs clasped together, motionless like a specimen.

A thin layer of sweat had already formed on his back muscles.

The person speaking spoke in a stern tone: "Don't want to do it anymore? Leave now. If you don't, someone else will."

A soft voice echoed: "Teacher, don't let him go. Such a good model is hard to find even with a lantern."

Other voices buzzed like annoying mosquitoes on a summer night.

"That's right, his deltoids have a lot of visual tension."

"His abdominals and external obliques are perfect. I want to draw the contrast between light and dark in the muscles. Model, can you twist it? Like this?"

The man demonstrated, twisting awkwardly. From a distance, he looked like a strangely shaped twisting stick.

A soft female voice drifted over again: "Your Achilles tendon is so long. Have you ever practiced hurdling?"

The voice sounded familiar.

The man in the dream had thick eyelashes trembling, and his eyeballs rolled rapidly.

He suddenly opened his eyes.

He almost couldn't wake up from Inception, and when he woke up, he was covered in a cold sweat.

At this moment, it was still daytime in China.

Childhood friend Sang Shi was jumping around in the group chat.

[Zombie: Lu Ziyu and I are irreconcilable!]

[Friend A: The film hasn't been edited yet?]

[Zombie: I was a murderer and arsonist in my previous life, and I'm an editor in this life!]

Chen Che, far away in Maple Leaf Country, was halfway across the world, disciplining his childhood friend in Hong Kong.

[Chen Che: This is your TV station, okay?

The harbor area instantly shut down. Sang

Shi, the young master in disguise as an editor, tried to make amends: Firsthand information, guaranteed! Lu Ziyu

's on a flight tonight, he's come to you! It's standard for celebrities to flee abroad when things get bad back home.

Chen Che ignored it and sent a voice message to Sang Shi: "I'm not familiar with him ."

Sang Shi's private messages bombarded him one after another.

[Zombie: I don't know if we're familiar or not, I've been hanging out with you since I was wearing open-crotch pants."]

[Zombie: Oh, what's a deep childhood friendship? You and Lu Ziyu are the real deal.]

[Zombie: Brotherly love is not as good as childhood friendship.]

[Chen Che: If you keep bothering me, I'll block you.]

Sang Shi lost his composure. A video came over: "Lu Ziyu took a gap year and a half, and now that he can't be a celebrity anymore, he's going back to your sister school to continue his studies."

Sister school?

A line of IDs suddenly popped up in Chen Che's mind: Yoyolooping.

The Instagram user he hadn't met in person was studying at the university next door.

A good friend became a classmate of Lu Zha Nan's, and Chen Che observed a minute of silence for his friend.

"Hey, why are your cheeks sunken and your brow dark?" Influenced by his family, Hong Kong's Sang Shao believed in numerology.

Chen Che rubbed his face and said he was dreaming and didn't sleep well.

The head in the video leaned over like Sadako, and Sang Shi chuckled: "A spring dream?" 

"Go away . " 

Chi Leyou returned to the dormitory, wiped the donkey clean, and returned the scooter to Park Yejin. 

"Feel free to use it," Park Yejin said, speaking a garbled mix of Chinese and English, occasionally with her native Korean language, her head buried in the tablet. "I'm rushing to finish the next chapter, it's too late! Draw quickly!" Chi 

Leyou said, "I've asked about your studio's need for models." 

Park Yejin finished the line drawing and activated the shake correction, and the lines of the scribbles instantly became smooth and seamless. 

She then looked up. "I forgot to tell you, the studio's heating is broken. Maple Leaf Country is such a shabby place, the repairman is so slow to show up. Making someone sit there naked for hours? Isn't that torture?!" 

"No heating... huh?" Chi Leyou looked out the window. The night wind howled past. It was -5 degrees Celsius. How could a model handle that? 

Luckily, Chen Che hadn't shown up. 

It was so incompetent of her to rashly offer someone a job without asking about the situation. 

With a guilty conscience, she remembered the VIP tickets Chen Che had asked her to find out about.

Chi Leyou sat up straight as if he had been given a shot of chicken blood, opened his laptop, and rubbed his hands on the keyboard, leaving afterimages -

"Scalper Lao Chi" made a brilliant appearance!