Chapter Twelve Greeting Card

  There are some things you don't want people to know about, but they will eventually be known.

  "Who's there?" Feng Qinglian walked from the house to the door to open it, and in came Feng Manyan, Ma Si's father. "Ma Si, didn't you have a parent-teacher conference today?" Feng Qinglian smelled a strong smell of alcohol on his son's body and asked, "How did you know?" Feng Manyan changed his shoes and sat down on the sofa in the living room, looking a bit drunk. After a while, he said, "At dinner time today, one of my friends didn't go, saying that he was attending a parent-teacher conference for his child, and that child is in the same class as Ma Si." Feng Qinglian went to the kitchen to pour a cup of hot water for his son and glanced at the small room. At this time, the two children inside were most nervous, and Ma Si quickly asked Ouyang what to do. Ouyang thought for a moment and said, "It's okay, just say my mom has already gone, and I'll let your dad go home later." Ma Si nodded and came out of the room, saying exactly what Ouyang had taught him to his father. However, Feng Manyan seemed to have no intention of leaving, took a sip of water, and said, "It's okay, I'll wait for your aunt to come back. Didn't they say that the parent-teacher conference would release grades? I'll ask about the scores." Ma Si nodded and went back to his room. After a while, Feng Manyan's intoxication wore off a bit, and he began to wander around. He saw Ma Si's school bag in the corner and picked it up, thinking that the child's school bag was old and wanting to replace it with a new one for Ma Si. Suddenly, he wanted to take a look at what his child usually carried to school, so he opened the school bag...

  At this time, Feng Qinglian, Ouyang and Maisie in the room were all worried and thinking of a way to deal with the situation when Feng Hongyan returned. Suddenly, they heard Feng Manyan shouting loudly in the living room: "Maisie, come out!" Maisie knew that his father must have found the test paper in his backpack, so he shrank under the bed and didn't dare to come out.

  The door of Ou Yang's room had a glass window on it, and Feng Manyan threw Ma Si's textbooks one by one from the living room, shattering the glass.

  "What kind of school did you attend to get such a lousy score? Do you still have the face to go to school? What are you studying?" Feng Manyan kicked open the door and shouted, "All of you get out!"

  Feng Qinglian had no choice, she understood her child, when he was angry, she still went along with his meaning, otherwise the consequences would be unthinkable. So she followed Ouyang to the big house, and then the door of the small house was heavily closed by Feng Manyan.

  Curses, slaps and Maisie's wails followed immediately.

  "Grandma, why didn't you stop Ol' Uncle?" Ouyang asked in puzzlement.

  "Are you stopping him? He's drunk and might even hit us, this can't be blamed on others. He didn't do well on the exam, let your uncle vent his anger and that's it. Hurry up and call your mom to ask if she's done yet, tell her to come back quickly."

  Ouyang picked up the landline at home and dialed his mother's phone number.

  "Hello, is that Ouyang? I just finished a parent-teacher conference and was walking home. What's up?" came Feng Hongyan's voice from the other end of the phone.

  "It's not good, my brother is being beaten by my uncle in the house. My grandma said to ask you to come back quickly." Ouyang spoke hastily, and Feng Hongyan immediately said "I'll go back right away, you and your grandma stay in the big house don't go over there."

  Before long, Feng Hongyan returned from outside. At this time, the small house was also quiet. Feng Hongyan pushed open the door from the entrance and saw Maisi crouching on the ground, hugging his body tightly with both hands, books scattered all over the floor, Maisi's body was bruised and swollen, and Feng Manyan stood aside, seemingly still out of breath.

  "What are you doing? If he didn't do well on the exam, can't he just do better next time? Hitting him won't solve the problem!" Feng Hongyan helped Mais onto the bed and said to Feng Manyan.

  "You think it's none of your business? You're helping Little Rabbit deceive me together?" Feng Manyan shouted at Feng Hongyan.

  "What's wrong with me studying like this? You just know how to drink every day, have you ever taken care of me? Have you ever found an after-school class for me to attend like Ouyang? All you know is drinking your wine. Now I didn't do well on the exam and you hit me, what do I owe you?" Mais finally couldn't bear it anymore and shouted out loud. These words left Feng Manyan speechless, she snorted and then stormed out of the room.

  "Does it still hurt?" That night, Feng Qinglian helped Mais apply medicine, while Ouyang was helping her mother clean up the broken glass and books on the floor.

  "I'm used to it." Mais said expressionlessly, this sentence was not wrong, from primary school to now, it's unknown how many times Mais has been scolded by Feng Manyan.

  Ouyang, who was standing beside him, didn't say a word. In fact, he knew that his fate and Mais' were the same. Mais' mother had left home when he was very young, divorced from her husband, and gone to work elsewhere. It could be said that Mais lacked maternal love, which is why Feng Hongyan was especially good to him. As for himself, Ouyang sometimes also wanted to be scolded by his father, or even slapped on the ear, but his father had not appeared in his life for a long time.

  After everything was settled, the family sat in the living room to rest. Feng Hongyan took out her notebook from her bag and said: "I attended two parent-teacher conferences today, and now I understand that the education level between the city and our area is still different. The way teachers speak is not the same. Chen Xi, Liu teacher said you are not focused in class, do you know? I specifically stayed behind to ask the teacher, otherwise those teachers only talk to parents of students who rank high, we parents don't matter. But Xu Xue Mei's mom was very pleased." Ouyang could tell that her mother was envying and jealous of Xu Xue Mei's family. "It seems like they are also going to buy a house in that neighborhood, maybe we'll be neighbors in the future." Ouyang seemed to recall Xu Xue Mei mentioning that her family was going to buy a house. Feng Hongyan continued to tell Ouyang about her impression of each subject teacher and what they mainly talked about, speaking for almost an hour. Then Feng Hongyan said: "Feng Mao Middle School is just not the same as 59 Middle School, Maisi, your Huang teacher didn't even mention one key point, it's still like before, talking about not fighting, not having early love affairs... Chen Xi's parent-teacher conference lasted so long, and you only talked for an hour?" Ouyang could see that her mother seemed very satisfied with her decision to attend Feng Mao Middle School.

  That night, Ouyang and Maisie were lying in bed. Maisie asked Ouyang, "Do you think those tutoring classes are useful?" Ouyang was puzzled and said, "Why are you suddenly interested in these things? You're not the one who's been looking down on those tutoring classes." Maisie turned over and said to Ouyang, "I just want to get my grades up a bit so I can look good myself and avoid getting scolded." Ouyang nodded and said, "Okay, you can talk to my mom about it later. You can go to the tutoring class I usually attend. If it's effective, then you can continue; if not, then don't go." Maisie said okay and turned over to sleep.

  Actually, every child wants to study well. No one hopes that their parents will lose face in front of others. But society is like this, it must divide people into three six nine grades, and divide students into winners and losers, just to show off the identity of those high-society people.

  Time flies, and before he knew it, the middle of December had arrived. Ouyang had already gotten used to taking the bus to school and living a life that started at 6 am and ended at 7 pm. He heard from his classmates that starting next semester, they would have to attend extra study sessions, but he wasn't sure if he could apply for an exemption to go home early.

  That day, Ouyang went to school as usual, and when he arrived at his classroom, he saw four greeting cards on his desk. He asked Wang Lin, "What's this?" Wang Lin pushed him gently and said, "These are Christmas cards. Starting from December, the store next to our school has been selling them. I told you, if you receive a card but don't give one back, you'll get scolded!"

  Ouyang listened and quickly opened the cards after putting down his backpack. The first card was simple, with a single color and a message that read "Merry Christmas" signed by someone named Moon. Ouyang thought for a moment, wondering if it could be from Xu Yu Jie, but he decided not to think about it too much.

  The remaining three cards were from Mu Yu Huang, Chen Juan, and someone named Mu Rong Xiao Zhu. Ouyang knew that in his class, there was another student with the surname Mu, and when he looked around, he found that Xiao Zhu was easy to spot because she had a height of 160 cm, which was quite rare for a girl in their grade.

  Although Ouyang also had a height of 160 cm, girls tend to look more slender than boys. He spotted Xiao Zhu, who had short hair similar to Yu Huang's style, with fair skin that made her almost look like a black-and-white pair with Ouyang. What struck him most was Xiao Zhu's eyes - her left eye had single eyelids, while her right eye had double eyelids.

  At first glance, he thought she looked like a boy, especially since tall girls often wore jeans and school uniforms that made it hard to tell them apart.

  After school in the afternoon, Ouyang went to find Xu Yuejie on purpose and asked: "Hey, was it you who gave me this greeting card? The signature is in English, I'm not quite sure." Xu Yuejie playfully blinked her eyes, smiled, and Ouyang only then discovered that Xu Yuejie had dimples: "Hmm, do you think anyone else has the word 'moon' in their name? How many greeting cards did you receive today?" Ouyang raised his hand and made a four gesture with his fingers. Xu Yuejie said: "Don't be discouraged, you'll definitely get more before Christmas. When I put the card on your desk earlier, I saw that it was still empty." Ouyang nodded and asked: "So what kind of greeting cards do you like? Simple ones, musical ones, or... weird ones?" Xu Yuejie paused for a moment and said: "Hehe, guess!" Then she walked out of the classroom.

  After school in the evening, Ouyang dragged Wang Lin to the warehouse to buy about 20 greeting cards. "Do you really think you can get back 20? This is such a waste." Wang Lin advised Ouyang, "Look, I only bought 10, I think this number is enough. You're not even familiar with them." But Ouyang said, "There are two reasons, first, to use greeting cards to get closer to the people I like and want to be friends with, second, if my family buys 4 or 5, it's also to avoid saying we're not thoughtful later." Wang Lin smiled and said, "Hey, I didn't think you were so clever."

  "That's it, I'm smart now." Ouyang said with a smile. This sentence later became Ouyang's catchphrase and also the joke that everyone used to tease him. However, this was the first time Ouyang said this sentence, and he remembered this incident all along.