Despite many uncertainties about the upcoming matches, the students decided to give their all and throw themselves into training.
The only thing Lin Wanxing hadn’t expected was that after the match schedule was announced, Chen Weidong came to find her alone.
Chen Weidong hadn’t attended any of the National Day holiday study sessions, claiming family matters kept him busy.
Today was his first training session after the holiday break.
Qin Ao had many complaints about this, but on one hand, it was a statutory holiday, and more importantly, Chen Weidong was filling in for the absent Wen Chengye as a volunteer player. No one could really demand too much from him.
During the previous "money-making" activities, everyone was highly enthusiastic, but Chen Weidong found it too exhausting and dropped out after just two days. So Lin Wanxing was mentally prepared for Chen Weidong approaching her.
"Teacher, I’ve thought about it for a long time. I might not be able to make it to training anymore," Chen Weidong said very directly.
"Why?" Lin Wanxing was boiling noodles and was quite surprised by his words.
"Our school’s sports team has training, and I need to participate."
Lin Wanxing frowned. Chen Weidong seemed to guess what she was thinking and said, "I wanted to tell you earlier, but I really enjoyed playing with everyone, and we won a lot... But I was just brought in to make up numbers from the start. I have my own events to train for."
Hearing this, Lin Wanxing quickly understood. "You have other competitions, right? Trying to get provincial rankings? Applying for special admission as a high-level athlete?"
"I... just..." Chen Weidong suddenly stumbled over his words.
"It’s fine," Lin Wanxing reassured him.
"It’s just, teacher, you know... I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket before, but football seems a bit tough here. For track and field, there’s a championship in November, with qualifiers before that. I want to take part."
Although Chen Weidong didn’t state it explicitly, his general meaning was clear.
The hope of achieving provincial rankings with the football team was slim, so he’d rather focus on his main event in November—track and field.
Lin Wanxing could actually understand this well, but the awkward reality facing her was that Hongjing No. 8 Middle School’s team only had 11 players. If anyone left, the team would have to disband. Lost in thought, Lin Wanxing rested her fingers on the iron pot and only snapped back to reality when she got burned.
She said with difficulty, "But you didn’t mention this in the meeting earlier. How about we hold another meeting and share what you told me with the other students? It’s really okay; we can all brainstorm solutions together."
"Please don’t, teacher," Chen Weidong hurriedly stopped her. "With someone like Qin Ao, if I said I don’t want to play football anymore, he’d probably punch me on the spot!"
"But you still have to tell them about your situation," Lin Wanxing insisted.
"How can I say that!" Chen Weidong began to hesitate. "I was just a substitute anyway and never planned to play for this long. Besides, if I leave, there’s no one to replace me. Teacher, maybe you can find a substitute? I can still play for a while recently, but I’m not sure about the future."
Chen Weidong’s tone finally softened. The boy looked utterly conflicted, while Lin Wanxing’s fingers ran under the flowing water.
She said, "Mm, I understand. You should make your own decision."
"I’ll think about it some more," Chen Weidong replied.
—
Chen Weidong’s hesitation was just a tangled interlude.
According to the schedule, on October 20th, Hongjing No. 8 Middle School would host Yuzhou Silver Elephant in the first round of the National Youth League group stage.
This period wasn’t particularly long, but it wasn’t short either.
After the National Day holiday, Lin Wanxing resumed her duties managing the school’s sports equipment storage.
The students gathered in the tutoring classroom every morning.
Lin Wanxing provided them with weekly schedules, including possible learning content and objectives.
Based on her class schedule and time arrangements, the students discussed and adjusted their daily routines.
The first class started at 6:30 AM, with two sessions in total.
After 8:30, Lin Wanxing went to work at the school.
The students completed their morning football training with Wang Fa.
At noon, the boys would take a short nap. After waking up refreshed, they’d finish the homework from the morning classes before heading out to play football.
Some students’ afternoon football training lasted three hours, ending when Lin Wanxing returned from work.
In the evening, they would have dinner together.
During meals, they’d watch TV series or meaningful documentaries selected by Lin Wanxing as a form of relaxation.
Evening classes began at 6:50 PM.
These classes usually ended around 10:00 PM, consisting of three sessions. Lin Wanxing would assign bedtime reading materials based on each day’s lessons.
Perhaps due to their innate love for freedom, the boys disliked staying in the classroom to read whenever they weren’t in class. They genuinely loved the rooftop.
Their previous experience with "collecting trash"—or rather, "learning resource recycling"—had provided them with plenty of know-how.
Qin Ao and Lin Lu were very familiar with the process of repurposing waste. Lin Wanxing didn’t know where they got the old warehouse pallets from.
They stacked several wooden boards together to form simple wooden sofas and sourced old foam cushions to place on top.
During breaks when the afternoon sun wasn’t too harsh, the boys loved lounging there, chatting and relaxing.
With vast green spaces nearby and the city’s uneven skyline in the distance, Lin Lu curled up on the wooden sofa and said it felt like vacationing in the Maldives.
Although they weren’t exactly sure where the Maldives was, they felt it must be a place with a high-end resort vibe.
Lin Wanxing had to manage equipment every day. She used to have lunch at school, but since the kids had now made her home their base, she returned every noon.
At first, the students would go out for lunch.
Their parents gave them meal money, but with heavy academic loads and mutual influence, they grew too lazy to go out.
The pack of instant noodles Lin Lu brought during the National Day holiday played a key negative role. Once others started eating instant noodles for lunch with him, it became an unstoppable trend.
Lin Wanxing had heard stories about shut-ins eating instant noodles for years and getting sick, but she always thought they were exaggerated tales. How could anyone eat instant noodles for that long?
But when she saw the students buying boxes of various flavored instant noodles, eating them three meals a day for a whole week without getting tired of it, she was truly shocked.
This simply wouldn’t do. Students engaged in sports and training needed proper nutrition.
To address this, Lin Wanxing specifically raised the lunch issue during the Friday meeting, urging everyone to find a solution.
At first, her motion to ban instant noodles didn’t even receive a second, nearly forcing it to fail.
Wang Fa provided the crucial second, moving the proposal to the next step.
The boys naturally resisted rigid, one-size-fits-all rules.
But after Lin Wanxing explained her viewpoint and pointed out the nutritional deficiencies from long-term instant noodle consumption, they relatively agreed.
"Eating instant noodles for lunch every day, even three or four packs, and still feeling hungry in the afternoon," Yu Ming remarked.
Once he said this, everyone felt there was some truth to it.
For the students, it wasn’t that they weren’t hungry or didn’t want to eat better, but eating was just something to get by—not a big deal.
Now that they had to seriously think about what to eat, they became "picky."
They couldn’t just eat anything; if they were going to eat, they wanted it to be good. Meals had to consider cost—since their parents’ allowances were limited—but also balanced nutrition, fat loss, muscle gain, and preferably green, natural, and organic.
Lin Wanxing didn’t offer any opinions, only stating that she was willing to split the cost of one meal and refusing to cook.
This was roughly what the free management model looked like. By the time Lin Wanxing realized what was happening, the students had already started moving discarded foam boxes and soil onto her rooftop.
The boys drafted a detailed nutrition meal plan based on the latest edition of the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents," combined with recommendations from foreign sports science nutritionists.
For the first time, Lin Wanxing began to doubt herself, wondering if she had taught them too much. How had the students suddenly become so capable?
The rooftop was divided into experimental plots by numerous foam boxes, making Lin Wanxing dizzy just looking at it. "Are you really going to grow your own vegetables?" she asked.
"Of course!" The students, covered in mud, replied with full confidence. "We’re even planning to grow organic vegetables—the top-tier kind!"
"Is it necessary to go through all this trouble?" Lin Wanxing was puzzled. "Why not just buy them? How long will it take to grow these before we can eat them?"
"Haven’t you bought groceries in a while? Don’t you know how expensive vegetables are?"
"Some vegetables have very short growth cycles; they can be harvested in a month."
"What vegetables? It’s already autumn—can they even grow now?" Lin Wanxing was bewildered and had many questions.
"Why explain so much to her? She doesn’t get it," Qin Ao said dismissively as he set down a bag of soil.
"Just wait and eat. Fu Xinshu will send you the bill after calculating; remember to pay up," Chen Jianghe said confidently.
Lin Wanxing looked around in confusion, finally settling her gaze on Wang Fa sitting under the sunshade. She thought of a new reason.
"This rooftop is half mine and half your coach’s. Did you even ask for his opinion?" she asked.
Wang Fa immediately raised his hand. "Count me in. Send the bill to your teacher."
Lin Wanxing: "..."
—
In any case, the students’ vegetable-growing venture began just like that.
Although it might have started from someone’s sudden idea, they became deeply engrossed in the process very quickly.
Their recent studies had enhanced their goal-setting, task-division, and practical abilities. Without any additional guidance, they naturally and systematically began dividing tasks and cooperating.
Fu Xinshu researched and selected low-cost, fast-growing vegetables. Zheng Feiyang’s grandparents had farmland in the countryside; he was responsible for obtaining seeds, seeking the elders’ advice, and leading the seedling cultivation.
Qin Ao mainly handled physical labor—watering, fertilizing, and carrying things were his responsibilities.
All these actions were completely spontaneous and self-directed.
Lin Wanxing discovered that the methods she had taught them for gathering information and note-taking were now being used to learn how to grow vegetables.
For the sake of gardening, Lin Lu even stopped playing games. To him, nothing seemed more interesting than squatting down to watch seeds sprout.
The topics the students discussed during training breaks shifted from games and videos to vegetable growing.
Yes, vegetable growing.
Which seeds were best, where to get seedling facilities, soil quality and types...
After listening for so long, Lin Wanxing even misheard the "National Youth League" as the "Vegetable Growing League" once.
Previously, following the students’ interests, Lin Wanxing showed them famous crime-solving American TV series during dinner.
Now, fully devoted to farming, they had no interest in violent content.
Lin Wanxing was forced to pause the unfinished American series and switch to BBC gardening documentaries like "Big Dreams, Small Spaces."
With gentle music, soft-focus shots, beautiful gardens, and a relatively slow pace.
Lin Wanxing had thought the students wouldn’t be interested in such relatively artistic content. To her surprise, they not only watched with great interest but also took notes while doing so.
Their notes included both Chinese and English, covering various plant names and habits, compost area design, compost bin and greenhouse construction.
They also learned to draw various garden design blueprints from the documentaries.
In Lin Wanxing’s view, the works of British gardening masters seemed quite different from her shabby rooftop. After all, a dozen foam boxes were their entire garden, but the students didn’t see it that way.
They not only began fantasizing and planning more but even considered the small empty space downstairs in Xincun.
Lin Wanxing didn’t deliberately encourage or discourage the students’ interests. Apart from forcefully vetoing their proposal to raise chickens on the rooftop, she let them do as they pleased.
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