After Transmigrating into a Book, I Have an Entire Family of Cannon Fodder

Qi Xingchen sniffled as Qi Yuji continued: “Also, Xingxing, I delivered the gifts for Dad and older brother already, tsk tsk tsk.”

“Do they like the gifts?”

“I’m not telling you. Go look at their Moments1 yourself.”

Dad Qi, Qi Xiaoming, and older brother, Qi Yunxiao, had been running the Qi’s together. Their workload was relatively busy, and they would not post more than two Moments in a year.

Hanging up Qi Yuji’s call, he curiously searched for Qi Xiaoming’s WeChat and realised that the display name the original owner gave him, was the emoji of a monkey covering its ears.

Qi Xingchen: “……”
How much did he hate his dad’s nagging ah!

Tapping on Qi Xiaoming’s Moments, on the entire empty white screen, there was only a solitary, faceless front photo.

The camera was focused on his chest that laid the tie he was wearing, and the accompanying text: 【Wore the tie my son gifted me to attend the World Economic Forum, all of my partners complimented me on how much more refreshing I looked [big smile][big smile]】

It was just a tie and not some rejuvenation technique, Qi Xingchen could not help but laugh.

Then he opened Qi Yunxiao’s Moments. His display name was different from Qi Xiaoming’s but carried the same meaning.
It was a monkey covering its mouth.

Yunxiao: 【The weather is not bad [image]】

The accompanying photo was naturally the tie clip Qi Xingchen gave him. Qi Xingchen rubbed the tip of his nose.

He changed both of their display names into “Dad” and “Ge” respectively.

.

In the blink of an eye, it was already the last mission of their second stop. The guests thought that it would be hard, but Director Zhao turned out to say: “Today’s mission is very simple, some people among you all have already experienced it. And that is——going to Little Tie’s junior high school to experience volunteer teaching.”

Very obviously, the “some people” referred to Qi Xingchen, who was especially happy once he knew of the mission.

Fragrant and delicious flatbreads, sweet and tart tomatoes, the eagerness to learn in the gazes of the children…… All of that had already caused Qi Xingchen to be deeply fond of them.

The other guests had also eaten the food that the children brought, and everyone thought that this mission was very meaningful. One after another, they carried their backpacks and headed toward the mission location.

After trekking on the winding, narrow, and rugged roads, then climbing over the mountain rocks that required wire ropes to scale, almost two hours had passed.

It took great effort to get to Niuben School. As the head teacher brought the guests on a tour, he2 talked about the funny things that had happened during his 10 years of volunteer teaching3:

“I’ve been volunteering to teach here for 10 years. Back then, the conditions were much worse than it is now. The tables the students used were their family’s dining tables, none of them were of the same height. The classroom floor was full of potholes too. The first time I held class here, I had already accidentally tripped over and fell.”

Although the head teacher was laughing as he said this, the guests could well imagine the difficulty and hardships involved as a freshly graduated university student who had determinedly come to the countryside from the city that was in excellent condition. All volunteer teachers were silent heroes indeed.

Niuben School had a total of two classrooms, a sports field, and a teachers’ dorm that was also their office. In less than 10 minutes, the tour was over. The head teacher said, embarrassed: “There doesn’t seem to be anything else to see. We’re just in time for one class of students to be doing self-study now, I’ll take you to the classroom to visit them.”

As he said this, he pushed the classroom door open. Qi Xingchen, who was standing behind the cameraman, immediately appeared in the children’s field of view.

The children: “!!!”

“Teacher Xingxing!”

Because their teacher was not strict, in addition to the fact that they really liked this very awesome and handsome big brother, they could not care more about their self-study, rushing out of their seats with a loud “huah”.

“Teacher Xingxing, why are you here?”
“Is it because you missed us?”
“You asked me to use the method for question 3 to do ten other similar problems, I’ve already done them all!”
“Don’t listen to him, I’m much better, I did 20 of them!”

Seeing the children surrounding Qi Xingchen completely, the head teacher was relatively surprised: “Have you met before?”

“Alright, alright, you guys are going to squeeze me out of the classroom already,” Qi Xingchen placated the children, then explained, “I helped them with a few questions previously.”

Under the circumstances of not needing to compete for anything, the mission became very simple. The guests allocated who was to teach which subject, and very soon, an entire day’s classes were done.

In the afternoon, it was time for the programme team to return back. As the children still had more classes, they could not leave and could only lean against the windowsill while watching Qi Xingchen helplessly.

Qi Xingchen did not dare to linger any longer, fearing that the children would start crying. He smiled as he waved at them, mouthing the words “quickly go back to class” at them.

The children instead disobeyed him for the first time, continuing to watch him.

Once they had left the children’s field of view, seeing that Qi Xingchen kept his head lowered, Bo Ye fell back to walk alongside him: “Feeling down?”

“……No.”

“It’s alright, Qianzhou is not that far away. You can visit them often in the future.”

“I said I’m not feeling down.” Teacher Xingxing stubbornly refused to admit.

Bo Ye couldn’t help but sigh. The little fan’s bad habit of hiding everything in his heart was really a nuisance.

After returning to Zeng’s house, Qi Xingchen half-heartedly shoved a few mouthfuls of rice into his mouth to fill his stomach, then rushed headfirst into his room. 3 hours later he took a stack of books and hurriedly ran out of the house.

Director Zhao was filming the scene of the other guests discussing what gifts to buy for the lucky draw. Out the corner of his eye, he spotted that swift black shadow and hurridly stopped him: “Xingxing, were are you going?”

“I’m going out to give Little Tie something.”

“Hua-zi, go and follow Xingxing.” Director Zhao stretched out his head to call for the cameraman, afraid of missing out any footage.

However, even before Hua-zi could stand up, “Bark bark bark!”, the large yellow dog suddenly jumped up and let out a series of barks——

It was unknown when a few dozen people had appeared outside in the courtyard.

Some of them were hugging bags of biscuits, some were holding a bottle of milk in each hand, some were carrying a woven nylon bag full of tomatoes…… Their eyes were glistening, while the rims of their eyes were tinged with red.

Qi Xingchen was immediately frozen in place: “Teacher, you guys- why are you guys here?”

“Because they can’t bear to part with……” The head teacher rubbed the heads of the the children, “can’t bear to part with their Teacher Xingxing.”

Qi Xingchen turned around to wipe at his eyes.

“What’s there to be this reluctant?” He turned back with a smile: “You’re not the only ones with a gift, I have a gift too.”

Pausing, he waved the exercise book in his hand: “This contains all the questions you all have asked me recently, I have consolidated them according to the type of question. My request is for you all to look through all of it within 10 days, I will asked Little Tie to do a random spot check.”

“We know, Teacher Xingxing!” The children shouted with tears in their eyes, “You must do a spot check, and you musn’t forget about us!”

Facing this sort of scene, there was no one in the courtyard who was not moved. Bo Ye headed over and patted Qi Xingchen’s shoulder, asking in a whisper: “Teacher Xingxing, why not we gift the kids with a song?”

Qi Xingchen knew that Bo Ye didn’t want the children to all start crying as it would make them more reluctant to part and feel more miserable, “Alright, what do we sing?”

“Let’s sing an old song then.”

Bo Ye cleared his throat: “Don’t worry how it will end later/At least we were once gathered……”

All of the people in the courtyard, the oldest being the 50 plus Zeng Er, the youngest being the slightly older than 10 children, chorusing in unison:

“As long as we once had each other, for you and me it is enough;

There are a lot of memories in a person’s lifetime, I only wish that there will be a me in your recollection……”

the song they sing at the end is called Ping Ju, directly translated as Gathering of Duckweeds or Duckweeds Gathering. It’s a very old song that no one knows the origins of, but there are a few versions of it online (as in sung by different people

I’m back! hopefully… things recently went wrong again (I’m super done too) so I have no idea what my next few months are going to be like. thought I could get out, but apparently not.

Footnotes

I think… I tl-ed this as Friend Circle before, but the official eng is Moments (function of WeChat) where you can post things for your friends to seenote that I have no idea of the teacher’s gender bc no pronouns were usedthe volunteer teaching here is specifically referring to volunteer teaching in the rural or poorer areas in China