You Have Everything I Dislike

During class activities, I often played table tennis with the third master. Largely because it was a sport I was quite good at, and the two of us could play together.

Once, neither of us had a ball. I was familiar with the physical education teacher. Seeing him training students, I went to him to borrow a table tennis ball. So he went back to the equipment room to get a ball, but he didn’t come back for a while. When he returned eventually, he gave me a tennis ball. “Just play with this. It’s basically the same.”

When I took the yellow tennis ball from my PE teacher to the concrete table, the third master let slip of a “pfft” and laughed, bounced the ball a few times to test, and asked me, “Does this work?”

I used the words of the PE teacher to him, “Well, it’s basically the same. Come on, let’s go a round, one popsicle per round.”

He threw the ball to me and let me serve. “Okay.”

That day’s score went up and down, and in the end, he won two popsicles.

The playground was a little far from the canteen, so I bought two popsicles during the second half of the class activity and went to the playground to find the third master.

At that time, the third master and our classmate Xiao Wang were talking. When it came to Xiao Wang, he looked like Tian Liang on the front and Harry Potter on the side profile, with big blinking eyes. It was only after meeting him that I had realized Tian Liang and Harry Potter actually looked quite similar.

Xiao Wang was confused when he saw me give both popsicles to the third master. I explained to him that I had lost the game, so I bought popsicles. Xiao Wang’s eyes lit up hearing this. He was eager to join in, but he didn’t want to play with me. He took my racket and wanted to fight with the third master.

The third master put both of his popsicles in Xiao Wang’s hand, took my racket, and said to the other, “All right, I admit defeat, the popsicles are all yours.”

After saying this, he returned the racket to me and directly threw the ball to play with me.

I looked at Xiao Wang. He had already peeled off the plastic wraps and began to eat while watching us play, and he seemed very satisfied with this arrangement.

I really like to talk to people, and it was useless for the class teacher to put the quietest girl on my desk. Later, that girl’s mother approached our class teacher and asked her to transfer her daughter away from my side…… because that girl also became very talkative (during class).

The beautiful female homeroom teacher called me out with a long sigh. I bowed my head and admitted my mistake, and carefully asked her, “How about transferring me to the last row with XX’s (third master’s) table?”

The young female homeroom teacher had always been quite fond of the Third Master and me — I thought she had a good vision.

The class teacher glared at me, “No, it is strictly forbidden for boys and girls to share the same table in our school. This takes this option off the table. I’ll think about it.”

After class, I ran over to the third master and said, “The class teacher said no one in our class would like to share a table with me. I’ll say you do!”

I think the homeroom teacher was really talking nonsense. At that time, it was clear that the whole class wanted to share a table with me.

After listening to me, the third master laughed and said, “Yes, I would like to share a table with you.”

I thought my homeroom teacher would agree to my request because she was so nice to me, but it turned out that day, during dinner break, she asked me to carry my books to the first row.

The first row was always vacant, so when I went there, I became the first and only person.

In fact, the desks in the laboratory were very large, and even the same row of desks were far apart, unlike the normal desks that were right next to each other. But it still felt different. I occupied a row by myself, but it didn’t feel bad at all.

A friend helped me move my books, and laughed while moving.

I felt uncomfortable in my heart, but I tried my best to pretend that it didn’t matter to me on the outside, “Did you see that? Special treatment!”

Because it was so special, I didn’t even dare to tell my mother, afraid she’d scold me. The next day at class, every teacher put up an obscure smile when they saw me, and I could only respond with a silly smile, which made me want to die from the embarrassment.

In Chinese class that day, I didn’t know if the class teacher was trying to appease me, but she gave me the highest score for my essay and asked me to recite it at the podium. Truthfully, there was no need to go to the podium; nonetheless, I stood up from my seat and turned around to face the class.

It was a self-study session at the end of the day, and feeling lazy, I propped my chin up to look outside the window. There was probably a class having a P.E. class downstairs and it was very noisy, a large contrast to the quiet sound of writing in the class.

When I had enough, I turned around to continue doing my homework and found a shadow of a dove on the yellow podium not far in front of me. Getting curious, I turned around and saw the third master in the last row with his hands crossed together. It was flickering and moving, and the dove on the podium was flapping its wings.

I stretched out my hand, and sure enough, I saw the shadow of my own hand. I made a dog-head gesture and looked back at the third master, he was smiling at me, and then I couldn’t help but laugh.

That was my first sincere laugh since I moved to the new seat.

He did that because there was a sentence in the composition I read that day, 

“The sun casts a shadow on the wall, as the days slowly get old.”

In the winter of that year, after school, I walked out of the classroom with the third master, but we unexpectedly ran into the third master’s father in the corridor, who came to pick him up. Obviously, we had a very pure relationship, but when we suddenly ran into our parents, we were inexplicably nervous.

To be precise, it was the third master who was nervous. He wouldn’t be able to say anything whenever he was nervous, so he just pointed at his father and told me, “This is my father.”

Crap! What the hell is with this strong Republic-of-China-tone?!

Being infected by his nervousness and following his words, I immediately bowed 90 degrees and said, “Hello, uncle!”

When we saw our classmates’ parents, we would call out “uncles and aunts”, but this kind of big salute also startled the third master’s father. He nodded to me and said, “Hello.”

The next day I asked the third master if his father said anything about me, and the third master told me, “My dad thinks your black down jacket is stupid.”

I had the feeling that his father’s real impression of me was only after removing the words “black down jacket”.

Moreover, this impression, until today, nine years later, was still the same basic evaluation his father gave of me