But hearing Old Mrs. Han confirming this to be true, Shi Xiaoya still felt happy.
She did not even know how cute she looked when she could not help but smile secretly. Han Zhuoling saw how she looked when she did that and it colored his gaze with gentleness.
“That’s settled!” Old Mrs. Han seized the chance to say. “When the competition ends, you are not allowed to leave by yourself. You can come and eat with us first.”
After eating, they’d let Han Zhuoling send her home. How natural and convenient was that?
Shi Xiaoya did not have time to say anything before the door to the room was knocked on.
Shortly after, a volunteer student came in and reminded them that the competition was about to start and that they could go in to take their seats.
The school had even especially sent security officers over to escort them over.
Lu Man separated from them at the audience seating area and went to the participants’ seating area to take her seat.
Zheng Yuan saved a spot for her so the two of them could sit together.
Not long after she sat down, the exchange team also came to take their seats in a line.
The exchange team had been arranged to sit on the first row.
As students from the official hosting school, Lu Man and the others very graciously sat on the fifth row.
The remaining three rows were left for the students from the other three schools.
Every team occupied a row at the side.
When the exchange team came over together, Lu Man noticed that Howard did not look good. He was frowning and seemed troubled. Clearly, he was still affected by what had happened earlier and had not recovered from it.
Even when his classmates on the same team spoke to him, he did not answer them.
When he saw Lu Man, he seemed to think of it again.
However, his buddy held him and said, “Don’t cause more trouble at this time!”
“You’re not the one in trouble!” Howard said furiously.
Shana was about to say something, but thinking about how ungrateful Howard had been earlier on, she resisted the urge and turned her head away, thinking that it would be better not to look at him at all.
The teacher leading the team, Luzern, said, “Howard, you need to quickly adjust your temper now. Don’t let it affect the competition in a while!”
“I can’t adjust my temper!” Howard was like a provoked gorilla now, as if he had just been injected with steroids, thrashing about and wanting to cause trouble somewhere. “This didn’t happen to any of you, so of course you guys don’t care!”
“Each of you only cares about the competition result. Aside from asking me to focus on doing well for the competition, what else do you guys know how to do?” No one cared about his well-being at all!
Luzern was so furious that he hated how he could not just kick Howard out of the team.
Given his current state, don’t even talk about helping, he might even drag them down and disrupt the entire team’s performance flow.
Howard knew how to be scared now and was panicking like a headless fly.
Where did his earlier arrogance go?
If he had not provoked others earlier on, how would he have ended up in this state?
It was clearly he who’d caused trouble for himself, yet he wanted to drag the whole team down.
Up until now, he still had not realized the severity of the consequences if they lost the competition.
Luzern did not expect Howard’s mind to think anything clearly, so he told him straight up, “Do you think this competition is not important, and that even if we lose it would be fine? That compared to your own future, this seemingly friendly competition held for fun doesn’t matter at all?”
Howard did not reply, but the slightly crazed look on his face said everything.
Luzern scoffed mockingly. “Howard, oh Howard. Use your brains! Why don’t you think about how the students from these schools have never won against our school’s students before? Right now, this is our school’s first time sending an exchange team over to compete. If we lose in the worst-case scenario, how embarrassing would that be?”
