Chapter 218: Chen Li’s Family Situation
"Teacher, I like you!"
Chen Li gathered all her courage and, with the help of a little drunkenness, almost shouted her confession to Yang Ye.
Yang Ye's hand holding the beer cup shook slightly. He slowly looked up at Chen Li’s fairly pretty face, looking completely stunned.
The classmates at the other tables were also stunned. They all stared over, confused. The noisy and lively atmosphere suddenly fell silent.
"Holy crap?" Someone muttered in confusion, and right after that, the whole place exploded with noise. The students all stood up, making a huge fuss.
"Say yes! Say yes!"
At first it was just two or three people shouting, but soon the whole place was filled with cheers.
Chen Li’s courage disappeared in an instant. She grabbed Wang Ruoyan’s arm and hid her face behind Wang Ruoyan’s shoulder, her body shaking lightly. Her ears were bright red, her legs trembling like she wanted to run away.
But Wang Ruoyan held onto her tightly, looking at Yang Ye with a face full of excitement, as if she were the one confessing.
When the students finally calmed down a bit, Yang Ye let out a helpless sigh.
"Switch seats and let Chen Li sit here. I’ll talk to her," Yang Ye said.
The student sitting next to Yang Ye immediately stood up, and Wang Ruoyan pushed Chen Li down onto the seat by using both hands on her shoulders.
Chen Li still kept her head down, her hands squeezed tightly between her thighs, shoulders curled in, not daring to look at anyone around her.
Her face was so red it looked like it could bleed. It wasn’t clear whether it was from embarrassment or too much alcohol.
Wang Ruoyan even kicked another student away and sat down beside Chen Li.
"Teacher! Hurry up and answer her!" she urged, glaring at Yang Ye. "Why are you hesitating? That’s not manly at all!"
Yang Ye took a sip of beer to calm himself down and smiled bitterly. "It’s just... too sudden."
When he had just started working as a teacher, maybe he still had some fantasy about relationships between teachers and students, maybe even had small hopes when meeting pretty students.
But after a long time, those silly ideas had already completely disappeared.
No matter how close he was with a student, he would only think of them as friends, and usually more like younger siblings or juniors.
A teacher-student relationship felt weird.
He turned to look at Chen Li’s shy, awkward sitting posture and asked softly, "You’re drunk, right?"
"Teacher!" Wang Ruoyan interrupted, even more unhappy. "If she wasn’t drunk, how could she have dared to say it out loud?"
"I’m trying to talk with Chen Li. Why are you butting in?" Yang Ye glanced at her.
"Because she’s my roommate!" Wang Ruoyan said proudly.
Ignoring her, Yang Ye spoke kindly and gently to Chen Li.
"At your age, you don’t really understand what love is. You might just think you like me because you feel safe around me, like a big brother. So you feel confused and think it’s love..."
He spoke very softly, only Chen Li and Wang Ruoyan could hear clearly.
But as Yang Ye continued, Chen Li’s face grew more and more upset. She had gathered all her courage to confess, but now she was being talked to like a child, it felt awful.
Meanwhile, from a distance, Li Mu could tell from the looks on Yang Ye and Chen Li’s faces that things weren’t going well.
"It failed," she sighed quietly with a little sadness.
"Yeah, it must be super awkward now," Yu Fan agreed.
He suddenly thought, if he had been rejected when he confessed to Li Mu, he probably would have wanted to find a hole to crawl into.
"The main problem is that Chen Li and Yang Ye didn’t really talk much before," Li Mu analyzed.
"If they had been hanging around together every day before the confession, like we did, maybe she would have had a better chance," Yu Fan said.
"So Chen Li should have found ways to get closer to him earlier, like running to Yang Ye’s office every day."
Not long after, Wang Ruoyan led Chen Li back to their table.
Everyone stopped mentioning the confession, and since Yu Fan had no seat at Li Mu’s table, he had to go back to his original spot.
Li Mu tried to change the topic to make Chen Li feel better. "Chen Li, what was your answer to the last big math question yesterday?"
But Chen Li completely ignored her and kept drinking quietly, one sip after another.
Wang Ruoyan muttered unhappily, "Yang Ye has no taste at all. Our Chen Li is so cute and gentle, but he still doesn't like her."
"Maybe it's just because they didn’t really spend time together before," Li Mu tried to comfort her using Yu Fan’s explanation. "Anyway, Yang Ye will have winter break soon, right? After that, you can invite him out to hang out. Maybe after a few times, he’ll start liking you!"
Even though the students could take a break after the spring exams, teachers had to wait a bit longer for winter vacation. After all, Yang Ye was not just a homeroom teacher, he also taught other grades.
"Right! Actually, we don’t even have to wait. Tomorrow, let's just go to the school and sit in his office and refuse to leave!"
Li Mu twitched the corner of her mouth at this crazy idea.
"If you think that's too slow, I’ll just get Yang Ye drunk tonight and send him straight to your bed! We'll make it a done deal! If he still doesn’t like you, we’ll call the police!"
Wang Ruoyan’s crazy ideas were totally over the top.
Sitting across from them, Yang Ye looked up, confused. How did these young students even know how to set traps like this?
Chen Li shook her head and said, "Forget it."
Lin Yuanyuan hugged her shoulders gently to comfort her. Wang Ruoyan kept giving bad ideas, while Li Mu jumped in here and there, trying to cheer Chen Li up.
Mainly, they knew Chen Li couldn't keep drinking. She was already having trouble sitting straight.
A few minutes later, Chen Li suddenly lifted her head.
She tugged on Wang Ruoyan’s sleeve and said in a small voice, "Will you come eat with me tomorrow?"
"Huh?" Wang Ruoyan scratched her head. "Eat?"
"My family arranged a blind date for me tomorrow," Chen Li said softly, her eyes turning red. "I don't dare go alone. They said... if I don’t go, they won’t let me go to college..."
Everyone froze for a moment. No wonder Chen Li, who was usually shy and never drank, was acting so wild today.
"That’s so early to go on a blind date," Wang Ruoyan frowned and tried to comfort her. "But it’s okay, a blind date doesn’t mean you have to get married."
"They said I have to pick someone soon and have the wedding early... and then get the marriage certificate a few years later."
"Why?"
"My brother is getting married soon..." she paused and added, "My family doesn’t plan to give me any dowry. They want to use the money from my dowry to help my brother buy a house."
"Then the guy you meet will probably be an old leftover man."
Li Mu didn’t know much about Chen Li’s family, but even though they lived in a small city, many students came from nearby villages where some families still strongly favored boys over girls.
Also, here it was normal for families to exchange dowries equally during marriage.
But in Chen Li’s case, because her family wasn’t giving her a dowry, she would probably only be matched with an older man in his thirties or forties who had a bit of money.
"But even if you do get married through a blind date, they probably still won’t let you go to college," Li Mu pointed out.
"I don’t have a choice..." Chen Li said quietly.
Other than Li Mu, most of the roommates were still basically kids. They weren’t financially independent, so they couldn’t really come up with any good ideas either.
"Why don’t you just run away from home?" Wang Ruoyan whispered.
"If she runs away, she’ll have to work in a factory or be a waitress to support herself," Li Mu shook her head. "Even if she somehow earns enough for a semester of college, what about after that? Besides, Chen Li is too soft-hearted. She would easily get bullied outside."
"Ugh..."
Wang Ruoyan looked at Chen Li, whose eyes were already red and swollen, and said helplessly, "How about we all go with you to the blind date tomorrow? Please stop drinking."
Li Mu quickly took away Chen Li’s cup and even moved the bottles under the table.
"Stop drinking. Tomorrow, we’ll go see what the situation is first. If it’s really bad, we’ll ask Yang Ye to come talk to your family. He’s the kind of person who would definitely help."