Part 2
“Xu Jingyou, you deliberately interrupted him just now, right?” Yuan Man stuck to him, asking incessantly, simply a ‘Ten Thousand Whys’. “What secret are you keeping from me? He said just now your appearance in junior high was completely different. What did you look like? Face full of acne? Skin especially dark? Didn’t shower often? Picked your nose in class…”
The veins on Xu Jingyou’s forehead throbbed. Yuan Man’s guesses were truly boundless and unreasonable, far from him, but a boy’s sensitive self-esteem didn’t allow him to reveal his past appearance in front of his crush. Holding a breath in his chest, he could only turn and walk away.
“Xu Jingyou, why are you leaving!” Yuan Man shouted behind him. “I’m talking to you!”
Xu Jingyou stopped. “So it was you talking. I thought it was some frog croaking.”
Yuan Man: “Have you seen such a handsome frog like me? With my looks, I’m at least a Frog Prince.”
The Frog Prince could wait for a princess’s kiss to break the curse, while Yuan Man hadn’t even held a girl’s hand up to now.
Seeing Xu Jingyou really leaving, Yuan Man hurriedly chased after him, pestering him to talk again. “Okay, okay, okay, I won’t pry into what you looked like before. Anyway, since I’ve known you, you’ve been this good-looking. Even if you were really an ugly duckling before, I don’t care. Let’s continue discussing business!”
Xu Jingyou turned sideways to look at him. “Business?”
What business was left?
“Yeah, I didn’t get to say more than a few words to Feng Lin Huijuan today, no way to judge if she’s my secret admirer.” Yuan Man grabbed his hand, swinging it coquettishly. “So let’s go to the milk tea shop to do homework together tomorrow!”
…
Sunday.
The milk tea shop had even more people than Saturday.
When Xu Jingyou stepped into the shop, he spotted that familiar figure at the square table by the floor-to-ceiling window at a glance.
“Over here!” Yuan Man also saw him immediately, standing up and waving at him. This time, he didn’t wear a mask or glasses, openly exposing his little dimple to everyone’s gaze.
Xu Jingyou stared at that little dimple, dazed for a second.
Truly going crazy.
He walked to the table, seeing Yuan Man had spread homework for several subjects all over the table, and even brought his own water bottle, timer (for doing test papers), mints, Rubik’s cube (what was this for?), etc. Quite the setup.
Xu Jingyou sat down. Yuan Man pawed out a small empty space on the table like a puppy digging a nest; his own things were piled messily together, very disorganized.
Grade 2 coursework was heavy. There were several test papers just for the week. Taking advantage of “staking out” today, Yuan Man simply brought the papers to do.
Yuan Man’s mental abacus clicked loudly: Since Xu Jingyou is here anyway, I can ask him if I don’t know the answers.
“Ask me?” Xu Jingyou: “Do I need to remind you, you are Grade 2, I am Grade 1.”
Yuan Man tutted. “Do I need to remind you, you are a Study God, I am a weak chicken.”
Thus, the Grade 1 Study God sat opposite the Grade 2 Weak Chicken, watching him fiddle with things noisily.
Yuan Man first spent ten minutes meticulously choosing a colored ballpoint pen for correcting errors; then another ten minutes fixing correction tape that wasn’t broken; for the next ten minutes, he clicked the Rubik’s cube loudly, claiming it was a warm-up activity for the brain before solving problems.
After this silky smooth combo, half an hour had passed.
Xu Jingyou: “…”
He reached across the table and confiscated Yuan Man’s colored ballpoint pen, correction tape, and Rubik’s cube.
Dropping two words: “Do. Problems.”
Yuan Man pouted. “Oh……………………”
Dragging the sound out long, quite unwillingly.
Xu Jingyou withdrew his gaze and picked up his pen to study.
He had only been doing problems for three minutes when he couldn’t stand Yuan Man staring at him. He looked up again at the boy opposite him and asked, “Why do you keep looking at me?”
“Xu Jingyou, are you really left-handed? You write homework with your left hand too.”
Xu Jingyou: “Haven’t you eaten with me?”
“Yeah, but many lefties get ‘corrected’, you know. Using left hand for daily life, right hand for writing.” Yuan Man gestured. “Can you write with your right hand?”
“I can use both hands.” Xu Jingyou answered. “Writing with the left hand is more comfortable but smudges the words easily, so for exams and writing important things, I use my right hand.”
Hearing this, Yuan Man immediately asked Xu Jingyou to perform writing with both hands. He had seen Xu Jingyou’s left-hand handwriting and wanted to see if the right hand wrote the same.
Actually, this request wasn’t hard to fulfill. Xu Jingyou subconsciously wanted to switch hands, but suddenly thought of something and stopped, stiffly changing the subject: “How many papers have you finished?”
Yuan Man clutched his head and wailed. “Why do you bring up the pot that doesn’t boil?” (Why bring up my weak spot?)
Being hammered by the xuedi like this, Yuan Man had no mind to think of anything else. He could only sigh and take out the timer, grunting and laboring over the papers.
By the square table, two teenagers sat facing each other. Their feet bumped occasionally under the table—you kick me, I brush against you—very intimate. The boy with the little dimple occasionally looked up, pushing the test paper to the handsome boy opposite, asking him about difficult exam questions.
Exam questions were easy to answer; the answers of youth weren’t so clear.
The noisy customer flow in the shop didn’t affect them. The cool air conditioning blew away the agitation brought by the sunlight, and the milk tea emptying by their hands proved the passage of time.
Finishing one paper, Yuan Man could finally slack off and rest.
He stretched a big lazy stretch, his eyes turning toward the workbench.
The table he chose was positioned very cleverly; sitting down, he could just see the employees busy inside the workbench.
Today Feng Lin Huijuan was working a full day. Presumably, she lied to her parents about make-up classes. She came to the shop wearing her high school uniform and hurriedly went to the break room to change into work clothes after arriving.
She was an extremely hard-working girl, never slacking off. Because she was a part-time student, many dirty and tiring jobs were pushed onto her by full-time employees. Yuan Man saw her peeling fruit, sweeping floors, wiping tables, cleaning machines, busy spinning like a top.
Meanwhile, those full-time employees used excuses like going to the toilet or smoking to slip away and slack off. Truly bullying.
Seeing him stop writing again, Xu Jingyou looked up and followed his gaze to the busy Feng Lin Huijuan behind the counter.
Seeing his gaze so focused, Xu Jingyou inevitably felt jealous, feeling he cared too much about Feng Lin Huijuan’s family and life; at the same time, he felt ashamed of his untimely and shameless thoughts.
He knocked on the table, interrupting Yuan Man’s stare, asking in a low voice, “What did you see staring at her?”
“Nothing.” Yuan Man asked, “Xu Jingyou, are you really not familiar with her from before?”
“Should I be familiar with her?” Xu Jingyou felt baffled by this question. “We aren’t in the same class and have a competitive relationship. We never greeted each other in private. Yesterday was the first time I spoke to her.”
Yuan Man: “Oh…”
He propped his chin up, looking preoccupied.
What he didn’t say was that before Xu Jingyou arrived at the milk tea shop, Feng Lin Huijuan came over and said three sentences to him.
Those three sentences were:
“Xu Jingyou didn’t come today?”
“Xuezhang, how did you become friends with Xu Jingyou?”
“Xu Jingyou is first in our grade, of course I know him.”
Every sentence was about Xu Jingyou.
Moreover, after Xu Jingyou arrived, every time Yuan Man looked up to slack off, he found Feng Lin Huijuan looking at Xu Jingyou. There was a fire burning in her eyes.
As they spoke in low voices, suddenly footsteps sounded. They looked up to see Feng Lin Huijuan holding a small cake.
Yuan Man was blank. “We didn’t order a small cake.”
Feng Lin Huijuan replied, “My employee card allows me to claim one employee meal a day. Consider this a gift from me to you guys.”
Her tone was extremely calm. After putting down the cake, she turned and left, not saying a single word to Xu Jingyou from start to finish. However, Yuan Man once again caught that bit of weirdness—after leaving, she looked back at Xu Jingyou as if trying to hide something.
Yuan Man couldn’t say why, but he felt uncomfortable all over now. Like swimming in summer with trunks wedged in the crack of his butt, or forgetting to tuck his pant legs into his socks when wearing long johns in winter.
In short, his whole person wasn’t flat, soft, relaxed, or leisurely anymore.
He really wished he could reach into his chest and scratch his little heart that was crumpled into a ball.
Yuan Man picked up a spoon. With one scoop, he dug away a small half of the cake.
The slightly sour lemon cream filled his mouth—a flavor Xu Jingyou would like.
He ate and thought: The person who wrote me the love letter can’t be Feng Lin Huijuan.
Because Feng Lin Huijuan doesn’t like me.
The person she cares about is someone else.
[Author’s Note] Sorry for the wait! But this chapter has a lot of words!! Can I get lots of nutrient solution~~! [Fighting][Fighting]
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