Sandbag throwing and dodgeball (4)
On Friday evening, after the midterm exams, Zhao Shihua had no desire to celebrate. Even when Xu Jiamei and Qiao Xiaoling invited her out for dinner and a movie, she declined, citing a cold as an excuse. But as they headed out together, Zhao Shihua regretted her decision. She recalled how she longed to join a group at the beginning of the semester, to gather around them like emperor penguins in Antarctica during the cold winter, clinging to each other for warmth.
Zhao Shihua dried his hair, looked up at the dark clouds hovering above his head, thought about the bright smiles on everyone's faces, sighed, and the stone in his heart became several kilograms heavier.
Stop wasting time lamenting; it's never too late to mend the situation. She'd originally considered falling asleep as soon as she got back to the dorm, but decided to study harder and stay up early until night. She quickly tied her hair into a ponytail, finished her meal and showered just after six, and prepared to return to the classroom for self-study. Even Zhuo Siqi had gone home to rest today, and she felt completely worthy of the red flag for "School's Hardest-Working Model."
But the moment he opened the door, Zhao Shihua regretted it again - the afterglow of the setting sun penetrated into the dim classroom inch by inch through the opened back door, as if drawing open the curtain of the stage, and in the center of the fan-shaped halo, Shao Yifu was sitting there alone, bending over to tidy up the things in the drawer.
Zhao Shihua was stunned for a second or two. The typhoon incident in junior high school replayed rapidly in her mind like a kaleidoscope. Dirty words like "a single man and a single woman in the same room" popped up in her mind again. The last picture showed a big warning word - "Run"!
If she had retreated quietly, she might have escaped unnoticed. But she was so panicked that the door slammed shut, a thud that would have jolted even someone drugged awake. Even Zhao Shihua herself was so frightened that she forgot to run. She turned her back, facing the wall, and huddled in the corner of the corridor, her heart pounding.
"What are you doing?" Shao Yifu opened the back door and took a few steps when he saw Zhao Shihua, who was facing away from him, using the ostrich tactic. "Hello?"
After a few seconds, finally realizing that the situation could not be reversed, the ostrich turned around reluctantly: "I... will do my homework."
Shao Yifu actually thought about it seriously: "There is homework right after the exam? Why don't I remember it?"
Zhao Shihua couldn't come up with any homework assignments on the spur of the moment, so she stopped answering. She turned her head to look at the stairs at the end of the corridor. It seemed that no one else would appear there. After Shao Yifu turned back, she also slowly returned to the classroom.
I had wanted to ask him, "Why are you still in school?" After all, Shao Yifu didn't seem like the type to be heartbroken and repent after failing a test. But as I passed his seat, my eyes caught the grass and dirt on the back of his school uniform, and I remembered that a group of boys had just gone to play football.
——Oh no, that means maybe other boys will come back to get their schoolbags.
"A-choo!" The quiet space was broken by a thrown stone.
"You have a cold too?!" Zhao Shihua felt that it was a bit like the sneeze with a beeping effect in the English test. She couldn't help but blame him in her heart for causing her to lose a few points.
"Ah?" Shao Yifu rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. "No, maybe I caught a cold from playing football. A--sneezy!"
Zhao Shihua quickly stepped back half a meter. She wasn't afraid of the other person catching her cold; quite the opposite. She was afraid of giving it to the other person. If someone else used this as a pretext, there would be no way to clear it up. Everyone's attention had finally shifted to other things; they couldn't let it fall through at this moment.
She quickly pulled out a chair, grabbed two exercise books from the drawer, stuffed them into her bag, and without a second thought, she ran. The chair slid across the ground with a rasping sound, a particularly harsh sound in the vast space.
"Hey!" The sudden shout was like a rope tripping her. Zhao Shihua stopped at the front door and heard Shao Yifu loudly ask her, "Why do you seem to be deliberately avoiding me lately?"
Zhao Shihua was like a thief caught on the spot. She was suddenly panicked and her left hand could not help but clenched the door handle. She did not dare to look back and only replied in a muffled voice: "No, no..."
"Then where are you going now? Didn't you just say you were here to do your homework?" Shao Yifu retorted confidently. I didn't expect his thinking to be so meticulous at this moment, remembering everything he had said a few minutes ago.
Zhao Shihua thought for a long time, not knowing what to say. He wondered about forgetting the past, making amends, and the rumors. All sorts of thoughts filled his mind, as if countless little figures were pulling at his limbs in every direction.
She suddenly didn't want to care about anything anymore. The thought of giving up on communicating with others resurfaced after two years. With a sudden push, she flung open the door and rushed out.
"Hey! Zhao Shihua!"
The person who was called pretended not to hear and hurried forward with his head down. Unexpectedly, Shao Yifu ran out from the back door, walked around the corridor, and intercepted Zhao Shihua at the previous corner, frightening him so much that he stumbled.
"Tell me, why are you running?"
Zhao Shihua looked up and saw Shao Yifu staring at her with wide eyes. Only then did she realize he was truly angry. The usually cheerful man suddenly frowned, standing in front of her like a wall. Zhao Shihua was still a little frightened. She suddenly remembered that when they first met at the welcome ceremony, she almost mistook him for a delinquent.
"I have a cold." What a perfect excuse.
"Then I have a cold too." Shao Yifu deliberately sniffed his nose hard.
The silence that had once enveloped the campus now weighed heavily on the two of them. It was unclear when this stalemate would end. Zhao Shihua and Shao Yifu stared at each other, as if engaged in a life-or-death struggle with their eyes.
Zhao Shihua quietly moved his left leg to the side, intending to launch a surprise attack from the side, but he vaguely heard a soft sigh.
"They told me—" After about ten seconds, Shao Yifu suddenly lowered his eyes, as if conceding defeat, "You don't... like me, do you?"
"What???"
When Zhao Shihua watched TV series in the past, she always wondered why the male and female protagonists were so unwilling to tell the truth. They had to drag it on for dozens of episodes, and only when they saw the other party either leaving or being with someone else did they suddenly realize the truth. They didn't take the car or the subway, and didn't care whether there was a level 9 typhoon or heavy rain outside. They just ran all the way in full view of everyone, as if they were chasing a robber who had robbed 30 million.
However, when the same situation happened to herself, Zhao Shihua realized how difficult it was to confess. Her mouth felt as if it was stuck with super glue and she couldn't open her mouth no matter how hard she tried: "Because I bullied you in the past, I want to make it up to you now, but you misunderstood me as having a crush on you. I'm really sorry..." Even if she was tortured, she would never say such words.
However, lacking the courage to speak the truth was one thing, but the other party's directness in asking was truly shameless, comparable to the thick-skinned hippopotamus, said to be impervious to bullets. He was indeed completely different from the timid Guan Yifu of his childhood.
"But I..." the shameless hippopotamus stammered, "I'm so mean to you——"
Zhao Shihua was stunned by the sudden question and was speechless for a moment. When he heard the word "but", he suddenly realized that the other party had interpreted his silence as a tacit agreement: "Wait! You don't think I really... what do you mean?"
She instinctively raised her hands in front of her, as if to calm him down, but also as if to create distance between them.
"How is that possible!" Zhao Shihua laughed dryly twice again, his tone as unnatural as a tape that has been played for a long time and has become distorted.
"Really? If you don't like it, that's the best!" Shao Yifu was completely annoyed by his popularity being denied by the word "impossible". His voice suddenly rose several degrees, "Anyway, I don't like it--"
"Of course it would be the best!" Zhao Shihua said angrily before he could say anything unpleasant. "It's not like I don't know who you like!"
"What do you know? That's nonsense!"
The two people, who were determined to fight to the death, argued louder and louder, as if whoever had the loudest voice would win.
"Hey, remember, you were the one asking me this!" Zhao Shihua's eyes turned red with anger. She paused for a second or two, then clenched her fists.
"Isn't it Jian Tingting?"
Looking back now, how obvious was my secret crush in my youth?
I can't help laughing when I meet them, and my tongue gets tied when I talk. I try hard to collect everything about them, from an ordinary group message to the essay examples copied by the whole class... I just think that no matter how well a secret is hidden, in the eyes of outsiders, it is a puzzle that can be easily solved by using your brain.
Zhao Shihua casually flipped through the album of memories and remembered Shao Yifu's joyful look when he carried the paper castle on his back to find Jian Tingting after the opening ceremony of the school sports meeting.
I forgot the exact reason, but their class and several neighboring classes had their seats temporarily moved elsewhere. As soon as the principal announced the dismissal, all the teachers and students in the school swarmed to every corner of the stands, leaving only the few freshman classes who had moved seats still waiting on the playground.
Jian Tingting came over to distribute the new seating arrangements. While other classes had "normal people" running errands, theirs was the only one to have a cartload of bricks moved in. Pei Nachuan had originally been planning to go, but Shao Yifu, despite his limited mobility, had insisted on volunteering. His intentions were clear to everyone.
Everyone was getting bored waiting, their eyes turning to Jian Tingting, who was about ten meters away. I don't know what the others were saying, but I guess they were making fun of Shao Yifu. He didn't care. He took off his red pointed hat and handed it to Jian Tingting, looking like a sheepdog that had come back with a flying saucer to beg for biscuits from its owner.
Only a fool couldn't tell who this crude and childish guy had his eye on, right?
However, as Zhao Shihua recklessly spoke out the conclusions she had drawn from her observations, a chill suddenly ran down her spine. She realized she had become the same person as Zhu Miaoyan. Had she truly fought the dragon for so long that she herself had become a dragon? Her self-loathing was like a sudden, stinking, sour boil, impossible to suppress, overflowing everywhere.
She raised her eyes and saw the boy's face, which was as red as the clouds in the sky, and the boy's features were still unclear. So when she almost thought that Zhu Miaoyan had exposed her secrets, she had the same expression. No wonder she was misunderstood.
It was unknown how long they stood face to face, or how long the silence lasted. As the dusk light faded, Zhao Shihua's gaze grew colder.
She waved her hand feebly, stepped around Shao Yifu, and spoke in a barely audible voice. She couldn't tell if the words were directed at the other person or herself. The word "like" was so difficult to utter, but dislike could be uttered at any time, piercing someone's heart directly and harshly.
"A toad wants to eat swan flesh," she said.
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