The sunlight flowed in through the gaps in the classroom window frames like melted honey, weaving golden grids on the desks.
Mu Xinrong put down his pen and stretched his sore fingers. He glanced at Chao Youye, who was covering his face with a textbook. His long eyelashes cast fan-shaped shadows under his eyes - this was the seventh time he had tried to cover his yawning face with a textbook.
"Chao Youye, do you want to go to the store?" Mu Xinrong lowered his voice and tapped the other person's desk with his fingertips.
Chao Youye peeked out from behind the textbook, her purple pupils shrouded in sleepiness. "No..."
The last word was drawn out like a lazy cat. After he finished speaking, he buried his face in his arms, and the cuffs of his school uniform slid down, revealing the silver watch on his wrist.
Mu Xinrong shook his head helplessly and stuffed the draft paper into his schoolbag as he stood up. As he passed the back door of the classroom, he heard the boys in the back row whispering: "Mr. Chao, didn't you eat lunch again today?"
"Hush, the young master of a wealthy family pays attention to light meals and healthy living..."
He pursed his lips and quickened his pace towards the convenience store.
The moment the glass door opened, cool air mixed with the sweet smell of carbonated drinks hit me in the face.
Mu Xinrong stopped in front of the refrigerator, his eyes swept over the orange soda and lemon tea, and finally stopped at the pineapple Gudong soda - Chao Youye once said that this tasted very much like the juice he drank when he was on vacation in Hawaii.
When I returned to the classroom, Chao Youye had already fallen asleep on the table. The boy's profile was pressed against the table, his eyelashes casting tiny shadows under his eyes, and his lips were slightly parted, revealing a small piece of teeth.
Mu Xinrong suddenly remembered that he was sleeping soundly curled up on the sofa in Chao's villa last week. The cashmere pillow he was using at that time had the same color as the color of his hair at this moment when the sunlight shone on his hair.
"Pop." The sound of the soda bottle cap being unscrewed was particularly clear in the silent classroom. Mu Xinrong took a small sip, and the cool bubbles exploded on the tip of his tongue.
He gently placed the bottle on the corner of Chao Youye's desk. The water droplets condensed on the outer wall of the glass slid down the bottle, leaving a small water mark on the wooden table.
As the sunlight crept up Chao Youye's brow, Mu Xinrong's fingertips reached out uncontrollably. The touch was softer than he had imagined, like a newly sprouted willow branch in spring. He hastily withdrew his hand, but the tip of his ear flushed suspiciously.
"Fuck..." He cursed in his heart and grabbed the textbook to cover his hot face, but he heard a rustling sound beside him.
When Chao Youye woke up, her fingertips touched the bottle of soda. The coolness of the glass bottle slowly flowed into her brain along her nerve endings.
He squinted his eyes and looked at the pineapple pattern on the label, and suddenly remembered that when he was a child in the manor, the gardener would always hand him a glass of freshly squeezed pineapple juice after he practiced the piano, and the outer wall of the glass would also be condensed with such water droplets.
"Mu Xinrong, did you buy this for me?" he turned around and asked, his voice still hoarse from just waking up.
Mu Xinrong was half asleep and half awake at the moment. He nodded subconsciously when he heard the voice, and then shook his head violently - unfortunately, Chao Youye had automatically filtered out the second half.
The young man raised a smile and unscrewed the bottle cap with a soft "pop" sound. The moment the sweet and sour bubbles burst in his mouth, he saw the blush on the tip of Mu Xinrong's ear and suddenly felt that this bottle of soda was sweeter than the pineapple juice in his memory.
The first class in the afternoon is mathematics.
When the teacher walked into the classroom with a stack of exercise books, Chao Youye was drawing cherry blossoms on a piece of draft paper with a pen. The curvature of the petals was so precise that it looked as if they had been measured with a compass - this was a technique he learned from Mu Xinrong.
"Chao Youye, come up and write this problem." The math teacher's voice was like a sharp knife, cutting through the sleepiness in the classroom.
The boy paused, his pen in hand, and looked up at the blackboard. The intersecting graph of a parabola and a straight line lay stretched out on the board, its fangs bared, its claws and teeth bared. Next to it were densely packed lists of known conditions, reminiscent of the complex financial reports in the Chao family mansion.
He sighed inwardly, placed his pen gently on the table, and straightened the collar of his school uniform as he stood up—even when faced with math problems, he couldn't lose the demeanor of a rich young master.
Mu Xinrong looked at Chao Youye's back as she walked up to the podium, and suddenly remembered last month's math test.
At that time, Chao Youye stayed up until three in the morning to practice questions in order to go to the comic convention with him. In the end, she even got sick.
On the podium, Chao Youye picked up the chalk and wrote a beautiful word "解" on the blackboard.
The chalk tip paused at "x2." He stared at the symbols, his mind replaying Mu Xinrong's voice as he lectured: "When you encounter a conic section, draw the coordinate system first, idiot..."
Hearing the snickers of his classmates behind him, he clenched the chalk tightly, his fingertips turning white from the force.
"Pah." A ball of paper hit his back and rolled to his feet. Chao Youye caught a glimpse of the math teacher explaining the wrong questions to the students in the front row, and quickly bent down to pick up the paper ball.
The moment it unfolded, familiar handwriting caught my eye. There were small cherry blossom designs next to the steps for solving the problem, and at the end, it said: "Use Vieta's theorem on the third line, idiot."
He suddenly remembered that in his third year of junior high school, he was punished by the teacher to stand in the corner because of a fight. Mu Xinrong slipped him a note when no one was paying attention. On the note was a cartoon man holding a banner that said "Come on".
The corners of his mouth lifted uncontrollably as he quickly reviewed the ideas for solving the problem. The chalk rustled on the blackboard, and the tangent of the parabola seemed to be given life, smoothly crossing the coordinate system.
"Well, the steps are very clear." The math teacher nodded approvingly. "Next time, don't be distracted. Sit down."
When Chao Youye returned to her seat, Mu Xinrong was writing something on a piece of draft paper with his head down.
He nudged the other person with his elbow and pushed the remains of the paper airplane over. There was a line of small text on it: "No crying face this time. Great progress."
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