After getting off the car, he personally helped the Ruanlin family inside. Seeing Ruan Jiaojiao trailing behind and wanting to enter, he quickly lifted her into his arms and brought her to the front seat, smiling, "Jiaojiao, sit with Uncle. It’s lonely for Uncle to sit by himself, and there’s no more room in the back anyway."
Xiu Xi, who had not yet boarded the vehicle, had a somewhat unpleasant look on his little face.
Staring at the "iron box" in front of him, he had already made up his mind that he would study hard and one day buy this "iron box" that a male could afford, just to show off to this male who was now flaunting in front of him!
Ruan Jiaojiao, who got stuffed into the front seat, had an indescribable expression as well. Before, when she was in primary school, it was less than three miles from their old house, a walk of barely fifteen to twenty minutes. Now that they had moved to the head of the village, the school was even closer. Walking there would definitely not take more than twenty minutes, and by car, it wouldn’t even take five, right?
Just five minutes of travel, lonely?
She didn’t understand the world of adults.
The journey was short. On the road, Shu Lang continued to talk all the way, but Ruan Jiaojiao maintained her aloofness, not saying a word, which made Shu Lang feel a bit disappointed.
When they arrived at the entrance of the central primary school and the car stopped, it indeed attracted the attention of many people.
Several kids got out of the car one after another, puffing out their little chests, looking quite spirited.
The children in the school who knew them were all envious, rushing up and surrounding the kids, chattering and asking questions, making the children feel extremely proud.
Ruan Jiaojiao stepped out of the car and, holding the Ruanlin family’s hand, started to look around at the primary school where she would spend the next six years.
The primary school served several nearby villages and was the central school for the whole town. With grades from one to six, including a preschool class, it housed over two hundred people. The school was quite large, but rather poor, so most of the items inside were rusty and decrepit.
The gate was about four to five meters wide, with a rusty iron door on each side.
Through the gate was an approximately eight hundred meter long track, filled with burnt coal slag. Encircled by the track was a playground used for full school assemblies. On each end of the playground was a basketball hoop, already in poor condition. A few older students were playing ball, and each time a basket was made, the hoop would shudder as if it might collapse the next second.
Outside the playground, aligned with the track, were two concrete table tennis tables, arguably the most decent sports equipment in the school. Across from the tables, near the school’s boundary wall, were three horizontal bars, rusty and worn down to reveal the black iron underneath. However, they remained relatively clean since students often used them to do flips.
Behind the entire playground was the teaching building. It was a red brick bungalow with six classrooms in a row and a narrow corridor through the center that divided them, three on each side. The corridor led to the canteen, the teachers’ office, and the preschool in the back.
After Shu Lang got out of the car and saw the teaching environment, his brow furrowed deeply.
There wasn’t even a proper bell, just a large iron chunk tied up in mid-air, with a rod made from a red string hanging beside it.
Especially when he passed through the small corridor and went to the back only to find the students’ toilets directly connected to the pigsty, his brows never loosened again.
The Ruanlin family seldom came to the school; it had always been Ruan Jianguo who took care of things, and she had never imagined the school would be .