Chapter 17

◎Did anything happen to you yesterday?◎

The next morning, Shi Yuesheng was already sitting upright on the sofa on the first floor with a newspaper in his hand. Aunt Chen came out of the room and said in surprise, "Mr. Shi, why are you up so early today? I'll bring you breakfast."

Shi Yuesheng shook his head and said, "No rush, let's eat together after they're all up. It's a rare weekend at home, let Ziqian and the others sleep in a bit more."

Aunt Chen hesitated and said, "Xiao Qian has been having classes all day and has already left."

Shi Yuesheng paused, putting down the newspaper in his hand: "What about Yueyue?"

"Xiaoyue too."

...

Zhan Xinyue still didn't sleep well that night. Although she no longer had a fever, bizarre dreams kept haunting her. When she woke up, she felt even worse than before she went to sleep.

After Pang Yun took a cold medicine at her request, Zhan Wei took her to school as usual. The campus was unusually lively today, with groups of people gathered everywhere. Sunday classes were very flexible; besides attending elective courses that interested them, they could also participate in club activities, and many clubs were quite active this time of year.

Unfortunately, such excitement had nothing to do with her. The experimental classes in the high school did not have the right to choose their own club activities, and they were forced to attend Olympiad classes on Sundays.

However, although it is called an Olympiad course, since the provincial education reform issued a document two years ago to cancel the submission of competition reports, the course content of the Olympiad course has become a more difficult version of the regular course, which can also be said to be another form of remedial classes.

Zhan Xinyue vaguely remembered that the make-up class wouldn't be held in the usual classroom, but in the large lecture hall. Finding the lecture hall still took her some time, but luckily she left early and arrived at the classroom with some free time; it wasn't full, just a few scattered people.

She was feeling very drowsy and walked silently through the back door with her head down. Just then, someone hurriedly stepped out the door and almost bumped into her.

"Excuse me—" The boy's clear voice trailed off, drifting away from her ear before suddenly drawing closer and ringing out again. He stopped in his tracks, turning back to her side, and exclaimed in surprise, "Oh, it's you!"

Zhan Xinyue looked up and was caught off guard by a pair of smiling eyes.

"So you're from Class 10!" the other person exclaimed in surprise.

...It was Xu Shen again.

How did he end up here?

Zhan Xinyue was stunned for a moment before she vaguely remembered that back then, because there were only two science experimental classes in the grade, the two classes had to have a class together on Sundays.

The summer morning sunlight was already a little dazzling, and the boy's hair was bathed in the morning light, as if it were gilded. When he looked at her, his eyes were curved, and his pupils showed a very pale color.

Almost the instant she saw his face clearly, her previous drowsiness vanished, and the heart-wrenching pain from her dream that day enveloped her once again.

In that vividly terrifying dream, she did not see Xu Shen.

After she woke up, she couldn't help but wonder how Xu Shen in her previous life would have reacted upon learning of her death.

Is it sadness, regret? Or... a sense of relief?

He'd just been caught cheating, and now he wouldn't have to bear the stigma of being exposed. He could even legitimately help his mistress become his wife. He'd already achieved two things: promotion, wealth, and the death of his wife. He must be quite pleased with himself.

Seeing her staring at him blankly with an unreadable expression, Xu Shen waved a hand in front of her and reminded her, "Don't you remember? Friday at the small supermarket, remember?"

How could Zhan Xinyue not remember? She suppressed her turbulent emotions and walked past him without saying a word.

"Looks like I don't remember..." Xu Shen touched his nose and smiled.

Zhan Xinyue strode into the classroom. Although not many people were there, the classroom was still clearly divided into groups. Class 1 students were mostly sitting in the front row, while Class 10 students were gathered in the back. Although a few students from the two classes knew each other and sat together, everyone generally sat according to their original classes.

In the last row of the classroom, Shi Ziqian's figure was very conspicuous. He was doing a problem with his head down, not sitting upright as usual, with one hand supporting his head, as if he was also sleepy.

Without thinking much, Zhan Xinyue walked towards him instinctively. Only when she pulled out the chair did she remember that during tutoring sessions, you could sit anywhere, and she didn't actually have to sit next to him.

However, Shi Ziqian had already noticed her. He glanced at her, then slightly folded up the test booklets on the table to make room for her.

Zhan Xinyue had no choice but to sit down and say, "Good morning."

She still remembered that Shi Ziqian greeted her when he left school that day. At that time, she thought that although her deskmate was usually a bit cold, he was actually quite polite and courteous to her.

His voice was a little hoarse as he said, "Good morning."

On Sunday, there are only two classes in total. The four classes in the morning are all math olympiad, and the four classes in the afternoon are all English olympiad, which is quite boring.

The math Olympiad class was taught by Zhang Chao, the math teacher of Class One. He explained things in much more detail than Chen Rui, but for Zhan Xinyue, who was already bad at math, the math Olympiad class was torture no matter what. Especially after suddenly bumping into Xu Shen, she was even more upset.

The events of her past life had passed too long ago, and many memories had become blurred. Before Xu Shen transferred to Class 10, she didn't have a deep impression of him and had long forgotten that the two of them had once been in the same class.

The fact that the two of them met again meant that she would have to sit in the same classroom as Xu Shen all day, and that this situation would repeat itself every week thereafter. She was not mentally prepared for this.

Zhang Chao kept rambling on and on, then wrote strings of characters that looked like gibberish on the blackboard. She glanced at them a few times, and her already tired head started to throb even more.

Xu Shen had already returned to his seat in the front row. Looking down from the back of the classroom, his figure was extremely conspicuous. She tried deliberately not to look at him, but she couldn't stop her gaze from drifting towards him. Staring at the collar of his school uniform for a while, the dream from last night suddenly came to mind, followed by the image of the car accident and the sky filled with red. It was like that then too; her head ached terribly, and not just her head, but her whole body ached so much that she couldn't even scream…

Zhan Xinyue, supporting her head, slowly slumped onto the table.

The rhythmic scratching sound of Shi Ziqian's pen tip hitting the paper as he did his homework drifted in from beside me. Shi Ziqian seemed to always be doing homework; aside from occasionally sleeping on his desk during breaks, he spent most of his time quietly doing his own thing, seemingly uninterested in anything else.

The sound of the pen nib gliding across the paper was faint, yet strangely comforting. This faint sound reminded her that it was all in the past, everything was over, and now she was on campus, nothing could hurt her anymore.

Perhaps it was because of that reassuring voice, or perhaps it was because of the cold medicine she took that morning, but she probably fell asleep during Zhang Chao's class.

Half-asleep, she found herself back at the entrance of Jinshi Xiaozhu, seeing Xie Wanzhi arm-in-arm with Xu Shen. They walked past her again and again, every movement and expression vividly clear. That childish voice, like a vengeful spirit, echoed relentlessly in her ears: "Daddy, Daddy..."

She knew she was dreaming, but she was trapped in this nightmare. Even though she struggled desperately to escape, her body was stiff and she couldn't move.

Something suddenly hit me on the head.

She suddenly broke free and sat up abruptly.

Before she could even feel relieved to have finally escaped her dream, she was already facing several pairs of faces in the front row. Looking further ahead, she saw Zhang Chao on the podium staring intently at her.

"Sleeping so early in the morning? Come on, let me wake you up. Come up to the podium and solve this problem."

Zhan Xinyue looked at him blankly.

"You." Zhang Chaochong waved the half-eaten piece of chalk in his hand.

Her mind was still sluggish from just waking up. She stared at Zhang Chao for a few seconds, and a nonsensical thought popped into her head: In such a high lecture hall, Zhang Chao could actually throw a piece of chalk up accurately from below. It's a waste of his talent to teach math; he should be teaching physics...

"Hurry up, you're still not awake!" Zhang Chao urged.

Zhan Xinyue quickly shook off the random thoughts in her mind, glanced at the problem on the blackboard, and unsurprisingly had no idea how to solve it.

Zhang Chao urged again, his voice becoming more stern: "Stand up!"

The classroom was filled with rustling sounds, and more people turned their heads to look curiously at the back rows.

She braced herself, preparing to get up and go on stage to face the embarrassment of not being able to write a single word.

"squeak--"

Shi Ziqian stood up before her, and the chair beneath him made a soft thud as he stood up.

Zhan Xinyue remained half-up, looking at him.

Just after a piece of chalk hit Zhan Xinyue's head, it bounced onto Shi Ziqian's desk. He picked it up and walked towards the podium.

His expression was so calm and expressionless, as if the chalk had been meant to be thrown at him. Zhang Chao was momentarily speechless, beginning to wonder if his words had been ambiguous, causing the boy to misunderstand.

Before he could say anything, Shi Ziqian was already standing in front of the blackboard, smoothly writing the answer with the chalk in his hand.

The students in front only saw Zhang throw chalk in this direction, but they didn't see who the chalk was thrown at. When they saw Shi Ziqian go up, they didn't have any other reaction. Instead, they were more interested in him doing problems in front of the blackboard.

In the blink of an eye, he had solved half of the problem. Zhang Chao didn't say anything more, but gave Zhan Xinyue a warning look.

Zhan Xinyue was now fully awake. She hadn't expected Shi Ziqian to help her and was extremely grateful. After Shi Ziqian finished his questions and returned to his seat, she quickly thanked him.

"No need." Shi Ziqian shook his head slightly.

Having narrowly escaped disaster, Zhan Xinyue rubbed her temples, forcing herself to clear her head and open the chemistry workbook she hadn't finished over the weekend to continue studying. After all, this was the most important thing right now; she couldn't let herself be distracted by Xu Shen.

Suddenly, Shi Ziqian's voice rang in my ears again, still casual and nonchalant, as if it were just a casual question.

"Yesterday... was there anything I could do for you?"

"No," Zhan Xinyue replied casually, "I just stay home and do my homework."

After a long time, she heard Shi Ziqian softly hum "hmm" and then say nothing more.

Zhan Xinyue thought he wanted to say something, but after a long while she didn't hear him say anything more, she turned her head to look at him in confusion.

His eyelashes were drooping, his lips were slightly pursed, and the pen in his hand was suspended in mid-air, without writing a single word for a long time.