2. Acting Guardian

After the meeting ended, Wen Mingjuan deliberately dragged her feet at an old-ox-pulling-a-cart pace toward the classroom — she simply couldn't calmly face walking into a room containing the very pervert she'd sprayed head-to-toe three days earlier.

"Teacher Wen." The moment she stepped through the door, a wave of greetings rose up to greet her ears. Wen Mingjuan instinctively lowered her head, not daring at all to project her usual "reigning over all" air of authority.

"Teacher Wen! I feel like I've seen you somewhere before?" At the sound of a young man's voice, Wen Mingjuan lifted her head — and broke out in a cold sweat.

It was him. That damned pervert...

"No... no way." Wen Mingjuan stammered, her face awash with guilt. "Whose parent are you? I've never seen you before. And... how old were you when you got married, to have such a big kid?"

Though Wen Mingjuan stubbornly refused to admit she'd ever met him, every word of her question was completely sincere.

Indeed, her students were sophomores — while this "pervert parent" standing before her looked, at most, in his early thirties, and quite possibly much younger than that. However she looked at it, there was no way he could have a kid this old. Unless he'd gotten married and had children at thirteen or fourteen?

"I'm Tao Muwei's uncle." He hurried to explain. "His parents have both gone to the mainland for business. I'm serving as his acting guardian."

"Oh." Wen Mingjuan instantly let out a breath of relief. At least he hadn't had a kid at thirteen or fourteen — that would've been even more perverse.

"Your surname is Wen?" he asked.

"Yes." Wen Mingjuan looked at him a little timidly. "Wen Mingjuan."

"What subject do you teach?"

"Chinese." She answered him again.

These few exchanges made her feel like a criminal under interrogation, and being interrogated like a criminal by such a lowlife left a particularly bad taste in her mouth. So she deliberately stopped looking at him, focusing her attention on the other parents instead.

Fortunately, among the parents attending this time, there were some Wen Mingjuan knew fairly well. She exchanged pleasantries with them and tried her best to find topics to keep them engaged, avoiding too much contact with that "pervert parent."

But before she'd chatted with the parents for even ten minutes, the principal came walking over to the classroom, beaming.

"Mr. Gao! Excuse me, why don't you come sit in my office?" said the principal.

That "greeting" from the principal immediately made Wen Mingjuan connect the dots — Tao Muwei's father was the head of the Parents' Association.

Had she known Tao Muwei had such a perverted uncle, Wen Mingjuan would never have agreed to let this family's man become head of the Parents' Association, no matter what. To think, the school had gone to great lengths to "hint" that her class's students should elect this "lacking everything except money" Father Tao. And now, with the actual chairman and his wife gone to the mainland for who knew how long, it looked like this Mr. Gao might end up acting as chairman of the Parents' Association too.

Good heavens!

This was, without question, a bolt from the blue for Wen Mingjuan.

Thinking about it now, Tao Muwei himself was pretty perverse too — he always did exactly as he pleased, utterly indifferent to those around him, with hair dyed streaks of red and blue; a dozen-odd piercings in his ears strung with rows of stainless steel rings like a bull's nose ring, not even sparing his navel; and platform shoes so absurdly high that even in her own heels, she was still a full head shorter than him.

Thinking about all this made Wen Mingjuan's blood boil all over again.

Tao Muwei's academic performance was dreadful — for an entire year, no one had managed to unseat him from dead last. On this point, Wen Mingjuan had gone rounds with him dozens of times, and all she ever got back was some version of "I don't like studying" or "My family's got plenty of money, why bother studying so hard."

To Wen Mingjuan, his mindset was clearly badly skewed. She'd tried to reach out to Tao Muwei's parents, but time and again found no way in — because the number of days they spent at home in a given year could be counted on two hands. In other words, after a full year as Tao Muwei's homeroom teacher, Wen Mingjuan hadn't so much as heard their voices, let alone laid eyes on them.

This sense of defeat wasn't limited to Tao Muwei's grades — his bizarre behavior made him, in the eyes of the discipline officer and the teachers, an out-and-out problem student.

Sometimes he'd throw his weight around in public places near the school, making a scene without a care for anyone, and the principal and homeroom teacher would regularly get summoned by shop owners to clean up after him. Twice, in the dead of night, Wen Mingjuan had even been called down to the police station to bail out Tao Muwei, who'd deliberately stirred up some minor trouble in an attempt to get himself detained overnight.

Wen Mingjuan grumbled to herself: "Ugh! Here I am, young and in the prime of my life, and I've already been dragged into the police station twice for no good reason. If word gets around without the full story, I might never get anyone to marry me."

She'd once asked Tao Muwei why he wanted to spend a night at the police station. His answer: "It's too lonely at home. I wanted the police to keep me company."

In truth, Tao Muwei wasn't really fierce — if you got down to it, his temperament was fairly mild. He wore a pair of light, delicate glasses, and when he wasn't talking, there was almost a hint of the poet Xu Zhimo about him.

What was troubling was that Wen Mingjuan now discovered that Tao Muwei's perverted uncle shared this same quality. He might not be reborn as some legendary beauty like Pan An, but calling him fine-featured and clear-eyed wouldn't be an exaggeration either. If she hadn't known his "true colors," she'd never have guessed what lurked behind that refined, scholarly face.

Ugh! That man surnamed Gao — with looks like that, yet capable of such filthy, despicable acts — it was an absolute disgrace to that refined appearance.

The principal eagerly ushered him off to the principal's office, finally giving Wen Mingjuan a moment to breathe. She had no idea what kind of persuasive tactics the principal used to keep him tied up there, making him forget the entire point of today's visit was supposed to be a meeting with the homeroom teacher.

Not that Wen Mingjuan much cared — as long as he didn't come back, she could relax and be herself.

* * *

Good times don't last. A few days later, Wen Mingjuan had barely gotten home from work when she received a phone call that sent her, utterly exhausted, rushing all the way to the Tainan train station.

That wretched kid had actually dodged a fare and hopped a free ride over a matter of a few dozen dollars!

A kid who lacked for nothing except money, staging a game of cat-and-mouse in a train station over a few dozen dollars?

Wen Mingjuan was thoroughly annoyed, instinctively feeling that Tao Muwei was deliberately making trouble for her. On the day of the parent meeting, hadn't his father entrusted Gao Weizhao to donate five hundred thousand dollars to the school? If five hundred thousand dollars meant nothing to them, why quibble over a measly few dozen?

Walking into the stationmaster's office, the first person she saw wasn't the stationmaster, nor a police officer, but Gao Weizhao.

The sight of him only stoked the nameless fire already burning in Wen Mingjuan's chest, and seeing Tao Muwei standing beside him looking utterly at ease only made it worse. Unable to hold back her rage, she launched straight into scolding him.

"Why on earth did you run all the way to Tainan to dodge a fare?" Her tone was rather worked up.

"For the thrill of it!" Tao Muwei answered, looking entirely unbothered. "Being chased is fun, you know?"

"Just for a thrill?" Hearing his confession, a surge of fury rushed straight to Wen Mingjuan's head. Her expression must have looked quite terrible, because everyone present turned to stare at her.

"Excuse me..." someone timidly interrupted, asking: "Who are you?"

Oh! In her fit of rage, she'd completely forgotten to introduce herself.

"I'm Tao Muwei's homeroom teacher. Wasn't it you who called me here?" Wen Mingjuan mumbled.

"No." The speaker glanced at Wen Mingjuan, then at Tao Muwei. "It was the kid who asked us to call you."

Tao Muwei?

Wen Mingjuan froze for a moment, and by the time she came back to her senses, her anger had already surged well past the limits of her patience. "What did you want me here for?"

"Well, you're not married anyway, and it's boring going home, isn't it? Might as well come keep me company — I was about to die of boredom." Tao Muwei said.

"You..." Wen Mingjuan pointed a finger at him, but with so many people watching, and having to maintain her image as a proper lady, she could only resist the urge to bite him hard.

"That's going too far!" she scolded.

"Teacher Wen." At this moment, Gao Weizhao, who'd been sitting, stood up. His gaze, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, fixed on Wen Mingjuan, and he said coldly: "How can a teacher lose her temper like this?"

Wen Mingjuan seethed inwardly — how strange. The one who'd caused trouble and gotten caught red-handed was Tao Muwei, and here was Gao Weizhao, arriving as his acting guardian, not only showing no shame whatsoever but actually lecturing her righteously. Was something wrong with him?

What exactly had he come here to do? Wasn't he supposed to be here to apologize?

In that moment, Wen Mingjuan suddenly grasped something important — the atmosphere in the room felt strange. Everyone present looked as if they didn't dare make a sound, and even the voice that had just asked who she was seemed to have grown faint.

Sensing something wasn't right, Wen Mingjuan cleverly lowered her stance. "Well then, Mr. Gao, what do you think a teacher should do when faced with a situation like this?"

"Muwei just likes you, that's why he wanted you here to keep him company. The moment you arrived, without even considering why the child would think or act this way, you immediately snapped at him harshly. Is that really the right thing to do?"

Faced with his icy expression and his long string of reproach, delivered almost without pausing to breathe, Wen Mingjuan found herself speechless, frozen on the spot.

Before she could recover, a commotion broke out outside — two uniformed police officers and two "plainclothes" officers walked in.

Wen Mingjuan froze again, because the eldest of the "plainclothes" officers greeted Gao Weizhao with remarkable courtesy and respect, even smiling.

"Brother Wei, my apologies! I didn't recognize you, and I certainly had no idea this young man was your nephew. If I offended you just now, please forgive me."

"It's fine." Gao Weizhao said coldly. "I appreciate you giving me face. The kid doesn't know any better and caused everyone this trouble — I'm terribly sorry. If you ever need anything in the future, just say the word, and I'll do what I can."

"You're too kind." The senior "plainclothes" officer's face broke into a broad smile.

"Aside from the fine for fare-dodging, consider the rest my apology to everyone — buy yourselves some snacks and drinks." Gao Weizhao pulled five thousand-dollar bills from his wallet and slid them directly across to the stationmaster.

"No need, how could we let you spend money like that?" the stationmaster said.

"It's just a small gesture from me." Gao Weizhao continued, unhurried: "I don't mean to trouble any of you — please, feel free to relax. As the saying goes, 'All men within the four seas are brothers.' We're fated to make friends here, no need to refuse my token of goodwill."

"Since you put it that way, I'll accept your kindness, then." However you looked at it, the stationmaster's manner was thoroughly obsequious.

Listening to this exchange volley back and forth, Wen Mingjuan was utterly baffled.

What on earth was going on? What was so remarkable about this Gao Weizhao that everyone treated him like some sort of deity? Even that senior plainclothes officer addressed him as "Brother Wei"?

"You say my attitude was wrong — I think the problem lies with you." Wen Mingjuan refused to believe this pervert had any real power, and righteously pushed back against Gao Weizhao's accusation from before: "It's exactly this kind of coddling that's made Tao Muwei behave so outrageously."

The moment she finished speaking, she once again became the focal point of everyone's stares.

A sudden chill swept down her spine — a strange, unsettling feeling.

Even after walking out of the stationmaster's office, Wen Mingjuan still had no idea what exactly had just happened.