Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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After the bell rang, the physics teacher lingered a while before leaving. But as soon as he left, cheerful cheers erupted from Class 2. Students chatted excitedly, some asking to go to the arcade, others inviting each other to do homework at the bubble tea shop. One by one, students began to leave the classroom.
While Ji Rang stood at the corner of the hallway, his face grim. Other students avoided him, taking a detour down the other staircase.
Qi Ying hadn’t come out yet, probably waiting obediently for Yu Zhuo in the classroom.
He stared at the front door, lifting his foot several times before pulling it back.
What was he doing?!
Arguing? Why did she run away as soon as she saw him?
Explaining the misunderstanding? Nothing happened between him and Xue Manqing!
Was he bored, talking to a little deaf mute? He had nothing to do with her! He didn’t even have her contact information! He must have eaten too many steamed buns at the cafeteria at lunchtime!
He cursed himself a few times in his mind, then turned to leave with a sullen face.
The half-open back door of the classroom was pushed open, and Qi Ying walked out, adjusting her backpack as she went.
Ji Rang was caught off guard as he came face to face with her. His displeased expression froze, unable to look away in time. When Qi Ying saw him, her eyes lit up at first, and her smile was sweet, but then, as if remembering something, her feet, which were about to run to his side, stopped. She was still smiling, but her expression had become timid and cautious, like when they first met.
Ji Rang felt a surge of anger and gritted his teeth, saying, “You come here right now.”
Qi Ying, observing his expression, felt that the general was probably very angry.
Was it because she always bothered him for no reason?
She lowered her eyes sadly, thought for a moment, and decided that it would be better to get out of his sight as soon as possible to avoid making him angry.
Then Ji Rang saw the usually sweetly smiling girl, silently turn around and walk away with teary eyes.
Ji Rang froze, his expression stiff and rigid. He only reacted when Qi Ying reached the stairwell, taking a few long strides forward and grabbing her wrist.
Qi Ying turned around, her lips slightly pursed, looking incredibly wronged yet trying to hold back.
His fingers tightened, his throat tightening, “I… I wasn’t being mean to you…” Ji Rang felt a throbbing pain in his temples, and he kept biting his tongue hard. The pain calmed his nerves, and he asked in a muffled voice, “Can I take you to get strawberry pudding?”
Qi Ying looked at him blankly.
He repeated four words: “Strawberry, pudding.”
She finally understood, smiled, and nodded obediently.
….
This time they went to a different dessert shop, right behind the school, next to the Qilixiang milk tea shop.
He ordered a strawberry pudding and was paying when Qi Ying stood beside him, looking down at the various colorful and adorable desserts in the glass display case.
She hadn’t tried any of them before, and wanted them all.
She felt she’d already had strawberry pudding last time, so she wanted to try something different. She tugged at Ji Rang’s sleeve, pointed to the mango mousse she liked, and indicated she wanted to switch.
Ji Rang disagreed, glaring at her fiercely: “No being fickle! You get what you like!” He shoved the strawberry pudding into her hand: “Eat!”
Qi Ying wasn’t angry; after all, strawberry pudding was delicious too.
She finished it in a few bites, took out her pocket money from her bag, and ran over, pointing to the mango mousse, signalling the clerk to get it for her. Just as the clerk was about to go over, Ji Rang, sitting in his seat, said darkly, “Don’t sell it to her.”
Who didn’t know Ji Rang?
The clerk didn’t dare disobey him and lied to Qi Ying, “This was pre-ordered by another customer, we don’t sell it.”
She was a little disappointed, clutching a twenty-yuan note, looking left and right, then happily pointed to a matcha cake, winking at the clerk.
Before the clerk could speak, the boss’s cold voice rang out again: “Tell her that this shop doesn’t sell anything except strawberry pudding.”
The clerk was speechless.
“Boss, don’t you feel any remorse for bullying a deaf-mute like this?”
Despite her inward grumbling, she could only comply. The clerk relayed Ji Rang’s words with an apologetic and guilty expression.
Qi Ying was a little surprised to encounter such a situation, but she assumed the dessert shop was doing well, and walked back with the twenty yuan in her hand.
Ji Rang was playing with his phone. When he saw her sit down, a faint smile appeared in his eyes, which he quickly concealed.
Qi Ying rested her chin on her hands and looked at him for a while. Seeing that he didn’t speak and was just leaning back in his chair playing with his phone, she was a little puzzled. She took out her phone and typed: What do you want from me?
Ji Rang glanced at the screen, shifted uncomfortably, and changed his posture.
He couldn’t very well say that he came to settle scores with her, could he?
He was silent for a moment, then replied expressionlessly under Qi Ying’s curious gaze: I wanted to do my homework with you.
Qi Ying’s eyes crinkled with excitement as she happily pulled out her worksheet from her bag and spread it on the table, then looked at him expectantly.
Every day after school, classmates would ask each other to go to bubble tea shops or coffee shops to do homework, but she’d never gone with anyone before. She never expected the first person to ask her out would be General Ji!
Ji Rang: …………
He slowly grabbed his bag, opened it, and glanced inside.
There was only a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a charger, a half-empty bottle of cola, and a high school math textbook that looked like it’d been shoved in some unknown year.
He could only pull out that math textbook.
He flipped through it and saw that several pages had been torn out.
What the hell were sine and cosine functions? What the hell were cos/sin/tan/f(x)? Was this a math book or an English book?
The genius who wanted to pretend to do a few problems was at a loss for words.
The key was that he didn’t have a pen.
Across from him, Qi Ying took out her pencil case, it was a pink cloth pencil case embroidered with a white, long-eared rabbit. Even the pen she used was impeccably shaped, like a blue whale.
She did a few multiple-choice questions and noticed Ji Rang still staring at the book in the same position. Curious, she tilted her head.
Ji Rang noticed her gaze and, forcing a smile, reached out to her: “Lend me a pen.”
Qi Ying suddenly understood and quickly pushed her pencil case over.
He opened the pencil case with two fingers, looked around, and picked out a pink whale-hat-shaped ballpoint pen.
He began to scribble and draw in his brand-new math book.
He drew a little girl with a ponytail, then drew a strawberry, wanting to draw a little girl eating a strawberry, but his drawing skills weren’t good enough, so he had to give up.
While working on the fill-in-the-blank questions, Qi Ying’s phone vibrated on the table. It was a message from Yu Zhuo: “Sis, where did you go? Didn’t I tell you to wait for me in the classroom and not wander off?”
Qi Ying knew he didn’t like Ji Rang, so she didn’t tell the truth: “I wanted milk tea, at Qilixiang.”
Yu Zhuo said: “Oh, then wait for me there, I’ll be right there. Buy me a milk green tea, 70% sugar, with extra boba.”
Ji Rang’s phone also rang. Upon answering, Qu Dazhuang shouted: “Brother Rang, the Class 7 homeroom teacher suddenly came over, and that kid Yu Zhuo ran away. But I checked the time, it’s been half an hour, so I didn’t chase after him.”
Ji Rang glanced at Qi Ying, who was replying to a message, and said coldly, “I know.”
He hung up and saw Qi Ying writing in her notebook, then handing it to him.
Her neat handwriting looked as obedient as she was: My brother’s here to pick me up, I have to go.
Ji Rang nodded slightly.
She wrote again: Can we do homework together again next time?
Ji Rang, having dug his own grave, pursed his lips and nodded again.
Qi Ying smiled sweetly at him and started packing her schoolbag. He held the pink whale pen, not returning it to her, and stuffed it into his bag along with his math book.
After leaving the dessert shop, Qi Ying went to the nearby Qilixiang to buy milk tea for Yu Zhuo.
After showing the clerk her order and turning around, she saw that Ji Rang was already gone. His schoolbag was slung across his shoulder, his steps were lazy, and he wasn’t wearing his school uniform properly, but his back was straight.
Qi Ying held the hot milk tea and waved at his back.
….
It was rush hour after school, and the school gate was congested with cars, all parents picking up their children. Yu Zhuo darted through the crowd with his schoolbag, running towards Qilixiang.
Car horns blared deafeningly at the intersection ahead.
A white Volkswagen was parked on the main road, blocking the intersection. The driver, a middle-aged man, leaned out of the driver’s seat and yelled at a small shop not far away, “Hurry up! How long will it take to buy a drink?”
A chubby little boy was paying for a bottle of soda at the shop entrance. “Coming, coming,” the black car blocked by him kept honking.
Seeing that he didn’t move, the car swerved to the right and drove through the traffic violation area monitored by electronic surveillance. It pulled up alongside his, the car window slowly rolled down, and a cold, sharp female voice rang out: “If you can’t park, don’t drive around causing traffic problems!”
The middle-aged man was embarrassed by her scolding and didn’t say anything until the car drove away. Then he spat out the window and cursed, “You think you can park like that! It’s all Volkswagen, what’s so great about it?”
The other driver, who was also annoyed that he was blocking the way, couldn’t help but mock him: “Don’t kid me, buddy, that’s a Phaeton, it could buy ten of your cars.”
The middle-aged man: “…”
Yu Zhuo was climbing over the railing next to the pedestrian crossing, intending to take a shortcut, when he suddenly heard someone shout from the side of the road: “Hey, kid.”
He ignored it and had just stepped over one leg when the voice called again: “The kid in the red Adidas.”
Wearing red Adidas? Wasn’t that himself?
Yu Zhuo turned his head and saw a black sedan parked on the side of the road, with a pretty girl with short hair sitting in the driver’s seat waving at him.
Yu Zhuo hesitated and pointed to himself, and she nodded.
He glanced at his hurdling leg, silently pulled it back, and coughed lightly, “Do we know each other?”
The short-haired girl smiled, her delicate eyebrows and long eyes exuding a cold and aloof air. “We’ve met before. You know Ji Rang, right?”
Yu Zhuo was even more puzzled, looking at her without speaking.
She smiled again, turned around and took an envelope from the passenger seat, handing it out the window, “Could you please give this to Ji Rang for me?”
Yu Zhuo frowned, “I’m not familiar with him, why don’t you give it to him yourself?”
Ji Qian shrugged, “He blocked me.”
Yu Zhuo was somewhat surprised, glancing at the envelope again, thinking, “Holy crap, is this a love letter?
Such a… such a beautiful and aloof young lady actually likes Ji Rang?
What kind of world is this?
Ji Qian was still smiling, waving the letter in her hand at him, “Kid, do your sister a favor.”
That smile was so beautiful that no boy could refuse.
Yu Zhuo reached out and took the envelope, repeating, “Let me make it clear, I’m not familiar with him, so I might not be able to get it to him. Even if I did, he might not accept it.”
Ji Qian gave him a knowing smile, just thanked him, and drove away slowly.
Yu Zhuo glanced down at the unsealed envelope, pursed his lips, and stuffed it into his bag. When he reached Qilixiang, Qi Ying was standing at the entrance with a milk tea in her hand, waving when she saw him.
Yu Zhuo took the milk tea, took a sip, and complained to himself, “Why is it hot? I wanted an iced one.” But since she’d already bought it, he didn’t plan to get another cup and led Qi Ying to the bus stop.
After getting on the bus, he texted Qi Ying: “Sis, let me tell you, that Ji Rang is definitely not simple.”
Qi Ying: …
Yu Zhuo told her about a pretty girl asking him to pass on a love letter, and added: “He’s just a scumb*g who plays with other people’s feelings!”
Qi Ying was a little angry: “Maybe it’s something important, don’t make wild guesses.”
Yu Zhuo: Then why did he block them? Isn’t it because he’s afraid to face it?
Qi Ying: If you say that again, I’ll tell Uncle you got into another fight today.
Yu Zhuo: ?
Qi Ying pointed to his elbow.
There was some dust from the wall where he bumped into Qu Dazhuang and the others in the classroom, and he had a minor scrape. Yu Zhuo was amazed by his sister’s insight and silently shut up.
When they got home, Wu Yinghua had already prepared dinner, she took the two children’s schoolbags, and told them to wash their hands.
Yu Zhuo’s schoolbag zipper was only half-zipped, and as it was left on the bed, an envelope fell out.
Wu Yinghua picked it up curiously. The envelope wasn’t sealed, so she opened it and looked inside.
It was a photograph.
A gentle-looking woman was holding a child of about one or two years old, holding a Mickey Mouse balloon, and smiling at the camera.
The bottom corner of the photo was printed with the date: taken in the year 2000.
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