Chapter 49 You are the most beautiful, okay...
Ever since that time in his senior year of high school when he wore Xu Ji's uniform and followed him into school, Tao Siyun has never returned to Huxi No. 1 Middle School. It has been eight years in a flash.
Tao Siyun rarely wears makeup and usually goes bare-faced, but she does have the habit of wearing lipstick.
After changing her clothes, she stared at the makeup mirror, looking left and right. She felt that the color of her lips was not light enough. Just as she was about to change to a different color, the phone next to her started vibrating again.
Xu Ji sent two words on WeChat: [Open the door]
“…”
Tao Siyun had to stop choosing the lipstick color and went to open the door with an unhappy look on her face.
Xu Ji entered the house and just closed the door. When he turned around, he saw Tao Siyun standing motionless at the entrance, as if he had a big opinion about him.
"What's wrong? Are you still asleep?"
Tao Siyun pursed her lips, frowned, and stared at him for several seconds. Then, in a tone mixed with complaints, grievances, and dissatisfaction, she said to him, "Are you rushing to morning self-study?"
It's not even half past eight yet.
Xu Ji was stunned for a moment.
This girl is quite grumpy when she wakes up. I don’t know if it’s because she just woke up, but her voice is very soft when she is angry.
Tao Siyun felt that he was being too much. They had agreed to leave at nine o'clock last night, and she had set ten alarms. However, this morning, before the first alarm even rang, she was woken up by a call from Xu Ji. Who could be happy about this?
There was clearly still time, and according to her original plan, she could sleep for another half an hour.
Besides, why go so early on open day?
Seeing her angry look, Xu Ji smiled casually, "There are traffic restrictions today, so I can't drive."
“…”
Tao Siyun had just finished getting angry at him for a while, but when he heard this, he suddenly felt guilty and immediately became embarrassed, glancing around, "Then..."
"Bus or subway?" Xu Ji asked her.
"The subway."
There may be traffic jams during the morning rush hour, so you can take the bus when you come back.
"Have you had breakfast?"
"not yet."
She was woken up by his phone call before eight o'clock. It was only twenty minutes later. She got up, washed, and changed clothes. She had no time to eat breakfast and hadn't even had a sip of water.
Xu Ji took out a small box of coconut milk (only 200ml) and two cookies from his coat pocket and gave them to her. "Eat them before you go. Is five minutes enough?"
“…”
Tao Siyun has lived for more than 20 years, and this is the first time that breakfast time has been shortened to just five minutes.
Even though there are only two cookies, eating breakfast and snacks are not done at the same speed.
Tao Siyun had difficulty in getting food when she was a child. Although more than 20 years have passed, she still remembers the shadow cast on her by going to kindergarten at the age of three.
The kindergarten teacher always says before meals, "The slowest eating child in each group should wipe the table."
So, eating became a kind of "competition", which is what Tao Siyun can think of now and the first "competition" she realized.
The child who finishes eating first will proudly hold up his empty bowl to show the teacher, and then he will receive a "great" compliment from the teacher and the little red flower sticker that everyone wants.
Tao Siyun envied the children who had stickers, but she was always the slowest eater in the class.
Once, the little girl sitting next to her was teased by the boy who got the red flower for being so slow. The girl, eager to win, puffed out her cheeks and snorted, pointing at Tao Siyun and saying, "It's not me, Dorothy is the slowest! She always wipes the table!"
Tao Siyun held the small porcelain bowl with a mouthful of rice in his mouth, tears were about to fall.
This was undoubtedly a trauma for the young girl at the time. The ridicule and belittling from other children made her feel deeply inferior because she was always the last one to eat.
Later, she began to show some food rejection, which basically manifested as:
“I’m not hungry…”
“I don’t like this…”
“Don’t eat…”
"So what does An An want to eat?" Qin Shu opened the cake box and asked tentatively, "Dad bought you a small cake, strawberry flavor. I don't have any, so how about just having a bite?"
Tao Siyun shook his little head and pushed it away, saying no, "Mom, I don't want to eat..."
Tao Daiming and Qin Shu were both very worried about her health, so they took her to the Children's Hospital for a check-up. The doctor told them that the child was not lying, she was really not hungry, and would eat when she was hungry. If there was something wrong, it might be that she was simply picky about food and was in a bad mood.
…
For Tao Siyun, eating breakfast every day feels like completing a daunting task.
It takes a long time to chew a piece of bread, and it is normal for her to take more than ten minutes to drink a glass of milk... After Tao Qian finished eating, he waited for her while reciting English words, without urging her. Anyway, their family's breakfast time usually lasts for more than half an hour. Even so, Qin Shu would not let her bring breakfast to school. She had to watch her finish eating before letting her leave the table.
In third grade, Tao Siyun once begged her mother to bring her breakfast to school because she was worried her brother would be late for a test that morning. After school that day, Qin Shu asked her if she had finished her breakfast. She lied and said she had. But when Qin Shu packed her school bag that night, they found milk and bread hidden in the bag's compartment.
I brought it back intact in the evening just as I had taken it to school in the morning.
From that day on, Qin Shu set a rule for her to eat breakfast at home.
…
The cookies are very crispy and fall apart with a light bite.
There were biscuit crumbs at the corner of his mouth. Tao Siyun stretched out his tongue and licked it quickly, but failed to lick it clean, like a little hamster stealing food.
After finishing the cookies, she picked up the coconut milk on the table, put the straw in her mouth, and slurped it, finishing the last sip.
The light lipstick color mixed with a little cookie crumbs was all spilled onto the white plastic straw.
Tao Siyun fully demonstrated a kind of innocence of being "tempted without knowing it". When Xu Ji asked her if she was full, she puffed out her cheeks and said "yes".
She inadvertently brought out the two completely different temperaments of "simplicity" and "seductiveness" just right.
Xu Ji coughed lightly and looked away calmly.
***
Shanghai West No. 1 Middle School is a century-old prestigious school. It holds an open campus day a few days before New Year's Day every year. This activity is mainly to allow students and parents who are interested in applying to the school to better understand the school's history, campus environment, teaching facilities, faculty, school characteristics, school atmosphere, etc.
To put it in simple terms, it means locking in outstanding students in advance and competing for them.
When Tao Siyun and Xu Ji arrived, Teacher Li was teaching a class. They walked around the campus for a while, and then went to the multi-purpose hall with the visiting students' parents.
Unlike some other schools, No. 1 Middle School wasn't renovated after graduation, adding air conditioners, replacing desks and chairs, or undergoing other upgrades. To Tao Siyun, everything was still the same as he remembered, with little to no significant changes.
The campus briefing session first gave a detailed introduction to the teaching staff of Shanghai West No. 1 Middle School, the admission score for the junior high school entrance examination, and the college entrance examination results of previous years. Then a "top scorer photo wall" suddenly appeared on the big screen.
That was the top scorer in the college entrance examination from No. 1 Middle School in recent years.
Tao Siyun was sitting in the back row. She had very good eyesight and recognized Xu Ji on the left side of the screen almost at a glance. She tilted her head to glance at the person next to her, and when she saw that he didn't have any special reaction, she turned her head back.
Afterwards, the photos on the photo wall were turned into a slideshow mode, and appeared on the screen one by one, with the name of each top scorer in the college entrance examination, the college entrance examination score, and the university they were admitted to written below.
2010……
2012……
Not in 2013.
For some reason, Tao Siyun suddenly felt very nervous, the kind of nervousness that was a bit like anticipation.
The next second, Xu Ji's enlarged photo appeared on the big screen, and she heard the students and parents around her exclaim "Wow!"
The full score of the college entrance examination was 750, but he only lost 33 points, which is a really abnormal result.
Tao Siyun couldn't help but feel curious and asked quietly, "How many points did you get in the English test?"
"147."
It was a little higher than expected, she thought it would be around 140. After all, English was Tao Siyun's strong point and the only subject where she could surpass Xu Ji. She was always proud of it and always got full marks.
"What about math?"
"150."
This score is not surprising at all, he just performed normally.
"What about Chinese?"
Xu Ji raised his eyebrows and glanced at her casually. Instead of answering, he asked, "Why don't you ask me how much I did in the comprehensive science exam?"
Tao Siyun hesitated for a moment, then made a bold guess in his mind and said it carefully: "300 in comprehensive science?"
Xu Ji said "hmm" disapprovingly, his tone was very flat, as if he didn't take the full score seriously at all.
Come to think of it, it's normal for him to get full marks in math and comprehensive science.
Tao Siyun sighed silently in his heart, feeling that he could not resonate with people like him at all.
There was a brochure of Shanghai West No. 1 Middle School on everyone's desk. She was a little bored, so she opened it and flipped through it casually, and unexpectedly saw the "Top Scorer Wall" on the screen just now.
There are eight photos in total, plus the small print introduction at the bottom, which takes up two pages.
Tao Siyun's eyes fell on the column of student personal introductions below -
Xu Ji, the top scorer in science in Shanghai West City in 2014, scored 717 in the college entrance examination and was admitted to Beijing Fu University.
It was also specifically written in brackets that he was a national first-class athlete.
Tao Siyun almost forgot that he was the top scorer in the college entrance examination and also a tennis champion.
Although I don’t understand tennis, the words “first-level athlete” seem to have great value.
Looking up, Tao Siyun stared at his photo in a daze.
It was a very small ID photo with a blue background, which made him look particularly white.
Xu Ji was wearing a white autumn school uniform. He looked at the camera nonchalantly, with a slight smile on his lips. If you didn't look closely, you couldn't tell that he was smiling.
…
"I have a digital copy of the photo."
The person next to him suddenly spoke, which scared Tao Siyun.
Xu Ji came over at some point and said, "If you like, I can send you a picture."
“……?”
"Or?" he asked.
Tao Siyun hurriedly closed the brochure, his face flushed red. Even though he was caught peeking, he still said stubbornly, "There are so many people up there, I'm not just looking at you, can you please stop being so narcissistic..."
Xu Ji glanced at her silently. Just when Tao Siyun thought he would stop talking, he suddenly spoke slowly and asked with great certainty, "Are you sure?"
Tao Siyun: "..."
"You stared at the upper right corner for a full five minutes. I thought you were completely captivated by my beauty."
“…”
Tao Siyun's face turned even redder, or to be more precise, he felt a little socially dejected.
She subconsciously wanted to refute, but Xu Ji was telling the truth. She was distracted just now, and the reason for her distraction was indeed because of his photo.
But she was just wondering whether this photo was taken by the school in the first semester of senior year.
She remembered that after she returned to Beijing, she also took the photo at the high school where she retained her student status. Everyone took it very seriously, especially the girls, who would secretly put on some makeup and apply a layer of BB foundation on their faces.
Because this photo will not only appear on the college entrance examination admission ticket, but also on the university admission notice, campus card, and Xuexin.com...
Once the filming is completed, no matter what the final appearance is, it cannot be changed.
That's why she was slightly distracted after seeing Xu Ji's ID photo, which was perfect in terms of expression management and naturalness, without a single flaw.
This wasn't the first time Tao Siyun had embarrassed himself in front of Xu Ji, so he simply gave up and stopped making any excuses. "Well, you look the best, okay?"
She deliberately spoke the truth in a very false tone, trying to cover up the embarrassment of his words just now, "I thought you were completely addicted to my beauty and couldn't extricate yourself."
However, just as Tao Siyun pretended to be calm and continued to listen to the lecture, Xu Ji suddenly said, "So you admit that you were looking at my photos just now?"
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