Chapter 3535.a5a5aa555oo
It was humid and hot during the return of the south wind. The playground was shrouded in fog. The flag-raising ceremony was so crowded that not a single breeze could get in.
Zhuang Yongyuan unzipped his school uniform, fanned himself with his hands, and looked towards the flag-raising platform.
Xie Kang was holding the microphone on the stage. He was a frequent speaker on behalf of students. He didn't even need a script and just kept on speaking in clichés.
It’s hard to imagine that the same mouth said “I miss you” and “I like you” more than a dozen times in a sticky voice last night.
Zhuang Yongyuan raised the corner of his mouth and smiled silently, and Xie Kang happened to be looking at him.
Their eyes met, and Xie Kang's fluent speech paused. He stopped talking and blinked his right eye slightly at Zhuang Yongyuan.
After the flag-raising ceremony, Zhuang Yongyuan followed the crowd and slowly moved toward the teaching building. He was at the end of the group, and soon Xie Kang found him and patted his shoulder from behind.
"It's so hot!" Xie Kang shouted and grabbed Zhuang Yongyuan's hand.
Zhuang Yongyuan was startled and pushed Xie Kang away as if he had been electrocuted. He glared at him, "There are so many people around here, don't mess around."
He spoke decisively, but the hand that was close to Xie Kang rubbed the back of Xie Kang's hand intentionally or unintentionally. Xie Kang became more and more aggressive, and pressed his whole body against Zhuang Yongyuan, with his rolled-up sleeves rubbing against Zhuang Yongyuan's arm.
From time to time, passers-by would greet Xie Kang. Zhuang Yongyuan's steps became heavier and heavier, and his heart beat like a drum. He always felt that these people had just seen the few seconds they held hands. Besides being panicked, he also felt a secret excitement and pride, and his whole body was hot.
"It's really hot." Zhuang Yongyuan whispered.
Xie Kang pulled out a rolled-up A4 paper from his pocket and fanned Zhuang Yongyuan with it. Then he turned and said, "Let's go to the canteen and buy some iced Coke."
"Will you be late?"
"If I'm late, then I'm late." Xie Kang quickened his pace.
Zhuang Yongyuan glanced at the words on the A4 paper and asked Xie Kang, "Is this your speech?"
"Yeah, it's so annoying. They're asking me to give a speech again."
"Why don't you look at your script when you give a speech?"
"Just take a look before you go on stage." Xie Kang turned around, looked at Zhuang Yongyuan proudly, and asked him, "Am I really that good?"
Zhuang Yongyuan held his chin up in his hand, looking thoughtful, and said, "It's okay. I'll give you a 9."
"Why not ten points?" Xie Kang was dissatisfied.
"How can you give a perfect score so easily?"
"But beauty is in the eyes of the beholder." Xie Kang lowered his eyes aggrievedly, "You don't like me enough, so you don't give me a full score."
"How smart you are has nothing to do with how much I like you!"
Xie Kang smiled slyly again: "Do you know what you just said?"
"What did I say?"
"This is the first time you've taken the initiative to say you like me. Before, I had to ask you before you would say it."
"I'm not..."
"You're not what?"
"I'm not saying I like you..." Zhuang Yongyuan didn't finish his words. Seeing Xie Kang's thick eyebrows and big eyes about to droop again, he hurriedly explained, "That's not what I meant."
"So what do you mean? Do you like me or don't you?"
They walked to the convenience store. Zhuang Yongyuan ignored him and opened the freezer to take out a bottle of Coke and a bottle of Sprite. Xie Kang stood beside them and enjoyed the cool air from the freezer.
Not many students dared to risk being late to the canteen at this hour, so there wasn't the usual long line to check out. As the aunt scanned the barcode on the drink bottle, Zhuang Yongyuan turned and whispered in Xie Kang's ear, "I like you, ten points."
The same mouth, last night at the music store, strumming the strings so effortlessly, the singer I'll have to pay to see someday, casually sang to myself: "Hey, can I buy your unhappiness?"
The best campus singer in the world, in an instant, became Xie Kang's private one.
"I want another 100 points." Xie Kang unscrewed the cap of the Sprite bottle with a smile, and with a "hiss", white foam overflowed from the bottle.
Zhuang Yongyuan drank his Coke and asked him, "Why do you want everything?"
Xie Kang faced Zhuang Yongyuan, walked backwards, and said, "Am I not the best?"
Zhuang Yongyuan fell silent again, and didn't even look at Xie Kang. Xie Kang got anxious and asked him, "Why are you ignoring me?"
Zhuang Yongyuan stuck out his tongue and said, "I'm thinking."
"What are you thinking about?"
"I think there's something wrong with you."
"Oh..." Xie Kang dragged out the words, "Have you thought of it?"
Zhuang Yongyuan raised his head, looked at Xie Kang seriously, and said, "I never thought of that."
Xie Kang swallowed hard and said, "Zhuang Yongyuan, I really can't stand you being like this."
Zhuang Yongyuan asked in panic, "What's wrong?"
"I, I want to hug you right now, I really want to hug you." Xie Kang was breathing rapidly, and he could not see the kapok trees on both sides, the ivy on the wall of the teaching building, and the phoenix flowers beside the iron gate. He could only see Zhuang Yongyuan, Zhuang Yongyuan who was getting closer and closer to him.
When the bell rang, Xie Kang was startled. He was already hugging Zhuang Yongyuan.
There is a celebrity's former residence in the school, commemorating a scientist from Pingnan.
The former residence was several hundred meters away from the convenience store. Xie Kang couldn't remember how he brought Zhuang Yongyuan here. He was surprised why he thought of this place. Could it be that from the first day he met Zhuang Yongyuan, he had found a secret base for them in the school?
He held Zhuang Yongyuan in his arms, and Zhuang Yongyuan held him back. In the damp, musty spring air of the century-old house, with barely a shimmer of sunlight, Xie Kang shared the only dark corner of his life with Zhuang Yongyuan.
They hugged each other so tightly, as if they were originally the same person, but they were accidentally lost and separated, and only met again at the age of seventeen.
Xie Kang stretched out a hand, held Zhuang Yongyuan's face, and felt something wet.
He quickly wiped Zhuang Yongyuan's tears with the back of his hand and asked Zhuang Yongyuan, "Don't you like this?"
Zhuang Yongyuan shook his head and said, "I'm very happy..."
Zhuang Yongyuan touched the tears on his face and didn't understand why he couldn't cry when he was sad in the past. It made him think he was very strong, but when someone was nice to him, he would cry at inappropriate times.
"It's time for class..." he said drowsily.
Xie Kang wiped his fingers from the corners of Zhuang Yongyuan's eyes all the way down. When he touched Zhuang Yongyuan's cheek, he said, "Smile."
Zhuang Yongyuan obeyed and forced a smile. Xie Kang took this opportunity to kiss Zhuang Yongyuan's dimple.
Zhuang Yongyuan shuddered, subconsciously pushed Xie Kang away, and immediately hugged him again. The sound of their hair rubbing against each other was like spring thunder.
A drizzle of rain drifted in through the slightly opened window. Footsteps were heard outside the door, and Xie Kang held his breath.
The janitor muttered to herself, "It's been a week since I reported the windows and no one has come to fix them. Whenever it rains, they have to close the windows."
There was no back door in this room, and the footsteps were getting closer and closer. The two of them were standing there with their clothes and hair messy and their faces flushed, and they were about to be caught red-handed.
With a "creak", the janitor closed the window and had to reinsert the loose latch several times before it was successfully reinserted.
She became impatient and walked away muttering. Before leaving, she suddenly stopped and glanced at the ground.
There were a bunch of wet footprints crowded together. She raised her head and looked around the room suspiciously.
The latch loosened again, and the rusty thin column slid out of the latch hole. When she closed the window again, she couldn't help but look at the patio outside the window. There was a thin layer of rainwater on the red hexagonal brick floor, but there were no suspicious footprints.
The footsteps gradually faded away, and the wardrobe door in the corner of the room was carefully pushed open. Xie Kang and Zhuang Yongyuan tiptoed out of the room one after the other. When they reached the hall, they heard footsteps again. They tacitly hid behind the mahogany sofa, waited for the school worker carrying a mop to pass by, and then ran out of the former residence in one breath.
Xie Kang shook his head. His arms were covered with water droplets. He had just run in a hurry and bumped into an unknown plant in the patio, and was splashed with water droplets on the leaves.
The campus was empty and quiet during class time, with only the voices of people from the teaching building coming from afar.
Zhuang Yongyuan adjusted his hair as he walked and said, "The first class is only halfway through. I feel embarrassed to just walk in."
Xie Kang said bluntly, "Just tell me you're not feeling well, and I'll go with you to see a doctor."
"Then the teacher will know that we have a special relationship." Zhuang Yongyuan glanced at Xie Kang. "Just now in the closet, you were scared."
"What am I afraid of?"
"I'm afraid of being discovered."
"They found out. We two guys were just being scolded for skipping class at best."
Xie Kang continued to mutter to himself, "It's good to like boys. No one would think of it as premature love."
Zhuang Yongyuan laughed. Xie Kang heard it and felt a little guilty. He said in a defiant manner, "I just discovered something."
"What's up?"
"Your dimples are salty when kissed."
He thought that saying this would make Zhuang Yongyuan shy and silent, but he didn't expect Zhuang Yongyuan to look up, blink slowly, and say, "You didn't dare to kiss me in the closet."
Seeing his expression, Xie Kang also smiled and said, "Believe it or not, after the performance this weekend, there will definitely be a lot of people who like you."
Zhuang Yongyuan started to feel uneasy when the performance was mentioned, his eyes wandering. Xie Kang slapped his head and said, "Oh, Li Xiuyu is coming back from Beijing today. We'll go to the piano store to practice after school this afternoon."
"Isn't he supposed to be here on Wednesday? Can he just leave for competition training?"
Xie Kang shrugged and said, "How would I know him?"
Zhuang Yongyuan murmured to himself, "I didn't expect we'd be performing in front of others so soon."
Xie Kang said proudly, "You are scared."
Zhuang Yongyuan said: "There will definitely be a lot of people by then."
"More people will come to see our performances in the future." Xie Kang said confidently as they approached the stairs where they were about to part. Zhuang Yongyuan's classroom was on the floor above his.
He put his hands in his school uniform pockets and watched Zhuang Yongyuan walk up. After Zhuang Yongyuan climbed a few steps, he called him and said, "If you get scared on the stage, turn around and look at me."
"What if you're gone someday?"
"How could that be? We will definitely keep performing together."
Zhuang Yongyuan looked at Xie Kang, nodded vigorously, and walked briskly up the remaining stairs. The moment he pushed the door open and entered the classroom, it was like stepping from backstage onto the stage.
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