After He Broke My Heart, I Went to Teach in the Countryside

[Village bully x village belle]

Yin Shutan is Chen Hui's boyfriend, and Chen Hui's devoted simp.

When Chen Hui doesn't want to go to class, Yin Shutan copies his notes late into the night.

When Chen Hui skips his turn on cleaning duty, Yin Shutan does the work for him and collapses from heatstroke.

After waking up, Yin Shutan learns that he's a cannon-fodder character in a melodramatic novel. Chen Hui only dated him to take advantage of him. He's an obstacle to Chen Hui and his white moonlight's love, and he dies a gruesome death in the end.

So Yin Shutan signs up for the school's rural teaching program and hurries off without looking back.

Nanpo County is an impoverished county in the north, short on teachers. Many children leave school after just a year or two to farm or find work.

But everything changes with Yin Shutan's arrival.

The students' parents have old-fashioned views, so he knocks on their doors one by one to explain the importance of compulsory education.

The school buildings are in terrible shape, so he brings materials himself on weekends and repairs the leaking roof.

Six months later, Nanpo County produces the top scorer in the national college entrance exam, astonishing the whole internet.

Reports about Yin Shutan's rural teaching work are everywhere. The person in the photos is refined and handsome, hardworking and good at teaching, and soon becomes a model for young people.

In the footage, the children, whose eyes once held nothing but confusion, now shine with a desire for knowledge.

Chen Hui thinks Yin Shutan went to teach in the countryside just to spite him, and that he won't last more than a few days before coming back.

But he never imagined that the next time he heard about his ex-boyfriend, it would be in the most famous local newspaper.

His ex has become a model citizen, and Chen Hui can't sit still. He packs his bags and heads to Nanpo County in the middle of the night to find him.

He doesn't even make it into the village before someone stops him.

The young man blocking his way leans on a shovel. His muscles are solid beneath his undershirt, and his wolfish black eyes gleam with mockery and disdain.

"Let's bury him here and use him for fertilizer," the man says to the others in a northern accent. "We can plant another couple of crops of corn next year."

Chen Hui's legs give out.

Chen Hui pees himself on the spot.

Zhou Sencheng, a rural entrepreneur, has never forgotten the snowy night when he was seventeen.

He went to pick up his younger brother from school and saw a slender rural teacher walking toward him, step by step through the snow.

The first thing Yin Shutan said to him was, "Hello."

The second thing was:

"Do you want to go to school?"

The person who was once his teacher and is now his lover changed his whole life.

I've never seen a village where the northern lights appear,

I've never seen anyone

setting off fireworks in the dead of night.

Mohe Ballroom

◎Written for the land of my hometown, and the snow of my hometown.

Theme: Revitalizing rural education