The Game of Life

Liu Qian became famous overnight.

By the time she found out, everyone in her class group was already using her emoticons.

Clips from her live streams were edited by netizens into a variety of emoticons, GIFs, and remix videos, sweeping across the remix section of B-site and stubbornly holding a place in the top ten trending on Weibo for a week.

Even Ji Yue would hesitantly ask her when she was ordering food,

“Have you eaten any snacks today?”

As a result, Jiang Feng and Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant rode the wave of popularity too, with the drama-loving netizens flooding Weibo daily with comments like

“hahaha,”

“what did the president do wrong,” and

“inquiring about the psychological shadow area of the dumpling girl” and then @Liu Qian.

Speaking of which, Liu Qian’s Weibo followers spiked to over five hundred thousand, and some advertisers reached out to her to post ads on Weibo.

Liu Qian had seemingly transformed from an eighteenth-tier broadcaster, barely scraping by and waiting for death, into a third-tier broadcaster with a slight surplus but still awaiting the same end.

In the blink of an eye, Volunteer Day arrived.

As for which student union president decided on Volunteer Day on a whim, that remained a mystery.

Early on Sunday, a groggy group of UAL University students gathered at the school gates at five in the morning and were taken by two buses to Morning Wind Primary School.

Wait, Morning Wind Primary School???

When Jiang Feng got off the bus and saw the understated luxury of Morning Wind Primary School’s gates and the row of maple trees planted by the entrance, he thought he was still dreaming, not yet fully awake. Volunteering activities were supposed to involve teaching at countryside schools, helping at orphanages and nursing homes, or at the very least handing out water to street cleaners.

What were they doing at Morning Wind Primary School, a prestigious private primary school?

As the most famous private primary school in Alan City, Jiang Feng felt compared to them, the volunteers were more likely the ones in need of help.

"Did we make a mistake, how come we ended up at Morning Wind Primary School?” Jiang Feng asked Liu Qian, having slept through whatever the student council members had said on the bus.

"President Liu said that today, the senior students of Morning Wind are volunteering to help lonely elderly people, and we are going to join them,” Liu Qian replied.

Jiang Feng instantly understood, they would be helping lonely elderly people while also helping the primary school students help them.

It seemed this year’s volunteer activity was especially challenging.

The student council members were assigning tasks to everyone.

"This volunteer event consists of three activities: helping in the kitchen to prepare meals for the day, cleaning up the campus, and performing for the lonely elderly. The kitchen work is quite demanding. Are there any students who believe they have decent cooking skills and would like to help out?”

Jiang Feng, Liu Qian, and Wu Minqi raised their hands in unison.

The student council member’s eyes brightened upon seeing this.

Oh, Jiang Feng, whose family runs a restaurant, professional!

Liu Qian, who does food broadcasts daily, must also be quite skilled.

The other girl… seems to be from their Chess Club; being together, they should all have a good standard.

"Great, you three then. There are also some teachers and students from Morning Wind Primary School who will help in the kitchen. We need more people for cleaning, would any student like to volunteer for that?”

Four members of the Home Economics Society: ???

Who exactly are from the Home Economics Society?

Hey, student, wake up a bit, those three are from the Chess Club!

When Jiang Feng and his group arrived in the kitchen, the teachers and students there were already bustling about.

Everything seemed to be in order. A kid, barely as tall as Jiang Feng’s waist, stood on a stool wielding a large metal spoon with seemingly professional finesse, stirring a pot of yet unboiled porridge, while the other dozen or so little creatures bustled around holding various items, with four female teachers cutting vegetables. There was none of the chaos Jiang Feng had imagined.

Jiang Feng was impressed by the fact that even a group of ten-year-old kids could be so organized. It befits a school for the privileged, indeed.

The next second, the little creature in front of Jiang Feng couldn’t hold onto the spoon and it fell into the pot.

Jiang Feng:…

The little creature reached out to fish for the spoon, looking as though most of its body was about to topple into the pot.

Jiang Feng quickly stepped forward and scooped him up to prevent the impending tragedy of a boiling child.

"You don’t need to boil it before opening it, and you children really shouldn’t be playing with fire. Go ask your teachers if there’s anything else you can help with,” Jiang Feng said in a gentle and persuasive tone.

A look of disappointment filled the child’s eyes, reluctantly staring at the pot.

"I came here precisely because my family won’t let me touch the fire.”

Jiang Feng:…

Do all you kids not involved in mandatory education show off like this?

"Liu Chengyin, no touching the pot!” A female teacher, who was nearby cutting a pumpkin, put down her knife and shouted at the boy trying to retrieve the spoon. Then she turned and yelled at two girls each holding a small bag of flour:

“Xiang Jingwen, Hu Xuehui, put the flour back!”

Jiang Feng:…

Okay, everything before was just an illusion.

The female teacher then turned towards Jiang Feng and the others as Liu Qian already took out her phone and Wu Minqi was beginning to scrutinize the kitchen and the food laid out outside.

"You’re volunteers from UAL University, right? My name is Chen, Mr. Chen. The one in the blue is Mr. Wang, the one in the black coat is Mr. Zhou, and the other is also Mr. Zhou. Could you please help us watch the porridge? The kids like to make trouble, and it might be a bit of a hassle,” Mr. Chen said.

"Mr. Chen, are you going to cook pumpkin porridge?” Wu Minqi noticed that all four teachers were cutting pumpkin.

"Yes, we are organizing a volunteer event with the theme of remembering the hard times and cherishing the sweet ones, so the meals are quite simple. Also, our school doesn’t have many people—altogether around two hundred, including three grades, teachers, and the elderly,” Mr. Chen explained.

“The pumpkins are all organic, grown in our school’s own cultivation base.”

Helping the elderly while reminiscing about the hard times and cherishing the sweet moments with them…

Jiang Feng had no energy left to comment on this bizarre volunteer activity.

"I’ll take care of chopping vegetables. The pieces you’ve cut are too large and won’t cook well,” Wu Minqi said as she picked up a kitchen knife without waiting for Mr. Chen to respond. With swift movements of her knife, she quickly mashed the previously large chunks of pumpkin into pulp.

"Do you have any sweet potatoes? This pumpkin isn’t sweet; it won’t taste good when it’s cooked,” Wu Minqi inquired.

"Yes, yes, yes.” Mr. Chen, who had been stunned by Wu Minqi’s chopping, snapped out of it and shouted towards two little girls in the corner playing catch with potatoes:

“Chen Xi, Chen Mengqi, stop throwing potatoes! And Wang Hao, bring two bags of sweet potatoes from the back.”

The students, instructed by their teacher, ran towards the storage room in the back.

"Mr. Wang, Mr. Zhou, and the other Mr. Zhou, I can handle the vegetable chopping alone; you don’t have to busy yourselves,” Wu Minqi almost said the words

“Even if you chop them, they’ll just have to be re-chopped by me later.”

The other three teachers put down their knives, looking somewhat bewildered.

Jiang Feng and Liu Qian were also somewhat bewildered.

It seems… there’s nothing left for us to do.

The porridge was already in the pot; Wu Minqi was taking care of all the chopping by herself, and the only thing left to do was to wash and peel the sweet potatoes, which one person could finish.

While other students were outside, cleaning, performing, chatting with the lonely elderly, and working hard, were we really okay just being idle here?

Jiang Feng sank into a deep self-reproach.

Then he saw Liu Qian opening a live stream.

???

WTF?