Chapter 4, Chapter 4: Elementary school students writing weekly journals...
In elementary school, when writing weekly journal entries titled "My Weekend," Fang Minzhou's weekends typically looked like this:
I have math olympiad class on Saturday mornings, do my homework at home in the afternoons, have New Concept English class on Sunday mornings, and sometimes go to the city library to read and study in the afternoons, and sometimes go out to play with my classmates.
Fang Minzhou, a high school student, has a weekend life that is much the same as when she was in elementary school.
She attends classes all day on Saturdays because high school students have very little rest time. On Sunday mornings, she sleeps in a little longer and studies in the afternoon.
Fang Minzhou's self-discipline is not only due to her quiet personality, but also a result of her parents' strict upbringing when she was young.
But later she preferred the various magazines at the newsstand, but that's a story her father couldn't know about.
Now they don't care about her much anymore. Her father started saying that she's grown up, "How old are you? Do you still need your parents to control you? But if you have any problems, you should tell your parents." Her mother, on the other hand, has started to be enthusiastic about giving her nutritional supplements.
Fang Minzhou later suspected that they couldn't control her anymore, since they didn't know how to do the high school problems, and she spent almost all her time at school. It was after realizing this that Fang Minzhou occasionally felt a little lost.
Back home, Fang Minzhou ate a late-night snack while keeping an eye on her parents' reactions.
After returning from a week-long business trip, her father secretly exchanged glances with her mother after looking at her school entrance exam report card. He then coughed lightly, suppressed his smile, solemnly folded the report card, and handed it back to her, saying in official jargon, "Not bad, that's a great start. Keep up the good work and strive for even greater progress."
Fang Minzhou has indeed grown up and begun to understand the thoughts of adults.
Her father, Fang Liangping, was a junior manager at a local company, and her mother, Zhao Ningying, worked at the street office. The children of her friends were basically peers who were on the same starting line. They compared and showed off to each other, as well as exchanged parenting tips. Presumably, after hearing about how high school kids were doing, they became more cautious around her.
Fang Minzhou agreed.
"When is the next exam?" Fang Liangping asked.
"Next month, it's still early."
"There's no such thing as taking an exam too early or too late..."
Fang Minzhou held her breath, knowing she had said the wrong thing again, but arguing would only give her father more ammunition, so she could only patiently listen to his nagging: "You think it's early, but other classmates may have already started preparing. If you think you should wait a little longer, it'll be soon..."
The overhead light flickered suddenly, and the three of them looked up at the same time. Zhao Ningying complained, "I told you the light was broken, the light was broken. I wanted you to see what the problem was."
The house they lived in was quite old, and no matter how well they took care of it, it couldn't withstand the natural aging process. Fang Minzhou knew that her parents had been planning to move to a new house, but because this place was closer to her school, the plan had been put on hold.
"Okay, okay, I got it. I'll check it later," Fang Liangping said, but didn't forget to continue lecturing Fang Minzhou, "The tortoise and the hare race, I've been telling you that all along..."
Fang Minzhou had no choice but to give a perfunctory answer, so she looked at her mother, who shook her head helplessly and amusedly.
When Fang Min arrived at school on Monday, she was still quite early, but when she saw the empty seat next to her, she couldn't help but feel annoyed, thinking that she would have to get up and give up her seat again.
She was still angry, but felt it wasn't worth arguing with such a person. It was better not to see him on the weekend, but once she returned to school, she couldn't help feeling depressed.
As she sat in her seat memorizing English words, a classmate came over and told her that someone was looking for her. Fang Minzhou looked towards the back door and saw Yuan Yue waving at her.
"What's wrong?" Fang Minzhou walked over.
In January, he handed her a plastic tote bag containing bread and two bottles of milk.
"...So much?" Fang Minzhou asked, somewhat puzzled. "I've already had breakfast."
“You can eat it when you’re hungry,” Yuan Yue said, then lowered her voice and said embarrassedly, “It’s about what happened last Friday… I’m still quite embarrassed. This bread is really delicious, so I bought a few extra! You can share it with… everyone.”
Fang Minzhou remained silent.
Yuan Yue hurriedly waved her hand and explained, "Oh, you don't need to say that I bought them, just divide them up directly."
Faced with the genuine sincerity on Yuan Yue's innocent and lovely face, and thinking about the argument with Wang Kan later that day, Fang Minzhou felt a little sorry for her kindness. Hesitating about how to start the conversation, he caught a glimpse of someone coming up the stairs, yawning and acting nonchalant.
He entered the classroom through the front door, his doe-like eyes looking anxiously at Fang Minzhou.
"It's alright, don't worry," Fang Minzhou said again.
"Uh-huh."
The bell rang for morning self-study.
Fang Minzhou sat back down in her seat. Wang Kan looked at her, but she didn't return his gaze. She put the plastic bag in the drawer and began to study.
After morning self-study ended, she called out to Ouyang Qian, gave her two pieces of bread, and gestured for her to give one of them to Jin Baihao.
"Thank you!" Ouyang Qian said happily. "I overslept today and haven't had breakfast yet."
Do you drink milk?
"drink!"
As Ouyang Qian turned around, Fang Minzhou's eyes swept smoothly toward Wang Kan, who had been staring at him.
Wang Kansuan had the kind of face with thick eyebrows and big eyes, so his gaze always had a strong presence, which Fang Minzhou disliked.
Not wanting to waste time arguing with Wang Kan, she slightly shifted her gaze, and the sunlight streaming through the window, which he had blocked, leaped into Fang Minzhou's eyes. In her eyes, the sunlight framed Wang Kan with a fuzzy, golden edge, and he became a monkey waiting to be fed.
The monkey was not aggressive at the moment, so Fang Minzhou took a piece of bread from the bag and handed it to him.
Wang Kan looked down at it, unmoved.
Fang Minzhou rolled her eyes, but then heard Wang Kan say, "I don't like sweets."
Fang Minzhou: "..."
She was holding a dorayaki in her hand.
"Do you have the original flavor or the salty flavor?"
Fang Minzhou: "..."
She picked out a pork floss bread for Wang Kan.
Wang Kan continued, "I don't like eating meat floss either."
Fang Minzhou: "..."
Take it or leave it.
Before she could irritably pull her hand back, Wang Kan said, "Never mind," and took the bread from her.
I opened the package and finished it in a few bites.
Although his eating manners weren't unsightly, the way he devoured the food still stunned Fang Minzhou. She silently moved a little further away from him, but seeing him puffing out his cheeks to find water but finding the cup empty, she couldn't help but worry that he might cough on her, so she placed another bottle of milk on his table.
Wang Kan looked at the milk and then at Fang Minzhou. He had thought that Fang Minzhou was trying to make amends to him and was giving him a way out, but her expression made it seem like that wasn't the case at all.
But he didn't think too much about it. He took a sip of milk to suppress the strange feeling in his heart. He wanted to say something, but the class bell rang. Fang Minzhou put two more pieces of bread on the desks of Zheng Yanhang and Wu Cheng, who were catching up on sleep in the back row, and then took out his Chinese textbook from the drawer.
A cold, indifferent profile, clearly in "Do Not Disturb" mode.
Wang Kan choked, took another sip of milk, and swallowed the words he wanted to say.
For the rest of the day, strangely enough, he didn't say another word. Fang Minzhou had no intention of paying attention to him at all. He always had his face turned to the side during get out of class, but as soon as he moved slightly after class, Fang Minzhou would immediately stand up and offer him his seat, like a snake startled by grass.
Sometimes Wang Kan didn't intend to go out, but because Fang Minzhou did this, he had no choice but to go out and wander around outside until class started before coming back.
On his way to the basketball court in the evening, he passed a convenience store and saw Fang Minzhou waiting for someone at the door. Their eyes met, which could have been a chance for them to greet each other, but Fang Minzhou turned his face away indifferently. Wang Kan's voice was stuck in his throat and turned into a muffled cough.
"Hey, what's going on between you and your deskmate? What did you do to upset her?" Zheng Yanhang asked curiously from the side.
"How could I dare to offend her?"
“Then why did she… and during that evening study session last time,” Zheng Yanhang said, “I feel like I’m being dragged down by you.”
Wang Kan: ?
He realized what Zheng Yanhang was complaining about on behalf of Fang Minzhou.
“I’m just being friendly and supportive of my classmates,” Zheng Yanhang nudged Wu Cheng next to him. “Besides, Fang Minzhou is really nice; she even gave me bread in the morning.”
Wu Cheng was dragged along to make up the numbers, and by then the battery was almost dead, so he could no longer react.
Wang Kan threw the basketball in her hand into Zheng Yanhang's arms, "You were bribed with just a loaf of bread? How much did you swipe my meal card to buy things?"
Zheng Yanhang let out an exaggerated wail, "Who knows what questions you might have to ask them in the future? As a man, I advise you to reflect on yourself and not upset our academic genius."
"You didn't even score as high as me, why are you worrying about this?"
"That's because I bombed my English test at the start of the semester! I've been studying vocabulary diligently lately, so you'll see about my English quiz tonight."
Wang Kan: "..."
Fang Minzhou coldly rebuked him.
Wang Kan was angry, but he couldn't vent it. He was actually reasonable, and he admitted that he had done something wrong.
He awkwardly bent down to pick up the pen, and Minzhou's legs moved to the side under the chair. Wang Kan was surprised to find that she was wearing a pair of socks that did not fit her aloof image at all: light pink with white bow patterns, and a small section of fair skin was exposed between the loose school uniform trousers and the socks.
He took so long to pick up his pen that Fang Minzhou became suspicious. Just as she was about to see what he was up to, Wang Kan straightened up.
One looked down, the other looked up, and the two were suddenly very close, but they immediately separated and turned back to face the papers on their desks, as if the distance between their noses, which had almost brushed past each other, was just an illusion.
The words written in lead on the blank paper didn't immediately stick in her mind. Fang Minzhou regretted it a little. Why did she care what Wang Kan wanted to do?
The thought that "I didn't expect Fang Minzhou to be so fair-skinned" rose and fell in Wang Kan's mind like a wisp of smoke, before she belatedly realized that she had broken the inkstone.
He only had two pens, one black and one red. He quickly came up with a plan and naturally asked Fang Minzhou to borrow one.
This is a probe to test the other party's level of friendliness.
Fang Minzhou was still feeling ashamed and annoyed because of Wang Kan, but not lending him the pen would only make things worse. The quiz during evening self-study was not strict, and there was plenty of time, so Fang Minzhou, who had almost finished the test, did not pursue the matter of "disrupting the examination room discipline" and took a black pen from his pencil case to give it to him.
Wang Kan wrote twice, then returned the document: "Broken."
Fang Minzhou didn't believe it. She took it back and tried it on her own draft paper. She really couldn't write anything. She had to give Wang Kan another pen. This time, although it could write, it was intermittent.
How could this be? Fang Minzhou was puzzled.
Just as a soldier needs a good weapon, she is quite particular about stationery. There aren't many pens in her pencil case, but they are all ones she is used to and finds easy to use. This situation shouldn't have happened, and how could something go wrong just when she was about to lend them to Wang Kan?
She simply gave him the one she had; surely he wouldn't be unable to write now!
Wang Kan: "..."
Fang Minzhou didn't say a word, but he felt... why did she seem angry again?
The pen in her hand still faintly retained her body heat, much like her lingering anger; fortunately, the ink flowed smoothly from the pen.
He said thank you, but Fang Minzhou didn't respond. Instead, she took out the pens from her pencil case one by one and tried writing with them. She threw the two pens that had run out of ink into the plastic bag she used as a trash bag, which she hung next to her desk.
Fortunately, the remaining two are fine.
Unfortunately, he ran into both of the bad ones.
A note from the author:
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