Chapter 3
"Tell me why your aunt kicked you out this time?"
As soon as Zhou Zifang got out of school, he rushed over and took a tour inside and out of the pigeon cage that Lu Jiyu had just rented. It was a very small apartment with one bedroom and one living room, and it was not just a tour, but he could walk through the whole place in just two steps.
Zhou Zifang walked to the kitchen, got himself a bottle of drink from the refrigerator, leaned against the door frame, and stared at the man in casual clothes sitting on the sofa in the living room.
Lu Jiyu showered on his way home that afternoon. He now wore a half-damp gray towel on his head, a white T-shirt and light blue slacks, looking like a youthful, high school boy. No wonder the girls at school were so enamored with him. Lu Jiyu ignored Zhou Zifang. He slumped on the sofa, a dark gray AirBook Pro resting lazily on his lap. The glow from the screen reflected off his black-framed glasses. His slender hands flew across the keyboard, accompanied by a constant clicking sound.
Zhou Zifang couldn't help but lean over to look at his screen. All he saw was a string of unfamiliar code. He looked at the code, and then he looked at it, neither of them recognizing the other.
Lu Jiyu felt he was in the way, so he leaned aside, holding his laptop, his eyes never leaving the screen. Zhou Zifang kept approaching, and seeing Lu Jiyu's lips pursed into a line, his brows slightly furrowed, and a look of displeasure, he asked curiously, "What is this?"
"Just a random little game." After typing the last code, Lu Jiyu closed the computer and looked like he didn't want to say anything more. He rubbed the back of his neck with his backhand, tilted his head back and closed his eyes for three seconds before he opened his eyes listlessly and looked at Zhou Zifang beside him.
"Who are you?"
Zhou Zifang could see that he was in a really bad mood, so he half-heartedly comforted him, "Why did you have to mess with that devil in your family when you could mess with anyone else?"
This was quite unfair. Lu Jiyu took the Coke from Zhou Zifang, which he had just unscrewed but not yet finished, and took two gulps. The pent-up anger in his heart didn't seem to be letting up.
"I didn't mess with her."
"She won't let me go."
Two months ago, Lu Jiyu ordered two snowboards online. He didn't pay attention when writing the address, so the snowboards were sent directly back to his home last week. Lu Lin happened to be at home and signed for them.
Ever since Lu Jiyu fell off a ski jump in Switzerland two years ago and ended up in the hospital, Lu Lin suddenly realized that skiing could be fatal. Upon returning to China, he gave away all of Lu Jiyu's ski equipment and explicitly forbade him from skiing again. Lu Jiyu happened to be busy with a math competition at the time and didn't have time to argue with Lu Lin, so he just let her be.
But he didn't expect that after so much time, Lu Lin still reacted so strongly to his skiing.
Zhou Zifang also knew about Lu Jiyu buying a snowboard. It was a friend of his who introduced him to the owner. "Your aunt doesn't allow you to ski?"
"Afraid I'd die."
"Death is fine, but I'm afraid of being disabled." Zhou Zifang was instilled with the fear of death since he was a child, and he never participated in such extreme sports.
But Lu Jiyu considered himself a man of measure. He skied for the freedom of the moment, never resorting to difficulty just to show off. The last time he broke his leg in Switzerland, it was purely to avoid a rookie who had appeared out of nowhere on the advanced slopes. If he hadn't missed that one move, the other person might have been crippled. But he didn't tell Lu Lin about it, or she would have scolded him for being so soft-hearted.
Zhou Zifang thought this was a trivial matter and there was no need for the family to tear each other apart over this: "Why don't you just find an excuse to coax her?"
No matter how you coax her, she doesn't even care even if you kowtow to her.
"Why don't you give it a try? Doesn't Lu Lin always praise you for being cute every time he sees you?"
Zhou Zifang hugged his shoulders fearfully: "No, you can't even handle someone like me. But to be honest, your aunt can't kick you out of the house just because of this, right? Are you hiding something else from me?"
Lu Jiyu was unusually silent for a few seconds.
"You also know that Lu Lin has no children, so she's counting on me to inherit her company."
Unfortunately, Lu Jiyu had never shown much interest in the matter. The day before yesterday, they had argued again about the snowboard, and Lu Lin had brought the topic back to the company. The two of them expressed their own opinions, and naturally, they parted ways.
Zhou Zifang knew that Lu Jiyu hadn't decided on a major even after being admitted, so he tried to ask him, "Does your aunt want you to study business administration?"
"Not really." Lu Jiyu shook the Coke bottle in his hand carelessly. The brown gas formed dense bubbles that piled together, and his blurry face was reflected on the transparent bottle.
Lu Lin’s rank shouldn’t be that low.
"She told me that I could study any major in college, as long as I was happy. Veterinary medicine would be fine, or even better, embroidery. As long as I could graduate with a diploma, that was all that mattered."
Zhou Zifang wasn't too surprised after hearing this. Ever since he knew that Lu Lin had been secretly scouting for a future sponsor for Lu Jiyu since he was in high school, Zhou Zifang was no stranger to Lu Jiyu's aunt's various amazing moves. "It seems your aunt is determined to train you to become a son-in-law of a wealthy family."
Lu Jiyu laughed self-deprecatingly: "After I finish my diploma, let me join the company directly. Then maybe it will be like what you said. Find me a suitable match. It will be arranged clearly."
"But how should I put it." Zhou Zifang sat up from the sofa: "On this point, I actually think your aunt's arrangement for you is quite good."
"Yeah." Lu Jiyu threw the Coke bottle at him, his face showing a hidden impatience: "If you think it's good, then change your surname to Lu."
"No." Zhou Zifang was still curious. "Would your aunt agree to this arrangement for you?"
Lu Jiyu swung the remote control in his hand, his eyes expressionless. “What does it matter whether you agree or not?”
Anyway, we haven't seen each other for so many years.
Zhou Zifang was tactful enough not to say anything else. He took the remote control from Lu Jiyu and turned on the TV across from the sofa, which looked older than him. As soon as the screen turned on, a ball of white snowflakes popped up.
Zhou Zifang had never seen such a scene before: "What the hell, a magic attack?"
Lu Jiyu was watching calmly with his head tilted to his head. He had already passed the stage of surprise and said calmly, "Give him three minutes."
Three minutes later, the snow disappeared, but everyone on TV had double images.
"I think the previous tenant of this apartment was presbyopic, otherwise how could he have spared the trouble of smashing this antique." Zhou Zifang stood up and, imitating his grandparents, patted the back of the TV very skillfully. After waiting for a few seconds, it was of no use.
"I give in." He admitted defeat.
Lu Jiyu stared at it for a few seconds, and his eyes hurt. When the TV was turned off, the screen went black, but the amazing thing was that the sound of the TV was still there.
"Damn, The Ring." Zhou Zifang was timid. He jumped onto the sofa and trembled.
Lu Jiyu walked around him and stood up. Zhou Zifang looked at his back and thought that he had grown taller after not seeing him for a few days. However, now was not the time to worry about that. "Do you think a Sadako will show up in the middle of the night?"
"Don't be afraid, I'll teach you." As soon as Lu Jiyu finished speaking, he turned around and unplugged the TV.
After all, no matter how powerful Sadako is, she is afraid that the TV will run out of battery.
＊
Jiang Wan stayed in the studio until very late yesterday and stayed there all night instead of going home. She was worried that the new tenant upstairs would be too noisy because she heard from the woman working at the convenience store next door that a young man had moved in.
Wearing the uniform of a German middle school.
It is said that he looks about the same age as Jiang Wan.
Dewen Middle School is a notoriously poorly-performing high school in Nanyuan City, housing a group of uneducated, wealthy second-generation students. Chen Meiyun had a brief romance with one of them during her freshman year, but he naturally ended up being dumped. Fortunately, she ran away quickly and didn't suffer any serious consequences.
Jiang Huainan had called to express his concern this morning. Jiang Wan made himself some coffee in the studio's kitchenette, his phone conversation nonchalant.
Jiang Huainan said ten sentences before she replied with a vague and perfunctory sentence.
"Since there are people living upstairs, I think it's not convenient for you to live in the studio. Why don't you go live with your aunt?" Jiang Huainan was with a tour group on the Gobi Desert to see the poplar forest. The signal was sometimes there and sometimes not. He was like a wild boar that had escaped from a cage, running around looking for a signal.
But Jiang Wan didn't want to accept his kindness. She picked up the coffee, took a sip, and pretended not to hear clearly: "Hello? Dad, what are you talking about?"
"I said, the password for my bank card that I kept in the bedside table is 678934."
Jiang Wan replied subconsciously: "Which bank?"
Jiang Huainan sneered on the other end of the phone and hung up. Jiang Wan then realized that he had been tricked.
It turns out that old ginger is still spicy.
After finishing her coffee, Jiang Wan returned to bed for a nap. It was May in the southern city, and the summer heat was just beginning to set in. She'd gone to bed wrapped in a thin corduroy nightgown, and as expected, she'd woken up sweating.
There were two missed calls on her phone, both from Chen Wulin. Ever since she got the bonus points from F University, Jiang Wan felt that Chen Wulin cared about her much more closely.
Chen Meiyu also thinks so.
"Men are all very bad. Look at Chen Wulin's mother. When Chen Wulin was a child, if he said a word to us, his mother would avoid him and drag him home as if we were infected with a virus."
"It's not that we have the virus, it's that he might learn bad things from us." After all, back in elementary school, Jiang Wan and Chen Meiyun were a notorious "unlearned" duo in the neighborhood. Jiang Wan corrected the wrong answers in Chen Meiyun's math workbook and returned it to her.
"So soon?"
McDonald's wasn't very busy on a weekday evening, so Jiang Wan and Chen Meiyun found a table by the window. Jiang Wan ordered a Coke, while Chen Meiyun had a children's meal as usual.
Jiang Wan didn't quite understand her hobby, but he respected it.
Chen Meiyun actually enjoyed it: "After leaving Mai Mai, who in this world would still treat me like a child?"
"A giant baby is still a baby." Jiang Wan took a sip of Coke and found it a little bland. Then she remembered that she had forgotten to remove the ice when she ordered. She opened the lid and used a straw to pick out the ice cubes one by one.
"Jiang Gong moves the ice." Chen Meiyun put Jiang Wan's corrected workbook back into her bag and became curious: "You told me yesterday that you met one of your father's former students? Which one?"
"It's the one I told you about." After Jiang Wan picked the ice, half of the Coke in the cup was gone.
Chen Meiyu tried to recall and soon had an idea: "Which one? Could it be the shame of Silin? What's his name?
In fact, Jiang Wan couldn't remember the other person's name very clearly, he only knew his last name was Lu because Jiang Huainan always liked to call him Xiaolu.
Back when Jiang Huainan was still working at the school, he'd been their class's acting head teacher for two months. After just two months, he was already raving about him, saying he was perfect in every way, like a fairy. At the time, Jiang Wan was just a nobody in Li Wan's eyes, but when she learned about this man from Jiang Huainan, she invited him to her home without hesitation.
What she told the boy was that she wanted him to give Jiang Wan some guidance, which was a pretty reasonable reason.
But Jiang Wan knew that Li Wan just wanted to intimidate her and embarrass her.
On the day the other boy came, Jiang Wan locked herself in the room and did not go out, no matter how Li Wan tried to persuade her outside the house. In the end, she could no longer pretend and started to complain about Jiang Wan in front of outsiders, wanting to tell them all the embarrassing things that had happened to her since she was a child.
Jiang Wan didn't consider herself a person with high self-esteem, but at that moment, she felt an unprecedented sense of shame. She remembered that it seemed to be raining that day, and long, cold raindrops drifted in from the window, hitting the diary on Jiang Wan's desk in a trance, like violent and disorderly tears.
Teacher Jiang's daughter is uneducated.
This is the label Li Wan wants to give her.
But Li Wan did not succeed that day.
Jiang Wan wasn't someone who easily remembered people. The main reason she couldn't forget Lu was because Jiang Huainan later mentioned him with a look of regret, saying that he had made a major mistake in the high school entrance exam and could only go to a regular high school based on his grades.
This is what Chen Meiyu jokingly called the shame of Silin.
However, Jiang Wan felt that these four words were a bit too much.
"He just failed the exam, and he didn't do anything immoral. You don't need to say that about him, right?"
In fact, this nickname was not thought up by Chen Meiyu.
"My friend told me that when that boy failed the exam, they reposted a thread on their forum mocking him. The thread was titled 'Shame of Silin', saying he took advantage of all the school's resources and ended up bringing discredit to the school."
Of course, it goes without saying that this post must have been posted by his rivals. A child of destiny like him must have many people who love him, but there are also probably many who secretly envy and hate him.
Jiang Wan picked up a piece of ice and held it in his mouth, chewed it into pieces out of boredom, and then swallowed it.
Chen Meiyun knew that this was a small habit of hers, and continued to ask: "You met him, and did he recognize you?
Jiang Wan finished eating one piece, then ate another: "He didn't recognize me. He had never seen me before."
"Actually, I'm quite curious about what he looks like. My friend said he's a super handsome guy. She said that in all her life, she's never seen anyone so handsome. Not only is he handsome, he's also quite interesting, but he's not very approachable."
Jiang Wan agreed that people are not easy to get close to: "I took a picture of him yesterday without turning off the sound, and he found out and it pissed him off."
"Really? You took a picture of him yesterday?" Chen Meiyun's focus was entirely on the first half of the sentence: "Show me the picture."
Jiang Wan picked up his phone, pulled out a selfie, and handed it to the other person, then smiled and said, "Sorry, I forgot to rotate the camera when I took the photo."
Chen Meiyun: …
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