97: Chapter 97 The First New Era Youth Conference

Parker stood in the hallway, Mary's last sentence still buzzing in his head.

"We should be the youth who actively participate in the New Era, not just spectators of the old world."

When she said that, a cloud happened to be blown aside by the wind outside the window, and sunlight poured in from the high window at the end of the hallway, drenching her in light.

She stood there in that beam of light, her school uniform sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her hair tied in a casual ponytail. There was no combat suit, no cape, and no low background music like in the movies.

But Parker just felt that if superheroes really existed, they would probably look like this.

In all these years, no one had ever asked him if he wanted to do something together.

Most people around him saw him as a nerd, a coward, or a ghost; they wouldn't even invite him to parties.

He remembered last night, Uncle Ben was fixing a water pipe in the kitchen. The wrench didn't budge after three turns, so he sighed, wiped his hands on his pants, and muttered to himself, "Getting old, my grip is gone."

Parker was sitting in the living room doing homework and heard it. He wanted to say something, but didn't know what to say.

Every day he scrolled through his phone to see news about the Ball Chief, watching the President suck up to the Ball Chief on Twitter, and Wall Street interns using Excel to calculate the winning odds for Special Abilities.

He liked every piece of news, typed a long string of words in the comments section and then deleted them, finally only sending a "thumbs up" emoji.

He had always been just a person who only knew how to give likes.

"How many people are in this group now?" Parker asked softly.

"Just the two of us for now." Mary spoke with great confidence, as if there was no difference between two people and two hundred, "But not just anyone is qualified to join."

"No problem, I'm in." Parker agreed quickly.

Although Mary's speech had indeed stirred the blood in his heart, the fact that Gwen was in this group was also a major reason he agreed.

Mary was very satisfied with his reaction. She clapped her hands and was about to speak when the school bell suddenly exploded overhead, the sharp metallic buzzing instantly filling the entire hallway.

Mary grabbed Gwen's wrist and turned to run. After three steps, she looked back, running backward while shouting to Parker: "Then at noon, in Club Room 302, come find us! We'll hold the first general meeting of the New Era Youth! Bring your own lunch. Oh, do you have food? It's okay if you don't, Gwen said she could share half of hers with you..."

Her voice drifted further and further away, and the later words were mixed with the bell, making them indistinguishable.

Gwen was dragged along, smiling back at Parker before turning the corner. The moment that smile was swallowed by the corner wall, Parker felt the fluorescent lights in the entire hallway dim by a degree.

He just stood there, still clutching his backpack, maintaining his posture from the previous second, as if he were in a dream.

He never expected that just a signature from Ball Chief Chen Mu could bring different opportunities to his mediocre life.

His biology teacher, Mr. Hines, leaned half his body out of the classroom next door and shouted: "Mr. Parker, it's bad enough having one person missing from my class; are you trying to make it two?"

Only then did Parker snap out of it, throw his backpack over his shoulder, and run toward the classroom.

——————

Twelve minutes after the lunch break bell rang, the door to Room 302 was pushed open a crack from the outside.

Parker squeezed in through the crack, a thin layer of sweat on his forehead, and said breathlessly, "Sorry, I'm late."

He closed the door: "This place is a bit hard to find. The hallway numbering stops at 298. I circled around three times before finding the stairwell hidden behind the corner."

Mary was sitting behind a folding long table. She tilted her chair back, front legs off the ground, back against the wall, and waved her hand at him.

The meaning was: no need to explain, just glad you're here.

"Did you bring lunch?"

Parker nodded and pulled a loaf of bread and a bottle of water from his backpack.

The bread was the most basic white bread from the supermarket, the plastic bag a bit flattened, with a golden twist tie at one end.

The water was from the school's drinking fountain, contained in a plastic bottle that had been reused several times, its label long gone.

He put these two items on the table, looked up at Mary, and found her staring at his lunch with a frown.

"Is that all you're eating for lunch?"

Parker looked down at his bread, then at Mary's expression. Unsure of what he had done wrong, he answered in his most sincere tone:

"Don't worry, this is definitely enough to fill me up. I've calculated it: two slices of white bread are two hundred calories, so this whole loaf is about six hundred calories. With unlimited water, it's definitely enough to last until school is out."

Mary let the front legs of her chair drop back to the floor with a dull thud: "Am I asking if you can get full?"

Mary lifted a paper bag onto the table.

The bag was large, and from the opening wafted an aroma mixed with cheese and roasted meat.

At the same time, Gwen had silently opened another bento box, which contained neatly arranged sandwiches, cherry tomatoes, and several pieces of chicken Caesar wraps cut into triangles and secured with toothpicks.

"Alright, eat with us." Mary pushed the paper bag half an inch toward Parker.

Parker looked at the bag of food, then at the white bread in his hand, and waved his hands repeatedly.

"No, no, I'm fine with this. Really, this bread is quite good, I just bought it this morning."

He didn't finish. Gwen took a sandwich wrapped in foil from her bento box and handed it directly to him.

"It's okay." She smiled, her smile appearing exceptionally soft under the fluorescent lights of the club room. "There's so much anyway, Mary and I can't finish it all."

"Besides, as youth of the New Era, we should help each other out."

Parker took the sandwich and looked down at the foil in his hand. He originally wanted to say "really, no need" again, but Gwen's gentleness made the refusal stick in his throat.

"Yeah." Mary nodded heavily from the side. "Gwen is right. Since you've joined, Parker, from now on in our group, I'm the leader."

She pointed to herself, then to Gwen: "Gwen is the deputy leader."

Finally, she pointed her finger at Parker: "You don't have any objections, do you?"

Parker already had half a sandwich stuffed in his mouth, so he could only shake his head repeatedly and say vaguely, "No objections, no objections."

Mary was very satisfied with this reaction. She braced her hands on the table, straightened her back, and solemnly announced with a grave and serious expression: "Very well, I now declare the first New Era Youth Convention officially open."

"Our agenda for today is: how to quickly participate in the tide of the times!"