Chapter 21

Once the parents had been seen off, the three girls walked slowly towards the dormitories.

"Rotten luck, none of us in the same class," said Zhao Xinxin, sorry about it.

"It's not surprising. There are apparently a dozen classes in our year," said Li Cheng, going by what she'd found out earlier.

"True. We've got to go to our classes tonight, though — are you going with your dorm-mates, or shall the three of us go together?" Zhao Xinxin asked, uncertain.

It was the last day of registration, and although term hadn't formally begun, the other years had already started evening study. The first-years had no lessons, but they were to gather in their classes tonight for a form meeting.

"Go with your dorm-mates. Company, and it'll get you talking to them sooner," Li Lan suggested.

"But I hardly know mine, it's awkward. What are yours like?"

"I only spoke to them while I was making my bed. They seem all right — it's speaking Mandarin that's strange." Li Cheng had found it uncomfortable in the dormitory. She could do it, but she'd only ever used it to read aloud in lessons; she'd never actually talked in it.

"You'll get used to it soon enough." Li Lan knew the feeling — she'd still been talking dialect with her friends right up to graduating from university.

They reached the block talking, and separated at their own floors: Li Lan on the second, Li Cheng on the third, Zhao Xinxin on the fifth.

Yu No. 1's dormitories were exactly what you'd expect — four bunks to a room, eight students. With the form meeting coming, nearly everyone had stayed in.

When Li Lan pushed the door of 205 open, all seven of the others were there, making eight with her. Seven people, and all of them quietly sorting out their own things, with only the occasional low remark.

At the sound of the door all seven looked round. Li Lan had met a few of them while unpacking, said hello, and climbed onto her bunk.

The meeting was at seven and she'd got back at half six. Being the first day, everyone was anxious about being late, and she hadn't been up there long before someone made a suggestion, quietly.

"The meeting's soon. Should we set off early?"

"Let's. I've seen other rooms leaving."

"So have I. Some of them went ten minutes ago."

The rest of the room agreed one after another.

Finding the room behind her, Jiang Yun, who'd spoken first, laughed shyly. "Let's go then."

"All right, let me get my shoes on."

By the time the ones on the top bunks had climbed down and put their shoes on, the doors of the neighbouring rooms were already locked — and the sight of them shut made everyone rather more anxious than they'd been.

"Why has everyone else gone? We're not going to be late, are we?"

"We won't be. The teachers said seven, didn't they? There's still half an hour," said Li Lan, trying to settle them.

It plainly had little effect. Several of them set off towards the classrooms at speed regardless.

"What if the teacher goes early? Come on, quickly." Jiang Yun was already regretting not leaving sooner. Late on the first day?

---

The first-year classrooms were mostly on the third floor, and everyone in 205 was in Class 3. Arriving out of breath, they were relieved to find the teacher hadn't come.

He hadn't, but nearly everyone else had, and the free seats were scattered in twos and threes. There was clearly no chance of the eight of them sitting together.

The first ones in walked into a room full of unfamiliar faces looking at them, and sat down wherever, embarrassed. By the time Li Lan got there the front and middle were full, so she had no choice at all; she said a brief goodbye to the others and headed for the back.

"Li Lan, shall we sit together?" A voice behind her.

She turned. A round-cheeked girl in thick glasses, still somehow very appealing, and Li Lan recognised Wang Jing from her own dormitory.

"Sure." They'd talked when she first came in, and Li Lan had taken to her, so she had no objection. They found two empty seats together.

Everyone was new, and apart from a few naturally sociable ones and those who'd come from the same school talking quietly, the room was nearly silent.

"Li Lan, do you think lessons will be really hard tomorrow?" Being in the same room had loosened Wang Jing up, and she couldn't resist a whisper.

"I don't think there'll be lessons tomorrow." Li Lan thought back to starting high school last time. "I expect it'll be military training first."

"Military training?" Wang Jing was appalled. "I thought that was only for university."

"High school too. We were issued the uniforms, weren't we?"

"I thought that was just clothes. I didn't know we'd actually be doing it. They say it's exhausting." She slumped onto the desk, having heard things about military training, and looked grave.

While the two of them were whispering, the door opened again — and this time it wasn't a student but a rather thin man in his thirties.

The murmur in the room stopped instantly, and Wang Jing, mid-flow, dropped her voice and mouthed at Li Lan: our form teacher?

Li Lan nodded. Presumably, unless he'd come to the wrong room, which was unlikely.

At the nod Wang Jing stopped talking, straightened up sharply, put both hands on the desk and looked at the front — the standard posture of a student.

He walked straight up, wrote three characters on the board — Jiao Wenfu — and turned round. "Good evening. My name is Jiao Wenfu, and I'll be the form teacher for Class 3."

After a brief self-introduction he gave them his contact details and the location of his office, ran through a few things to be aware of, and moved on — though with term barely started there wasn't much to say.

Which brought them to one of the great classics: going up to the front to introduce yourself.

Watching the ones ahead of her and checking the time, Li Lan congratulated herself on her choice of seat. Sit far enough back and your turn never comes.

Sure enough, even after they stopped taking turns at the front to save time, the introductions were still unfinished when the bell for evening study went.

While her classmates were introducing themselves, Li Lan looked attentively at whoever was speaking and in fact reviewed the day's takings in the system shop.

The day had been too full to check, and other people talking was the perfect opportunity.

She opened her personal information first.

[Host: Li Lan] [Points (L1): 2800 — convert to a higher grade?] [Stamina: 25] [Spirit: 30] [Focus: 25] [Memory: 40] [Comprehension: 40]

There had been plenty of plants in the garden, but between the time and her legs she'd only managed to touch some two hundred species — a long way off fifteen hundred. Even so she was pleased. It wasn't far away; she could simply go back.

She looked at the numbers and started planning.

Stamina went to the back of the queue as usual. A summer and an exam's worth of experimenting had given her a good understanding of the others, and the first conclusion was that not one of them was unimportant. Memory and Comprehension went without saying, and Focus and Spirit, which looked peripheral, did a great deal.

With Focus at twenty-five, she found that ten minutes was about her limit at full concentration, after which her attention slid off on its own and wouldn't come back.

Spirit was the same. When she'd first taken it to thirty she'd had energy to spare for a while, and then she'd adjusted and was tired again.

This time she had points enough for two hundred and eighty of them — enough to lift everything several levels — so she decided to raise the ceiling and the average together.

Decision made, she opened the shop and started buying.

[Host: Li Lan] [Points (L1): 0 — convert to a higher grade?] [Stamina: 40] [Spirit: 100] [Focus: 100] [Memory: 100] [Comprehension: 100]

Every point spent and the balance back to zero, and Li Lan wasn't troubled in the least. That row of hundreds was quite enough to be excited about.