Shift! The Side-Character Heroine

Having reassured that she could indeed obtain knowledge through learning within the Dimensional Gate and carry up the knowledge to the real world, Zhao Youyue had her breakfast in a self-satisfied manner, then off to school she went.

She sat in a luxurious sedan owned by her father Zhao Jiayi. Though she was not very knowledgeable regarding the various brands of car manufacturers in this world, Zhao Youyue knew for a fact that the vehicle she sat in was a luxurious sedan. The comfort level of this particular car is obviously on a different level compared to other ordinary sedans. Of course, a great deal of attention was also placed on the interior of the vehicle.

Zhao Youyue really liked pairing her phone to the car’s Bluetooth function so that she could choose her favorite music to play. Along the journey to school, she felt at ease and relaxed. At times she will even stream videos from B station at the backseat of the car. Not to mention, the full name of B station is not Bilibili from the other world, instead it is just another danmu[1] video website that starts with the letter “B”. The car interior itself was already equipped with a smart device similar to a tablet and she only needed to connect it to her phone’s WiFi hotspot to access the site. Never once did she worry about her mobile data quota nor have she ever paid the phone bill as these were sent to her father’s private hospital instead.

Clearly, Zhao Jiayi’s private hospital was not catered to the commoners as the patients who were admitted here are all rich and prosperous. This has brought him financial benefits and interpersonal connections that are on a level unimaginable by other hospital directors.

The luxurious sedan stopped at a spot some distance away from the school gate as usual. This happened to be Zhao Youyue’s habit all along. Obviously, she has no intention of allowing others to know that she was the little missy from a very well-to-do household. Somehow she felt that it will affect her in a negative way. Probably, this was caused by some inexplicable struggles within her own ego. If the others knew of her current status, she would become the center of attention regardless of how mediocre she was.

The silver lining was that, most of the high school students were still rather innocent and would not place too much emphasis on wealth. Perhaps this is the best time for boys make a go at chasing girls based on their appearance and talents.

Although nowadays Zhao Youyue had the tendency to mess around while craving for attention, she was not ready to utilize her family background to achieve her objectives. She felt that this was not a classy act, as if she was too ordinary and could only forcefully impress others in such a way.

Of course, Zhao Youyue’s personality has not changed much as compared to her previous self. Her souls were being merged together, which allowed her past memories to be accepted in a perfect way. Otherwise she would realize that even being a girl could be extra challenging. Her entire mannerism will surely be very awkward and not as natural as she is currently.

After the luxurious sedan had come to a stop, the driver, Liu Zhongcheng got off the car and opened the door for Zhao Youyue. He placed one hand slightly below the top of the back door to prevent Zhao Youyue from knocking her head accidentally.

“Thank you, Uncle Liu.”

Zhao Youyue got down from the luxurious sedan. Carrying her school bag, she walked towards the school.

To be frank, Liu Zhongcheng very much wanted to carry the missy’s bag, but Zhao Youyue thought that this will draw too much unnecessary attention. Thus, he had no choice but to forgo his intention.

It was fortunate for him to become the chauffeur for the missy. Well, Zhao Youyue was quite an easy-going and polite person and also respected him greatly. As such, it was pretty relaxing and comfortable getting along with missy.

To put it another way, Zhao Youyue did not portray the aura of a pampered rich girl.

As Zhao Youyue walked within the school compound, she observed the surroundings in detail as she will experience another three years of senior high in this particular school. She could no longer recall her memories clearly from her previous schooling days. Anyhow, she knew that the other half of herself will never qualify for this kind of senior high school, nevertheless she treasured this golden opportunity very much.

The school had a decent green landscape with fully equipped facilities and it also had a natatorium. Along the way, Zhao Youyue saw numerous photographs and stories honoring the school’s outstanding alumni erected like guideposts. They were all elite academicians or prominent business person. Besides, honors for the recent batches of outstanding alumni were seen as well. All of these alumni were students who successfully enrolled into top metropolitan universities or even students who obtained first place in various competitions.

Once she entered the academic building, pictures of prominent figures were hung along the walkway. Seeing most of these figures, Zhao Youyue got a sense of familiarity but it felt strange to her at the same time – familiar in the sense that her previous self had once knew very well of these figures or had at least heard of them; and strange because the merging of her other self with the different sets of memories, has led her to a thought that the achievements of this group of people supposingly belonged to another group of prominent figures.

Zhao Youyue did not bother dwelling too much on these muddling matters. She entered the classroom from the front door. Unexpectedly, the ranking for the placement test during the start of this semester was displayed on the right. Zhao Youyue ranked twenty-seventh among fifty over students in her class. This truly is perfecting the art of mediocrity.

Towards the right edge of the chalkboard, a spreadsheet was seen. Every day, the learning committee will jot down the day’s learning schedule, in order for everyone to keep track in advance of the day’s programs. By doing so, it also allows them to prepare their learning materials before the start of each program. To save trouble however, many students ingeniously placed the textbooks of all the major lessons directly on their desks. The textbooks were piled up as if they were trying to build a bunker. Well, this gave the students a sense of security in case they dozed off in the middle of a lesson. Nevertheless, these students were still caught by their teachers. It has been proven countless times that these “bunkers” only served as a psychological relief and had no actual practicality in them. Regardless of that, everyone seemed to be doing it tirelessly.

At the top portion of the chalkboard were eight big letters written in red – “Study hard, improve everyday”, while a red flag bearing a gear was in the middle of these letters. If not mistaken, a great man comparable to the country’s founder also appeared in this world and had an identical famous saying [2], but with a different name. At the same time he has led China to become a great oriental power, whereby Korea and Japan were both vassal states of China. Apart from that, a vast land of the far-east also belonged to China. This eventually formed worlds of two extremes with Europe and the United States of America.

A vertical line was drawn on the left edge of the chalkboard. Each day, every student was required to write down an apothegm by their language teacher. During the lesson, their language teacher would lead the class to read the apothegm aloud.

The projector’s screen was also placed at this corner as some teachers were used to conducting the lesson with the help of computing multimedia. However, as for now several teachers that are fond of teaching through the old-school style chose to use chalks when writing on the chalkboard. After each lesson, the chalkboard will be filled with tidy handwritings which brought about a sense of accomplishment. Well, this has pretty much troubled the students who made notes along the lessons though, as sometimes the teacher might write in a hasty pace which turns out to be illegible handwritings.

Zhao Youyue kept moving forward. At the innermost part of the classroom, next to the windows was the water dispenser on the side of the wall. Each time after every PE lesson, the students will form a small crowd in front of the water dispenser. Therefore the smarter ones among the students would fill up their water bottles one lesson earlier.

Ah, the entire classroom was full of nostalgic memories from the youth.

Most of the students had arrived in the classroom as most of them were basically boarding students. Their homes may not be around the cities of Jiangnan province. As such, they were only able to return home during month-long holidays. Yup, quite pathetic indeed.

Well, one thing to know is that boarding students were required to wake up early in the morning for running exercises. In comparison to these students, Zhao Youyue was much happier as a commuting student.

The fact that she was a commuting student indicates that she also had a tough time fitting herself into small groups. Usually, the female students would have formed groups beforehand. Most of these students had lived together as dorm mates in the same dormitories and because of that they quickly became good friends. After all, they do live upon each other and eat together for most of the times. In fact, the school canteen assigned dining tables based on students’ dormitories and the meals were not individually served. Supposingly, this was said to prevent comparison between the students…

Zhao Youyue’s desk-mate Zhou Fang already has a bestie of her own. Zhou Fang will call out for her dorm mate Zheng Wen each time she wanted to head for the restroom after a lesson ended. Both she and Zhao Youyue were not very chatty between themselves though, and still preferred to keep a polite distance. Probably because they have not come to a stage where both of them are really warmed up together.

Zhou Fang smiled to Zhao Youyue as she saw her approaching and made room for Zhao Youyue to enter.

The moment she sat down, one of the subject representatives approached Zhao Youyue to collect her homework.

Translation Note:

[1] Danmu – original text 弹幕 literally means “bullet curtain”. It is named such a way because viewers of the videos are allowed to leave their comments as they are watching and these comments will be plastered all over the screen – resembling scenes from bullet hell genre games.

[2] The saying “Study hard, improve everyday” or “好好学习,天天向上” originated from Mao Zedong.