country bumpkin

Nothing particularly noteworthy happened in the village this time, and before we knew it, the holiday was over.

Yunya reluctantly said goodbye to her grandmother and returned to the city.

This semester, Yunya will be starting second grade, and poor thing, she wasn't assigned to a class. Her Chinese teacher is still Tian Bilian, and her math teacher is still the formidable Pan Guojiao.

Fortunately, she was still in the same class as Sun Fei, and their classmates were still the same people.

However, this time her deskmate changed to a very fierce girl. This girl was Guo Jingyi, whose grades were just as bad as Yun Ya's.

She was arrogant and domineering, and loved to take advantage of others. Any eraser or pencil that Yunya dropped, if she found it, she would keep it for herself.

The two shared a desk, and Guo Jingyi drew a line in the middle of the desk.

Sometimes when Yunya is writing, she might accidentally go over the line. In response, she would hit Yunya's elbow hard, making Yunya's eyes well up with tears.

Yun Ya was no pushover either. She fought with her several times, and the two were evenly matched, resulting in a draw.

Once, Yunya and her got into a fight, tearing up textbooks, overturning desks, and throwing schoolbags and pencil cases all over the floor.

The other students didn't dare to intervene; they just watched the farce unfold.

In the end, Yunya's hands were pinched until they bled, with several bloody nail marks and pits that looked very painful.

Guo Jingyi wasn't in much better shape; her hands were covered in cuts and bruises from pinching herself. Her hair was a mess, making her look like a fighting rooster that had just finished a battle.

When Sun Fei saw that Yun Ya was being bullied, she wanted to help and take sides, but she was afraid of Guo Jingyi's fierce appearance, so she could only go to the office to find a teacher to handle the matter.

Meng Fanxing, a good friend, wanted to help, but had no reason to hit the female classmate, so he could only watch helplessly.

Sun Fei brought the homeroom teacher to the classroom, where the teacher punished the two by making them stand in the aisle to reflect on their actions.

After school, Sun Fei went to apologize to Yun Ya, feeling embarrassed.

She said, "Yun Ya, I'm sorry. I originally wanted to call the teacher to stop Guo Jingyi from hitting you, but I didn't expect you to be punished as well."

Yun Ya knew that Sun Fei wanted to help her, so she looked up at Sun Fei and said, "It's okay, I know you want to help me, you don't mean any harm."

The two walked home together, talking as they went.

When they got home, Yunya told Sun Limei about how she had been beaten and bullied that day.

Sun Limei said, "If she bullied you, and she started it, we're not afraid of her. I'll go to your class when I have time and warn her once."

At this moment, Yunya felt that her older sister now was like a real sister. Regardless of whether her sister would stand up for her or not, her words had already given Yunya a great comfort.

The next morning, during the long break between classes, Yunya never expected that Guo Jingyi would call her older sister to scare her.

In front of a girl who was a head taller than her, Yun Ya was a little scared. She wasn't stupid; knowing she couldn't win and would suffer, she wouldn't resort to force.

She listened to Guo Jingyi's warning with her head down, fighting back tears, not daring to look at her. She didn't dare to raise her head, afraid that others would see her pathetic state and embarrass her.

The tears welling in her eyes were her last act of defiance, and her final act of self-respect.

After showing off, Guo Jingyi's older sister didn't return to her own class until almost time for class to start.

When the bell rang, Guo Jingyi sat down in her seat with a smug look on her face.

Yun Ya thought to herself, "What a spineless person! They can't win, so they just complain. And they even ask their sister for backup, as if they don't have a sister at all."

She made up her mind to have Sun Limei come over that afternoon to scare Guo Jingyi and save face for herself.

Sure enough, Sun Limei arrived as promised during the afternoon break.

This time, it was Guo Jingyi's turn to lower her head and shed tears.

Seeing her aggrieved look, Yun Ya felt a little soft-hearted. She wondered if she had gone too far, completely forgetting how badly she had been bullied that morning.

Seeing that it was almost time, Yunya quickly urged her older sister to return to her own class.

Guo Jingyi realized that not only she could find someone to back her up, but Yun Ya could too, so she became much more restrained and stopped bullying Yun Ya.

After that, the two acted like strangers, ignoring each other. In special classes, when the teacher asked the students to play games together, they would pretend to play for the teacher, but they still didn't talk to each other behind the scenes.

A month passed, and finally it was time to change seats. Yunya was able to separate from her as she wished, and both of them breathed a sigh of relief.

Sitting at the same table every day like this is really stifling. I feel much better now that we're apart.

Yunya was assigned to the fourth row from the back, almost in the middle of the class. Her deskmate turned out to be Zhang Ruisong, a friend of a friend.

Yun Ya wondered why she couldn't sit with Sun Fei.

This time, Sun Fei was assigned to the last row because she is tall, and the teacher was afraid that she would block the other students, so the tallest students had to sit in the last row.

Meng Fanxing was one of the shorter boys in the class and was moved to the first two rows, several rows away from Yun Ya.

After class, he would come to play with his good friend Zhang Ruisong, and he would also play with Yunya.

Sun Fei would also come over to join in the fun, and the four classmates would laugh happily from time to time.

This semester, Yunya's grades remained poor, and Sunfei's grades were the same.

The teacher still hits and scolds as before, without changing the teaching methods at all.

In school, underachieving students are the teachers' punching bags. Teachers also bring their bad temper to work if they have unhappy things at home.

Those underachieving students live in misery every day, suffering greatly.

They hoped their grades would improve, but at the same time, they hoped their teachers wouldn't pay attention to them. Every night when they went home to sleep, they dreamed about their teachers punishing them.

That day, the school suddenly announced that there would be an important diagnostic test, which put Yunya and Sunfei in a difficult position.

They knew their grades weren't good, and if they failed the test, they would be severely criticized by their teachers.

In the days leading up to the exam, Yunya was so anxious that she had nightmares every night and was always distracted in class during the day. Sun Fei was the same, sighing all day long.

On the day of the exam, Yunya received the test paper and felt panicked as she looked at the questions that she only vaguely understood.

She secretly glanced at her deskmate Zhang Ruisong's test paper, wishing she could copy a little. But Zhang Ruisong was focused on answering the questions and didn't give her a chance at all.

After the exam, Yunya was constantly worried, afraid that the results would be announced.

The day finally arrived when the grades were released. The teacher walked into the classroom with a dark face and began reading out the scores.

Yunya clenched her fists nervously, and when she heard that her score was still not ideal, tears welled up in her eyes.

The teacher launched into another tirade, and Yunya felt as if she had fallen into endless darkness, not knowing how to improve her grades or escape this cycle of being criticized by the teacher.