Those things that happened in those years

Chapter 54 Overestimating One's Abilities

Not long after his conflict with his political teacher, Fu Zhigang dropped out of school and was never seen at school again. Many years later, I heard that he was doing quite well and even became the village head through an election! It's really hard to say right and wrong in life.

Since his confrontation with his political science teacher, Hong Liguo has completely lost the feeling of being noticed. When the political science teacher teaches, he acts as if Hong Liguo doesn't exist in the class. He doesn't ask him questions or check his homework. He has been completely abandoned.

This situation suited Hong Liguo's wishes perfectly—he simply stopped treating politics as a compulsory subject, and would only flip through a couple of pages when he felt like it, and not even bother with the homework when he didn't want to study it.

During that period, Hong Liguo's mind was filled with thoughts of how to let Qiao Shuang know the feelings he had for her hidden in his heart.

Looking back now, they were truly ignorant and naive back then. To put it nicely, they were young and impetuous; to put it bluntly, they were unruly. They wasted so much of their precious time.

In the first year of junior high, things were alright. Even though there were occasional fights and arguments, everyone at least managed to go to school on time. But since entering the second year, many students have started to consider skipping school.

They leave home on time in the morning, but wander off somewhere along the way. They don't know when they will come home from school in the evening. They quietly reappear and blend into the crowd to go home. Their families have no idea that the children didn't go to school at all. They think that the children are diligent and studious.

Back then, there were no convenient communication tools, so school teachers could only ask classmates who knew the student for the reason for the absence. Even if the classmates knew the reason, they would never tell them, much less pass on the teacher's words to the parents.

Unlike now, if you're not at school for a class, or even out of the teacher's sight for a second, the teacher will ask why via WeChat, or even call your parents directly, leaving you nowhere to hide and making it impossible to skip class.

Hong Liguo often thinks that if they had the same learning environment back then, most of the children might have been able to achieve academic success. This is because there were fewer subjects back then, and there were no foreign language classes. Compared to students today, it would have been much easier for them to pass the college entrance exams.

However, in those days, the children were not very sensible, and the parents did not pay attention to it. In addition, communication was limited, so even if the school and teachers wanted to manage them, they were really helpless.

The main reason for truancy and skipping classes was ultimately the increasing number of people dating. In those days, students were generally older, and some junior high school students were even older than today's high school students, so it was understandable that such situations occurred.

In the first year of junior high, most people only secretly liked and secretly longed for each other. But in the second year, they became bolder, and the hormones that symbolized the budding of youth surged in their hearts. Most people began to boldly confess their feelings.

As a result, the cause of fights has changed from "status disputes" to "relationship disputes," with frequent incidents of people fighting over a partner or being beaten. Consequently, more and more students are dropping out of school or transferring schools.

The school did hold several assemblies, earnestly explaining the dangers of early romantic relationships to the students, advising them not to date too early, to focus on their studies, and that once they got into university and a job, partners would naturally come along, and they could have whatever they wanted. The school's efforts were no less than those of the parents, but the results were minimal—students continued to date and skip classes as usual.

Amidst this chaos, Hong Liguo discovered that Zou Jianmin, who had previously given up on pursuing Qiao Shuang, had once again set his sights on her.

Zou Jianmin would spend all his free time fawning over Qiao Shuang, trying to strike up conversations, and even pretending he couldn't solve a problem and asking her for help. Hong Liguo felt very resentful watching this, and a sense of hatred arose within him.

He couldn't help but deliberately find an excuse to provoke Zou Jianmin, hoping to take the opportunity to beat him up and make him back down.

But Zou Jianmin was a smart man and knew Hong Liguo's temperament. No matter how Hong Liguo provoked him, he endured it and refused to get angry, refusing to clash with Hong Liguo. This frustrated Hong Liguo greatly. He privately consulted with Fa Zi, trying to come up with a reasonable way to teach Zou Jianmin a lesson.

Fa Zi came up with many ideas, but Zou Jianmin just wouldn't take them.

Later, Hong Liguo and Fa Zi lost their patience and decided: they didn't need a reason to beat him up! They would just wait for the day after school, then secretly ambush Zou Jianmin on his way home, and when he passed by, they would suddenly rush out and warn him to stay away from Qiao Shuang. If he didn't listen to their advice, they would give him a good beating to make him back down.

However, Zou Jianmin clearly sensed the crisis. Every day after school, he would either walk home with several fellow villagers or take a detour, making it impossible for Hong Liguo and Fa Zi to catch him.

During lunch break that day, everyone had finished the food they brought from home. Some were engrossed in doing their homework, some were chatting quietly together, some ran outside the classroom to play, and some were dozing off on their desks.

Hong Liguo and Fa Zi had finished their meal and were sitting in their seats whispering about how to find an opportunity to deal with Zou Jianmin when the wooden door of the classroom was suddenly kicked open with a loud bang that made everyone's ears ring.

Everyone was startled by the sudden commotion and turned to look at the door—only to see three menacing-looking men drunkenly barging in.

Hong Liguo looked at the three people and saw that one of them was short and had a big mouth, another was quite burly but had very big eyelids, so big that it seemed like he couldn't see the road without lifting his eyelids, and the third had a small tuft of black hair on one side of his face. Judging from their appearance, none of the three were good people.

Many students panicked on the spot. The timid ones quickly left their seats and hid in corners to avoid the trouble, fearing that they would be affected by these "plague gods"; others simply got up and quickly ran out of the classroom.

Hong Liguo and Fa Zi did not recognize any of these three people. Judging from their clothes and demeanor, they were clearly not students from the school, but rather unemployed people from society.

Before everyone could recover from their shock, the three men had already surrounded Zou Jianmin from both sides, and one of them shouted, "You're Zou Jianmin?"

Although Zou Jianmin was quite tall, he was completely unfit for a fight. He panicked at the first sign of trouble, stammering, "I...I...I am...What...what do you want to do?"

"What do I want? I want to beat you up, of course!"

No sooner had he finished speaking than the three of them attacked together, throwing punches and kicks at Zou Jianmin...