Chapter 18. Auntie's attitude surprised Fang Minzhou…
Auntie's attitude made Fang Minzhou realize for the first time that "Wang Kan's deskmate" was a very prestigious title.
Just like at the parent-teacher meeting more than two months ago, Wang Kan looked embarrassed, but she smiled and greeted her, "Hello, Auntie."
"Hey, hello, have you eaten yet?"
The aunt was so enthusiastic that Fang Minzhou didn't think much of it and said, "Not yet."
“Then you can eat with Wang Kan, I just came from…”
“Mom…” Wang Kan interrupted.
Chen Hongshan glanced at Wang Kan with dissatisfaction, then continued to say to Fang Minzhou, "Don't be so polite. I just came back from Wang Kan's maternal grandmother's house. I specially brought him the dishes she made while they were still hot. They never taste as good when they're cold and then reheated."
Wang Kan, standing to the side, was getting impatient. Fang Minzhou was also unsure how to respond, so she simply kept smiling.
"Oh, and... Auntie wants to thank you."
ah?
Fang Minzhou was stunned.
……Yeah?
Fang Minzhou was caught off guard. She never expected that Wang Kan would be studying late into the night. And it was only then that she realized a question: how did Wang Kan's mother know that they were deskmates?
She looked at Wang Kan, whose face was filled with shame and indignation, confirming the credibility of the matter.
"I'm leaving," he said angrily.
"Hey, where are you going?" Chen Hongshan couldn't stop him, so she said to Fang Minzhou, "That's just how he is, he has a really bad temper. I'll trouble you to sit next to him."
Although Wang Kan, who hadn't gone far, couldn't hear clearly, he could guess what his mother was saying even with his toes. He turned around and shouted, "Stop talking!"
Chen Hongshan raised her voice: "You..."
Fang Minzhou quickly replied, "It won't be a problem."
Chen Hongshan clicked her tongue unhappily, but still spoke kindly to Fang Minzhou: "He definitely has... Auntie knows, but thank you anyway. I've actually been wanting to talk to your teacher Zhan about whether we could get him a better seat..." She couldn't help but complain a few times, then suddenly exclaimed, "Oh dear, I forgot you haven't eaten yet. Go eat quickly, and Auntie will bring you something delicious next time."
"No need..." Fang Minzhou hurriedly declined.
After finally watching Wang Kan's mother get into a red car at the school gate, Fang Minzhou sighed deeply.
It was late autumn, early winter, and darkness fell in the blink of an eye. The cold wind jolted her thoughts. She turned around and took a few steps before realizing that Wang Kan hadn't gone far. When he noticed her, he arrogantly gestured with his chin towards the package in her hand, "What are you carrying?"
"...It's from January, I'll get it for her."
Wang Kan frowned slightly, then relaxed, probably remembering who Yuan Yue was. He's still like this; you can tell what he's thinking just by looking at his face. Should you call him naive or foolish?
But how did he become someone who secretly studies in secret...? Is it because of what she said?
What were you thinking?
Fang Minzhou tried to find clues on Wang Kan's face.
"Is it heavy? Let me help you carry it?"
"Need not."
"...Where are you going now, the cafeteria or..."
"The girls' dormitory," Fang Minzhou said.
"……oh."
On the way from the school gatehouse to the cafeteria, you pass by the dormitory building. In the dark and cold season, some trees are bare, and there are fewer people on campus. You can vaguely hear shouts coming from the basketball court.
On the wide main road, Fang Minzhou initially walked behind Wang Kan, but before they knew it, they were walking side by side. Their shadows overlapped under the streetlights. Fang Minzhou noticed this and took a few steps forward. Wang Kan seemed to have noticed this as well and followed.
Passing by a bulletin board that had been demolished and renovated, Fang Minzhou felt that there seemed to be a wall between her and Wang Kan.
From the moment they met, every word and every expression influenced their impressions of each other. So sometimes the wall was built higher, and sometimes a few bricks were silently removed. It was a patchwork of dismantling and repairing, but the wall remained uneven. Then, Wang Kan's mother's words were like a hammer, smashing the wall down with a crash. But the smashing was so ugly and abrupt that even the two of them, who were not good neighbors, looked at each other in bewilderment.
When she arrived near the dormitory, Fang Minzhou turned and went straight in. After telling the dormitory supervisor, she went to Yuan Yue's room. However, it was only her turn to take a shower, so Fang Minzhou had to put her package on the ground. "I'm going to eat first. Remember to buy some food at the convenience store later."
Fang Minzhou walked out of the dormitory building and found a person standing under the street lamp.
He pulled the hood of his black hoodie over his school uniform jacket, put one hand in his pocket, and carried a thermos in the other, listlessly rubbing the soles of his shoes with his head down.
The streetlights have a limited illumination range; if Fang Minzhou takes a few steps forward, he will cross the boundary between light and shadow.
At this moment, Wang Kan saw her first, immediately took off his hat, stopped his little movements, stood still slightly stiffly, and then casually tilted his head back and said, "The cafeteria? Let's go."
He didn't wait for Fang Minzhou this time, and walked ahead by himself. Fang Minzhou looked at his back and suddenly couldn't figure out what Wang Kan was thinking.
When they arrived at the cafeteria, there were few students, and the cafeteria staff were already preparing for dinner. There were very few dishes left, so she chose scrambled eggs with tomatoes and stir-fried cabbage with shredded pork.
Fang Minzhou sat down with her tray. After getting her food, she returned and Wang Kan sat diagonally opposite her. Several insulated lunch boxes of various sizes were laid out, creating a stark contrast with her tray.
Wang Kan: "You eat so much vegetarian food?"
Fang Minzhou: "..."
"Barbecued pork, do you want some?" Wang Kan asked, but at the same time, she had already put several dishes on Fang Minzhou's plate and ladled a bowl of radish and meatball soup for Fang Minzhou. "I haven't touched my chopsticks, let's eat together, I can't finish it by myself."
The steps were uneven and bumpy, making it difficult to find a foothold. Fang Minzhou could only eat in silence and then praise how delicious it was.
The meal was even more awkward than the two of them had imagined, to the point that Wang Kan later started explaining how the dishes were made. His grandmother had taught him, for example, that the meatballs should be made with lean pork from the hind leg, and that hand-beating them would make them more elastic than machine-beating them. She also suggested adding a little white pepper powder for a fresher flavor, and that the radish should be stir-fried before boiling.
Fang Minzhou chimed in at the opportune moment, but inwardly cursed Wang Kan for being so quiet, so that the two of them could eat faster.
"When I was little," Wang Kan began, starting with this seemingly random phrase after finishing the recipe.
Fang Minzhou looked up at him.
Can't he ever be serious for once? Fang Minzhou remained unmoved and stern. Wang Kan coughed and continued, "Anyway, I boiled a pot of soup. I forgot whether I added oil or salt. My parents praised me, but they were actually laughing their heads off. I remembered it and went straight home after school every day to cook soup. I didn't let my parents know. I just drank it myself until one day I thought, 'Hmm, this tastes just right.'"
Wang Kan's story ends here. Fang Minzhou, the only listener, remains reluctant to give any response. He waits and waits, then chews a mouthful of rice and tastes sweetness. "...What I mean, you... understand?"
Fang Minzhou said calmly, "No wonder your essay score wasn't high either."
"……What?"
"You only provide arguments, but you don't analyze or summarize them, and then you think you've written clearly enough and that others should be able to understand what you're writing."
Wang Kan: "..."
After finishing her meal, Fang Minzhou put down her chopsticks, took out a pack of napkins from her pocket, tore open the seal, and offered it to Wang Kan. Wang Kan took one, held it in her hand, and smelled the faint scent of jasmine; she always used the same brand.
The fragrance made Wang Kan feel slightly dazed, reminding him of other scents he had smelled on Fang Minzhou: her usual laundry detergent seemed to be some kind of floral fragrance; her shampoo, when the weather was still relatively warm in September and October, had a very fresh plant scent, but now it must have changed to a different type, when she swung her ponytail or took it off and tied it back, it had a very faint milky scent; the candies she secretly tore open during evening self-study, fruit candies, milk candies, mints, if you listened carefully, you could even hear the sound of hard candies being crushed in her mouth.
And then there was that praying mantis that appeared out of nowhere that day, jumping onto her desk. She was practically in his arms, and the scent of osmanthus wafted in from outside the window with a cool breeze.
“Last time at the station… I actually roughly know what you mean, but my attitude wasn’t very good,” he heard Fang Minzhou say to him.
Wang Kan's ears burned. He didn't need Fang Minzhou to apologize, and besides, the apology was too much.
She's right.
"I just wanted to say... everyone's situation is different. Your parents might not care much about you, whether your grades are good or bad, and they'll still bring you food. But other people might not be like that..."
Wang Kan chuckled, "Don't be fooled by my mom."
Fang Minzhou looked puzzled.
"Do you think she's a very nice person?" Wang Kan sighed helplessly. "She is quite nice, and she doesn't care about me, so they don't care what I do. But she brought me food today, and she might not be home for the next ten days or half a month."
Fang Minzhou understood, but to be honest, she couldn't empathize with Wang Kan's troubles. Did he still want to be managed?
However, Fang Minzhou could not say these words aloud, so she could only swallow them.
Wang Kan seemed to realize that he had said something he shouldn't have, and suddenly fell silent.
The cafeteria tables were made of stainless steel, the silver tabletops blurred and distorted with lines and colors. As the cafeteria emptied out, everything they said seemed amplified. Fang Minzhou, having finished eating, urged Wang Kan, "Have you finished eating?"
"Soon."
There were only a few bites of rice left.
"There's still some soup left, let's finish it all," Fang Minzhou said. "Don't waste it."
"Oh, okay."
Yuan Yue ate slowly, and Fang Minzhou had never been in a hurry to wait for her before, watching her eat like a little rabbit. This habit carried over to the present, and after staring at Wang Kan for a while, Fang Minzhou realized something was wrong. Before being discovered, he quickly moved on, but noticed that Wang Kan's chopsticks movements were quite standard.
When she was little, her father corrected her eating and writing habits, and even sent her to calligraphy classes for a while. This gave her a little quirk: she would sometimes observe whether other people held chopsticks and pens correctly. Later, she discovered that some people could still hold things steadily or write beautiful characters even though they didn't hold them correctly, so there was no absolute relationship between the two. She didn't quite understand her father's strictness back then.
After Wang Kan finished eating, the two of them cleaned up the dishes together and walked silently towards the teaching building. However, when they reached the third floor where the classrooms were located, Fang Minzhou heard Wang Kan, who had somehow fallen behind her, call her name. She turned around, and he spoke slowly and solemnly: "What I said last time was serious."
When was the last time? What did you say?
Fang Minzhou thought to herself that Wang Kan was truly incorrigible. She had been told to have arguments and evidence, but now she couldn't even remember to cite her own viewpoints.
“…Okay.” She then said something strange, and hurriedly added as she turned around, “Class is about to start.”
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