Although Li Yang had a secret crush on Zhou Yao, he never showed it. Even his best friend, Sun Datao, had no idea, to the point where he'd once suspiciously wondered if Li Yang wasn't into girls at all.
Zhou Yao walked over, smiling at the classmates who greeted her. She spotted Li Yang, came up to him, and said with a smile, "Li Yang."
Li Yang smiled back. "Zhou Yao."
By now, almost everyone from the class had arrived.
"Looks like everyone's here. Let's go in," a classmate said, leading the way.
The restaurant before them was three stories tall. The class reunion was being held on the third floor, in a conference room that could hold fifty people.
There were already about twenty people inside.
As classmates reunited, the room buzzed with excited conversation. After all, it had been a week since the college entrance exams ended.
It wasn't just the students; their homeroom teacher, Wang Zhen, was there as well.
His eyes landed on Li Yang, and he immediately walked over. "Li Yang," he said, "you didn't take the college entrance exam. I can help you apply to repeat the year."
With Li Yang's grades, getting into a top-tier university would have been no problem. Something unexpected had come up, so in the teacher's view, he definitely needed to continue his studies.
It wasn't just Li Yang's situation. Two other classmates who usually had excellent grades but hadn't performed well on the exam were already planning to repeat the year, hoping for a better score next time.
Seeing their homeroom teacher, Wang Zhen, talking to Li Yang about repeating the year, some of the surrounding classmates glanced over, their expressions filled with sympathy for him.
Li Yang had never placed outside the top three in any exam. For him to have faltered on the college entrance exam of all things was, without a doubt, a real shame.
Hearing Wang Zhen's words, Li Yang shook his head. "There's no need, Teacher Wang. I don't plan on repeating the year."
'The idea had suddenly come to him after that walk on the seabed.'
'For him, the whole point of getting into college and graduating was just to find a good job.'
'But now, that wasn't important at all!'
'What did walking on the seabed mean? It meant the ocean could become his personal ATM!'
'He'd already caught a king swimming crab, and besides that crab, he had seen plenty of other valuable creatures on the seafloor.'
'If he wanted to, he could catch them all and sell them for money.'
'With an ability like this, going to school would be a total waste of time.'
'The crucial thing was that Li Guohai now had late-stage cancer, with no telling how many months he had left. With the ability to walk in the ocean, Li Yang could constantly search for treasures and sell them for money!'
'If he found enough treasures and made enough money, he could buy the Anticancer Agent.'
"Not repeating?"
The surrounding classmates were stunned to hear Li Yang's words.
"Li Yang isn't going to repeat the year? What's going on?"
"It's not that he performed poorly or messed up on the exam—he didn't even take it. In that case, he can't even get into a vocational college."
"What is Li Yang thinking?"
The classmates were all very confused.
To have such good grades and then just decide not to continue studying at all...
Zhou Yao was also looking at Li Yang. A more petite girl next to her whispered, "Li Yang isn't going to repeat the year? That's so strange. Yaoyao, what do you think he's thinking?"
Zhou Yao didn't say anything, her gaze fixed on Li Yang, her own thoughts unreadable.
At that moment, Teacher Wang Zhen was also taken aback. He then looked at Li Yang in confusion and tried to persuade him further, but Li Yang's mind was clearly made up.
After a few more words, Wang Zhen gave up and said, "Well, if you change your mind about repeating the year, you can call me directly. The offer stands anytime before the new semester starts."
He really didn't want to give up on such a promising student.
Li Yang smiled and said, "Thank you, Teacher Wang."
After Wang Zhen left, a few of Li Yang's closer friends couldn't help but start asking questions, especially Sun Datao, whose face was a mask of confusion.
"Brother Li, what's going on? Didn't you say before that you were going to repeat the year? Why the sudden change of heart?"
When he had visited Li Yang at home earlier, Li Yang had specifically said he was going to repeat.
Li Yang just smiled, shook his head, and didn't explain further.
Seeing this, Sun Datao assumed Li Yang was still under a lot of pressure and decided not to say anything more.
The party began, and food started arriving at the tables. The boys ordered some beers. For some of the students who had just finished their exams, this might have been their first time drinking beer, so they didn't order much.
Li Yang drank his beer and chatted with some of his classmates.
'For him, this would probably be the last class reunion.'
Later on, some classmates started going around with their glasses to make toasts, with Lin Qiang being the most active among them.
He brought a glass over to Li Yang and said with a wide smile, "Li Yang, I heard you say you're not repeating the year? Since you're not, you'll have to find a job, right? So, what's the plan? My family's lobster restaurant is hiring. You want to come give it a try?"
He made the invitation with a beaming smile.
Lin Qiang's family owned a lobster restaurant with excellent business. It was even somewhat famous within a large radius, all because the restaurant had a giant lobster that was ninety-three centimeters long!
You had to understand, the longest lobsters caught in the sea nowadays were only about 1.2 meters long; finding one that reached even a meter was already incredibly rare!
A ninety-three-centimeter one was also a rare sight, and Lin Qiang's family had used it as a promotional gimmick to make their restaurant's business bigger and bigger.
That ninety-three-centimeter giant lobster was their restaurant's main attraction. Thanks to its fame, some customers went to Lin Qiang's family restaurant and spent money there just because they wanted to see this "number one giant lobster of Coastal City."
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