fool
The bell rang like a pardon, temporarily quelling the restlessness in the classroom. The math teacher came in with a test paper, his face looking grim.
"The results of the last in-class test are in." The teacher threw the paper onto the podium with a loud "bang". "Overall, it's not good! Some of the basic questions were ridiculously wrong!"
There was an instant silence below, and everyone shrank their necks.
The papers were handed out, passed from front to back. Some wailed, others rejoiced.
Jiang Yibai took his, glanced at the score on top of it, and put it on the table without any expression. Lu Panji next to him leaned over to take a look, but he elbowed her away.
"Stingy." Lu Panji muttered and shrank back, looking at his terrible test paper with a sad face.
Jiang Yibai ignored him and looked past the crowd to that corner.
Lin Xiyan also received his test paper. He lowered his head, his fingers gripping the edge tightly. He couldn't see his score, but his shoulders slumped slightly, as if pressed down by an invisible force. He retreated into his own closed-off state.
I guess he didn't do well on the test. Or, for him, not well enough.
The teacher began analyzing the test papers at the podium, spit flying. He talked about a few questions with a lot of mistakes, then waved his hand and said, "You have the rest of the time to correct them yourself. If you don't understand something, ask your classmates or come up and ask me."
The classroom was buzzing with discussion, tables and chairs were dragged around, and several people gathered together.
Jiang Yibai looked at Lin Xiyan. He was motionless, like a frozen statue, staring at a single spot on the paper, his eyes empty. It was unclear what he was thinking. The negative emotions were almost solidifying into a solid form, swallowing him whole.
no.
Jiang Yibai sighed. He had just finished a croissant and a carton of milk; it couldn't go to waste.
He kicked the chair away and stood up. His movements were a bit big, causing several people nearby to look up at him.
He ignored it and walked straight towards the corner.
Lu Panji said "Hey" from behind, but didn't shout to stop.
The corridor was not long. Jiang Yibai took long strides and reached Lin Xiyan's desk in a few steps.
The shadow fell, and Lin Xiyan seemed to wake up from a nightmare. He looked up suddenly and saw that it was him. The confusion and panic in his eyes had not yet dissipated. His fingers subconsciously put the paper into his arms, as if he wanted to hide it.
Jiang Yibai didn't give him a chance to hide. He placed one hand on Lin Xiyan's desk, leaning slightly forward, getting a little closer. From this distance, he could clearly see Lin Xiyan's slightly trembling eyelashes and the lips that were pursed with nervousness.
"Which question is wrong?" He asked, his voice not loud, but clear enough to penetrate the scattered discussions around him.
Lin Xiyan seemed to be unable to react. She stared at him blankly without saying a word. However, her ears honestly began to turn red.
Jiang Yibai waited for two seconds, but he had no patience left, so he simply reached out, pinched the corner of the paper that was wrinkled by Lin Xiyan's hand, and gently pulled it out.
Lin Xiyan loosened her grip and let him take the paper away.
Jiang Yibai glanced at the score—a few points lower than his own, but still a significant improvement over the others. That's it? Is that worth being upset about?
He glanced down, landing on a few red crosses. These were all minor deductions, and one of the larger questions had a somewhat convoluted procedure, so the examiner deducted some points for the process.
"This question," Jiang Yibai pointed his finger at a wrong question, lowered his body even more, almost close to Lin Xiyan's ear, and lowered his voice even lower, with a hint of unquestionable intimacy, "What do you think? Hmm?"
The ending of that "hmm" rose slightly, like a feather scratching the tip of his heart. It was a tone he had never used with anyone else, sticky, even a little coquettish, as if this was how it should be between them.
Lin Xiyan froze, his breath held. Jiang Yibai's breath brushed against his earlobe, and the skin there quickly burned, a blush spreading from his ear to his neck. His fingers scratched unconsciously at the table, his throat moving as he uttered a very soft, breathless sound: "...Wrong substitution."
"Stupid." Jiang Yibai said, but his tone was not harsh at all, instead it seemed like he was smiling helplessly. He picked up the pen on Lin Xiyan's desk, and his fingers accidentally brushed against the back of Lin Xiyan's cold hand.
Lin Xiyan trembled violently and curled up his fingers.
Jiang Yibai seemed oblivious, leaning forward to scrawl a simpler formula on his draft paper. "Look here," he said, tapping the tip of his pen on the paper. His voice softened, almost whispering, so only the two of them could hear, "Isn't this much simpler?"
Lin Xiyan was forced to look at the calculations on the paper, his attention drawn away. His eyelashes trembled, and he tried to concentrate. As he read, a realization slowly emerged in his eyes. "...Yes."
"Don't go around in circles next time," Jiang Yibai said, tapping his pen at another spot. "And this one, the steps are too long-winded, and it's annoying for the teacher who grades the papers."
"Yeah." Lin Xiyan responded softly and nodded. His tense shoulders unconsciously relaxed a little.
"This big question, too," Jiang Yibai pressed forward, half of his body almost leaning against the desk, his arm touching Lin Xiyan's. Through the thin layer of school uniform, he could feel the other person's subtle trembling and warm body temperature. "Your idea is right, it's here. If you skipped a step, the old man would think you were cheating and not give you any points."
He kept calling me "stupid" and "nagging" as he scolded me, but his voice was low and sticky, like a thin needle coated with honey, which didn't hurt when it got stuck, but made me itchy instead.
Lin Xiyan, initially frozen and bewildered, was gradually drawn into the discussion. He would occasionally whisper a retort, "...it can be done that way, too."
"It can be done," Jiang Yibai tilted his head to look at him, close enough to count his eyelashes, "but it won't be pretty. I want the most beautiful solution."
His gaze was too direct, and Lin Xiyan couldn't resist it. Her eyes drifted back to the paper, her ears red as blood, but the corners of her mouth curved slightly, uncontrollably. It was very shallow and quickly disappeared.
Jiang Yibai saw it. The inexplicable irritation in his heart was instantly smoothed out. He even unconsciously touched the back of Lin Xiyan's hand with the end of his pen.
"Get it?" he asked, his voice soft and unlike his own.
"...I understand." Lin Xiyan's voice was still very soft, but it was no longer as frivolous as before, and it sounded more solid.
"Do you really understand?" Jiang Yibai asked with a bit of forced intimacy.
"Yeah." Lin Xiyan nodded, not avoiding his gaze this time. The mist in her amber eyes dissipated a little, and they were clear and bright, reflecting a little of his shadow.
Jiang Yibai felt as if something had hit him gently in the heart. It felt a little numb and itchy.
He maintained the posture that almost encircled Lin Xiyan, and slowly explained two details to him. The surrounding students' discussions seemed to become a vague background noise.
Lin Xiyan's trembling gradually subsided, and occasionally she would follow his train of thought, tapping a step on the draft paper with her finger, raising a question. Occasionally, her fingertips would touch Jiang Yibai's hand.
It would immediately retract when touched, but the next time, it would still reach out carefully.
The fondness in Jiang Yibai's heart was like a stone thrown into a lake, creating ripples that grew larger and larger. He looked at his slightly opening and closing lips, at the reddened back of his neck, at the pair of eyes that finally focused and reflected his own, and he just wanted to get closer.
What aloofness, what face, screw it.
He wanted to stick with this person right now, pull him out of that gray shell and take good care of him.
"That's about it." Jiang Yibai finally stood up and put some distance between them. If he got any closer, he was afraid he would lose control and do something.
Lin Xiyan seemed to come back to his senses all of a sudden from the shrouded atmosphere. He moved his shoulders uncomfortably and breathed a sigh of relief, but the light in his eyes did not dim.
He looked down at the paper that had been revised and marked by Jiang Yibai, and his fingers gently stroked the sharp and beautiful handwriting.
"Thank you." His voice was low but clear.
"Yeah." Jiang Yibai responded. His fingers itched a little, wanting to rub his soft-looking hair. But he resisted.
He turned around and walked back, feeling that Lin Xiyan's gaze was about to burn through his back.
Back at his seat, Lu Panji looked at him with a look of astonishment: "Fuck, Brother Jiang, what were you doing just now? You got so close to me, what were you talking to Lin Xiyan about? When did you two become so familiar with each other?"
Jiang Yibai glanced at him, picked up the water cup on the table and took a sip, and said in a flat tone: "Talk about the topic."
"Do you need to be so close to me when I'm giving a lecture?" Lu Panji said with an exaggerated expression, "I almost didn't recognize you when you were like that just now! How could you still speak in that tone?"
"What kind of tone?" Jiang Yibai put down the water glass and glanced at him.
"It's just... so sticky!" Lu Panji tried to describe it, "It's like talking to my cat!"
Jiang Yibai didn't deny it. He raised the corners of his mouth quickly and then lowered them.
"Shut up. Noisy."
Lu Panji: "..."
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