Chapter 42 (1/2)

“You’re going to climb up on stage from the steps over there in a moment, do you understand?” Teacher Zhao pointed toward the area where there were steps to climb up on the stage a little worriedly as he prodded Xiaotu once again.

“Yep, yep!” Xiaotu nodded excitedly.

Just as Teacher Zhao was about to continue reminding her a little more, a girl holding a bouquet of flowers walked over, bent down to Teacher Zhao, and said, “Teacher Zhao, here are the flowers for your class.”

“Okay, thank you very much.” Teacher Zhao took the bouquet of flowers from the girl’s hands with a smile, thanked her, and glanced at Xiaotu, who was still intently watching the performance onstage. Still feeling somewhat worried about whether Xiaotu would be able to carry out this task correctly, he shook his head dismissively, took hold of her little hand, and said, “Never mind, I will take you over there myself. It’s quite dark in the auditorium, and I don’t want you to get lost.”

Xiaotu turned her head around and stared at Teacher Zhao for quite some time. Surprisingly, she then said, surprisingly, “Uncle, you never stop nagging.”

Teacher Zhao was caught off guard by her comment. He felt as if she had all of a sudden given him the cold shoulder. “Do you still want to go up on the stage with the flowers?”

“Yes, yes, of course I do.” Xiaotu quickly shot up from her seat and followed Teacher Zhao to the stairs that led up to the stage.

They stood next to the stairs as they finished watching the performance. Then, as the performance ended, Cheng Zhiyan stood up from behind the piano and, along with all of his classmates who had been dancing, he bowed to the audience to thank them for watching.

They received a thunderous round of applause.

“Go, go quickly!” Teacher Zhao gently pushed Xiaotu’s shoulder, shoved the bouquet of flowers into her hands, and motioned for her to start up the stairs.

Xiaotu held tightly onto the bouquet of flowers that was nearly half her size as she struggled to climb up the stairs and onto the stage.

The host knew that when this performance ended, someone was going to be assigned to deliver flowers to them and therefore wasn’t in any hurry to continue speaking.

The students who had just performed gazed down hopefully at the audience, only to see that by the stairs that led up to the stage, a bouquet of flowers seemed to be slowly moving toward them.