Papa's Princess | 时代少年团 TNT ✓

•CHAPTER THREE•

The day was going pretty slow for me, two more minutes until class. I just wanted to start learning and forget about this environment. If I was learning, I would at least be distracted from the students who probably thought of me as trash. I was now organizing my books, when all the student’s eyes seemed to look to the front. I thought it was the teacher stepping in, but instead, I saw a girl.

She was tall and slim, which the coldest look I had ever seen. She didn’t crack a smile at anyone, neither did she regard anyone. Her short black hair only seemed to intensify her coldness. She was a student, it was obvious, but her uniform was different from mine and I didn’t understand why. Instead of dressing like me and the boys, she wore a long-sleeved button down blouse with a violet bow around her neck, and her skirt was plaid with violet and light blue. All the boys were staring at her, and it somehow shocked my core.

She stopped next to my desk, and seeing that she was the only other girl in the class, I assumed she wanted to say hi to me. Instead, she regarded me for a while then walked away from me and sat somewhere at the back. Something told me she didn’t like me, that look in her eyes was just so devious. Well, one more person hated me, it seemed to be nothing new in this school. However, I was hoping she would be excited to finally have a female classmate, I guess not.

The teacher walked in, distracting me from my thoughts. She was a tall slim woman with extremely long black hair, and she looked quite friendly at first sight. She wore a dark green suit of a skirt and shirt, carrying some files and books in her hands. She placed them on the table in front of us.

‘Good morning students,’ she announced as he turned around, writing the subject “English” on the green board with her chalk.

‘Good morning madam.’ the students replied, all but Hui who I was somehow looking at closely. Hui had her feet in high-top black boots on the desk, and it was obvious she didn’t care what anyone said or thought. Her arms were also folded in somewhat defiance.

The teacher turned away from the board back to the students. ‘Hui take your feet off the desk.’
Everyone now turned in her direction.

‘Nah, I’d rather not.’ Hui replied calmly. It was shocking how rude she was.

At our old school, if anyone replied to a teacher like that, they would probably be thrown out of class and get a good amount of punishment. But I guess it was different here, a lot of things were different here. Instead of the teacher saying anything to Hui, she simply sighed. Her eyes then turned to me.

‘Oh, you must be Lina.’ the lady announced. ‘My name is Mrs. Lin, I’ll be taking you in English.’

I nodded my head. She seemed friendly, and that was at least a relief. At least my teacher didn’t hate me.

‘You came in on a good day, I’m going to be distributing the test papers which the class wrote last week.’ Mrs. Lin informed, and most of the students grumbled. ‘Don’t complain now, you wrote the paper yourselves.’

She grabbed the file from the table and started flipping through it.

‘Well the highest grade this time was a 92%, Ma Hui.’ the lady announced, walking over to Hui and placing the paper on her desk just next to her booted feet. Hui grabbed the paper and looked at it like she didn’t care.

‘She’s usually top of the class.’ Jiaqi whispered to me as if I cared. I didn’t, but I appreciated the fact that someone was talking to me.

‘Yan Haoxiang, 88%.’ Mrs. Lin announced the next student, and I watched as the Yan Haoxiang walked to Mrs. Lin and grabbed his paper. He looked at it for a while before going to sit down. I hadn’t heard Haoxiang speak since I entered this class. He seemed serious.

I watched as several students in the class went to take their papers, some smiling, some laughing and some gritting their teeth. It was interesting what a grade could do to you wasn’t it?

‘And finally, Liu Yaowen. I suggest you pull up your socks.’ Mrs. Lin held out the paper to him.
Yaowen got up and grabbed the paper with a disappointed look, from where I was sitting, I could see that he had gotten a D. His reaction wasn’t indifferent like Hui’s, he seemed sad. I guess he wanted to do well in school, unlike Hui who seemed to not mind at all.

‘Alright, let’s go on to today’s lesson: verb tenses.’

…

After having had my locker allocated to me, I walked over to it at recess and tried to put my books inside of it. However, somebody bumped into me and made me drop my books on the floor. Once again, the person didn’t even say sorry. I picked them up then looked at the person who was now standing next to my locker. It was Hui who fiddled with her locker to open it.

I wanted to say something but I decided to ignore her. Instead, I continued with packing my books in the locker. Inside her locker was dark with cobweb designs and vampires. My assumption was that she was Goth.

‘Lina,’ she uttered my name all of the sudden as she looked for her books in her locker. ‘You have a pretty name.’

Her words were kind, but something told me kindness was not the intent of her words.

‘Thank you.’ I finally decided to reply.

‘Have you noticed we’re the only two girls in this school? How climactic.’

I didn’t know what to answer at this point. Instead I just stared at her as I tried to decrypt her message.

‘There’s only two of us here, and I don’t want competition. You don’t even stand a chance.’ she spoke so lazily.

‘It’s fine.’ I replied with a confused look. ‘I don’t want to compete with you either. I just want to focus on getting good grades, I promise I’ll stay out of your way.’

‘If only I believed you.’ she gave me a smirk and slammed her locker. I watched her start to walk away, but it wasn’t long before one of the guys from our class started to follow her and talk to her. I recognized him as Zhang Zhenyuan when he was receiving his test paper. He got a 78%, so I assumed he was pretty good at school.

I looked over at Hui’s locker which had just been closed. It had a huge sticker on it in the shape of a black heart. Inside the heart there were words written: Papa’s Princess. Papa’s Princess? What kind of a weird nickname was that?

The bell rang for us to return to classes, so I quickly grabbed my science book and ran up the stairs. I didn’t want to be late on my first day of school.