One reason is that his words are not taken seriously.

Though equally criticized for his character, and equally a drifter in the outside world, Wang Kun was far more likable than Old Three Wu. In the mouths of many people in Happiness Lane, Old Three Wu was just a damn bastard, the kind who would even refuse to spare a woman her whoring money.

But Wang Kun was hardly much better.

Looking at the empty house, beer bottle in hand, he drifted from room to room. The one thing all the rooms had in common was chaos. One room served as a storage space, packed with Zhang Pa’s books and all sorts of useless junk.

Staring at that wall of books, he had no idea when he would ever sell them all. After thinking it over, he called Liu Xiaomei. “Have your two friends left?”

“Not yet. They’re still refusing to give up and trying to persuade me,” Liu Xiaomei said. Then she asked, “Tell me, should I at least spare their pride a little?”

Zhang Pa replied, “When something comes up, don’t think too much. You have to make yourself comfortable first.”

“You’re right. I’ll do as you say.” After a pause, Liu Xiaomei added, “Move in with me, then I’ll be even more comfortable.”

Zhang Pa laughed. “Would your father agree?”

“He has to agree. They also want to examine up close what kind of goods you really are,” Liu Xiaomei said with a smile.

Zhang Pa said, “Your parents really are no ordinary people.”

“They absolutely are,” Liu Xiaomei said. “Want to come to dinner tonight? Grilled meat with Lin Lan and Wu Tian.”

Zhang Pa asked, “Would that be convenient?”

“What’s convenient or not about it? The real question is whether it’s convenient for you,” Liu Xiaomei said.

Zhang Pa said it was definitely convenient, and after setting the time and place, they hung up.

Happiness Garden was not far from the conservatory, only about fifteen to twenty minutes away by bike.

In Zhang Pa’s original plan, he would meet Liu Xiaomei, get through Lin Lan and Wu Tian, finish the task, and go home to sleep.

But at dinner, Lin Lan, unable to sway Liu Xiaomei, turned her spear toward Zhang Pa and said that if Liu Xiaomei agreed to work as a dance director, she could bring Zhang Pa along to snag a role—guaranteed a supporting part with lines.

Zhang Pa asked curiously, “Does a dance director have that much power?”

According to Lin Lan, if Liu Xiaomei took the job, she herself could make a cameo, Lin Lan would have a role too, and with Zhang Pa added in, one dance director could arrange three parts?

Even if he was only a minor supporting role, uttering a couple of lines and then disappearing, Liu Xiaomei and Lin Lan were both so beautiful that they surely couldn’t be treated like insignificant extras.

Speaking of beauty, Zhang Pa grew a little dazed again. Lin Lan’s looks were acceptable; if the female lead were beautiful enough, or had enough presence, she might be able to suppress her.

But who could suppress Liu Xiaomei’s presence?

It was not merely beauty, not merely being pretty. Every gesture and movement carried tremendous charm. Add to that years of dance performances and constant exposure to all kinds of situations, and the kind of confidence and pride hidden deep in her bones would, with the slightest lapse, shine through with ease.

If Liu Xiaomei were to play a role in it, only three or five top-tier actresses in the entire country might be able to hold the stage. Put anyone else there, and they would inevitably be overshadowed.

Thinking of this, he took out his phone and sent Liu Xiaomei a message: “You really are outstanding.”

Hearing the alert, Liu Xiaomei looked at her phone, then smiled at Zhang Pa.

Lin Lan asked, “What are you two doing? Secret glances and stolen smiles?” Then she tried to persuade him again. “Zhang Pa is pretty handsome. Wouldn’t it be fun to go act a role?”

Liu Xiaomei asked Zhang Pa, “Want to go?”

Zhang Pa shook his head. “At least not right now.”

“Then when will you want to?” Lin Lan asked.

Zhang Pa smiled. “At the earliest, it’ll have to be a year or two.”

“You’re doing it on purpose,” Lin Lan sighed. “Looks like we can only return empty-handed.”

Wu Tian then asked, “What about my matter? Will you agree? As long as the performance goes smoothly, this year’s major domestic dance award will basically belong to the two of us.”

Liu Xiaomei answered with a smile, “Sorry, I don’t really want to go to the capital right now. You’ll have to understand.”

Wu Tian sighed too. “Then I’ll have to find someone else.”

As the project initiator, Wu Tian was under a lot of pressure. Nobody cared how grand your dream was or how lofty your pursuit might be. Investors only cared about profit. If this investment failed, Wu Tian’s future could be imagined.

Since nothing was settled, dinner ended early. Wu Tian flew back to the capital that very night. Lin Lan stayed one more day and would leave tomorrow.

After seeing them off to the car, Liu Xiaomei asked Zhang Pa, “You really don’t want to act?”

Zhang Pa replied, “It’s not that I don’t want to act. I just want to wait until my main work has some real progress before doing anything else. Right now, I’m in a stage of accumulation and learning. I want to learn as much as I can.”

Liu Xiaomei smiled and brought up the matter of moving again. “How am I supposed to answer my mother?”

Looking at her, Zhang Pa suddenly pulled her into a tight embrace and said softly, “If I could, I’d like to hold you like this for a lifetime.”

Liu Xiaomei laughed. “Avoiding the question.”

Zhang Pa let go and stepped back. “I’m not avoiding it. I do want to move into your house too, let your mother-in-law examine her son-in-law’s quality. But I’ve just taken over forty-five troublesome brats. At the very least, I have to get through this first year of middle school. I’m not exaggerating—there isn’t a single student who lets me rest easy. Every one of them is just impossible. From No. 119 Middle School to your place, and then to the conservatory, it’s all a bit far. I’m the homeroom teacher, so it’s not very convenient.”

Liu Xiaomei said, “That reason I can accept. All right, go home.”

Zhang Pa smiled. “Not going on a date for a bit?”

After thinking seriously for a moment, Liu Xiaomei replied, “Not anymore. I still need to help you think of a subplot.”

Happy times passed in an instant. He送 her home, reluctant to leave...

When he got home, the fat guy and the others still hadn’t returned. Zhang Pa washed his face, brushed his teeth, and lay on the bed thinking about a new story. Thinking and thinking, he never quite came up with one, and drifted off to sleep instead.

The next day he arrived at school early. The all-beef banquet for ten straight days had already been eaten. Today marked a new beginning, and he did not know whether anyone would skip class.

Fortunately, heaven gave him some comfort: all forty-three students were present. Only Sheng Yang and Luo Chengcai were absent.

After praising the students a couple of times, he handed the podium over to the English teacher and returned to the office.

He still had one important thing to do: look at the students’ dreams.

Forty-three assignments, read one by one with care.

The students had a lot of imagination. The topic Zhang Pa had given them was dreams—what they most wanted to do. What they wrote was wonderfully colorful.

Yu Yuanda, the fat one’s dream, was to eat: to eat however he liked and never get sick, with diabetes and high blood pressure having nothing to do with him; to eat boldly, and to eat through all the world’s delicacies.

Looking at that essay, Zhang Pa could only shake his head helplessly. His own financial ability simply could not support the fat one’s dream.

Gao Fei’s dream was to dominate professional basketball, to take on the entire American major league by himself. Zhang Pa set that dream aside as well; there was truly no way to make it happen, not even with the slightest bit of effort.

After spending two hours reading all the essays, Zhang Pa was convinced. Aside from a very few, most of the students’ dreams were fantasy tales. Not to mention fulfilling them, he had never even thought about most of them.

For example, some wanted to cross into another world and fight in all directions; some wanted to be reborn into the Qing Dynasty and take on the Eight-Nation Alliance; some wanted to go back to the War of Resistance era and wipe out the Japanese devils; some even wanted to found a new China... Zhang Pa was left speechless. Were these guys actually fellow writers, skipping class at home to write stories?

There were also those dreaming of world-shaking fist fights, with nothing else going for them except being able to fight.

As for the dreams normal students ought to have—scientist, police officer, soldier, doctor... not a single person had such a noble dream. There were, however, a few hopelessly unrealistic dreams: being rich, and rich with beautiful women.

Looking at this pile of dreams, Zhang Pa only wanted to say one thing: I just can’t do it, Your Highness.

He had originally planned to use dreams to motivate the students to study, such as who liked singing, who wanted to become a star... But strangely enough, among the two dreams that countless teenagers especially wanted, not a single one in his class cared about them.

He imagined a talent show judge asking: What is your dream...

Then he pictured the monkey troop in his classroom: I want to conquer the whole world...

Good heavens, what kind of monstrous children had grown up into this bunch? Not one wanted to be a singer, and not one wanted to be a film star?

The next class was Chinese, so Zhang Pa took the essays into the classroom. After the bell rang, he held up the stack of papers and said, “You’re impressive. Very impressive.”

Yu Yuanda asked, “How are we impressive?”

Zhang Pa put the essays down and looked over the whole class. “You all have your first-year Chinese textbooks, right?”

“Yes,” many students replied.

“Who doesn’t? Raise your hand.”

No one raised a hand. Zhang Pa said, “Good. Let’s begin class.”

The dream-motivation method had failed, so he would have to think of another way, perhaps threats? The problem was how to threaten them. Threaten what? What did these monkeys care about?

After thinking it over, he set down the Chinese textbook. “Let’s chat for a bit. How was the barbecue on Saturday?”

“Good.” “Very good.” “Extremely good.” All kinds of answers came back, each expressing satisfaction.

Zhang Pa said, “Glad you liked it. We’ll keep it going.”

The students shouted their approval again.

Zhang Pa went on, “Tell me, what do you usually like? What do you care about most? What are you afraid of? Who wants to go first?”

Yu Yuanda raised his hand. “I care about delicious food, and I’m afraid people will eat without calling me.”

“Are you trying to eat yourself into an elephant?” Zhang Pa was defeated. “You really are the embodiment of your own words.”

Wang Jiang asked, “Teacher, what exactly do you want to know?”

“I want to know what you care about. Then I can use that to motivate you, or make deals with you, or even use the things you care about as bait to trick you into studying,” Zhang Pa said very frankly. “If there’s something you want to do but can’t, you can trade with me. The price is: read more books and study more.”

“Teacher, I’m short on money,” one student said.

Zhang Pa said, “I’m even shorter on money than you, and I’m also lacking in conscience. Don’t provoke me, or I’ll kill you.”

The class burst into laughter. Another student said, “Teacher, I like a girl. If you help me contact her, I’ll study hard.”

“You want a teacher to help you start an early romance? Stand up and tell me how you came up with that,” Zhang Pa said.

“I just want her, and I want to have an early romance with her,” the student said as he stood up.

Zhang Pa said angrily, “Is that what I asked you to say?”

“Then what did you want me to say?” the student shot back.

Zhang Pa was helpless. Too lazy to explain, he waved him down. “Sit.”

Then he asked, “Anyone else? Say something more reliable.”

“I care about health,” one student said, raising a hand. “Teacher, can you write to the city government? The haze is getting worse and worse, and we can’t even go out and play anymore.”

Hearing that, Zhang Pa didn’t know whether to be angry or helpless. “You came to class because you don’t want to breathe haze?”

“That’s part of the reason,” the student replied.

Zhang Pa sighed. “I really do want to beat all of you.”