“Hahahaha—!”
Xu Ye’s gangster-ish little line had the whole class cracking up all over again — even Su Tong nearly lost it up front.
Zhang Yiyang just stood there, stunned.
Seriously? Days of work on a fully prepared campaign speech, and it loses to “you ride with me”?
Xu Ye turned to Su Tong. “I’m done, Counselor.”
She walked up to the podium, still smiling, and addressed the class again. “Anyone else want to run for president?”
Nobody.
She didn’t bother calling on anyone else this time.
“All right then. Choose between Zhang Yiyang and Xu Ye, write your pick on a slip of paper, and bring it up to the podium. I’ll give everyone five minutes to think it over. One reminder — who ends up as your class president actually matters. A good president can bring real energy to a class, so vote with your gut.”
Both candidates returned to their seats. Su Tong waited quietly at the front.
After a few minutes, the class scribbled names down, folded the slips, and brought them up one by one to set on the podium.
Xu Ye, already pretty sure how this would go, glanced over at Zhang Yiyang and caught the nervous look on his face. On a whim, he grabbed a red pen from Zhang Xinzhou, wrote Zhang Yiyang’s name on his own slip, and walked it up to the podium himself.
Once every vote was in, Su Tong picked up a piece of chalk and wrote both names on the blackboard — Xu Ye’s on the left, Zhang Yiyang’s on the right.
She started unfolding the slips one at a time, calling out names as she went. “One vote for Xu Ye.”
She marked a stroke of the character zheng [TL: a traditional Chinese tally method using the five-stroke character 正 — each stroke counts one vote, and a completed character equals five] on the board.
“One vote for Xu Ye.”
“One vote for Xu Ye.”
Seven votes in a row, all for Xu Ye. Zhang Yiyang hadn’t expected that. Honestly, neither had Xu Ye.
Wait, hold on.
Does everyone in this room actually believe in me that much?
The eighth vote finally went to Zhang Yiyang, and then it was right back to a run of votes for Xu Ye. By the time they were halfway through the stack, Xu Ye’s side of the board already had three full characters tallied, while Zhang Yiyang’s side barely had three strokes on the first one.
Sensing that continuing the count would only twist the knife further, and remembering Zhang Yiyang had played eager assistant to her on registration day, Su Tong said kindly, “I think we already have our answer here. Zhang Yiyang, do you want me to finish counting the rest, or—”
“Let’s just leave it,” Zhang Yiyang said, clearly bitter about it.
“All right then.”
Su Tong announced with a smile, “From here on, Xu Ye will be our class president for Financial Economics, Class of 2014. Let’s give him a round of applause.”
Clap clap clap—
The room erupted.
“Now, does anyone want to run for League branch secretary?” [TL: the Communist Youth League branch secretary, a student leadership position tied to the Party-affiliated youth organization that’s a standard fixture alongside the class president role in Chinese university classes]
Silence.
“If nobody’s running, then Zhang Yiyang, you’ll take on the League branch secretary role for our class.”
“Thank you, Counselor.” Zhang Yiyang forced out an awkward smile.
Su Tong checked her watch, then turned to Xu Ye. “Come with me to the office for a minute.”
“Sure thing.”
He followed her to the office, where she gave him a long one-on-one talk — mostly her doing the talking, him doing the listening, the gist of it being how to actually do a good job as class president.
Once the lecture wrapped up, she handed him two tasks. First: teach the class how to apply for a library card, top up water and electricity payments, that kind of thing. Second: collect everyone’s contact information and set up a proper WeChat group.
Xu Ye frowned. “Didn’t Zhang Yiyang already make a QQ group?”
Su Tong smiled. “WeChat’s more official. And besides — have you noticed you’re not even an admin in that QQ group? You’re the class president now.”
“Hadn’t noticed, actually,” Xu Ye admitted. “For what it’s worth, I voted for Zhang Yiyang.”
“You voted for him?” Su Tong looked genuinely surprised.
“Yeah.”
That answer earned him a serious bump in her estimation. Anyone else in his position probably would’ve voted for themselves — she hadn’t expected him to throw his own vote to his rival.
Xu Ye added, “He put in a lot of effort trying to win this. He’s probably pretty disappointed right now. Maybe you could talk to him, Counselor? Help him process it a bit?”
Su Tong shook her head. “He’s an adult. If he can’t handle a loss like this without hand-holding, there’s even less reason for me to bother.”
That actually made sense to Xu Ye. He nodded and headed back to the classroom.
“The president’s back, settle down.”
“Keep it low-key, low-key.”
“President, say something else!”
“Don’t egg him on.”
Xu Ye walked up to the podium and slapped the desk twice. The room went quiet immediately.
He got right to it. “The counselor gave me two things to take care of. First — I’m supposed to walk you all through getting your library cards, water cards, that kind of thing. Get your phones out, we’re setting up a WeChat group face-to-face right now. I’ll post the steps in there in a bit.”
“President, what’s the group password?”
“Our company number from military training.”
“I’m in.”
He set his phone down. “Second thing — I need everyone’s personal info. I’ll post a template in the group, just fill it out and send it in as instructed.”
“Okay~”
“That’s it, just those two things. Message me privately if you’ve got questions. But heads up — Saturdays and Sundays, unless it’s something important, don’t come looking for me. I’ve got a date to get to.”
A girl in class spoke up quickly. “President, you already have a girlfriend?”
“Obviously.”
Shameless as ever, Xu Ye added, “Look at this face. If a guy like me didn’t have a girlfriend, how’s anyone else supposed to stand a chance?”
“Hahaha.”
Ding-a-ling—
The bell rang for the end of the first block. College class periods ran ninety minutes — the equivalent of two regular high school periods stacked together.
Seeing the class starting to get rowdy again, Xu Ye slapped the desk once more. “Teacher’s about to walk in. Let’s make a good first impression. No more horsing around once class starts.”
The second he finished, a middle-aged man with a messenger bag over one shoulder appeared in the doorway.
“You’re our Microeconomics professor?”
“That’s me.”
Xu Ye quickly flashed the class a “stop” gesture. Once the room settled, he hurried back to his seat in the last row.
The Microeconomics professor glanced over at him, then walked up to the podium.
Ninety minutes flew by before anyone noticed.
Xu Ye had expected to zone out at some point, but found himself fully engaged the entire class. Granted, that probably had something to do with the subject matter — if this had been Linear Algebra or Financial Mathematics, he’d have been face-down on the desk asleep within ten minutes.
The second the professor left, the class scattered toward the cafeteria in clusters. Zhang Xinzhou and Yang Fei dragged Xu Ye along, arms slung over his shoulders.
“Ha, in the end you really did become class president.”
“You think I wanted this?”
“Sure, sure. The people’s choice, what can you do.”
Yang Fei asked, “Xu Ye, what are we eating for lunch?”
Xu Ye stopped him cold. “What did you just call me?”
Yang Fei blinked. “…Xu Ye?”
Xu Ye put on his most exaggeratedly serious face. “Outside the classroom building, call me Xu Ye, I won’t say a word about it. But we’re still inside the building right now. What exactly should you be calling me?”
“…P-president?”
Xu Ye turned to Zhang Xinzhou, grinning. “Hey, would you look at that, he’s not as dumb as he looks.”
(End of Chapter)