America: A Prodigy of Stereotypes

After her aunt and uncle left the school, Liqun followed the teacher to get the textbooks, printed out the class schedule, and finally arrived at the classroom.

"Class, please be quiet. I'm going to introduce you to a new student."

"I know it's unusual for new students to arrive on Wednesday, but I still hope everyone will give them a warm welcome."

"Liqun Liu..."

Pronouncing Liu Liqun's name in Mandarin seemed a bit difficult for the teacher, but the teacher still persisted and finished pronouncing the full name.

“Li...Qun, there’s an empty seat next to Peter, go sit there.”

"Peter was the student in the last row who wore glasses."

“Peter, Li Qun is a new student. Could you please show him around the campus this week?”

Li Qun and Peter made eye contact.

They both wore black-rimmed glasses, but Li Qun's lenses were much thicker than Peter's.

Peter nodded somewhat reluctantly to the teacher and accepted the task of showing the new students around the school.

Li Qun sat down in the seat at the back door of the last row of the classroom, took out her textbook and arranged it, then turned to Peter and began to talk quietly.

The teacher simply ignored Li Qun's little antics during class.

"Hello, Peter. Your name is Peter Parker?"

"How did you know?" Peter was clearly shocked.

“I saw your name written in your workbook.”

"Oh." Peter nodded blankly and smiled shyly at Li Qun.

After one class, it was lunchtime, and Peter took Liqun to the school cafeteria. Liqun had brought his own lunch, while Peter went to buy the lunch provided by the school cafeteria.

As Li Qun pulled out a three-layer stainless steel insulated lunchbox, Peter Parker pushed up his black-rimmed glasses enviously.

Li Qun glanced at Peter's meager school lunch on his stainless steel plate and couldn't help but feel sorry for Peter.

"Would you like to have something to eat with me?" Li Qun asked Peter.

"no thank you."

One layer is golden fried rice with eggs, another is cucumber salad, and yet another is broccoli and sweet and sour pork tenderloin—a feast for the eyes, nose, and palate.

“Peter, are you free this weekend? I’d like to invite you to my home,” Li Qun said.

“Well, we’ve only known each other for less than an hour, haven’t we?” Peter said.

"I feel like we'll get along really well."

“My uncle runs a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. I’d like to invite you to a meal. My teacher asked you to take care of me, a transfer student, and I thought I shouldn’t let you do this for nothing,” Li Qun said, her eyes full of sincerity.

“Okay,” Peter agreed.

Li Qun and Peter ate lunch in the far corner of the school cafeteria, where they could clearly see all the students' groups at a glance.

Seeing 16-year-old Peter Parker, who looked remarkably like Tobey Maguire, eating at the same table with him, Li Qun relaxed a little about life at Midtown High School.

It's so good that it's not Tom Holland.

This is not the Marvel superhero universe he knows.

“You speak English so well. Are you from Aurora?” Peter also began to lower his guard and became curious about Li Qun.

Stereotypes +1…

“I would say ABC, and currently my nationality is American,” Li Qun replied.

"Why did you suddenly transfer schools?" Peter asked.

“I was studying in Boston until a few months ago when my family was in a car accident.”

“My parents didn’t survive, and I’m living with my uncle now.”

"..."

"..."

Peter fell silent, and Li Qun, seeing that Peter was not speaking, also fell silent.

Peter's eyes flickered, and his gaze toward Li Qun held a sense of shared suffering.

“Me too…” Peter managed to stammer out half a sentence.

“My parents also had an accident when I was very young, and my uncle Ben Parker adopted me.”

"Peter, does your uncle have children?"

“They only have me as their child,” Peter replied tactfully.

"I have a cousin, who's like a younger brother to me. But he's a bit slow and doesn't attend Midtown High School."

"We can be brothers."

"……Thanks."

Peter smiled, a genuine smile of happiness.

"Peter, who is this? What makes you so happy?"

Several tall figures blocked the overhead light, and Peter immediately stopped laughing upon hearing this sound.

"Flash, he's a new transfer student, and the teacher asked me to mentor him."

"Another bookworm? What's your name?"

“Liu Liqun,” Liqun replied.

"What kind of name is that, Liu... I'll just call you Leon."

"Ugh, you're eating bugs? Ugh!"

Stereotype +4...

Flash Thompson glanced at the fried rice on the table, then led the few team members behind him away with disgust.

Seeing that Fleiss had walked away and started chatting and laughing with another group of people, Li Qun asked Peter, "Does this kind of thing happen every day?"

"Not every day."

“Perhaps it’s because Fleiss is particularly concerned about me, and he came to greet me when he saw that I had made new friends,” Peter replied awkwardly.

"Oh no!" Peter suddenly exclaimed.

"what happened?"

“I have PE class this afternoon,” Peter replied.

“I don’t need to go; the principal has already spoken to the PE teacher on my behalf. I’m just recovering from the car accident, and the doctor said I’m not ready for strenuous exercise yet,” Li Qun told Peter.

Peter felt abandoned by his new friends. He was alone again in gym class, as the transfer student, Li Qun, couldn't be his workout partner for the grueling PE class.

Chapter 5 A Day at Midtown High School

After Wednesday, Li Qun was no longer a 16-year-old boy who had lost both parents and was beginning to recover from the trauma of the car accident; he was now wearing the golden headband called "High School Student".

After wearing this golden headband, he can no longer enjoy the carefree time of waking up. If he lets himself go and does whatever he wants, the headband will tighten around his head, making his future life miserable.

Before he voluntarily put on the golden headband, on Tuesday evening, his cousin Shuangxi asked Liqun, "Cousin, you're going to school tomorrow. How are you feeling?"

"Once, I had a life of freedom in my own hands, but I didn't cherish it, and now I'm here..."

I need to get up at 6:30 every morning because the first class at Midtown High School starts at 7:30.

There are four classes in the morning, each lasting 50 minutes, with a 10-minute break between classes; lunchtime is one hour but there is no lunch break; there are three classes in the afternoon, and school ends at 3:30 pm.

However, 3:30 p.m. does not mean the end of the day's school classes; there are still advanced placement and elective courses available.

These are called AP courses, which are college-level courses offered by the College Board at the high school level, allowing eligible high school students to take them and earn college credits starting in high school.

Midtown High School does not offer a comprehensive range of AP courses, but it does offer important subjects such as Mathematics and Computer Science, Natural Sciences, and History and Social Sciences.

After school ended at 3:30 pm on the first day, Li Qun finally realized why Peter Parker, who was just a high school student, was able to make so many small inventions for himself after becoming Spider-Man, and why Peter and his high school classmate were able to work as interns in a tech company lab like Osborn right after entering college.

It turns out they were all secretly rolling the dough behind everyone else's back.

Li Qun originally thought that with his knowledge level from the Aurora Education System, he could live a carefree life at Zhongcheng High School after his time travel, but he didn't expect that he would still have to study hard.

However, besides the diligent students like Li Qun and Peter, Midtown High School also has a group that doesn't require much brainpower. These are the athletic students, represented by Frye Thompson, members of the school's sports teams. These teams include football, soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, and even a cheerleading squad.

The school team participates in the New York and national high school leagues every year, bringing glory to the school. The star players on the school team have an absolute dominant force among the other nerdy students at Midtown High School.

Flash, a rising football star at Midtown High School.

……

……

"Leon, you answer this question."

Liu Liqun stood up. Because the pronunciation of his name was embarrassing for the teachers, his name at school had been passively changed to "Lyon".

It was also due to Flash's loud voice. During the first week of school, he and Peter were inseparable, and Flash shouted out the name he had given Liu, "Leon," until everyone knew it.

“That’s a good answer. Please sit down, Lyon.”

Every teacher at Zhongcheng High School likes to call on students to answer questions in class. When Liqun first transferred to the school, he received special attention from every teacher. Almost every class, the teachers gave Liqun a chance to demonstrate his intelligence.

There were only about twenty students in the same classroom, so Li Qun had no way to avoid it.

Li Qun feels that she is about to awaken an avoidant personality. Can the teachers of each subject please stop having such performative personalities and always have to stir things up in their classes?

"Peter, you must have been secretly laughing just now, right?"

"Ah."

Peter smiled and nodded at Li Qun.

Peter Parker has completed the NPC task of "showing the new students around the campus for a week". Outside the school, Peter and Li Qun have also completed the achievement of visiting each other's homes. Li Qun has become one of Peter's few good friends.

The bell rang, and finally it was three o'clock when school was over.

"Are you really not going to participate in clubs or take AP courses?"

In the hallway outside the classroom, Peter pitifully asked Li Qun that he still had two more AP classes to attend.