Chapter 27 — The Unattainable Goddess

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The cafeteria at No. 1 High was enormous, three stories tall. The ground floor was the general cafeteria, the fast-food sort of place: a ring of little stalls selling every kind of dish around the perimeter, and rows of tables and chairs in the middle.

The second floor was private rooms, meant for the wealthier students, where one could order dishes off a menu — though students whose families were not so well off also came up here for birthday parties and the like. The food on the second floor was plainly a cut above the first; they had hired proper chefs for it.

The third floor was the faculty dining room. The food was much the same as the student cafeteria below, though the setting was more refined. Students, of course, were not permitted to eat up there.

Wei Zhao followed Kang Xiaobo into the cafeteria. Kang Xiaobo pointed to an office on the right. "That's where you get a meal card."

"Oh, I'll go get one right now." Wei Zhao nodded. Gu Pengzhan and Uncle Qing had not given him a school meal card or a library card or anything of the sort, but clearly such things could be taken care of on campus at any time, so long as one showed a student ID.

"What, you think I can't afford it?" Kang Xiaobo was a little put out at Wei Zhao's move to get a card. "It's our first day knowing each other, and you're on my turf. Naturally I'm treating."

Seeing Kang Xiaobo like that, Wei Zhao dropped the notion of getting a card at once. "All right then. We'll do it after we eat."

"Fine, I'll go with you after." Kang Xiaobo said cheerfully, leading Wei Zhao through the various little windows.

The selection at the windows was really quite something — vegetarian and meat dishes alike, several kinds of staples, plus steamed buns, dumplings, stuffed pancakes and the like. Wei Zhao asked for tomato with alfalfa sprouts and some rice; Kang Xiaobo ordered a plate of shredded pork in garlic sauce and steamed buns. Altogether it came to eleven yuan — neither much nor little, a middling level of spending.

Wei Zhao and Kang Xiaobo found a seat and set the two plates together so they could swap bites.

Once seated, Wei Zhao quickly scanned the whole cafeteria. Shen Yushu and Gu Mengyao were not here; presumably they had gone up to the private rooms on the second floor.

"What are you looking at? Checking out the beauties?" Kang Xiaobo laughed. "Shen Yushu and Gu Mengyao are both upstairs. They'd never eat with the likes of us. But if you're lucky, you might run into Tang Yun."

"Is that so?" What Wei Zhao cared about was where Gu Mengyao was, not whether this Tang Yun might put in an appearance.

"Tang Yun's family doesn't seem to be doing too well, though. Most of the time she brings her own lunch." Kang Xiaobo sighed. "Really, with looks like hers, she could say one word and countless boys would fight for the chance to buy her a meal. She could eat in a second-floor private room every day if she wanted to."

"Hah. A girl with spirit doesn't care about that sort of thing." Wei Zhao said mildly.

"You're right about that. Tang Yun never cared about any of it. A girl like that is rare indeed." Kang Xiaobo said, thoroughly agreeing. "But the more she's like that, the more boys fall for her. A girl who doesn't care for money — that's exactly what we students adore."

Unfortunately, Tang Yun never appeared, not even by the end of lunch. Wei Zhao didn't mind, but Kang Xiaobo was slightly disappointed. Many students were like him, coming here every day to eat in hopes of seeing Tang Yun; it had become a kind of expectation.

Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu, though, came down the stairs from the second floor arm in arm, drawing the sidelong glances of many boys. To the vast majority of those sitting there, the two were princesses high above them, visible but unattainable.

Many boys did not even dare look at them directly. Wei Zhao watched the two out of the cafeteria, then went with Kang Xiaobo to the management office by the entrance.

"Wei Zhao, you were staring at Shen Yushu and the other one the whole time, weren't you?" Kang Xiaobo asked.

"Just looking around." Wei Zhao was a little embarrassed.

"Ah, give it a few days and you'll understand. They're not our princesses. Tang Yun is." Kang Xiaobo looked at Wei Zhao with sympathy. Still, when he had first started school, hadn't he secretly loved Shen Yushu and Gu Mengyao too? But as he grew older, he came to understand the gulf between them.

"All men are equal" is a lovely fantasy. Anyone with a bit of maturity understands that people have never been equal. Wine and meat rot behind vermilion gates while bones of the frozen dead lie on the road — that is no joke, but a fact.

Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu's lives were brilliant and many-colored. Their charmed, princess-like existence was not something an ordinary boy like him could ever step into.

So although many in the class knew Gu Mengyao did not much care for Zhong Yongliang, they also knew that in this class, he was the only one with any right to pursue her.

Getting the card went smoothly enough — after all, he was bringing money to the school. The cafeteria manager claimed the place made no profit, but only a fool would believe that.

Wei Zhao showed his student ID and put two hundred yuan on deposit, and easily got his meal card. On the way out, though, Kang Xiaobo grumbled, "Brother, what did you put in that much money for?"

"To eat. Why?" Wei Zhao was baffled. While he was making the deposit, Kang Xiaobo had been shooting him looks, and he had no idea what the fellow meant.

"The school cafeteria — when you hand over your money they smile in your face, but the day you stop eating there and want a refund, just you wait. We're seniors already; who knows how much longer we'll even eat here? You put in that much at once, and when we graduate you'll be running back here every day for a refund — who's got that kind of time?" Kang Xiaobo said, half reproachful.

"Ha, is that so? It's fine. It's only two hundred yuan. Look, we spent over ten in a single day; two hundred will last a month or so." Wei Zhao laughed, unconcerned. "If they won't refund it, they won't. Worst case, the two of us skip a day of eating and come here for a feast."

"You're a carefree one." Kang Xiaobo said approvingly. "If the restaurants off campus weren't even pricier, I wouldn't eat in this cafeteria at all."

"Food's food." Wei Zhao was not picky. The cafeteria fare was no match for the chef Uncle Qing had sent over yesterday, but it was at least far better than Widow Wang's snack shop at the edge of the village.

Back in the classroom, he found that most of the students had not gone out to play. Senior year was precious and tense. It was a watershed in a person's life: work hard and strive, and you might get into a top university; slip up even a little, and you might fall by the wayside.

Anyone who tested into No. 1 High was among the best; no one wanted to be worse than the next person. The children of the wealthy were the exception, of course — at this hour they were out on the basketball courts playing to their hearts' content, or in internet cafes off campus playing online games.

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