Falling for Xuezhang Is Obviously Xuezhang’s Fault Chapter 2.2

Part 2

He was always like this, like a whirlwind—arriving unreasonably and leaving without warning.

The only proof he had been there was the half chicken leg in Xu Jingyou’s tray.

When he left, Xu Jingyou and Mushroom Head hadn’t finished eating yet.

Mushroom Head looked at Yuan Man’s retreating figure and couldn’t suppress his curiosity. “Xu Jingyou, Xuezhang Yuan is a huge celebrity in the second year. They say there isn’t a single person in all the high schools in the city he doesn’t know! Xu Jingyou, how did you become friends with Xuezhang Yuan?”

Xu Jingyou, who was eating quietly, paused his chopsticks. A complex emotion flashed through the eyes behind his lenses. “Who said he and I are friends? I never intended to be his friend.”

“Uh…” Mushroom Head scratched his head and asked shamelessly, “Then if you don’t consider him a friend, are you not going to eat the chicken leg he gave you? Let me help you eat it!”

As he spoke, Mushroom Head’s chopsticks reached out.

However, before his chopsticks could touch the chicken leg, it suddenly vanished from the plate.

Mushroom Head looked up blankly—the chicken leg had already appeared in Xu Jingyou’s mouth.

Xu Jingyou: Straight-faced chewing noises…

Mushroom Head: ?

This guy is so weird.

…

The last class on Friday was customarily PE.

The PE teacher required them to run three laps as a warm-up first. Except for girls with “special circumstances” who could ask for leave to rest, no one was allowed to fall behind. The students groaned and complained, but there was no choice; they had to run.

Everyone jogged along the track, soon heading toward the other end of the playground. That was where the first-years had their PE class. This time, Yuan Man paid special attention and, sure enough, found Xu Jingyou there.

Xu Jingyou was extremely tall, standing out conspicuously in the formation. Adolescence was a period of crazy growth for boys, but Xu Jingyou had grown far taller than the others. Standing with his classmates, he was a full half-head taller, so the Grade 1 PE teacher had placed him first in the first row.

Every time the PE teacher shouted “Dress left!”, the whole class’s eyes would converge on Xu Jingyou.

Just then, Yuan Man ran past Xu Jingyou along the track.

Yuan Man jumped up and down, waving at him, saying hello with his dimple on full display. “Hi, Xuedi~!”

All the Grade 1 xuedis thought Yuan Man was greeting them and responded in unison, “Hi, Xuezhang~!”

Yuan Man laughed like a duck, “Gaga,” but Xu Jingyou remained that same cold, distant iceberg.

Why is this Xu Jingyou iceberg so hard to crack? Yuan Man wondered.

At the same time, he blamed himself. Xu Jingyou is so tall and good-looking, how come I never noticed him before?

After the fifteen-minute warm-up, the PE teacher announced free activity time.

Everyone immediately called their friends and rushed to the equipment room; if they were late, they wouldn’t get a ball.

“Yuanyuan, play 3v3 with us, we need one more!”

“Yuanyuan, soccer? If we don’t have enough people we can call the first-years!”

“Yuanyuan, come on, let’s play badminton. No crappy school rackets this time, I brought mine from home!”

Yuan Man was always popular; boys and girls alike fought to play with him.

But today, Yuan Man turned them all down and ran toward the first-years instead.

Class 3 Grade 1 had also dismissed for free activity. Yuan Man circled the playground but couldn’t find Xu Jingyou. Sharp-eyed, he caught the Mushroom Head boy he had met before and asked, “Where’s Xu Jingyou?”

Mushroom Head pointed to the stands beside the basketball court. “He’s over there.”

Yuan Man looked in the direction of his finger and finally found Xu Jingyou.

Good heavens, Xu Jingyou was actually reading! This was precious PE time. It was rare for the PE teacher not to be “sick,” yet Xu Jingyou showed zero interest in participating.

Yuan Man had truly never seen anyone who liked reading more than Xu Jingyou. He read while volunteering at the library, and surprisingly, he was still reading during break time.

After a thought, Yuan Man strode toward the basketball court stands and sat down right next to Xu Jingyou.

“Xu Jingyou, what are you reading?” Yuan Man asked in a cheerful tone. “Introduce it to me.”

Xu Jingyou looked up from his book. Those indifferent eyes looked at him through the lenses as he asked bluntly, “Xuezhang, are you actually interested in what I’m reading, or is this just a tactic to get close to me?”

Even though his little scheme was exposed, Yuan Man wasn’t embarrassed. He simply leaned back on his hands and said carelessly, “I genuinely want to be friends with you, so of course I have to find a topic to talk about.”

“Want to be friends with me?” Xu Jingyou’s tone was flat. “I think you just want to get the borrower list from me.”

Yuan Man pouted. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive! …Besides, I have a reason why I absolutely have to get that list.”

“What reason?”

Yuan Man was tongue-tied for a second. His darting eyes stared at Xu Jingyou as if considering whether this person was trustworthy.

He hadn’t planned on telling anyone about this, but inexplicably, the moment their eyes met, Yuan Man opened his mouth as if possessed. “I found… a letter in that book.”

“What letter?”

“A letter written to me.” After saying this, Yuan Man suddenly thought of something and added stammeringly, “Don’t misunderstand—it doesn’t count as a love letter—maybe it counts, anyway, don’t ask. The letter is that person’s privacy, I won’t show it to you.”

“…” The eyes behind the lenses wavered for an instant.

At this moment, Xu Jingyou was incredibly grateful that he rarely showed any expression, allowing him to hide all his inner thoughts. He heard his own voice ask, “You found… a letter?”

“Yeah!” Yuan Man didn’t hear the implication in his voice. “That letter had my name on it. There isn’t a second Yuan Man in our school!”

Before he could finish his sentence, Xu Jingyou suddenly slammed his book shut with a bang and got up to leave.

Yuan Man was baffled. “Where are you going?”

Xu Jingyou: “Time to assemble.”

Yuan Man: “Huh? But the PE teacher hasn’t blown the whistle yet.”

But Xu Jingyou said nothing, continuing to stride toward the playground.

Chasing behind him, Yuan Man felt this xuedi really had a weird temper. As they say, roses have thorns; it seemed that whether male or female, good-looking people would use their beauty to commit crimes and do whatever they wanted.

One in front, one behind, chasing each other. Yuan Man was much shorter than Xu Jingyou, and in no time, a gap opened up between them.

Yuan Man wasn’t made of cotton candy. He felt that as a xuezhang, he had humbled himself again and again to get close to this xuedi, only to be met with rejection every time. He could get angry too, okay?

The more he thought, the angrier he got. Yuan Man’s temper flared up. “Xu Jingyou, I haven’t finished talking and you run off. Do you need to pee or something?!”

“…”

“Xu Jingyou, stand still!”

“…”

“Xu Jingyou, you— Shit, look out!!”

Before Xu Jingyou could react, Yuan Man lunged forward, slamming into his back and carrying him down toward the side.

The two tumbled into a ball, stumbling a few steps before barely finding their footing. In the next second, a speeding basketball smashed heavily into the spot where he had just been standing, then crashed into the wire fence next to them with a loud clang, actually denting the mesh.

“Yuanyuan, are you okay?!” A few boys from the basketball court ran over quickly. “Sorry, our hands slipped while shooting.”

Yuan Man clutched his forehead and glared at the troublemakers, shouting fiercely, “What ‘hand slipped’? I bet you didn’t even see where the backboard was! If you can’t shoot threes, don’t force it. Look, if your Grandpa [referring to himself] hadn’t reacted fast enough, you would have hit someone!!”

The basketball players were Yuan Man’s classmates. Having been scolded by him, they didn’t dare talk back and could only bow and apologize repeatedly.

Yuan Man lectured them for a while, then forced them to sign a pile of humiliating treaties (including but not limited to: getting water for Yuan Man during breaks, saving seats for Yuan Man in the cafeteria, snatching spicy sticks for Yuan Man at the tuck shop, etc.) before letting them go.

After those troublemakers rolled away, Yuan Man looked at Xu Jingyou, who had been standing silently at the side for a long time. Raising an eyebrow, he said, “Why aren’t you talking? Scared silly by the basketball? If you don’t play basketball, don’t read next to the court next time. It’s dangerous. If you really like reading that much, find a safe place to do it.”

Xu Jingyou stared at his bright red forehead, subconsciously lifting a hand to touch it, then abruptly realizing the action was too intimate. He quickly retracted his hand and flusteredly pushed up his glasses.

“Xuezhang, your forehead…”

“It’s nothing,” Yuan Man rubbed his head and cracked a joke. “You look so frail and weak, how are your bones so hard? I slammed my head into your shoulder just now and thought I hit a wall.”

Xu Jingyou thought he heard wrong. “Me? Frail?”

Yuan Man: “Yeah, look how thin you are. Eating only those vegetables at noon, your nutrition won’t keep up.”

Xu Jingyou was momentarily speechless. He looked down at himself. He spread his fingers and clenched them tight; the veins on the back of his hand were distinct, his knuckles prominent.

Yes, he was no longer the person he used to be. Now he was lean and tall. His height, approaching 1.9 meters, made everyone have to look up at him. No one would ever mock or bully him again for eating one extra mouthful of rice or one extra piece of meat.

Lenses hiding his complex expression, he looked back at the boy in front of him and asked, “Xuezhang, why did you save me just now?”

“What do you mean ‘why’?” Yuan Man was stunned at first, then immediately reacted. “Wait, you don’t think I’m going to demand a reward for a favor, do you? The borrower list is a separate matter from this, don’t go imagining things! That ball was really fast. Getting hit would definitely cause a concussion. Even if it wasn’t you standing there, even if it was a stranger, I couldn’t have just stood by and watched.”

As he spoke, a patch of dark cloud was quietly moved aside by the wind, and sunlight illuminated the boy’s face without reservation.

Yuan Man’s face was round, still carrying a trace of childishness, but his eyes were forever bright and spirited, filled with a frank and fervent camaraderie.

—That was a heroism unique to this boy.

At that moment, a whistle sounded from the other end of the playground. The PE teacher was calling for assembly.

The assembly points for the first and second years were different. Hearing the whistle, Yuan Man hurriedly prepared to leave, but Xu Jingyou suddenly called out to him.

“Xuezhang.”

“What?”

“…I want to know, if you actually find the person who wrote that love letter, what are you going to say to him?”

“Aiyah, I told you it doesn’t count as a love letter.”

Yuan Man scratched his face. To be honest, he hadn’t seriously considered this question before.

However, it wasn’t really a question worth thinking too hard about.

“It’s simple—I’d say ‘Thank you’!”

Xu Jingyou was stunned. “Thank you?”

“That’s right!” Yuan Man’s eyes curved, the dimple on his left cheek brimming with a smile. “He wrote that letter to me so earnestly, so naturally I have to stand in front of him, look him in the eye, and earnestly say—’Thank you for your sentiments, I have received them!'”

Xu Jingyou’s heart gave a violent lurch, soaring high into the sky.

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