Exam Preparation
The January breeze, laced with snowflakes, blew into his collar. This year's snow was heavier than ever before. Li Huaizhou had just stuffed the last exercise book into his schoolbag when Xie Mo grabbed his wrist. His palm, a touch of body warmth, radiated through the thin knitted sleeves, like a piece of warm jade, instantly neutralizing the chill in the breeze.
"Let's go, there won't be any seats left soon." Xie Mo's voice was a little more urgent than usual, but he deliberately slowed down his pace, waiting for the person who was dawdling behind him. Li Huaizhou looked up at him. The setting sun was falling on the tips of Xie Mo's hair, dyeing it a layer of light gold. Even his frowning brows seemed softer than usual. The final exams were approaching. He had just passed the math test in the last monthly exam, but the other subjects were obviously not satisfactory. Xie Mo looked helpless when he held the report card.
In fact, Li Huaizhou himself was also panicking. He was able to perform better in the last monthly exam, but after all, the questions in the monthly exam were very simple. The final exam was completely different. At that time, he relied entirely on Xie Mo to watch him practice questions every day after school. His foundation was too weak, and the slightly more difficult knowledge points were still a mess. Just like yesterday's physics class, the teacher was explaining the test paper, and he stared at the circuit diagram on the blackboard, but he couldn't tell the difference between series and parallel. When he secretly asked Xie Mo after class, his ears were burning. When the glass door of the library was pushed open, warm air hit him in the face. Ji Jiancheng had already taken a seat, "Xie, the university bully! You're finally here!" Ji Jiancheng instantly turned off his phone, rushed over and put his arm around Xie Mo's shoulder, shaking a wrinkled math test paper in his hand, "I've been thinking about the last two big questions all morning and still don't understand them. Can you explain them to me? Just two questions!"
Xie Mo didn't turn around, but simply reached out and gently pushed his arm away, his movements as natural as brushing away a fallen leaf. "I'm busy, I need to help Li Huaizhou with English." As he spoke, he put his schoolbag on the chair next to Li Huaizhou. When he turned around, the coldness in his eyes instantly melted, and even his voice became softer. "Take out the cloze test you got wrong yesterday. I'll see if you made the same mistake again." Li Huaizhou quickly unzipped his schoolbag and rummaged through the pile of papers with his fingertips, but his ears perked up quietly. Ji Jiancheng's voice was a little exaggerated with frustration: "Really? Xie Mo? Your discrimination is too obvious!"
"Hmm," Xie Mo's voice was flat, but with a certain degree of unquestionableness, "He has a poor foundation, so he needs to be watched." Li Huaizhuo's fingertips paused, and the corners of his mouth couldn't help but curl up. He felt that this guy was too naive. Last time, he said that he would only tutor him and really wouldn't tutor others. At that time, he pulled his hand back awkwardly, and said stubbornly, "Who cares if you only tutor me, you can tutor whoever you want." As a result, Xie Mo smiled and came over, with his forehead against his forehead, his voice as light as a sigh: "But I only want to tutor you." Thinking of this, Li Huaizhuo's ears turned red, and even when his fingertips touched the cold cover of the test paper, he felt a little warmth.
Shen Qitang's helpless voice came from behind: "Okay, Ji Jiancheng, stop making trouble. Come here, I'll explain it to you." Then Ji Jiancheng's exaggerated wailing: "Qitang, why are you helping him? I'm really asking for advice!" Li Huaizhou listened and couldn't help but secretly look up, just in time to meet Xie Mo's gaze. Neither of them spoke. Xie Mo moved his chair closer to him, and his knees gently touched his knees, with a slightly warm touch. "Don't listen to them," he pulled the English test paper that Li Huaizhou had found in front of him, and pointed the tip of his pen at a cloze test. "I told you last time that for this question, choose 'unless', which means 'unless'. Why did you choose 'if' again?"
Li Huaizhou's face instantly burned up, and he quickly lowered his head to stare at the red cross on the paper: "I... mixed it up."
"It's okay, write it down again." Xie Mo didn't criticize him, but pushed his notebook over, on which phrases and examples were marked with pens of different colors. "Look, 'unless you study hard', translated into 'unless you study hard', if it is changed to 'if', the meaning is reversed. Come, read it after me." Li Huaizhou read along with him in a low voice, but his eyes couldn't help glancing at the notebook. Xie Mo's handwriting was beautiful, and even the punctuation in the examples was neat.
After finishing his English, he started working on math problems. Li Huaizhou spent a long time poring over a quadratic function problem, his draft paper filled with crooked parabolas, but he still couldn't calculate the coordinates of the vertex. Seeing that his nose was sweating with anxiety, Xie Mo couldn't help but laugh. He reached out and took the pen from his hand and drew a clear coordinate system on the draft paper: "Don't worry, first transform the function into a vertex form, y=ax+bx+c, the horizontal coordinate of the vertex is -b/2a, you calculate this first."
His fingertips held the pen, his movements light, the rustling sound of the pen tip sliding across the paper, mixed with the rustling of other people flipping through books in the library, surprisingly not noisy at all. "Did you figure it out?" Xie Mo suddenly looked up. Li Huaizhou quickly came back to his senses, picked up the pen, calculated, and whispered, "Is it... is it (2, -3)?"
"By the way, great." Xie Mo's fingertips tapped his draft paper lightly, with a hint of smile in his tone, and said "reward", took out a snow pear candy from his pocket, peeled off the candy wrapper and stuffed it into his mouth. The aroma of milk mixed with pears spread on the tip of his tongue, with a familiar warmth. Li Huaizhou held the candy in his mouth, and even his heartbeat slowed down. Ji Jiancheng next to him finally gave up struggling and was forced by Shen Qitang to do math problems. Occasionally, he would look up and complain, "This problem is too difficult." Shen Qitang would knock on his head helplessly and say, "Who told you to sleep in class?" Li Huaizhou listened to their conversation and couldn't help laughing.
They continued to study until 7:30 pm, just as the library was closing. The four of them packed up and headed out. Ji Jiancheng was still complaining to Shen Qitang about the physics problems, and Shen Qitang listened while helping him pick up the workbooks he hadn't put in his bag. Xie Mo walked beside Li Huaizhou, carrying his bag, his fingers occasionally brushing against his, a gentle, tentative touch.
"Get off work early tonight," Xie Mo said in a low voice, so only the two of them could hear him. "I'll send you a summary of the knowledge points we made up today. Call me on video after work and we'll continue our chemistry class." Li Huaizhou nodded, feeling a little reluctant. "Don't wait too late, you still have classes tomorrow."
"No, I have to do the questions anyway." Xie Mo smiled and rubbed his hair, took off his scarf and wrapped it around his neck, "The wind is strong, don't catch a cold." The scarf still had the smell of laundry detergent on him. Li Huaizhuo wrapped himself in the scarf, and even his ears were warm. When he walked to the door of the bar, Xie Mo stopped and said, "Go ahead." Li Huaizhuo nodded, turned and walked into the bar. As soon as he pushed open the glass door, he subconsciously glanced at the bar - Wen Juzhi was sitting behind the bar, holding something in his hand. When he heard the door open, his eyes fell on him with a familiar, creepy scrutiny.
That look was like an icy snake, coiling around him, causing Li Huaizhou to pause in his tracks. He quickly lowered his head and walked backstage, but his back felt like it was being pricked by needles, as he could not help but feel Wen Juzhi's gaze still glued to him. When he changed into his work clothes, his fingers trembled a little, and he couldn't help but feel anxious. Fortunately, Wen Juzhi didn't talk to him tonight, but only glanced at the bar occasionally. Li Huaizhou didn't dare to delve into the meaning of that look, so he could only run to the private room more frequently to deliver drinks and things, hoping to get off work early.
Finally, at twelve o'clock, Li Huaizhou went upstairs and had just finished washing his face when his phone rang. It was Xie Mo's video call. He quickly picked it up, and Xie Mo's face immediately appeared on the screen. His hair was still wet, and water droplets dripped down the ends of his hair, landing on his collarbone, leaving a small stain. He was wearing a loose white T-shirt with a low neckline, revealing the clear lines of his collarbone.
Li Huaizhou's heartbeat quickened instantly, his eyes became a little blank, and he didn't even hear Xie Mo calling him.
"Baby?" Xie Mo's voice came from the screen with a hint of laughter, "What are you looking at? You're distracted." Li Huaizhou suddenly came back to his senses, his face flushed instantly, and he quickly looked away, pretending to look at the chemistry textbook on the table: "No... I'm not looking at anything."
"Really?" Xie Mo smiled. "Or... are you just stunned?" He reached out and wiped the water droplets from his hair. His movements were natural and beautiful. Li Huaizhou's face turned redder, but he didn't refute. Instead, he raised his head and looked at Xie Mo on the screen and whispered, "I can't help it. Teacher Xie is too handsome. It's hard to concentrate." Xie Mo on the screen was stunned for a moment, then laughed out loud, his shoulders shaking slightly. "Okay, then Teacher Xie will allow you to watch for two minutes. After that, we will discuss the questions, okay?"
Li Huaizhou nodded, his eyes unable to help but fall on the screen again. Xie Mo's long hair slowly dried, and then fell neatly on both sides of his cheeks, making his face look smaller. He leaned back in his chair, holding the chemistry textbook in his hands, occasionally lowering his head to turn the pages, and the movement of his fingertips across the pages was particularly beautiful. Xie Mo turned the textbook to the page "Laboratory Preparation of Oxygen" and his voice suddenly became serious: "Okay, it's time to explain the problem. You said you didn't understand this problem last time, so let's go through it again - first, we need to choose a generator. The reaction between hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide does not require heating, so we use a solid-liquid non-heating type..."
Li Huaizhou quickly collected his thoughts and listened carefully to his explanation. Xie Mo explained very carefully, breaking down each step clearly. Occasionally, he would stop and ask him, "Do you understand?", with a soft and patient tone. When encountering something that Li Huaizhou didn't understand, he would find a piece of paper to draw a diagram, and when giving examples, he would deliberately tell some jokes, making Li Huaizhou laugh. Before he knew it, it was past two in the morning. Li Huaizhou yawned and could hardly open his eyes. Seeing his look, Xie Mo couldn't help laughing: "If you are sleepy, go to bed first. We will go to the library tomorrow to discuss the remaining questions."
"But I haven't finished yet..." Li Huaizhou rubbed his eyes, his voice a little unclear.
"It's okay," Xie Mo's voice was very soft, and his eyes were particularly gentle in the camera. "Go to bed first, otherwise you will fall asleep in class tomorrow." He paused and added, "Good night, baby."
"Good night," Li Huaizhou nodded, and hung up the phone reluctantly. Lying on the bed, he subconsciously looked at Xie Mo's scarf folded on the bedside, pulled it back and hugged it in his arms. It still had the scent of Xie Mo, and when he thought of his wet hair on the screen, the corners of his mouth couldn't help but curl up. The moonlight outside the window shone through the gap in the curtains and fell on the pillow, with a faint silver glow. It was rare for him not to suffer from insomnia during this period. Li Huaizhou only felt that his mind was full of function problems in his dreams, and... that person
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