A Young Woman's Heart

"Have."

"I'll trade you some snacks."

“Okay.” Mr. Xue readily agreed, his smile always revealing his snow-white teeth.

"Second row, Liu Xiaowei, Wang Jiale."

"Hey—!!! Why am I still with him?! Wen, I demand a change of deskmate!" Wang Jiale protested angrily. She thought that with the new semester, she would be able to get rid of this guy, but she didn't expect that things would remain the same.

"There's no replacement available."

"I don't want to sit with him!!" Wang Jiale stomped her foot like a child, slamming her pencil case on the table in a fit of anger. "Ugh, what are you doing? I don't want to!"

"Liu Xiaowei, do you often make Wang Jiale angry?" Ye Wen turned her head to look at him.

"I didn't. She's never happy with anything I do, and I haven't done anything to upset her." Liu Xiaowei looked aggrieved. "What does this have to do with me?"

Wang Jiale bit her lip, then began to loudly list all the things she disliked about him: "He has dandruff, and he often touches his hair on purpose so that the dandruff floats onto my desk. He also often doesn't shower and is always dirty. And he always says things about me on purpose, and... and... anyway, he's just so annoying!"

"Liu Xiaowei?"

"What? I don't have any dandruff anymore! Look, look—" Liu Xiaowei vigorously touched his hair amidst the other boys' laughter. "See? It's gone, isn't it?"

Wang Jiale stepped back, as if facing a large bag of garbage that had been brought close.

"I don't care, I don't want to sit with him!"

"Okay, sit down for now. I'll keep an eye on things. If it doesn't work out, we can move to another seat, okay?"

"So annoying..." Wang Jiale stomped her foot again, her two ponytails swaying violently. "Ugh! It's so annoying to sit with him."

"Cough cough..."

"What's wrong with me? I didn't do anything to you." Liu Xiaowei sighed helplessly. "Besides, I'm taking showers very frequently now, okay?"

"Don't talk to me." Wang Jiale rolled her eyes at him, annoyed.

"You have a lot of opinions..." Mo Xueyao couldn't help but laugh, but she was also a little worried that this might really affect her studies. "Awen, how about we change it?"

"Let's leave it at that for now." Ye Wen insisted on her own arrangement, glanced at the seating chart, and then pointed to the third row, "Next, Mo Xueyao and Hua Yinyin."

Mo Xueyao sat inside, in a window seat, which was a pretty good spot and one of the most popular seats among students.

Every day you can bask in the morning sun, and when you're tired, you can look out the window and soothe your eyes with the green plants.

The only problem is that my deskmate is Hua Yinyin.

“Eek—” Mo Xueyao deliberately dragged out the sound.

"Hehe, little Yaoyao~" Hua Yinyin grinned mischievously as she reached out her devilish hand to her, "Now you can't escape!"

“…Then touch it.” Mo Xueyao drooped her eyelids, straightened her chest, took another step forward with one leg, and even deliberately pulled her skirt up.

"Hey, what are you doing!"

"I gave up resisting."

"Don't give up! Really... there's no point in not resisting."

Mo Xueyao felt she had Hua Yinyin under her thumb. She hid a smile on her lips and said, "I'm too lazy to resist. Touch me all you want."

"Damn it... Damn little Yaoyao, how could she, how could she..."

"What, you can't even touch me?"

"Then I won't hold back! Heh heh, trying to 'deal with me' this way? No way! Not resisting is a form of resistance too!"

"Hey, stop! Stop! What kind of logic is that?!"

"Ahem!" Ye Wen coughed heavily. "You two should be mindful of yourselves in public."

Mo Xueyao, her face flushed, tapped Hua Yinyin's forehead. This guy had just buried his face in her arms...

"Fourth row, Zhou Yong, Duanmu Ji."

Duanmu Ji glanced at Zhou Yong warily, then raised his hand: "Teacher, may I sit in the seat inside?"

"Hmm? Okay, what's up?"

"It's nothing. I know Zhou Yong likes to use the restroom, and it's a bit of a hassle to give him a seat when we're sitting outside."

These words were actually spoken by Duanmu Ji. Not only were they long, but they also carried a hint of teasing in their calmness, which made Mo Xueyao turn her head to look at him a few more times.

"Cough cough! What the hell do you mean? My kidneys are fine!" Zhou Yong shouted in protest.

It seems that Duanmu Ji gets along well with the boys and they can already joke around together.

However, I always felt that he had some hidden purpose besides this...

"Alright, sit down. Then, the last row, An Ruosu on the left, and Li Hongran on the right."

"Huh?" Mo Xueyao looked up at An Ruosu, whose fair face flushed slightly under her gaze.

"Haha, Susu, you blush when someone you like stares at you? It's okay, it's alright if you failed last time, there's always another chance. But Mo Xueyao has a lot of suitors, why don't you find someone else?"

"Uh……"

Only Mo Xueyao and An Ruosu found Li Hongran's words very strange, especially Mo Xueyao, mainly because she knew that the person he liked was him...

However, after a winter break, he seemed to have become much more at ease.

Perhaps he realized that the feeling wasn't love, but rather admiration?

"Alright, the seating arrangements are done. Now you can finish your homework yourselves. The teachers will be coming to collect it later, so hurry up and finish it."

"Can you move a little further? Don't cross the line!" Wang Jiale, who had returned from winter break, seemed to have even less patience with Liu Xiaowei.

"Okay, okay..." Liu Xiaowei could only lean helplessly against the wall.

"Oh dear, Lele, don't..."

"What's wrong? I hate him!"

"Pfft, she really is like a child..." Mo Xueyao shook her head helplessly.

“Yes, yes, just a child.” Hua Yinyin nodded in agreement.

……

(three)

There seemed to be a heated argument taking place in the principal's office.

Of course, only one person seemed excited, while Mo Kong, holding his pipe, remained quite calm.

"Senior year, senior year! It's the last semester of senior year, why are you still so lazy? How can you still have time to catch up on homework? Every moment is precious, classes should start now, starting today! The physical exam is on Sunday!! And from now on, every week should be six days of classes, or even six and a half days! Regular high school students are either lazy or not talented enough, otherwise they would have gone to top high schools long ago. We need to push them harder, increase the intensity, and put pressure on them! Look at all the high schools in Hangzhou, which one only has five days of classes in senior year? This is completely unreasonable, Mo Kong, let me tell you, your so-called advanced teaching philosophy is completely unacceptable in my opinion! The few students with good grades in our school are all relying on their own talent, the overall average score has not improved, and has even declined! Do you understand?"

Mo Kong took a light drag on his cigarette, seemingly waiting for the balding vice-principal to finish speaking.

……

Chapter 180 Right and Wrong Are Hard to Distinguish

"We must help our students study better so they can get into better universities. This is the most important moment of their lives, a life-changing event! We need to put pressure on them when necessary; they will thank us later. If we don't take action now, more people will regret it. I even think all senior high school students should live on campus and go home once a month. Their free time should be further reduced. Our students are too fortunate. Look at the poor cities in the north, look at those students, they have to do another test paper before meals every day! And our students, how much homework do they do, how many tests do they write, how much review material do they complete? This shouldn't be the case. This is the best age for them to work hard!" The vice principal spoke with increasing passion, his spittle flying. "Back in our day, we all voluntarily got up at five o'clock and went to bed at one o'clock, only sleeping four or five hours a day, and we didn't seem to have any problems. Ah, what, are our students at Yukong High School particularly pampered?"

The vice principal finally stopped talking, seemingly because he was a little short of breath from talking too much and needed to rest.

Mo Kong calmly took a deep drag of his cigarette and slowly exhaled a smoke ring: "When anything crosses the line, it loses its bottom line."

"What do you mean by overstepping boundaries? We're doing this for the students' own good. Does it mean that if they don't compete and strive in school, they won't need to compete and strive in the future? The law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, that's an eternal truth of the world!"

"So we can only teach animals and machines, not humans?"

"But that's how society is; if you don't learn these things, you'll be left behind!"

“It’s because those who enter society are all like this that society is like this.” Mo Kong leisurely put down his pipe. “You need to understand that society is made up of people, and different people make up different societies.”

"But that's how society has always been. It's hard for us to change society, so we can only change ourselves."

“It has always been so…” Mo Kong smiled and said the vice principal’s name in full for the first time. “Ji Huaimin, if it has always been so, we should still be in the feudal era, not in this new era. The past is what it is, and it is never right just because it has always been so. The corrupt and wrong should be broken. What we need to do is to cultivate real people, instead of being afraid to change anything and only daring to change our own machines and beasts.”

"Nonsense! You know perfectly well that's not what I meant."

"Heh, so what do you mean by 'survival of the fittest'?"

"It's a dog-eat-dog world. Those who aren't competitive will naturally be eliminated. Otherwise, if others work so hard and you don't, why should you live better than them? If others can do what you can't, why shouldn't you be the one eliminated? This is the natural law that should exist!"

“Alright, if that’s the case, then Ji Huaimin, you should commit suicide in a few years. From a biological point of view, animals that are old and unable to reproduce are wasting food. This includes all physiological functions of the human body, which are just meant to keep you alive until your reproductive function fails.” Mo Kong narrowed his eyes. “Since we’re talking about the survival of the fittest, why not learn it more thoroughly? Or, there was once a school of thought that followed your example. It was called fascism. In their world, anyone who was disabled, unhealthy, physically defective, or mentally defective should be humanely destroyed because of the survival of the fittest, so they shouldn’t be allowed to waste food.”

"You, you, Mo Kong, you're just making excuses! You're talking about extreme scenarios!"

“When the bottom line is lowered little by little, extreme situations are not far away.” Mo Kong’s tone was very calm as he looked at Vice Principal Ji Huaimin and gently shook his head. “If students are tamed and rendered unable to resist, and then allowed to be manipulated by others after entering society, then many things will never be changed.”

"Even so, what's the point of you only training students from our Yukong High School?"

"A single spark can start a prairie fire. Plant a seed and it will eventually sprout. This is better than killing everything now."

The vice principal felt like he was going crazy: "Mo Kong, you're just making excuses. When did I ever say I wanted to kill everything? It's the last semester of high school, don't you think we should endure it, persevere, and fight a little harder?"

"That depends on the students' wishes."

"What do kids know! They're just playful!"

"If they don't play now, they'll make up for it by playing later."

"That's still better than playing now!"

"So, you are only responsible for the school's grades, not for their lives." Mo Kong finally said something important. "You are unworthy of being a teacher. Everything you do is for your own immediate interests. You are for the school but not for the individual students. The school's honor and its improvement are ultimately related to you and are all for your own benefit."

"you you……"

"Alright, Ji Huaimin, I don't want to argue with you anymore, because it's pointless. Obviously, neither of us can convince the other. There are many things in this world where it's hard to tell right from wrong."

Time will prove me right!

"Time can never prove anything. In the long river of time, everything will be wrong for a period of time and right for a period of time, and so on." Mo Kong sighed deeply, his eyes, which were sunken in their sockets, revealed a hint of weariness and vicissitude.

"Those foreign things can't be used here. Our national conditions are different. Mo Kong, Mo Kong, you're just rigidly applying them!"

"If we're talking about rigidity, I don't think there's anyone more rigid than you."

"When I was young, I admired everything foreign and thought it was all good. Now I think that some things are only suitable for us if they are our own."

"Some things are the same; they are our own, but they are not suitable for us."