Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Dividing Our Desk
Chen An looked attentively at the girl in front of him, guided by the teacher. She had striking black long hair that was quite eye-catching among elementary school students, and her appearance was as cute as a doll.
"Hello, my name is Lu Li," the girl said somewhat reservedly, seeming a bit uneasy in the new environment.
"What a coincidence, I also have two characters in my name, Chen An. Here, take this," Chen An shifted his belongings to the left side of the desk and silently handed a ruler to his new deskmate.
"Um... what does this mean?" The girl looked confusedly at Chen An, then at the ruler.
"It's to draw the line for our desk territory," Chen An said, looking surprised. "Don't girls do this with each other?"
"Do you boys do this kind of boring thing?" Lu Li looked at Chen An in disbelief. "What's the point of drawing a line on the desk?"
"It's the result of the territorial instincts of human younglings," Chen An observed the girl with interest. "No one wants their territory to be invaded, so boys usually draw a line on the desk to let their deskmates know not to cross the boundary. I'm just surprised that girls don't do this."
"I don't know..." Lu Li shook her head with some confusion. "This is the first time I've attended a school where two people share a desk."
Saying that, Lu Li quietly placed her school bag on the floor and took out her textbooks and pencil case. As Chen An saw the pencil case, a hint of nostalgia appeared on his face. Although he didn't recognize Lu Li's pencil case, the flashy appearance and the design that popped out stationery when pressed were things he had admired as a child decades ago.
"Why is everyone secretly looking over here?" Lu Li was puzzled by the continuous glances directed her way, not understanding their meaning.
"The school we're in has a conservative atmosphere, or you could say it has remnants of feudal traditions. The teachers here are also influenced by this atmosphere and subconsciously assign seats to separate boys and girls. And children tend to imitate adults, so they unconsciously think that boys should sit together," Chen An explained. "So in their eyes, I'm just really unlucky to be seated with a girl."
"I... don't understand," Lu Li blinked her eyes in confusion, looking at the boy who was using a lot of unfamiliar words.
"It's fine, sometimes, not understanding something is actually a good thing," the boy in front of her sighed like an old man, shrugging like a very grown-up person. Lu Li wanted to ask more, but she saw that the teacher had picked up the chalk, so she had to hold back her questions.
"Everyone, turn to page fifty-two. Today, we will learn..." As the teacher started the class, the boring forty-five minutes were about to begin again. Chen An absentmindedly opened his Chinese textbook and started staring at it, bored out of his mind.
...
Lu Li's mouth twitched as she looked at the extra pages inserted into her deskmate's textbook, which clearly didn't belong to the textbook. She could barely recognize phrases like "Thirty-Six Stratagems," "Kill with a Borrowed Knife," and "Deceive the Heavens to Cross the Sea," but since she wasn't familiar with them, she decided not to say anything.
And so, the excruciating forty-five minutes passed second by second until the bell for the end of class rang. Chen An finally got up to find his little buddies. He was eager to confirm something.
"Man, you're really pitiful," said the two friends Chen An had in the class, Fatso and Skinny. They were obviously waiting for him, but their sly grins didn't escape Chen An's notice. Fatso patted his shoulder, seemingly enjoying his misfortune. "Ended up sitting with a girl, huh?"
"Do you guys think I'll lose some weight just because I'm sitting with a girl?" Chen An covered his forehead. "How old are you guys? Why do you still have these childish thoughts?"
"But, man, girls are so whiny!" Skinny looked at Chen An sympathetically. "They don't play basketball because they're afraid of sweating, they don't play soccer because they're afraid of getting dirty, and they don't play throwing sandbags because they're afraid of pain. Sitting at the same table with such whiny girls, you haven't offended the teacher right?"
"My dad also said that boys shouldn't get too close to girls," Fatso shook his head and swayed. "He said it would weaken our masculine energy. In other words, being with girls for too long will make you girly too."
"Hope your dad won't regret teaching you this when you can't find a girlfriend in the future," Chen An rubbed his temples tiredly. "And Fatso, promise me you won't say these things to anyone else. I'll treat you to spicy snacks after school."
"Huh?" Fatso hesitated for a moment and then looked regretful. "But I already told others."
Chen An's heart skipped a beat, realizing that things weren't looking good.
"But we just finished class! How did you manage to tell others so quickly!"
"Through notes, everyone was passing them during class..." Fatso's expression showed that he hadn't thought it through.
Uh-oh!
The worst-case scenario had happened. Chen An instinctively looked around, and sure enough, the boys around him were giving him strange looks. He was already seven years old, and he somewhat understood the logic of these kids. He knew how much impact such nonsense could have on them; they were too quick to take adults' words as absolute truth.
"Forget it... It's too late to stop now. You two, just leave me alone for a while," Chen An waved his hand, and after sending the two little rascals away, he returned to his original seat and buried his face in the textbook with frustration.
"What's wrong?" Lu Li curiously looked at her dejected deskmate.
"Soon, I'll be given a lot of nicknames like 'girly boy' and such," Chen An's voice came out muffled from the textbook. "I'm done for this semester. I can only hope that when I move up to fourth grade, I'll be in a class where they don't know me."
"Why would they give you such hurtful nicknames?" Lu Li looked puzzled at the gloomy boy in front of her. "You're all classmates, how could they do something so cruel?"
"That's the problem. 'Cruel' is beyond their scope of knowledge; they don't even know how to write that word!" Chen An pointed outside, looking disinterested. "There's a boy in the neighboring class who was caught secretly reading comics during class, and the teacher criticized him, saying his head was full of Ding Dang, the name of cat from the comics. Since then, he's been given a nickname 'Ding Dang Brain,' and no one ever calls him by his name anymore. They all just call him that for no reason at all."
Lu Li pondered for a while, then shook her head in confusion, "This... makes absolutely no sense."
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