"I definitely couldn't fill in my real parents' information. I didn't want to cause a sensation, nor did I want the teachers and school leaders to be so scared they couldn't sleep at night. So I fudged it a bit. For my mother's name, I put Jin Zhoumeng, and for my father's name, I put Jiang Shui."
Reading the letter to this point, Cen Yemeng frowned. "This... was it based on our names? Your surname stayed the same, and then Ye, splitting into fire, took the opposite meaning to become water? Jiang Shui is quite a nice name."
"It seems so," Jiang Ye mused. "Your surname, half of it removed, becomes Jin... Is there a surname Jin?"
"Yes, a classmate in elementary school had the surname Jin," Cen Yemeng nodded. "The Jin family of Jiedian Star is also a prominent one."
"Then the character Ye, taking its opposite meaning, becomes Zhou." Jiang Ye chuckled. "Jin Zhoumeng, isn't that the meaning of daydream? Would teachers really believe this name?"
The couple put their heads together and continued reading the letter.
"In terms of occupation, I put bookstore owner for Mom and soldier for Dad. That's not exactly lying either. Then I got two more phone numbers and listed them as my parents' phones. I also bought a relatively inexpensive small apartment in a neighborhood near the school and listed that as our home address."
"The shoes I originally wore were all over ten thousand yuan. Before school started, I bought some shoes around six hundred yuan. The school requires us to wear uniforms and not our own clothes, so I felt this was low-key enough. In the eyes of the teachers and classmates, I should be that kind of ordinary child from a well-off family, neither poor nor rich. I guess no one would have thought that one of my paintings could sell for an eight-figure sum."
"I originally thought everything would be fine, but I didn't expect that in the second month of school, things would start to unravel."
"Dominica gave me a mechanical watch before. It looked ordinary, and I didn't think much of it, so I wore it all the time. One evening during self-study, I was doing homework when the homeroom teacher walked past my desk while patrolling the classroom. She suddenly stopped, quietly lowered her head, and took a good look at my watch, then walked away without saying anything. At first, I thought she was checking the time, but I immediately remembered the large clock hanging at the front of the classroom. I felt something was off, so I searched for the watch online and discovered that my watch was actually worth six hundred and sixty thousand yuan. I was terrified. The watch looked completely un-luxurious. I thought it was just an ordinary watch worth a few thousand yuan."
"The next evening, just as self-study began, the class monitor handed me a small note, saying the homeroom teacher was waiting for me in the office and wanted to talk about some things."
"I went there with trepidation. The homeroom teacher was waiting for me behind her desk, with a smile on her face. I noticed her gaze flick to my wrist, but I had already taken off my watch."
"The homeroom teacher's attitude towards me was normal at first, but that evening in the office, her attitude was surprisingly good. Her expression was as warm as Aunt Isabelle's, as if I were a child of her own relatives. After I sat down, she even poured me a cup of tea. I thanked the teacher and took the tea, already anticipating what might happen."
"She first asked about my studies, and then, as expected, shifted the topic to my family background. She inquired about my parents' specific jobs, the size of my mother's bookstore, and my father's rank in the military. I fumbled my way through, saying my mother ran a small, unknown bookstore, a tiny shop that barely made ends meet. My father was a cargo pilot in the army, with no particular rank."
"The homeroom teacher clearly didn't believe me. My evasiveness probably made her more certain of her guess that I wasn't an ordinary child, so she started to explain."
"She said that my demeanor didn't seem like that of a child from an ordinary family, so she guessed I had rather distinguished parents. Recently, the class was forming a parent committee, selecting parents with social standing to serve on it, as such parents often have the ability and financial means to serve the class, while ordinary working parents are trapped in endless overtime."
"She also asked if I could use my family's connections to benefit the class. I decided to play dumb, and the homeroom teacher had to explain further, for example, if my mother's bookstore sold educational materials, she could supply them to our class, or even the entire grade. When the school organized expansion activities, perhaps we could arrange for our class students to visit my father's military base for exchange and learning."
"I couldn't directly refuse, so I used a delaying tactic, temporarily agreeing and saying I would discuss it with my parents when I got home. However, my parents' time was very scarce, and even if they were willing to do something for the class, they might not have the time. The teacher said it was fine, that it was all voluntary."
"The second time things unraveled was the next day at lunch. I went to the cafeteria to get food and paid with the electronic campus meal card on my phone. The payment failed, and the money I had topped up was gone. So I withdrew money from my bank card to top up the meal card. When I was topping up, I originally intended to put in a thousand yuan, but a friend I was eating with, joking around, suddenly reached over and quickly added two zeros to my phone screen, then instantly clicked to top up."
"Under normal circumstances, ordinary students wouldn't have that much money, so the top-up would have failed. But I still had over 180 million yuan in my bank card, so topping up the campus account with a hundred thousand yuan was instantly successful. My phone's volume was still on, so a voice prompt immediately sounded: 'Your campus electronic meal card has been topped up with one hundred thousand yuan.'"
"The people queuing around me heard the voice prompt and were all stunned, staring at me with their mouths agape. Several lines fell silent. The scene was incredibly awkward. The friend who was joking froze, as if his brain had crashed. Later, he privately told me that his adrenaline was surging, and the shock he felt was more than in the past decade combined."
"Within three days, rumors were circulating throughout the school that a rich second-generation student had topped up his meal card with a hundred thousand yuan in one go. In the monotonous and high-pressure learning environment of a high school campus, such news spread faster than legs could carry it. Some students started approaching me, both boys and girls, all saying they wanted to be friends with me. When I went to eat in the cafeteria, I might end up with a dozen new friends on my phone."
"Soon, the homeroom teacher called me to the office again. Even the dean of students was waiting there. They asked me if I had accidentally topped up my meal card with a hundred thousand yuan, and if it was a mistaken top-up, they could contact the cafeteria's backend to refund me."
"At that moment, I really wanted to hit my head against a wall. If I lied and said it wasn't true, that it was just classmates spreading rumors, then the homeroom teacher and the dean of students might have already known my meal card balance; they were just testing me. If I admitted it was true, it would be an indirect confession that my ordinary student persona was a disguise. It felt like stepping on a landmine on a fiercely contested battlefield – lift your foot and you're blown up, don't lift your foot and you become a live target."
"After much deliberation, I took a gamble and lied, saying it wasn't true. Surprisingly, I managed to fool both the homeroom teacher and the dean of students."
"But the incidents of my cover being blown continued to happen one after another. I was being very careful, but in the end, I still couldn't hide it."