“The male rabbit’s feet are swift and strong, the female rabbit’s eyes are misty…”
She had memorized it—completely mastered The Ballad of Mulan.
Brimming with excitement, Xia Hua pumped herself up: “Tomorrow, I’ll tackle Hard Roads in Shu. The day after, A Petition to the Emperor. And the day after that, The Memorial on Sending Troops…”
“This is messing with my mentality,” she muttered. “To think I have to memorize all this miserable crap again.”
Xia Hua scratched her head. What could she do?
These were exactly the poems listed in the exam syllabus.
‘Jiji, jiji, Mulan weaves by the door.’
‘No sound of loom or shuttle, Only the sighs of a girl.’
‘Ask her what’s on her mind, Ask her what’s in her heart’
‘Nothing at all,’ she says, ‘Nothing at all.’
‘……’
She kept reciting, determined to commit the entire poem to memory, and walked away from the filthy, chaotic sanitation zone behind the parking shed.
There were plastic bottles, used tissues, sausage wrappers, milk tea cups—trash everywhere.
The moment she left the area, the discipline office arrived to inspect it.
“Class One. Again, it’s Class One’s sanitation zone causing problems.”
“At least before, there was a girl who would come clean up. Now there’s not even a shadow of anyone…” muttered the teacher from the discipline office, frowning as he gave Class One a big fat zero for sanitation.
Meanwhile, Xia Hua returned to the classroom, her expression calm as ever.
The moment she stepped inside, someone grinned at her, “Xia Hua, did you go clean the sanitation zone again?”
Xia Hua shook her head. “Nope.” She pulled out her geography textbook to prepare for the next class.
Fang Qiao, who sat nearby, called out loudly, “Bet you went to clean up again!” Xia Hua widened her eyes. “How could you slander me so baselessly?” Fang Qiao laughed, “What do you mean slander? I saw you go over there myself. You definitely cleaned up.” Xia Hua smiled faintly. “Going to the sanitation zone doesn’t necessarily mean… cleaning.”
Kong Chi arrived late.
Not that it mattered—no one really believed her.
The classroom was full of cheerful energy.
Could she not clean? No. She definitely didn’t dare not to clean.
No one understood Xia Hua better than the students of Class One.
Everyone, in surprisingly good spirits, made it through the first two geography periods peacefully.
They were even a little nicer to Xia Hua, simply because they believed she’d done what they wanted her to do.
Like masters doling out a small reward—they offered a sliver of kindness, and considered it a generous gift.
Until morning exercises ended.
The director of the discipline office always “took a bit of everyone’s time” afterward.
He went over new school policies—hairstyles had to be neat, uniforms tidy.
Then came the announcements.
And when he brought up Class One’s sanitation zone, his tone grew particularly harsh:
“I’ve been in education for thirty years, and I’ve never seen a sanitation zone so filthy. I must strongly criticize Class One.”
“Cleaning your assigned area is part of your responsibility.”
“But what did I see today?”
“Garbage. Everywhere…”
The director scolded them harshly, and the students of Class One were dumbfounded.
What was going on? How could this be possible? It couldn’t be true!
They couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
A sanitation zone full of trash? That could only mean… Xia Hua really didn’t clean?
In an instant, a wave of rage clouded their vision.
They felt as if they’d been deceived— Like a caged bird they’d kept locked away had suddenly pecked out their eyes.
“You’re finished, Xia Hua,” said Ye Tingzhu through gritted teeth.
“How could you? How dare you?” Fang Qiao looked at her in disbelief.
“The homeroom teacher will deal with her.”
“Xia Hua, you’ll take full responsibility for this.”
“Xia Hua, you’re the cancer of this class…”
“…”
Let the world rage as it may—Xia Hua only smiled faintly, already retreating to the back of the classroom.
Then, calm and collected, she turned around, raised a hand, and waved goodbye to everyone.
Honestly, if she weren’t forced to maintain her “girl” identity, she’d really rather flip them the middle finger.
Just then, the discipline director barked, “Dismissed,” and the crowd on the field scattered like dye in water.
Anyone who wanted to find Xia Hua’s silhouette—too late.
She had vanished without a trace.
She quietly made her way to the administrative building.
On the fifth floor, from within the discipline office director’s room, came the sound of him roaring—
Along with her homeroom teacher Zhou Qing’s awkward laughter, forced flattery, and angry but carefully suppressed replies.
“Don’t be upset, Director,” Zhou Qing said with a forced smile. “This time was just an accident.”
“An accident?” The Director of Academic Affairs shot him a glare and said in a grave tone, “This is the most critical period for our school. Everything must revolve around the third-year students and the college entrance exam. And yet, you can’t even manage the sanitation area? What are you trying to do—hand it back to the seniors and make them clean it?”
Since the start of the second semester, third-year students were exempted from cleaning duties to focus on exam prep.
Their sanitation areas had been redistributed randomly to second-year classes.
Xia Hua leaned back against the corridor wall, arms crossed.
“Don’t worry, Director. I’ll make sure to properly discipline that student when I get back,” Zhou Qing gritted through his teeth.
The director didn’t seem to find anything off about that reply.
After all, who would’ve guessed that such a large sanitation area… Was being cleaned by only one student?
He assumed Zhou Qing meant disciplining all the students on duty that day. B
ut in truth, Zhou Qing only meant to punish Xia Hua alone— And he was always a man of his word.
“Cao~” (a kind of grass), Xia Hua cursed under her breath and dusted off her clothes as she walked away from the admin building.
The next two periods were English—taught by none other than Zhou Qing himself.
Time to skip class again? Well, technically it wasn’t skipping.
She had made it very clear: as long as Zhou Qing was there, she’d never step foot in that classroom.
Until they reached some kind of resolution, this was how it had to be.
You may not amount to much in life, but you should at least have some self-respect.
The bell rang again for class.
Xia Hua sat just a dozen meters from the classroom, on a stairwell where no one could see her.
Sure enough, moments later, Zhou Qing’s angry shouting could be heard echoing from the room.
“Where is Xia Hua? Where did she go? How dare she skip her sanitation duty? Does she even know how much trouble she’s caused? Even I got called in for a lecture! What does she want, to ascend to heaven!?”
“She skipped class again, sir,” Ye Tingzhu reminded him.
“I know that. What I want to know is—where is she?”
“Sir, if you’re willing to punish her,” Ye Tingzhu said with a charming smile, voice full of conviction, “we’ll definitely help you drag her back. You mustn’t let such a terrible student off the hook!”
“Exactly, she’s gone too far.”
“Leave it to us boys to catch Xia Hua,” said Chen Kailun proudly, as if it were a sacred duty.
“I’ve never seen someone so shameless—she didn’t even clean the sanitation area…”
—Oh my~ So many people are after me now?
Xia Hua put down her phone.
She had just finished recording everything happening in the classroom and backed up the audio to her cloud storage.
Who knows? It might come in handy one day.
What does it feel like to become the class’s public enemy? Xia Hua could only say—it’s… just so-so.
“Most people in Class One are still decent. It’s just that Ye Tingzhu and her group control the narrative. And with Zhou Qing secretly backing them… Publicly condemning me has become a kind of ‘political correctness’ in our class.”
That was the dilemma she’d been stuck in all along.
“I want to change this reputation they’ve forced on me. I want my high school life back— To live it like a normal person.”
Ostracism, bullying—these are all man made conflicts.
“If someone chooses to isolate me, or to bully me…”
“Then I’ll just defeat them.”
Xia Hua said it calmly— She was no longer the person she used to be.