Chapter 2: Rumors

Whether it's Qiao Lan or Tan Mo, they're both supporting characters, and the book doesn't really write much about them.

Because Qiao Lan shared the same name as hers, and because she liked Tan Mo's persona, Qiao Lan had watched the plot more closely than the protagonist. Now that the jokes of the students around her crowded into her ears, all of them calling Tan Mo with words like crazy, stupid, and insane, Qiao Lan found it indescribably jarring.

Finish writing the last letter of the composition, the class bell finally rang, Chen Yaoyang and Qin Yang and a group of playful boys returned to their seats, slightly Mediterranean teacher stepped on the bell and entered the classroom, as soon as he came in, pulling an extraordinarily muffled voice and went straight to the first group of students in the first row, the first group of students.

"Newspapers out," rolled the textbooks in his hands into tubes and one by one began to examine them.

"Said it a couple times! Reading comprehension cross out the parts of the answer in the original text and say it every day for nothing... Who are you writing these lines for? Are you studying for me?"

Old Liu cursed while checking, Qin Yang Slowly picked up the newspaper on the table and scanned it, resulting in the whole face turning green.

The paper was clean and didn't even have a question written on it.

Qiao Lan actually didn't do it for him!

Qin Yang was so angry that he immediately turned his head to look at Qiao Lan angrily.

Qiao Lan didn't see Qin Yang's red face and thick neck, but Qiao Lan's classmate saw it and quietly pushed Qiao Lan's arm to remind her. Qiao Lan looked up and saw Qin Yang's cannibalistic gaze, and immediately sent Qin Yang a look that said you're an idiot, and then never looked at Qin Yang again.

Qin Yang was shocked. What the fuck, was Qiao Lan taunting him?

If it wasn't for the teacher, Qin Yang would have rushed over to Qiao Lan and attacked her directly.

Qin Yang's classmate is also surprised, Qiao Lan usually rushed to please this group of people in the class, today is really a bit strange, but did not lose their wits like Qin Yang, urged Qin Yang said, "Do not worry about so much quickly copy, Lao Liu is coming over."

Qin Yang then reacted to the primary and secondary, ruthlessly gouged Qiao Lan a glance before grabbing a pen and frantically copying the answers.

While copying, he couldn't help cursing Qiao Lan, all because of Qiao Lan! He had to...

Just as he was thinking this, the newspaper in front of him was jerked away by Old Liu.

Old Liu had only glanced at other students before, but he didn't expect to check Qin Yang so closely, and Qin Yang was confused.

Old Liu flipped the paper from side to side, and after a few seconds of silence, exploded.

"Two checkmarks on an option in the perfect fill-in-the-blank, what's the matter, copying the serial? Reading comprehension answers are not written after the question to write on the options, young eyes crippled? Copying the answers and still tugging at it, as if I didn't see it, huh? The essay to the reading copy once as I can not see it, right, you think I am a fool or blind! You're not capable of doing anything, you might as well stand on the playground and tan a few pounds of oil is still worth more, when your parents' money is spent, you'll find a crooked-necked tree, go hang yourself, get out of my way and stand in the back!"

Qiao Lan almost didn't hold back her laughter.

No wonder the students are scared to death when they mention this teacher, this speed of speech, machine. The speed of speech, like a machine gun, to receive such a scolding is a disgrace to the grandmother's home.

Soothing.

After scolding Qin Yang, Lao Liu didn't lecture him again, and when he checked on Tan Mo, he just glanced at him and then skipped over him.

No one treats Tan Mo like a normal person.

Tan Mo didn't react to this either, he was hidden in the shadows under the wall, his slightly longer hair covering his eyes, Qiao Lan could only see his sharp chin, excessively thin and pale.

Qiao Lan withdrew her eyes, ignoring Qin Yang's murderous gaze as she stood behind her, and listened attentively to Old Liu's lesson.

Although the old Liu grumpy, but the class is really very level, a section of English class nothing feel very quickly ended.

After class, Qiao Lan looked at her schedule, put away her English textbook and searched for her math book in the hole in her desk. Just as she touched the corner of the book, a shadow covered her. The voices of the girls talking around her dropped, and when Qiao Lan turned her head, she saw Qin Yang with a fierce look on her face.

Qiao Lan pulled her math book out, "What for?"

Fuck, what's the point of asking him? Qin Yang's eyebrows are raised.

He was scolded and punished, and now he has the nerve to ask him what he's doing?

"Didn't I tell you to write the paper?"

"I promise?"

Sitting in front of Chen Yaoyang Song Yao and others heard this sentence, are slightly surprised to look over, Qin Yang froze, but was angry more feel shameless, "You fucking say it again?"

"Are you deaf? Move over, get out of the way", Qiao Lan stood up as she was about to place a couple of books in the back of the classroom to go in the book case.

Just as she stood up, an enraged Qin Yang grabbed the book in Qiao Lan's hand and threw it out, hitting the wall at the back of the classroom with a heavy thud.

A book flew straight towards Tan Mo's side, hit Tan Mo's leg, and fell to the ground again.

There was a sudden silence in the class, and Qiao Lan suddenly remembered the description of Tan Mo's illness in the original novel.

Asperger's is extraordinarily sensitive to touch and can even overreact, with the sensation of their skin touching a foreign object causing them to be painfully upset.

Qiao Lan knew he was in a tight mood, pushing Qin Yang away and heading for Tan Mo, with Qin Yang cursing behind him, "What the fuck, you think you're a big shot because Song Yao took you on, who the hell would want you if it wasn't for your pity..."

Qiao Lan turned a deaf ear and quickly walked over to Tan Mo, picked up the books at Tan Mo's feet, looked up at the teenager in front of him and asked him carefully that

"You're okay."

The teenager looked like he didn't see or hear, and hadn't reacted in the slightest, he was sitting at the table like a statue, ash and blood stains on his school uniform, pale thin fingers holding a pen and writing something, a book on the table, and his body didn't move at all.

Qiao Lan stood up and crouched down a little, leveling with Tan Mo, "I'm sorry."

The pen in Tan Mo's hand finally stopped for a moment, and she raised her head slightly and unnoticeably, and for a moment, Qiao Lan met Tan Mo's eyes, which were covered by her slightly longer hair.

But that was all, and he lowered his head again, still saying nothing.

Without bothering him further, Qiao Lan stood up and made a quick sweep toward Tan Mo's desk.

Not a textbook, it was densely filled with words, interspersed with symbols and formulas that were not part of high school knowledge.

That formula Qiao Lan recognized as the indefinite integral of calculus, the Newton-Leibniz formula.

Qiao Lan just happened to learn here before she wore the book.

*

Qin Yang had intended to teach Qiao Lan a hard lesson, but he never expected that Qiao Lan, who is used to pleasing him, would not know what kind of drugs she has taken today.

Qin Yang couldn't keep his face, cursed in the classroom for almost ten minutes, and finally said, "Don't you fucking regret it, don't think we'll take you again!

Qiao Lan did not take such a childish threat in her eyes, she had already seen this kind of threat when she was in elementary school, and moreover, like the former Qiao Lan, Qiao Lan did not want to humble herself to please other people in exchange for "friendship", moreover, Qiao Lan did not want to have anything to do with these people any more. Qiao Lan doesn't want to be involved with these people any more.

Especially Chen Yaoyang.

Thinking of Chen Yaoyang's undisguised loathing of her today, Qiao Lan couldn't figure out what the Qiao Lan in the book really liked about him, was it self-mutilation?

Reaching into his book bag, he fished out a couple of Alpine lollipops and was left a little speechless.

It turns out Qiao Lan really did buy the candy.

Qiao Lan was even a bit confused about the brain circuitry of this Qiao Lan.

Putting these thoughts of trying to find ways to please people on learning, it is not so bad every time the exams, the family is poor and not very good-looking, but also do not study well, no wonder it is disliked by people.

If you want to be liked and accepted, you always have to shine.

Qin Yang unilaterally feels that Qiao Lan is intentionally not giving him face, and calls on a group of his buddies and girls who are close to him to unknowingly isolate Qiao Lan.

Satisfied with listening to a group of people badmouthing Qiao Lan, saying that she doesn't look even a tenth as good as Song Yao, but also has the nerve to like Chen Yaoyang, and doesn't look at how much Chen Yaoyang has been hurting her, and that it's only because Song Yao is so nice that he's helping her out...

Qin Yang was a little excited, he couldn't wait to see Qiao Lan get alienated by his former best friends and then have to come to him to apologize.

I turned my head and saw Qiao Lan with a lollipop in her mouth.

Fuck!

Qin Yang's mood, which had just been soothed, suddenly vanished.

Qiao Lan had no time for Qin Yang, chewed the lollipop in her mouth and went to the restroom. When she came back, she saw the homeroom teacher enter the classroom, and when she came out, Tan Mo slowly swung his wheelchair and followed the homeroom teacher.

What's this going to be?

Qiao Lan stares at Tan Mo's back for a short while before entering the classroom, where she hears a group of students talking about Tan Mo.

"What's Mu doing with him?"

"Who knows," someone said, "I'm really convinced that Old Mu has a damn good temper, if I were Old Mu, I wouldn't bother with him."

"Old Mu is the Holy Father reincarnated in love, every time he is dumped in the face every time he is still eager to go up..."

"Isn't it just a flood of love, disability plus mental illness, you can't care more about caring."

The students laughed, and one boy said, "He's really psychotic... he looks pretty normal sometimes."

"Neurotic isn't always neurotic," a small girl interjected, "the last time I cleaned, I just accidentally touched his arm, I didn't mean to, but it ended up pushing me right out of the way and almost falling over, really sick."

The pen in Qiao Lan's hand lurched.

It's not like that.

That's because he has Asperger's and his skin is so sensitive that what a normal person would call a light touch is a surprise to them that a normal person wouldn't understand.

"Didn't I sit at the same table with him for a couple days before, and talk to him a little bit, and it scared the hell out of me."

"What's wrong?" The students were excited and good-humored.

"You talk to him and he stares straight at you without moving his eyes, it's just creepy, and also, his hand shakes sometimes when he's holding a pen..."

"Isn't that epilepsy?"

"Crap he's got a pen, writing, can he?"

He will, of course he will, Qiao Lan thought of the calculus book he saw on Tan Mo's desk today.

While Asperger's can make people autistic and rob them of basic social functions, it is true that the IQ as well as the memory of such people is far superior to that of the next person, and Tan Mo is even more so.

He looked straight at a person, not because he wanted to do anything, but because he couldn't read the emotions of the next person, he was just trying to understand what the other person meant.

As for the trembling fingers... That's PTSD left over from a car accident, an autistic kid with Asperger's since he was a kid who never got better after witnessing the death of his mother in a car accident, after his legs were paralyzed.

He was pathetic enough, but no one ever took pity on him; they called him crazy, stupid, and psychotic, irritating the teenager, who was already on the verge of a breakdown, over and over again with the most vicious banter of his age.

Another girl beside her was spouting off about her so-called sightings, saying that she had occasionally seen Tan Mo holding a pen and scribbling like a three-year-old, and that she had once seen Tan Mo drooling in a silly way.

"Crap and drool!"

"Fuck what a fucking idiot."

"What do you think his mom and dad are doing sending him here?"

In the classroom, the students talked, laughed, stupid, crazy, and so on words over and over again into the ears of Qiao Lan, Qiao Lan can not bear to look at the girls who make up rumors.

"Enough said?"

The girl froze for a moment and screamed out, "Qiao Lan you're sick!"

"You're not sick if you make rumors?"

The girl's face turned white and she cursed and changed the topic, "Thanks to Qin Yang's comment about you today I'm still helping you out, being nice is like a donkey's liver and lungs..."

The onlookers looked at the girl, then at Qiao Lan, their faces wondering what they were thinking, and gradually dispersed.

Near the beginning of class, Tan Mo finally returned, his injured hand wrapped in gauze, and Qiao Lan glanced over and turned his head, catching a glimpse of his classmate pretending not to have intended to move his desk farther away.

In the afternoon, Qiao Lan clearly felt that she was being isolated, and that the girls who had been talking to her before were now completely ignoring her.

Qiao Lan's mind was unperturbed, she couldn't even name these people, so she didn't care about them.

As the students poured out of the classroom at the end of the afternoon, Qiao Lan packed her homework for the day into her bag and was about to leave when she turned her head and saw Tan Mo again.

He was still sitting in the last row, writing something with his head down, and passing students stretched their necks to look at him, probably thinking he was scribbling like a three-year-old.

Qiao Lan sat back down again, and it was only when the classroom was gone and only a few people were left, and there was no more noisy shouting in the hallways, that Tan Mo moved.

He pushed his wheelchair, turning it in silence, out of the classroom, out of the building, and finally stopped there at the handicapped access.

The cuts on his hands still hurt, his fingers stuck in the wheels hurt, and with such gentle handicapped access in front of him, Tan Mo silently clenched his fingers and after a pause of almost ten seconds finally put his hands back on the wheels of the wheelchair.

The wheelchair just moved, but it was grabbed by someone who grabbed the backrest of the wheelchair and slowly pushed it down the handicapped access.

Tan Mo crets his head, his voice horrified and containing a shock of anger.

"Let go!"

The person behind the back did not let go, until the wheelchair was pushed to a gentle place this only released the hand, and then turned to leave without saying a word.

Tan Mo's hands were deadlocked on the wheelchair, his already pale complexion became whiter and whiter, and he sat silently in the wheelchair, staring tightly at that person's back.

He remembers this man.

Not long ago, she stood in front of him and asked if he was okay.

And one more, sorry.