Reversed Life: Chapter 24 - Mu Xiangxiang, Yingcheng High’s Newly Crowned School Beauty
Chapter 24: Mu Xiangxiang, Yingcheng High’s Newly Crowned School Beauty
Rice noodle rolls were something Father Mu had learned to make a very, very long time ago, back when he still worked in a cafeteria, from a coworker from Chaoshan who had come to City A. Although many native residents of City A had never even seen this kind of snack before, apparently in another city thousands of miles away, it was an extremely common and beloved everyday food.
The main reason Father Mu chose to sell it from a stall was because it was light and convenient. Rice batter mixed with vegetables, meat, and egg only needed to be steamed before serving. As long as the seasoning sauce tasted good enough, there was probably no simpler meal in the world.
What Father Mu, skilled as he was, didn’t realize, however, was that even in the birthplace of rice noodle rolls, very few cooks would dare casually describe the dish as “simple.”
Not to mention anything else—just getting that final sauce poured on top to taste “good” was far from easy.
The rice sheets were soft, springy, and perfectly thin. The minced meat mixed into them had already been seasoned and blended seamlessly into the rice batter. Add a plump, silky steamed egg inside, then top it with the rich, aromatic sauce Father Mu had simmered over low heat all night long, full of minced meat and diced mushrooms—
And occasionally accompany it with a few crisp green pickled peppers soaked to a tangy perfection from the condiment jars on the tables.
What could be more invigorating than eating something this delicious first thing in the morning before heading groggily off to work?
And so messages began flying between classmates and coworkers. Friends dragged friends along. Some ate there, some ordered takeout. Very quickly, the newly opened breakfast stall tucked into one corner of Youth Plaza sparked a wave of popularity on its very first day.
At the breakfast stall, the two owners were already busy beyond belief. Steam carrying the fragrance of food blasted against their faces. Even in the bitter winter cold, sweat had appeared on the couple’s foreheads.
From behind them came a customer’s loud shout—
“Boss! Another one with extra meat and egg!”
“Coming right up!”
Without even turning her head, Mother Mu answered crisply. Her hands had already become nearly mechanical in speed—cracking eggs, spreading meat filling, ladling rice batter, plating dishes. Yet customers still poured toward them from every direction in the plaza. She hurriedly wiped sweat from her forehead with her sleeve and discovered that the bucket of eggs beside the stall was almost empty already. That was supposed to be an entire day’s supply!
And right now, it wasn’t even nine in the morning!
Beside her, Father Mu, who handled the money, was equally overwhelmed. Dragging his less-than-mobile leg back and forth, he hurried around nonstop—running to buy more eggs one moment, responding to customers asking for refills of pickled peppers at tables where the jars had already been emptied the next. He moved almost faster than able-bodied people. His nerves were stretched so tightly that he had no energy left to notice physical exhaustion. Only after the breakfast rush gradually ended, when some of the other vendors around the plaza had already begun packing up—
Did he finally slump into a chair with blank eyes and, together with his wife, begin to feel the delayed aches spreading through their bodies.
The little bucket holding their cash earnings was already stuffed full. Nearby, a vendor who seemed to sell jianbing packed up his things while grinning at them. “Business is good, huh!”
Father Mu had spent years shut away in the urban village and hadn’t interacted with strangers in ages. Yet at this moment, perhaps because the lively crowds at the stall had transformed into real confidence filling his body, he surprisingly didn’t feel awkward at all. Instead, he chatted energetically with the man for quite a while.
Mother Mu organized the pile of bills, then added in the money paid directly through mobile transfers. The moment she confirmed the total, even her aching arms stopped hurting.
“Two thousand two hundred?”
When Father Mu heard the number, even his breathing paused briefly. “Did you count wrong?”
Mother Mu herself felt dazed. She knew people could make money doing business these days, but she’d never imagined it could be like this. Previously, she had worked three part-time jobs every day almost without a single day off all year, and even then her combined monthly income was only five or six thousand yuan. In a city like City A—which wasn’t even first-tier—that income already counted as comfortably above average.
But now, this was only the first day she and her husband had started their business.
And after deducting all costs, they still had nearly a thousand yuan in profit left over.
After a long silence, Father Mu’s throat tightened. Countless indescribable emotions surged through his heart, and in the end, all of them condensed into the hand he reached out to hold his wife’s.
That hand was dry and rough, possessing none of the elegance so often praised in art and literature. Yet even after half a lifetime, it could still make his heart pound fiercely.
“A-Si.” Father Mu’s gaze rested on the fine wrinkles and old scars on her hand as his thumb slowly stroked over them. “All these years… it’s been hard on you.”
Mother Mu burst out laughing, her eyes reddening as tears shimmered within them. “Oh, spare me. You heartless man—you were still bringing up divorce all the time a few years ago!”
But this was wonderful.
Truly wonderful.
No matter the hardship, the suffering, the persuasion from others— She had never agreed to abandon him.
******
Meanwhile, at Yingcheng High not far from Youth Plaza, it was currently the most crowded hour of the morning.
Along with the arrogant roar of a motorcycle engine, many people at the school gate knowingly turned their heads. Sure enough, appearing in their line of sight was that flamboyant black lightning bolt.
Qiao Nan parked in his usual spot. As he removed his helmet, he sensed several unusually intense gazes coming from the school entrance. Turning his head, he met a few familiar faces that seemed to have appeared at Gao Yan’s birthday party on Saturday. He raised an eyebrow.
That reaction immediately triggered another wave of blushing panic.
Qiao Nan wasn’t unfamiliar with scenes like this. Students at Yingcheng were far bolder about expressing their feelings than the kids at ordinary schools like No. 12 High School. Before transferring schools, girls had often stared at him this way. Only now…
The short-haired girl’s thin, pale face lifted slightly, her cold gaze looking down imperiously from beneath beautifully shaped eyes.
At the school gate, the boys crowded together among the girls immediately turned even redder.
Qiao Nan rolled his eyes and brushed past the group of suspiciously gay-looking idiots. Along the way, people actually started greeting him— Something that absolutely hadn’t happened last week.
What the hell was wrong with everyone?
At first, Qiao Nan still glanced at the people greeting him, but eventually he stopped acknowledging them entirely. He hurried into the classroom, only to be met head-on by a burst of excited female chatter.
The shy, chubby little class committee member Ling Long blushed as she proactively took the motorcycle helmet tucked in the crook of his arm, not even daring to meet his eyes. Meanwhile, the girls gathered in another corner of the classroom also crowded around. They pushed one another around awkwardly for ages before finally one girl stepped forward, grinning while holding up her phone.
“Mu Xiangxiang, you’re famous on the school forum!”
Qiao Nan took a moment to process what she meant before immediately frowning and looking at the screen.
Beneath a starry night sky stretched a mountain road. Racing cars filled the screen, crowds noisy and packed tight. Headlights and streetlights intertwined, radiating chaos and extravagance. At the center of the photo, a white car sat parked sideways. Amid everyone’s attention, leaning lazily against the open driver’s-side door was a girl sneering coldly.
She was slender and tall, her gaze icy, her expression arrogant. One corner of her lips hooked upward as dim lighting illuminated a face so exquisite in the night it almost seemed demonic. Like a victorious general returning from battle, her sharp aura pierced straight toward the heavens.
Jiang Hai clicked into the newest hot post on the school forum titled: “AHHH risking my life posting these pics—since when did Yingcheng get a goddess like this?!” The instant he saw the aggressively striking photo, his chest tightened.
0L: Long story short, the OP is at a junior girl’s birthday party with friends right now, and a bunch of street racers suddenly crashed the place looking for a fight, holy shit. Heard they’re some people from City C. Fucking infuriating. Then the goddess descended from the heavens, seriously. Four kilometers on Xiaoming Mountain Road—she WON the race ahhhhh she was so cool I’m crying!!!
Below the post was a three-and-a-half-minute video. Perhaps boosted by the frenzied screaming from the crowd and the roar of luxury car engines, the moment the short-haired girl drifted beautifully back to the starting point and stepped out of the car—The atmosphere became so electrifying it made people’s blood boil.
The video and photos had probably been uploaded to the forum on Saturday night itself. The popularity they generated was astonishing. In just over a day, the thread had already accumulated thousands of replies—and Yingcheng’s middle and high school divisions together only had a little over a thousand students.
No young person could resist the thrill of beauty combined with sheer power. The usually rule-abiding little animals of Yingcheng had practically gone crazy with excitement.
2L: AHHH I died from that look!
3L: So freaking cool ahhh please tell me she’s really from our school?!
4L: Holy shit our school was hiding beauty like THIS?! I thought school beauty Lu Xiaoxuan didn’t look like this?!
……
150L: It’s been this long and nobody’s claimed this goddess yet?
……
270L: I was there too, real-name witness here. The ones causing trouble were Guan Ziming’s group from Jiahe Private School’s basketball team in City C. Damn, they even beat up Jiang Hai. Totally outrageous. They brought so many people. If the goddess from the OP hadn’t stepped up and slapped them in the face, who knows how it would’ve ended.
271L: Nobody’s come out saying they know her after all this time. She probably isn’t from our school, right?
272L: With that face, that figure, that aura—even compared to Lu Xiaoxuan she’s not inferior at all. She’s probably really not from Yingcheng, otherwise how could nobody recognize her…
273L: …Wait a second. This girl… why do I feel like I’ve seen her before?
274L: Grab the person above!
275L: YES grab them ahhh confess everything!
……
455L: AHHH I’m 273L! I remembered! I saw her at the school gate on opening day! You guys know that super cool motorcycle parked by the big banyan tree?! This goddess was the one riding it to school!
After that, the thread erupted into worship over the owner’s cool image. Quite a few people who had attended the birthday party on Saturday also appeared in the comments. Amid the frenzied exchange of information, the identity of the girl in the photos was finally uncovered. Someone quickly dug up a photo of Mu Xiangxiang receiving her full scholarship award from Yingcheng’s official website. The caption beneath the image read— “Warmly Welcoming Mu Xiangxiang, Provincial Third-Rank Middle School Entrance Exam Top Scorer”
In the official photo, Mu Xiangxiang had long hair. She looked silent and aloof, like eternal ice that would never melt.
Provincial third-rank top scorer…
Looking at those words, then comparing them with the arrogant drift from the racing video in the original post—
The only thing Yingcheng’s little animals could reply in the following pages was two words: I kneel.
Jiang Hai couldn’t help laughing out loud at first, but soon after he irritably began ruffling his hair again. The swelling pain from being smacked around on Saturday had long disappeared, yet an indescribable agitation still churned inside his chest.
The girl in the original video still wore that sharp-edged sneer. Setting aside the unbelievably exquisite face highlighted by the short hair and headlights, her expression and aura felt so strangely familiar!
As Jiang Hai’s thoughts spiraled uncontrollably, he simultaneously felt that even entertaining such suspicions meant he’d gone insane. Torn between logic and instinct, he was suffering so badly he practically wanted to die—
Until a loud cry of pain suddenly rang out from the basketball court. Startled, he looked up to see Xiao Pangzi, who had been dribbling the ball, apparently slip and fall hard onto his backside.
****
“How is it?” The girl holding up the phone to show the forum thread to its now-exposed subject looked inexplicably shy. “Mu Xiangxiang, a ton of classmates are saying they want to vote you as the new school belle!”
Seeing how proud many of Class One looked, as if they themselves shared in the honor, Qiao Nan fell silent for two seconds, black lines practically filling his forehead. “…So lame.”
Eek—
Watching him brush past the crowd with a dark expression and return to his seat, seemingly completely indifferent to the title of “school belle,” the girls of Class 1 not only didn’t feel snubbed, they instead developed an even deeper sense of admiration. Ahhh, Mu Xiangxiang really is Mu Xiangxiang. Totally different from those coquettish bitches! Surrounded by all those passionate gazes, Qiao Nan felt like he’d swallowed shit.
To hell with this school beauty nonsense.
Pulling out his phone, he opened the forum and clicked into the hot thread. Just in time, a fresh comment appeared—
1960L: Alright from today onward I’m unilaterally declaring the goddess my wife.
Qiao Nan narrowed his eyes at the comment. Ever since waking up this morning, he’d already been in an inexplicably gloomy mood. Seeing this made him even more irritated. Everything looked annoying to him now. Tossing the phone aside, he licked the inside of his cheek. Fuck. Even a pimple had popped up at the corner of his mouth.
Exhaling heavily, he propped his knee against the edge of the desk and leaned back lifelessly, staring blankly at the ceiling.
The girls in Class 1 watched that decadent, gloomy, yet exquisitely handsome face and huddled together in the corner of the classroom squealing softly— What do we do? The more we look at Mu Xiangxiang, the cooler she gets!
****
The bad news for the school basketball team arrived at noon. Reportedly, during morning practice, Xiao Pangzi—the small forward—had slipped and fallen, directly fracturing his tailbone. He’d already been sent to the hospital.
Because the injury involved such a bizarre body part and because it happened to a member of Yingcheng’s basketball team—a group holding special status at the school—the level of attention immediately multiplied. Along with concern for Xiao Pangzi’s injury, more people began discussing another issue—
What were they supposed to do about the upcoming interschool tournament?
Several boys from Class 1 gathered together, shaking their heads and sighing over the sudden news while chattering away—
“This is seriously doomed. There already aren’t many people suitable for small forward.”
“Didn’t Brother Nan used to play that position?”
“Yeah. After Brother Nan left they couldn’t find anyone, so they switched to Xiao Pangzi. Among the remaining players, his shooting accuracy was the best.”
“WOC if he’s down, Yingcheng might as well just lie flat and take the beating.”
Doomed, doomed. Absolutely doomed.
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