Chapter 27: The Unattainable Goddess

The No. 1 High School cafeteria was massive, spanning three floors.

The first floor was the general cafeteria, similar to a fast-food restaurant, with various small stalls selling different types of dishes lining the perimeter and rows of tables and chairs in the center.

The second floor consisted of private dining rooms, suitable for wealthier students who wanted to order specific dishes; however, students from less affluent families would also come here to host birthday parties or similar events.

The quality of the food on the second floor was clearly on a different level than the first, as they employed professional chefs.

The third floor was a dining hall reserved exclusively for faculty and staff. The food was similar to the student cafeteria on the first floor, but the environment was more elegant. Naturally, students were not allowed to dine there.

Lin Yi followed Kang Xiaobo into the cafeteria. Kang Xiaobo pointed to an office on the right and said, "Go get your meal card there."

"Oh, I'll go get one now."

Lin Yi nodded. When Chu Pengzhan and Butler Fu had initially met him, they hadn't provided him with a school meal card or a library card, but such things could clearly be obtained at any time on campus simply by presenting a student ID.

"What? Looking down on me?"

Seeing Lin Yi about to go get a card, Kang Xiaobo looked somewhat displeased. "It's our first day knowing each other, and we're on my home turf, so naturally, it's my treat!"

Seeing Kang Xiaobo say this, Lin Yi abandoned the idea of getting a card immediately. "Alright then, I'll get it after we eat."

"Fine, I'll go with you after we're done!"

Kang Xiaobo said readily, leading Lin Yi through the various service windows of the cafeteria.

There was quite a variety of food in the windows—vegetables, meats, several types of staples, and things like buns, dumplings, and stuffed pancakes.

Lin Yi ordered some alfalfa tomatoes and rice, while Kang Xiaobo ordered a plate of fish-flavored shredded pork and steamed buns. It cost eleven yuan in total—not too much, a moderate level of spending.

Lin Yi and Kang Xiaobo found a seat and placed their two plates together so they could swap and eat from each other's dishes.

After sitting down, Lin Yi quickly scanned the entire cafeteria. Chen Yushu and Chu Mengyao were not here; they had likely gone to the private rooms on the second floor.

"What are you looking at? Looking for beauties?"

Kang Xiaobo laughed. "Chen Yushu and Chu Mengyao are both upstairs. They wouldn't eat with us, but if you're lucky, you might run into Tang Yun!"

"Is that so?"

Lin Yi was concerned about where Chu Mengyao was, not whether Tang Yun would appear.

"But it seems Tang Yun's family isn't doing very well. Most of the time, she brings her own lunch."

Kang Xiaobo sighed and said, "Actually, with Tang Yun's condition, any word from her would have countless boys scrambling to treat her to meals. It wouldn't be impossible for her to eat in the second-floor private rooms every day!"

"Heh, a girl with ambition wouldn't care about those things," Lin Yi said indifferently.

"You're right, Tang Yun never cares about that. Girls like her are truly rare."

Kang Xiaobo agreed deeply. "But the more she's like that, the more boys like her! It's exactly these kinds of girls who aren't driven by materialism that we students love!"

Regrettably, Tang Yun did not appear even after lunch was finished.

Lin Yi didn't mind, but Kang Xiaobo felt a slight sense of disappointment.

Many students were like Kang Xiaobo; they came here every day hoping to see Tang Yun, and it had become a sort of expectation.

Meanwhile, Chu Mengyao and Chen Yushu came down the second-floor stairs arm-in-arm, drawing many boys' gazes.

However, to the vast majority of those sitting there, the two were like high and mighty goddesses—to be admired from afar but never reached.

Many boys didn't even dare to look them directly in the eye.

Lin Yi watched them walk out of the school cafeteria and then went to the management office near the entrance with Kang Xiaobo.

"Lin Yi, you were staring at Chen Yushu and the others just now, weren't you?" Kang Xiaobo asked.

"Just looking around," Lin Yi said, feeling a bit embarrassed.

"Sigh, you'll understand in a few days. They aren't our princesses. Tang Yun is."

Kang Xiaobo looked at Lin Yi with sympathy.

However, when he had first entered school, hadn't he also had secret crushes on Chen Yushu and Chu Mengyao?

But as he matured, he came to understand the gap between them.

"Everyone is equal" is a beautiful fantasy.

Anyone even slightly mature understands that people are never truly equal. The saying "Rotting meat and wine behind red gates, while bones of the frozen lie in the streets" is not a joke, but a reality.

The lives of Chu Mengyao and Chen Yushu were brilliant and colorful.

Their princess-like, gifted lives were not something an ordinary boy like him could enter.

Therefore, although many in the class knew that Chu Mengyao didn't particularly like Zhong Pinliang, they also knew that in this class, the only one qualified to pursue her was Zhong Pinliang.

The process of getting the card went quite smoothly. After all, they were bringing money to the school. Although the cafeteria manager claimed they didn't make a profit, only a fool would believe that.

After presenting his student ID and pre-loading two hundred yuan, Lin Yi easily obtained his meal card.

As they walked out, Kang Xiaobo complained, "Buddy, why did you deposit so much money?"

"To eat, why not?"

Lin Yi was somewhat puzzled. When he was depositing the money earlier, Kang Xiaobo had been constantly making eye contact with him, and he didn't know what the guy meant.

"It's the school cafeteria! When you give them money, they greet you with a smile, but once you stop eating and want a refund, you'll be waiting forever! We're already in our third year of high school; who knows how much longer we'll be eating here? If you deposit so much at once, you'll be wasting time coming back to get a refund after graduation. They won't have the time for that!" Kang Xiaobo said reproachfully.

"Haha, I see. It's fine, it's only two hundred yuan. Look, we spent over ten yuan today; that two hundred will be gone in a month or so anyway."

Lin Yi smiled nonchalantly. "If I don't get a refund, I don't get a refund. At worst, the two of us will skip a day of eating just to come here and have a feast."

"You're quite easygoing!" Kang Xiaobo said approvingly. "If the restaurants outside weren't more expensive, I wouldn't eat at this cafeteria at all."

"It's good enough to have something to eat."

Lin Yi wasn't picky. Although the food in this cafeteria wasn't as good as the chef Butler Fu had sent yesterday, it was at least much better than the snack stall at Widow Wang's place at the edge of the village.

Upon returning to the classroom, he found that most students had not gone out to play. Time in the third year of high school was precious and intense.

This was a turning point in life. Through hard work and struggle, one might enter a key university; with a slight oversight, one might fail the exams entirely.

The students who could get into No. 1 High School were all top performers; no one wanted to be inferior to others.

Of course, that excluded the children of the wealthy, who were currently playing basketball to their heart's content on the playground or playing online games in internet cafes outside the school.

(End of Chapter)