Chapter 201 He felt disgusted by the cuckoo occupying the magpie's nest

That should have happened during the summer before my junior year.

During the winter and summer holidays, unless she was doing an internship, Zhu Yingning would usually sign up for various volunteer activities, teaching in mountainous areas, volunteering at a nursing home, and so on. During the summer between her sophomore and junior years, Zhang Jiacheng and Zhu Yingning signed up for the same program, teaching summer interest classes for elementary school students in western China.

Of course, they didn't have any impressive talents, and Zhu Yingning couldn't possibly teach a child to blow leaves. While she didn't mind, writing "This holiday, we diligently taught mountain children to blow leaves" in the activity summary report felt a bit informal and unappealing. Fortunately, this activity didn't require any advanced skills. Before departure, they received three days of recorder training, printed and distributed sheet music, and then everyone, carrying several large boxes of recorders, set off for their destination.

The two-week teaching program was supposed to proceed smoothly, but at the end of the second week, the weather turned sour. Two days and two nights of torrential rain followed, causing flooding in the town. The water was knee-deep—high enough for adults. Many children were trapped in the school.

To ensure their safety, the top leaders sent several vehicles and asked civil servants, teachers and nearby enthusiastic villagers to escort the students home.

The car couldn't fit into the narrow alley, so it had to park at the village entrance. Teachers carried their students the rest of the way. Zhu Yingning also jumped into the water to help several children get home.

The flood ended and their teaching support also ended. She was busy doing a lot of things in the last few days, and because she didn't keep warm in time, she felt a little tired on the high-speed rail back to Beijing.

Since he seldom caught a cold and was always very sluggish when he did, Zhu Yingning didn't take it seriously. She covered him with a blanket and said, "I'll be fine after a good sleep. Call me when you're ready." Then she leaned back in the chair and fell asleep unconscious.

Zhang Jiacheng was a little worried, so he took her kettle and got up to get her some hot water.

The hot water was in another carriage. He waited in line for seven or eight minutes before getting some. When he returned to the carriage where she was with the kettle, he saw Xu Sirui.

To this day, Zhang Jiacheng still can't figure out why Xu Sirui appeared there that day.

He occupied the seat next to Zhu Yingning, but without the slightest sign of embarrassment, his posture relaxed, as if he were the original occupant. His face, however, was so delicate that it seemed impossible to associate him with a thug. But that wasn't the point. The point was that he slowly sat up straight and pulled his hand away from her face after hearing him return. Before that, Xu Sirui had been leaning towards her, with his back to him.

Zhang Jiacheng didn't want to think about what he had just done.

He turned his head and their eyes met in mid-air.

There was no expression on Xu Sirui's face, and there was no trace of guilt in her eyes as if she had been caught by her boyfriend. She was both frank and lazy. Her eyelashes drooped slightly, covering the upper part of her eyes and the meaning deep in her eyes. The downward curve at the end of her eyes was a bit sleepy, as if she didn't take his arrival seriously at all.

After looking at each other for a moment, he reached out and hooked the small transparent bag on the table in front of him. Zhang Jiacheng looked in the direction of his finger and found that it was a bag full of medicine.

"Her nose is blocked due to a cold. Let her spray it before going to bed tonight, otherwise her nose will be blocked and she won't be able to sleep."

He spoke in a low voice, and after he had finished his instructions, he stood up and left without any extra words, nor did he show any reluctance to leave, as if they were really just riding in the same car and came by to check on their old friend.

But Zhang Jiacheng knew that this was definitely not the case.

He stood there for a long time without moving, until the residual warmth on the seat dissipated and Zhu Yingning turned her head towards the window in her sleep. Then he slowly walked forward and pried open the bag with his fingers.

Medicines for treating nasal congestion, low-fever cooling patches, cold granules... the dazzling array of medicines made Zhang Jiacheng feel even more disgusted than the first time he saw Xu Sirui.

Including Xu Sirui's previous statement, which was so natural and familiar that it could even be called provocative. What position did he take to make this statement? Who did he think he was?

But no matter how he disparaged the other party in his heart, Zhang Jiacheng had to admit that he had indeed succeeded in annoyed him.

If you look closely, what really annoyed him was not Xu Sirui's provocative words, but the familiarity and understanding between them as they grew up together and witnessed each other's most vulnerable and embarrassing moments. Zhang Jiacheng knew a long time ago that he had no chance to participate in this. He could be her boyfriend, but not necessarily the person she would remember for the rest of her life.

The mark that Xu Sirui left in her life cannot be matched by any kind of love in the secular sense.

He never told Zhu Yingning about this because he felt there was no need to make things more complicated, or perhaps he didn't have enough confidence in himself.

But Xu Sirui's existence is like some kind of virus. When he and Zhu Yingning are in a good relationship, she never thinks of him. Once something goes wrong in the relationship, he can't help but simply and crudely attribute the existing problems to Xu Sirui, even though he knows that this is unreasonable.

Just as Zhu Yingning said, the problems in the relationship between her and him had actually never had anything to do with Xu Sirui.

**

"You say..." After watching Zhang Jiacheng get up and leave, Wen Wenxu put down the menu that was covering his face and asked Chen Fei awkwardly, "Should we pretend we know nothing and continue eating, or should we chase after the captain and comfort him?"

Chen Fei held his forehead, also having a headache: "...You ask me? You'd better not ask me."

It just so happened that after buying the juicer at Wanda, Wen Wenxu said he wanted to buy some summer clothes. Unfortunately, the prices in the clothing stores there were shocking. Except for chain stores like Uniqlo and Zara, the rest started at five or six hundred yuan.

"Do stores like this really have business here? Who's actually patronizing these stores?" Wen Wenxu complained as he walked out. "...Forget it, let's go to the shopping mall. I want to buy some clothes that are worth my low salary."

So the two of them went to the shopping mall and took a quick stroll around the clothing area on the first floor.

Wen Wenxu buys clothes in a swift and decisive manner, without even trying them on - anyway, all he buys are printed T-shirts. As long as the size is right, the print suits his aesthetic taste, and the price is under a hundred yuan, he doesn't even bother to see if the fabric is comfortable. He just buys it and pays, and the shopping is done in less than half an hour.

After shopping, of course they had to satisfy their stomachs, after all, it was already dinner time. Remembering that the last time they came here with Zhu Yingning, they had a good meal at a farm shop, Chen Fei and Wen Wenxu walked towards that shop in tacit understanding without thinking.

It was peak season and the restaurant was full, so the waiter asked them to sit in the waiting area in the corner of the restaurant and gave them a menu so that they could order in advance.

Wen Wenxu was just thinking about what to eat when Shen Fei patted him on the shoulder: "I think I saw the captain."

"Really?" Wen Wenxu closed the menu and craned his neck to look around the waiting area. "Where is it? Ask her to come and eat with us."

"She's already eating, and seems to be with someone else."

"That's great! Let's just go over and grab a seat so we don't have to wait here for our lives." Wen Wenxu said as he was about to transfer the menu to someone else.

Chen Fei quickly pulled him back: "No, I don't think she wants to be disturbed by us."

"Why?" Wen Wenxu asked casually. After asking, he finally followed Chen Fei's line of sight and saw Zhu Yingning not far away. He also understood why Chen Fei said that Zhu Yingning didn't seem to want to be disturbed.

The two of them sat in the corner and passively listened to the reason why their captain broke up.

After the two parties left, after a struggle between conscience and desire, Wen Wenxu touched his flat stomach and spoke again: "How about... let's eat first?"

Before Shen Fei could glare at him and call him a good-for-nothing, he quickly explained, "I think since the captain didn't let us know she came here to see her ex-boyfriend, she definitely didn't want us to know about it. If we rashly go to comfort her, it might make the situation even more awkward. Think about it, isn't that the truth?"

"But she just went out crying."

"Hiss—indeed, that's why I said let's eat 'first'. What I meant was that we should send her a message after we finish eating to find out her current condition from the side." Wen Wenxu explained clearly, "If she's not feeling well, we'll go and comfort her. If she can adjust on her own, then we'll just pretend we don't know anything."

"Well... okay, this is the only way." Chen Fei looked in the direction where Zhu Yingning left and couldn't help but sigh.

Thinking of what he just heard and the scene he saw, Wen Wenxu sighed a little: "But the captain's ex-boyfriend is also in trouble for the second time. He was broken up once on the phone, and he was broken up again in person. This brother is a bit unlucky."

After he said that, Shen Fei also recalled what had just happened, but her focus was different from Wen Wenxu's - she remembered that Zhu Yingning mentioned Xu Sirui's name in the second half of the conversation. From what she heard from their conversation, her ex-boyfriend seemed to think that Xu Sirui was an intruder in their relationship... ?

Is this true or is it just her ex-boyfriend's own conjecture?

Chen Fei was in a dilemma.

On the one hand, she felt that since it concerned Xu Sirui, it would be better to tell him to avoid any misunderstandings or even rumors. On the other hand, she felt that this was Zhu Yingning's privacy, and it seemed more morally right to keep it a secret for her.

To tell or not to tell, that is the question.

They were confused until the end of the wait, and they were led to an empty seat by the waiter, but Chen Fei still couldn't come up with a definite answer.

She decided to take a seemingly evasive, yet effective approach.

"Do you have any coins?" she asked Wen Wenxu.

Wen Wenxu didn't understand why she suddenly asked such a question, but he still searched his pocket seriously. In the end, he only took out a ball of paper towels that had been washed dry and hard by the washing machine and could be used as stones to kill people.

He shrugged helplessly and held up the ball of paper that had been stuffed into his trouser pocket for who knows when. "I have this. Do you want it?"

"...How desperate am I to want something like this?" Chen Fei rolled her eyes at him and pointed at him with her index finger. "How about this, you be the coin."

"What's the meaning?"

In her heart, she silently set the flower to not speak and the word to speak, and then said to Wen Wenxu: "Just pick one from the flower and the word and tell me, and I will know the answer."

"Oh! I see." Wen Wenxu thought for a moment, then caught a glimpse of a few unknown pink flowers hanging on the tree outside, and blurted out, "Then let's call it flowers... Did you think I would say that? Nonono, I insist on choosing words!"

"?"

"What do you think? Didn't expect it, words! I chose the words!" Wen Wenxu pounded the table hard, his voice breaking with excitement, and he didn't know what he was talking about.

Chen Fei took out his cell phone and thought to himself, Captain, I'm sorry, but if you look into the root of the problem... yes, it's all Wen Wenxu's fault.

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The author has something to say: There is only one chapter today, sorry [please]

Tomorrow I will challenge to update 8,000 words. If the challenge fails, just ignore me (regretful departure)