Chapter 4 – Challenge
TL: Milaryn
Edit: IlkonEbi
Jiaming did not look for trouble, trouble just seems to always find him.
The New Year brought many complications to the Huang family, however as Jiaming was an unimportant child, he was able to hide and escape from it. He participated in the ancestor worship, had the family dinner and did the yearly greetings on New Year’s Day for the red packets. Huang Haobing and the other children saw him and they wanted to beat him up, but they did not dare to and it made them sigh. This was similar to a situation where the wife divorced the husband, then married someone else and every time the ex-husband saw her he would want to hit her. However, the helpless wife now had a relatively fierce husband, so he could only think about doing it, while not being able to put his thoughts into action.
Since this large family did not have any love for him, after Jiaming received the few red packets, he went to the martial arts school for the next few days as Lingjing had already told him to do. The martial arts school was called Ye’s Martial Arts School. The front building was a hall for training, then a yard separated it from the back where the living quarters were. Since it was the new year, there were not a lot of people learning martial arts; apart from Lingjing hogging the arena area, there were two other children that would come and go. Father Ye would often sit on the side in the hall, reading a book and Jiaming would also occasionally pick up a book from the bookcase. Lingjing generally called him a poser when he did that.
Lingjing would sometimes call him up to the arena ring and have him be a practice target. It was a rather painful situation for Jiaming because when she made mistakes in the techniques, he could not do anything and had to hold himself back from correcting her. Thus, whenever visitors dropped by for the new year greetings, he would help out with serving tea and snacks. The visitors would ask since when did Old Ye suddenly have an additional son and father Ye would frequently respond that Jiaming was his actual son while Lingjing was being raised as a future daughter-in-law. Lingjing would sulk for at least half a day if and when she heard him say that.
Naturally, they would not stay at the martial arts school every day, father Ye would occasionally take the children out to play. They would set off fireworks and play with bamboo-copters and Jiaming had to show a jubilant expression while cheering happily. It was at these times that he wished the phoenix had sent him back to when he was eighteen or nineteen instead.
When the fifth day of the new year arrived, Liu Huaisha, dressed in fiery red from head to toe, showed up and demanded to become a student.
It was around nine in the morning when she appeared and Jiaming was in the arena ring holding two punching pads, being Lingjing’s sandbag. When father Ye saw a little child enter, he waved at Lingjing to get her attention as he thought it was Lingjing’s friend. He smiled in welcome and said, “Hi there, are you looking for Lingjing?”
“Ah, hello, are you Lingjing’s papa?” Liu Huaisha did a little curtsy, then took off her snow-covered red shoes and looked towards the two people in the arena ring. She cutely waved her finger in the air, “Nope, I'm actually here… to issue a challenge!”
“Huh? A challenge?”
Father Ye looked bewildered and then looked at where Liu Huaisha was pointing at, “I want to compete against him!” She was not pointing at Ye Lingjing, but at the pad-wearing Gu Jiaming that was standing there like a dummy.
Several of them were shocked with that exclamation and Lingjing said, “He… He doesn't know how to fight…” while Jiaming nodded in agreement.
“That's not right, since he's wearing the martial art school's uniform then he's part of this school. A few days ago when he was being bullied, he needed a girl to protect him. If I want to learn martial arts here but if I can't even compare to a girl after, then what have I come to learn?”
“Um… That… Learning martial arts is to improve your physique, not to be used for fighting…” Father Ye stroked his beard as he said this, then glancing at Jiaming, he changed his mind and said, “Well, currently our school's honor is on the line, Jiaming, you should compete with this little lady.”
“Huh?” Jiaming opened his mouth to protest. ‘This Ye Han, he should only be joking right?’ but then Ye Han continued, “Yeah, winning or losing shouldn't matter. What's important is whether you have the guts or not, we can't let our school be considered as a joke.”
Ye Lingjing’s brow wrinkled, then said to Jiaming, “Then fine, Jiaming, you should fight once with sis Huaisha, besides… I’ll secretly tell her to go easy on you.”
“Oh… how am I supposed to fight?”
“You… you should just run for your life.”
“Oh.” Jiaming smiled helplessly in his heart, continuously escaping would be a good challenge and he could have his fun since he was not afraid of the little girl.
Shortly after, Lingjing left the arena and sneakily said something to Liu Huaisha. The red-clothed little lady nodded her head briefly, then climbed into the arena ring and quietly said, “The type of boys I hate the most are ones that need girls to protect them. Just you wait!”
The two of them bowed at each other, then Ye Han rang a little bell and exclaimed, “Start!”
The red-clothed girl threw out a fist with a fierce shout, the combination of the two letting out an impressive pressure. However by the time her fist reached, she was only punching empty space because when father Ye said to start, Jiaming had already yelped “Save me!”, ducked his head and ran off.
The ring was slightly smaller than a regular sized one. Even though it was pretty large for children, it was relatively easy to intercept a person within its scope. Liu Huaisha really despised seeing the boy run around the ring while yelling “Save me”. Her father said that real men should stand and fight without running away. Seeing him run made her really impatient so she rushed towards Jiaming.
After a short while, she discovered that the boy escaped like a mudfish – he would run, jump and roll as well as use the ring’s boundary ropes to speed up by bouncing off them. Whenever it seemed like she had managed to corner him, he would barely brush by her and escape to the other side of the arena. She chased him for a full five minutes around the ring but was not able to even grab onto a corner of his clothes.
“Stop running…”
“I’m going to catch you…”
“If you keep running, I’m going to kill you…”
After a while, the competition became a farce to the people watching and Lingjing’s cheers went from “Jiaming run faster…” to “Jiaming run faster… Sis Huaisha you can do it!” Ye Han clutched his stomach while laughing loudly, and his laughter made Liu Huaisha feel increasingly embarrassed.
“Stop running already!”
“Jiaming, I’m going to stop!”
Having chased him until she was huffing and puffing, Little Huaisha finally called for a stop. With that one sentence, Jiaming instantly stopped running and leaned on one of the pillars, gasping lightly for breath before asking, “Really?”
“You only know how to run!”
“Then are we even? I haven’t won, and you haven’t won?”
The red-clothed girl sighed noisily and glared at Jiaming. Jiaming only smiled as he approached her, but then suddenly, the little girl let out a loud shout and pounced threateningly at him, “I’m going to kill you!”
Jiaming suddenly retreated and was forced to kick out as his hands protected his head; at the same time, he twisted his lower body. He was forced into a corner by her sudden move and he was not able to escape as easily. Little Huaisha’s second punch squarely hit Jiaming on the arm and her heart leapt in excitement, but her next punch hit air once again.
It was not because Jiaming had managed to escape, it was because he had half-squatted down to avoid that second punch. As the momentum of her punch caused her body to involuntarily move forward, Jiaming rushed at her and hooked an arm around her waist, causing the little girl’s body to fly back.
Bang—, the little girl fell heavily on the floor and Jiaming threw himself on top of her. If they were professional athletes, then this move would have been regarded as an excellent display. However, in Ye Han’s eyes, he saw this as a lucky act that Little Jiaming had somehow accidentally managed to do. Seeing Jiaming’s expression at that moment, Huaisha involuntarily let out a cry, turned her head around and tightly closed her eyes. However, when she tried to wriggle out from under him, she discovered that Jiaming had tightly grabbed onto both her hands.
“Let go of me!”
“Nope!”
“Let go!”
“I’m going to hit you!”
“Oh——”
In the ring, the little girl struggled wildly to get out from under Jiaming as she even tried to bite or scratch at him. However Jiaming continued to tightly hold onto her two hands and no matter how much she yelled, he absolutely would not let go.
“Oh——I am going to kill you——”
Jiaming the frog :3