Puzzle Madness

Chapter 97: Classmates Crawling Before Morning Reading

Sizzle, sizzle.

Doudou's teeth rubbed against each other in his mouth, and it sounded like sawing wood.
The doctor disappeared without even helping me with my math homework! Next time I see him, I'll make him write a thousand copies of "Super High School Exam Hero" and "Algebra King."

Doudou's seat is in the back row of the classroom, next to the window; it is moved once a month.

Ai Xi has arrived - this is rare.

There was a plastic foam box next to the table, with steam coming out of the exposed corner; it was filled with packaged breakfast, with only a few bags left.

Doudou threw the homework book on the table and moved closer to Ai Xi:
"Ha! You're here so early, right after school starts."

Unlike Doudou, his deskmate was often late; before, she would either come in halfway through the morning reading class or simply skip the entire class.

Because her grades were good, the teacher didn't say anything to her: I didn't expect her to be so abnormal on the first day of school.

On Ai Xi's desk lay a stack of tattered banknotes, mostly five-cent and ten-cent notes. She was carefully counting them, pressing the counted bills down with coins.

She raised her chin towards Doudou and said hello:

"Good morning; I have to make money today."

She gently kicked the foam box and used her head to signal the students behind her who were holding breakfast in their mouths and copying homework:
"Selling some breakfast. I guess everyone will be rushing to finish homework early at the start of school and won't have time to eat, so I bought some extra to sell."

"Didn't I buy the answers to my summer homework at the bookstore? I gave you the paper version, and the bonus floppy disk is a good place for everyone to take a look at—"

She gave a thumbs-up behind her; the back row of the classroom was still filled with the rustling of students copying homework. The students' eyes widened as they stared at the large display screen next to the blackboard, their heads bobbing:
"Business is pretty good anyway, so the answers are just a gift. I even play some music for them. That way they feel like their money's worth spending, and they don't complain about me taking advantage of them after they're full."

Doudou nodded vigorously, agreeing deeply—Ai Xi was indeed like that, his mind full of resource utilization and business opportunity exploration; he admired him very much:

"You're really smart. I can't think of such a thing."

After Ai Xi finished speaking, he took out another bag of hot food from the foam box and placed it on Doudou's table:

"Here, I still have some. Are you hungry, Doudou?"

Doudou picked up the plastic bag, which was damp from the steam; it contained a fried taro cake.

"Eh? It's the new taro shop."

The crust of the pastry is golden and wrapped in oil paper; it makes a crisp sound when rubbed: the oil paper is printed with an anthropomorphic cartoon pattern of taro, which looks neither cute nor interesting, but rather a bit weird.

This mascot, which bears a resemblance to Majin Buu, but is even more purple, embraces three large, round, colorful characters:

[Taro King]——
This is a new snack chain store that opened in front of the school: it only specializes in selling various taro snacks.

Taro paste, roasted taro slices, taro cakes, and fried taro cakes; the raw materials are all fresh Lipu taro shipped from the neighboring province, which is a main selling point.

Doudou bought some to eat when he passed by the provincial library during the summer vacation. The taste was acceptable; but he couldn't figure out what was so special about the Lipu taro.

Last semester, the homeroom teacher said at a class meeting that the snacks at the school gate might be spiked with opium in an attempt to make everyone addicted; he told the students not to buy these things and that it would be better to buy snacks in the cafeteria.

But the effect was minimal; before Doudou walked into the school, he saw people queuing in front of the store.

Ai Xi stood up and coughed twice:
"People often talk about this store. Especially the mascot. It's ugly, right? But there are some rumors. I'll ask around and tell you--"

She suddenly put her palm to her mouth and spoke loudly to the back row:
"Hey, have you finished copying the math?! Then I changed the answers to English."

Along with the scattered responses and the vague objections from more people holding food in their mouths:
"No! Not finished yet! I just finished copying the fill-in-the-blanks!"

"Don't be impatient, wait a moment and change!"

Ai Xi asked, but his feet started moving first.

She ran up to the podium, fiddled with the terminal, and changed the summer exam answers on the screen to English:

"Those of you who haven't finished copying the math papers should look for the ones you have copied! Hurry up, morning reading is almost here. If I get caught, you'll be in trouble too."

She rushed back to her seat complaining and squeezed past Doudou:
"Hurry up and get them to finish copying their homework. They're all so slow. If the homeroom teacher catches them, it would be a big loss if they use the money I earn to pay for class fees—"

Halfway through the squeeze, Ai Xi suddenly slammed the table:
"Ah! I almost forgot, there is still a job to do."

She bent down and took out a school uniform from her schoolbag, spread it out on the table, and began to paint carefully with the brush.

It's now the season between summer and autumn, but the sweltering heat will linger in Mong Cai until November. There are many different trends in school, some of which involve some modifications to the uniforms:
Some students took their long school trousers to the tailor's stall to have the legs narrowed, making them fit snugly against their calves—others, having watched too much breakdancing and disco, had them made into wide-legged bell-bottoms. But the upper body of the school uniform was the real market.

The short-sleeved sports uniform with a collar is not popular. Even in the hot summer, students tend to wear a short-sleeved white shirt over their T-shirts.
Most of these white shirts have patterns painted on the collar, back and cuffs, or have strange words written on them.

At this age, temperature and comfort are often last on the list; wearing two shirts on a hot day and sweating all over is a detail among details.

Most of them use markers: because they are easy to fade due to sweat and need to be washed frequently, the shelf life of these modified school uniforms is not very long; those who lack graphic skills will hand this work over to students with more artistic talent.

Thus, a new profession has unknowingly emerged among the middle school students in Mong Cai City: school uniform alteration artist. The charging methods vary, from fried chicken sticks at the school gate to a small note for the midterm exam. Somehow, people sometimes prefer this primitive economic structure of barter.

Even students with beautiful handwriting are more popular than usual during this period.

Ai Xi is the leader in this small paid project and is also responsible for the blackboard newspaper at the back of the classroom:
Some students would even bring school uniforms from other schools and ask her to draw some patterns on them, or they would directly sell the finished products - private traders between schools also came into being.
-
Doudou lowered his head, a fried taro cake still in his mouth. He also slowed down the process of putting his textbooks into the drawer—his attention was drawn to the school uniform on Ai Xi's desk.

[It's still so hot, and you're already preparing for long-sleeved school uniforms? Really prepared.]

He didn't ask, so as not to disturb his deskmate's work:

Normally, classmates would find some gorgeous or cartoon-like designs from magazines for Ai Xi to copy, or they could let her design her own—the latter would cost more; Dou Dou felt like this was like tattooing the school uniform.

The patterns generally have one thing in common, which is the pursuit of beauty; therefore, the patterns are very specific.

But this one is obviously different; even for Doudou, it has a personality that is not usually seen:
From the collar of his shirt to the sleeves of his long sleeves, it was covered in lines and circles—branchs and arcs connecting perfect circles of varying sizes. It was like the mannequins in a traditional Chinese medicine clinic, with acupuncture points and meridians painted on their bare skin.

[It looks a bit like the costumes from Tron! Did a movie fan ask Ash to customize it?]

But lines and circles are not the only part of the pattern. Next to the larger circles, there are some Chinese characters that look like Chinese characters, but they are so strange that it is impossible to tell what they are.

Doudou squinted his eyes and pondered for a while before he realized what was going on:

These words are reversed, just like looking in a mirror.

Apart from the reversal of the text, there is nothing special about these labels - the circle on the shoulder says "shoulder", the elbow and wrist say "elbow" and "wrist", and they are also marked as left and right: these overly normal text contents make Doudou feel a bit avant-garde.

"This one isn't difficult, just requires a lot of work; I'm almost done."

Ai Xi took a tape measure and aligned it with the lines on the uniform. Then, following the scale, he drew a vertical line at every centimeter, marking the corresponding numbers and letters. This made the already complex surface of the uniform even more densely packed.

Rather than being a pattern meant to highlight one's personality, it's more like a design drawing with strange content.
-
When she finished her work, Doudou reached out and tapped on the mottled table next to the school uniform:
"Wow! This drawing is so different, a little special—why are there scales? Who asked you to draw it?"

"Jingbo asked me to draw this."

As Ai Xi spoke, she unfolded the school uniform, shook it out, and put it back on the table. She smoothed out every wrinkle that wasn't covered by the patterns and reflected text, and then carefully folded it.

"Ah, who?"

Doudou frowned and pondered—but still had no answer: he usually stayed in class and had good relationships with his classmates.
But asking him to actually name a few names was extremely difficult. At most, he would consider someone's face familiar, and if he could add a surname, that would be a nice touch.

Ai Xi nudged Doudou with his elbow, placed one hand across his head, and gestured back and forth:
"Ruan Jingbo. The tall girl in our class, our classmate."

Doudou scratched his head and racked his brains:
"Ah! Could it be that?"

He still didn't remember. He didn't remember people well, not to mention that he had been away for a summer vacation.
pat!

There was a crisp slapping sound, someone was hitting the ground with his palms.

It was at this time that Doudou's classmate, Ruan Jingbo, crawled into the classroom:

Her limbs were all on the ground, with her elbows and knees pointing towards the ceiling fan; the visual effect of her folded hands and feet resembled an enlarged locust; her torso and head hung down in the middle of her limbs, like a container being hooked by a sling.

The backpack was carried backwards, right next to his chest and abdomen - if it was carried on the back like a normal person, it would probably slide down the back of his head to the top of his head.

From this angle, Doudou couldn't see Ruan Jingbo's face.

But Doudou saw that the rest of her body was motionless like a statue, only her forearm was rotating randomly with the elbow as the center, and even twisted backwards in a dislocated joint, sticking to the triceps: this exceeded the normal range of motion of the human body.

The usual noise before morning reading suddenly disappeared as she entered the classroom, and the rustling sounds of copying and low conversations disappeared.
It was as if there was some invisible glass cover separating Class 3's classroom from the rest of the school; this made Zhang Yusheng's singing sound particularly harsh.

In the silence accompanied by monotonous background music, Doudou raised his index finger and spoke loudly, almost deafeningly:
"Hey? You mean her?"

(End of this chapter)