Ask her to come out

When Wen Sheng chased after them, two tall figures in the stairwell had already reached the far end of the stairs and were about to go up.

"Xu Jianing!"

Her shout echoed through the empty stairwell, causing the two people who had already stepped onto the stairs to stop in their tracks.

Li Changshui tactfully said, "I'll go back to the classroom first."

Xu Jianing turned his head slightly, somewhat surprised. He stopped and turned around, standing on the stairs quietly watching her.

The moment their eyes met, Wen Sheng suddenly regretted it, because she had no idea what to say.

The two people stood one in front of the other, with several steps between them.

Xu Jianing didn't urge her, waiting for her to speak.

Wen Sheng suddenly hesitated to take another step forward. Instinctively, she tried to find a reason to speak, but her mind went blank, and she could only clumsily come up with excuses:

"Senior, how did you find your own learning method?!"

As soon as the words left her mouth, Wen Sheng wished she could disappear on the spot, or better yet, crash headfirst into the wall next to her.

Oh my god, what did she just say?!

The sharing session ended a long time ago, so isn't it incredibly abrupt to ask this now? And why did she use "excuse me"? Who speaks to a classmate so formally?

What Xu Jianing saw was a girl standing at the bottom of the stairs, so nervous that she almost twisted the hem of her clothes into a pretzel, not daring to look up at him.

"Are you afraid of me?" he suddenly asked.

Wen Sheng was taken aback by his words, then looked up at him and said, "Who said that? This is my way of showing respect for knowledge."

Xu Jianing paused for a moment, his eyes darkening slightly. He didn't even realize it himself, but his fingers, hanging by his side, twitched.

“That’s true.” He walked down a few steps toward her, and said self-deprecatingly, “For studying.”

His tone was indifferent, revealing no particular emotion.

As Wen Sheng listened, she felt as if she had accidentally stepped on some unseen line. The other party hadn't said anything, but it made her feel a little guilty.

"Wen Sheng." He suddenly called out to her.

"Um?"

"You chased after me just to ask about study methods?" A faint smile played on his thin lips.

Wen Sheng opened her mouth, then stubbornly blurted out, "Yes, because I thought you were making it up after listening to your sharing of learning experiences."

"Which sentence was made up?"

"Ten minutes of reviewing before bed? You really do something like that?" She directly exposed his pretense.

Xu Jianing remained calm, neither denying nor admitting anything, and continued to walk down one more step, closing the distance between the two.

As the sun set, they stood at the top of the stairs, their feet on the mottled, old cement steps. His shadow fell right at her feet, almost completely enveloping her.

"How do you know I can't?" Xu Jianing asked.

Wen Sheng was speechless for a moment; they were too close, and her language system simply collapsed.

Xu Jianing suddenly laughed.

This smile wasn't a polite smile maintained on the podium, but a genuine smile from the bottom of my heart that I couldn't hide.

When he saw her running towards him, he wasn't so irritated anymore, and he even forgot about how she hadn't dared to look at him from the audience earlier.

"Sounds fake?" Xu Jianing chuckled softly.

Wen Sheng turned her head away and took a step back: "It's... not something someone like you would do."

"What kind of person?" He raised an eyebrow, a hint of amusement in his eyes.

"The kind who gets excellent grades, looks too aloof, and doesn't talk much?" Wen Sheng described him somewhat uncertainly.

"So how do you think I'll learn?"

"A natural talent, the kind of person who can automatically memorize knowledge after a good night's sleep."

"Then why did you chase after me to ask me?" he asked deliberately.

Wen Sheng paused, then said with a hint of annoyance, "I thought you would hide something real."

"Wen Sheng, how long have you known me?"

"Are you so sure that I look too cold and don't talk much?"

This sentence doesn't sound like a blame; it's more like a profound question that's hard to refute.

Wen Sheng was taken aback by the question. He had only said it casually, but he didn't expect the man to take it seriously and ask such a direct question.

While she was still organizing her thoughts, Xu Jianing suddenly asked, "Are you free on weekend mornings?"

"Yes," Wen Sheng answered instinctively.

“I’ll take you to a place,” Xu Jianing said, “a place specifically for hiding ‘real stuff’.”

Wen Sheng: "......"

Seeing the other party hesitate, Xu Jianing slowly added, "Don't worry, it's a not-so-public place, most people won't be able to find it."

He looked at her with a half-smile, "Didn't you just say that you have great respect for knowledge?"

Wen Sheng looked at him with a mixture of belief and doubt. Xu Jianing looked so serious yet with a mischievous grin that she couldn't tell if he was serious or just teasing her.

I suddenly began to doubt whether the oppressive feeling I had just experienced was just my imagination.

After all, Xu Jianing's emotions came and went quickly, and she couldn't keep up with them at all.

He's right, she really doesn't know what kind of person he is.

Her impressions of him were all vague labels; she knew almost nothing about the real "him".

So she nodded, perhaps not for "where to go," but for him, whom she didn't understand.

"good."

As she walked back to the classroom, Li Qingmiao called out to her, "Wen Sheng, let's go! There's a new dish tonight!"

Wen Sheng looked down and took out a few coins from the drawer. She counted them, and with the crumpled meal ticket, it was just enough for a good meal in the cafeteria.

But she could only choose between buying books and eating out.

Finally, Wen Sheng put the meal ticket back in the drawer. "Miaomiao, you go first. I want to go to the bookstall."

"You haven't eaten yet?" Li Qingmiao asked.

"I still have some leftovers from lunch, I'll eat them later."

Wen Sheng walked out of the teaching building, crossed the square, and followed the flow of people toward the school gate.

The book stall was set up on the street not far from the school gate. An old parasol provided shelter from the wind and rain. Stacks of exercise books and supplementary teaching materials were spread out on the wooden frame. Some of them were already yellowed, and the covers had the words "Physics Enhancement", "Mathematics Sprint" and "Chinese Language Improvement Secrets" written in big, eye-catching characters.

Several students were squatting in front of the bookstall, their schoolbags on their backs, flipping through the books and muttering to themselves:

"Is this the book that Senior Xu recommended?"

"Let me see..." The student being asked flipped through his notes, checked them, and nodded: "Yes, but he said this is suitable for intensive study, it's a bit difficult, and it's more suitable for students with a foundation. Are you sure you want to buy it?"

"Buy it! How could something recommended by Senior Xu be wrong?" another classmate chimed in. "Just buy it first, it'll give you peace of mind. What if you need it someday?"

The group chatted amongst themselves, and finally each person pulled out a few cents, scraping together enough money to pay for the book. They held it in their arms as if it were a precious treasure.

Wen Sheng stood quietly to the side, flipping through the workbook. The questions in the book were densely packed, and the difficulty was indeed not low.

She simply squatted down, picked up the stack of workbooks next to her, and flipped through them one by one. Every time she turned a page, she would stop and silently judge in her mind: Can I do this problem? Is the explanation clear? Is it suitable for my current level?

The stall owner sat on a low stool, and the radio next to him was playing the TV series "Romance of the Three Kingdoms": "Cao Cao is too suspicious, he will surely lose Jingzhou."

As he collected the money, he glanced at the book and couldn't help but laugh, "Young lady, you're quite different from others when it comes to choosing books. Usually, when students come here, they just buy whichever book someone recommends. It's rare to see someone like you, flipping through each page so carefully."

Wen Sheng was holding a math workbook, her brows furrowed as she pondered the types of questions. After hearing the stall owner's words, she looked up and said, "I'm afraid I'll buy the wrong one, which will waste time and money."

The stall owner nodded, quite approvingly: "I also have a regular customer at my stall, just like you. He always takes his time to look through everything before making a purchase."

Wen Sheng closed the book in her hand, picked up the next one, and asked as she flipped through it, "What happened next? Did he ever need the books he bought?"

"Did you use it?" The stall owner squinted and thought for a moment. "That kid has pretty good grades. I heard he's always been first in his grade. He's pickier than anyone else when it comes to choosing books. He doesn't look at the cover, and he doesn't believe in fancy descriptions. He just stares at the questions and explanations."

"Isn't it strange? Every time school starts, he picks out a lot of workbooks. I thought I'd found a bookworm to be a big customer. But every time, within a week, he stops buying workbooks and just asks me if I have any second-hand books to sell."

“Once I asked him why he didn’t buy the books you’ve flipped through, and he said he had done all the exercises, but hadn’t read the novels yet.”

Wen Sheng imagined the scene and couldn't help but ask, "Did he come back later?"

"Come on, it's only the beginning of the semester, right? He'll definitely come to buy workbooks when school starts, and he'll just come to read novels during the middle of the semester."

As the stall owner spoke, he pointed to a stack of old novels in the corner of his stall, "If it weren't for these few tattered novels of mine, he wouldn't have bothered with my stall."

As she looked at the books, the image of Xu Jianing sitting under a tree reading a novel involuntarily surfaced in her mind, and she burst out laughing.

"So, that serious look of yours is familiar. The way you pick out books and the way you frown are just like that kid." The stall owner clicked his tongue twice. "You two aren't siblings, are you?"

Wen Sheng didn't reply. Instead, she stood up, handed over the workbook she had been choosing for a while, and asked, "How much is this one, boss?"

The stall owner was interrupted for a moment, smiled, and quoted a price: "I'll give you a discount, one cent, the same price as regular customers."

Wen Sheng took out crumpled coins from her pocket, handed them over, and then turned and slowly walked down the steps on the street toward the teaching building.

The stall owner had just finished collecting the money when a familiar voice rang in his ears:

"Boss, do you have any new books lately?"

He looked up and saw that it was indeed Xu Jianing.

"Hey, Aning, you've come at just the right time. If you had arrived three minutes earlier, we might have bumped into each other."

"who?"

The stall owner said mysteriously, "A young girl who picks out books in the same way you do, squatted there flipping through books for a long time, and even the way she frowns is just like you."

Xu Jianing asked, "Which book did she buy?"

The stall owner pulled out the last book in the same series from under the wooden shelf behind him and shook it: "This is the one. She picked it out herself and flipped through it several times before buying it."

Xu Jianing glanced down at the cover and nodded: "This book of questions is quite difficult, and most people don't like to choose it, but it's very suitable for people with a foundation."

"You're right, she's very selective. She flips through each question and looks at it one by one. She doesn't say it, but her eyes are even more discerning than yours."

As Xu Jianing listened, she suddenly recalled what she had said at the stairwell that afternoon—

"I thought you would hide something real."

Now it seems we've found one of them.

The stall owner, still chuckling to himself, said, "Next time I see her, I'll recommend you to her."

Xu Jianing handed over the workbook in her hand, saying, "No need, I'll explain it myself."

While giving change, the stall owner asked, "Hey, not buying a novel today?"

Xu Jianing replied casually, "School just started, it's not time yet."

Despite saying that, his gaze fell on the novel shelf next to him.

The copy of "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio" that was available for borrowing was still there a few days ago, but it's gone today.