A Young Woman's Heart

You can tell from the sound that it's exceptionally crispy.

"What is that?" Mo Xueyao asked curiously.

"Want some hollow fried balls, Haruka?"

"Can't we put some filling in there?"

"Sure, but that's how it's usually eaten."

"What a strange way to eat it."

Li Wanyan nodded slightly in agreement; she seemed to have never seen this kind of snack before.

Xuan Anyi can cook many dishes. Seeing that Mo Xueyao's minced meat was not yet chopped, she opened the refrigerator, took out yesterday's leftover rice, sprinkled salt on it, then shaped it into a ball, rolled it in a batter with beaten eggs, and fried it in oil.

This aroma completely whetted Mo Xueyao's appetite: "Mmm...it smells so good..."

"It's leftovers from yesterday."

Last night, she only ate a bowl of noodles. Soupy food like that always makes you hungry easily. Plus, she went out for a walk this morning, so now that her cravings were being piqued, her stomach started growling.

"I'll fry them for you, and you should have finished chopping the minced meat by now."

"Ok!"

She had already slowed down, but then she started chopping away again with great force.

I must say, if it weren't so tiring after a while, this job would actually be quite stress-relieving...

"Is this considered a fried rice ball?" Mo Xueyao asked curiously, watching Xuan Anyi mix the meat filling.

"I guess so. Uh, Wanyan, do you want some? We can each have half."

Li Wanyan nodded, scooped the rice ball out of the pot, and then neatly cut it in half with a clean kitchen knife.

The rice ball is empty; the outermost ring of rice grains is fried to the crispiest, while the inside still retains the texture of ordinary rice.

In short, it has a crispy exterior and a tender interior.

Although the ingredients are all common and inexpensive, Xuan An-yi's cooking skills are truly excellent, which is why she can make these dishes so delicious.

After making these novelties, the next step was to make pancakes, which Li Wanyan knew how to do, and her technique was very skillful.

"Did Wanyan do this often before?" After all, Mo Xueyao hadn't seen her do it much when she was at home.

After all, her mother usually does the cooking, so she doesn't have much room to improvise.

“Yes, back when I was with my mom.” She paused for a few seconds and said softly, “we wouldn’t put in so much meat, just a little bit of minced meat, and then we would fill it with lots of chopped green onions, and we would make it quite thin.”

"Somewhat like scallion pancakes?"

"It's closer to an egg pancake."

"oh oh……"

While Li Wanyan was making pancakes, Xuan Anyi was also trying to make fried dough sticks. However, these fried dough sticks, which hadn't been proofed beforehand, didn't puff up much, making them feel quite dense and a bit hard to bite.

"Let's put it in the refrigerator and cook it tomorrow. It's too wasteful to make it like this, and it won't taste good either."

"So, what else are you planning to make? Maybe we won't have enough cookies?"

After all, there were quite a few people who came together.

"We have potatoes, let's make French fries."

“This is good!” Mo Xueyao nodded vigorously immediately.

"Can Xiaoyao help peel it?"

"Row!"

Mo Xueyao, who has a particular fondness for Western fast food chains like KFC and McDonald's, certainly wouldn't dislike French fries.

"Swish, swish, swish—" As soon as she sat down, she picked up the spores and began scraping them up quickly.

Xuan Anyi, standing to the side, felt a pang of heartache: "Xiaoyao, that's not how it's done. You're wasting so much flesh by scraping it off."

"Huh? But if I don't shave like this, it won't get clean."

"Use your backhand to scrape, and then be gentle and slow."

"This is so troublesome... Auntie, you're just like my mom."

"Pfft..." Li Wanyan suddenly laughed out loud, but when the two looked at her, there was no expression on her face, as if someone had just farted.

"Wanyan, what were you laughing at just now?" Mo Xueyao pressed on relentlessly.

"You sometimes say that about me too."

"Uh……"

Xuan Anyi blinked, as if she had grasped the humor, but Mo Xueyao herself still didn't understand what was so funny.

Is it simply because they are similar?

Xuan Anyi and Mo Xueyao dug up potatoes together and quickly finished the required amount. Then, it was all her turn to perform.

In terms of knife skills, she was better than Li Wanyan, and she was very fast. She cut the irregularly shaped potatoes into relatively even strips, coated them with a little batter, and then threw them all in.

The fries tumbled in the oil, gradually turning golden brown. Before long, Xuan Anyi scooped them out with a slotted spoon and poured them into a large iron basin.

She sprinkled salt into it, then held the iron basin with both hands and shook it vigorously.

The fries, already hardened from frying, collided with each other, making a crisp, solid sound.

When you're hungry, this is more wonderful than any music.

"It would be nice to have ketchup."

"I'll give it a try."

"what?"

This seemed to pose no challenge for Xuan Anyi, but instead of ketchup, she made a sweet bean sauce thickened with flour and starch.

It's not as delicious as ketchup, but it's better than nothing.

Moreover, the sweetness of the sweet bean sauce gives it a unique flavor.

The enticing aroma from the kitchen wafted out through the open door, finally attracting the first 'prey'.

"Wow, what smells so good?" Ye Wen asked excitedly, leaning against the kitchen door with one hand. "I'm so hungry! Is there anything to eat?"

"What would you like to eat, Wen?" Mo Xueyao proudly introduced, as if she had made all of these herself. "French fries, pancakes, and a few fried rice balls, and then there's porridge. You can add whatever toppings you like..."

"Wow—this is so abundant!" She swallowed hard. "Did you make all of this?"

"Of course!"

Xuan Anyi didn't expose Mo Xueyao; she just smiled and nodded.

"Wow, that's awesome! From now on, you guys will be in charge of cooking! Hmm... let me see... some porridge... and then... some pancakes... and fries too..."

"Teacher Ye, should we wake the others up for breakfast?" Li Wanyan asked abruptly.

"Ah—right, right…wait, wait, let me wake the others up first!" Ye Wen quickly turned around and ran out in a panic.

……

Chapter Nineteen: The Students Have Arrived

The bright sunshine made it hard to imagine that such a violent storm had occurred the day before, as the island was now as calm as if nothing had happened.

The plastic track at Hope Primary School has only a few more dark green leaves. These trees are not newly planted; they were all planted before the school was redesigned. Some of them were just moved slightly during the subsequent replanning.

The school gate was wide open, and Qiu Yi was sitting in the guard post as a temporary security guard. There was only a chair under his bottom, and everything seemed very simple.

It was already 3 p.m., and some students who needed to live on campus started arriving early one after another.

There are no special arrangements for today; Ye Wen will assign dormitories to these students anyway.

However, Mo Xueyao and Li Wanyan still put on their formal attire and took charge of receiving the students.

The main problem is that Ye Wen and Wang Qianyu aren't around right now. They went to Z City on the shore to buy things by boat. The only person I can talk to at school is Qiu Yi, and Taiyin... doesn't seem like someone who's very good at communicating with children.

So the two of them came to help.

"Uncle Security Guard, where should I wait for my teacher?" a little girl with curly hair like seaweed asked politely.

"Uh... I'm not a security guard... Never mind, let's go to the third floor of the teaching building, room 301."

"Thank you, Uncle." The little girl thanked him and, carrying the large canvas bag that looked like it was for fishing gear and was disproportionate to her size, walked towards the school building painted in bright colors.

Qiu Yi's role at this moment is to give directions to the students who arrived early.

There weren't many students from other islands; most of the students participating in this tutoring program were local children, since it's more convenient.

—This data comes from statistics collected after prior contact. As for how many people will actually come on the day classes start, which is tomorrow, it is not yet a definite number.

……

Classroom 301.

The desks and podium had been wiped clean, but at noon today, Ye Wen made a last-minute decision not to arrange all the students to have class together, but to separate them by grade level.

In other words, there will still be six classes.

In this way, both Mo Xueyao and Hua Yinyin can teach Chinese whenever they have free time, since the classes are staggered.

However, we won't be dividing it like that today; for now, we'll just have everyone report in one classroom.

Mo Xueyao, who was supposed to be the propaganda committee member, was bored anyway, so she started drawing a simple blackboard newspaper on the blackboard in front of her.

The words "Welcome, Students" are painted in large colors, next to a towering tree, with surging waves in the background and a golden beach drawn with yellow chalk, and of course, various shaped seashells on it.

"Oh, right, Wanyan, I found a really pretty blue stone this morning, look—" Mo Xueyao, who was drawing seashells, suddenly remembered this and put down her chalk, eagerly taking out the frosted stone.

"Ah."

"Isn't it beautiful? Maybe it's some kind of precious stone!"

Li Wanyan took the stone, examined it carefully for a while, and then gently shook her head: "It looks very layered."

"Yes, it has a bit of the feel of agate or sapphire."