Chapter 33
You Congxi slowly packed his schoolbag.
Before get out of class ended, Shen Yue passed her a note saying that he couldn't take her home after school today because something had come up at home.
You Congxi read the note but didn't reply. For some reason, Shen Yue thought that Yin Zixuan was deliberately not sending the note back. Yin Zixuan sneered, making Shen Yue permanently lose the opportunity to send notes to You Congxi through her.
After nearly two months of getting to know each other, Yin Zixuan and her deskmate, the discipline committee member Liang Jing, became quite familiar with each other. They witnessed Shen Yue's unreasonable and outrageous behavior. In the midst of Shen Yue's impotent rage, Liang Jing announced that he would soon receive a ticket to the homeroom teacher's office for a day trip.
Shen Yue's pupils dilated in shock: "How was this calculated??"
Heaven can bear witness, he was practically law-abiding that day, so how did he manage to commit five violations?!
Liang Jing calmly pushed up her glasses: "Passing notes in class and slandering classmates is an even greater offense."
After speaking, he noticed Yin Zixuan's gaze and smiled at her.
Shen Yue coldly watched the two exchange glances.
Okay, you're the discipline committee member, so you're in the right.
Before he could finish drafting his report denouncing Liang Jing, the discipline committee member of Class 7 in the second year of high school, for abusing her power and fabricating a false case against the innocent Shen Yue out of personal greed, his phone vibrated in his pocket. As soon as he took the phone out, he heard a voice from his right front: "Playing with your phone in class is a tenfold offense."
Shen Yue: "......"
He immediately shoved his phone back into his pocket and buried himself in writing a report, giving her a "you just wait" look.
As he wrote the complaint with a cold face, he guessed that Wen Hu might have invited him to dinner in the group.
Shen Yue was able to sit safely in the classroom without being assassinated by Director Lu and Da Shu thanks to Wen Hu.
After leaving the office in the morning, Shen Yue dragged his two aching arms, which smelled of oranges, and pondered as he walked, feeling that something was not right.
Seeing He Qizheng grinning and waving at him from the toilet entrance, and the glances that kept drifting towards him as he passed by, he suddenly remembered—
On Friday, I caused such a huge mess for Tang Miaosong, and this morning I even read my apology in front of the whole school. But just now in the office, she didn't mention a single word about it. Shen Yue frowned. This is not normal.
Watching You Congxi walk into the classroom without looking back, Shen Yue listened absentmindedly to He Qi rambling on and on in his ear.
He said impatiently, "Get to the point."
He Qi clicked his tongue, quite dissatisfied with this kind of guy who would forget his friends for the sake of a pretty girl, but he couldn't beat him, so he had to give in: "I said, as soon as Hu Zi came this morning, he went to his homeroom teacher and told her everything. He even went to Da Shu and asked her not to make things difficult for us."
"Tsk." Shen Yue didn't expect Wen Hu to go to such lengths. He had always kept quiet about his past, but this time, in order not to implicate his brothers, he had completely exposed his wounds.
He Qizheng sighed: "On the bright side, Tiger has let go a bit."
Shen Yue nodded slightly. Indeed, Wen Hu, who was usually the type to keep things bottled up until he died, was now willing to say something. It seemed that Wang Mian's death sentence had really put his mind at ease. Otherwise, in the past, even if Wen Hu fabricated some outrageous reason to take all the blame, he would never tell the truth to others.
Back in the classroom, Shen Yue made a deal with He Qizheng to massage him during a break, priced as a model.
Hearing He Qi's exaggerated urging him to look at the group chat, Shen Yue ignored him. His hand was so sore that he didn't want to lift it even a millimeter.
With a slight twitch of his ear, even though they were a row apart, Chen Yue could still clearly hear the girl's clear voice: "It's broken? How did it break?"
What's broken?
Looking over Yin Zixuan's head, Shen Yue saw that the two were touching heads and fiddling with someone's phone.
He heard Qu Qi complain: "Who knew, it just wouldn't turn on for no reason. It was a new one installed during the Chinese New Year. If my mom finds out, she'll cut it into noodles."
Oh, Shen Yue casually looked away, as long as You Congxi's phone wasn't broken.
Feeling the kneading on his arm lessen, Shen Yue raised an eyebrow, ready to confront He Qizheng.
Taking money and then lying about it—that's outrageous!
"Look!"
Shen Yue's brows were still furrowed in annoyance. Just as he was about to push away the phone that was pressed against his face, his gaze was drawn to a name on the screen.
You Congxi dissuaded Qu Qi from skipping class to repair her phone, promising to accompany her to the repair shop after class at noon. He then focused on writing his assigned essay as punishment, oblivious to everything else around him.
In addition to writing as punishment, Xun Songyue also made her rewrite these three essays in the style of Shen Yue. You Congxi was so worried that she lost a lot of hair in five minutes. She didn't leave her seat all morning. It wasn't until noon when she went out to get her phone repaired with Qu Qi and came back from a random place to eat that You Congxi still had two essays to rewrite.
In the afternoon, You Congxi was writing furiously at his seat, while Qu Qi was fiddling with his new mobile phone next to him.
Her old phone, which had mysteriously broken down, was completely unusable. She went to three repair shops, but they all gave up on it. In a fit of anger, she simply bought a new one.
Six thousand yuan, divided into 24 installments, 250 yuan per month.
You Congxi sighed, worried that the phone shop might go bankrupt before she could pay off the debt. Qu Qi covered her mouth and pulled her out of the shop under the murderous gaze of the shop owner. As soon as Qu Qi let go, You Congxi casually said, "By the time you finish the college entrance exam and buy a new phone, you'll be in college and still paying off the phone debt from your second year of high school."
Finally, You Congxi treated Qu Qi to a bowl of grilled cold noodles to appease her anger.
You Congxi felt that Qu Qi was doing it on purpose, because she only had eight cents left and couldn't afford grilled cold noodles.
A cunning woman. (Thoughts while wandering along the stream.)
You Congxi wrote until school was over, then put down his pen and belatedly felt his neck stiff, his back sore, his fingers numb, and a deep red dent on the side of his fingertip that held the pen.
This was a self-study period, and there was no teacher. She stretched and suddenly saw stars, hearing her bones cracking all over her body.
Writing essays is a killer. Exhausted from swimming in the Congxi River, my eyes were unfocused, and I thought absentmindedly.
The bell rang, and You Congxi crumpled up Chen Yue's note and stuffed it into her pocket, planning to throw it away in a trash can later. Qu Qi was on duty today, and You Congxi planned to stroll around the water room to stretch her muscles.
I don't know what's the story behind Shuifang, but every time I come to Youcongxi, I hear some shocking news.
She watched the water level in the cup rise gradually, the gossip chattering between the two girls next to her still echoing in her ears.
-Did you see the group chat? I heard that Shen Yue got really angry, and no one in the group dared to speak for a long time.
- Oh my god, why? He doesn't talk much in the group, I've never seen him post anything in the group.
- It seems that someone said bad things about You Congxi and speculated about their relationship, which caused Shen Yue to lose his temper.
-Oh my god, that's terrifying! Didn't they say Shen Yue and You Congxi didn't get along? On the first day of school, Shen Yue even had someone beat up You Congxi!
-Who knows? According to people in Class 7, they didn't seem to have a particularly good relationship with the two, but they didn't seem to have any grudges either. Maybe they're just ordinary classmates?
Would ordinary classmates defend each other like this? I have a feeling there's definitely something going on between them.
Qu Qi put the mop away, picked up her backpack, and watched as You Congxi finally returned slowly. She was holding a water cup in one hand and scrolling through her phone in the other, looking very serious with her head down.
"What are you looking at?" Qu Qi patted You Congxi on the shoulder, startling her.
She subconsciously turned off her phone and put it in her pocket, then looked up to observe Qu Qi's expression.
"What kind of look is that?" Qu Qi said.
"No," You Congxi replied quickly, then after a couple of seconds, hesitated before adding, "You saw..."
"Huh?" Qu Qi stuffed two envelopes he had taken from You Congxi's table into her hands. Seeing that she had stopped speaking, he couldn't help but ask, "What did you see?"
You Congxi didn't speak. She examined the envelope in her hand and asked, "What's this?"
Qu Qi said, "They came right after you left. One was a man and the other a woman. They were from another class and I didn't know them. They asked me where You Congxi was sitting. Before I could react, I saw them apologize to Shen Yue, put the letter on your desk, and run away. I asked Shen Yue, but he wouldn't tell me. He just told me to give you these two letters."
You Congxi recalled the rumors he had overheard in the water room and began to have a vague guess in his mind.
Her temples throbbed, and she had a slight headache. What was going on?
After saying goodbye to Qu Qi at the crossroads, You Congxi tightened the collar of his coat and kicked at the pebbles aimlessly.
By the end of October, the weather was getting cooler, and half of the leaves on the roadside had turned yellow. A few premature, short-lived leaves fell down and curled up in a corner, looking inexplicably lonely.
She recalled the big tree she saw from the window next to Tang Miaosong's workstation, a tree full of leaves, and how many would fall with a gust of wind, which was a pity.
She pushed off with her feet, and the pebbles rolled away with a clatter. A cold wind blew by, and as she buried her head in her collar, she suddenly smelled a faint scent of oranges.
You Congxi was taken aback.
Did you get it in the office?
She racked her brains for a while, but to no avail, so she simply stopped thinking about it and walked the rest of the way with her nose buried in her collar.
She's always like this; if she can't figure something out, she won't think about it, she'll just throw it all to the back of her head and pretend she doesn't know. Thinking too much is exhausting; her head feels as heavy as if it's stuffed with a weight. In You Congxi's view, this is no less than self-torture, just like how she doesn't know why her parents divorced, why her father no longer loves her, or why her mother has a new child.
Occasionally, on sleepless nights, she would replay the first seventeen years of her life like a movie. These problems she had trampled underfoot were like unkillable cockroaches, climbing up the movie screen as it unfolded. By the time she realized what was happening and tried to shake them off, these tenacious creatures had already taken hold of the gaps in her brain, gnawing at her flesh bit by bit.
She asked herself, why?
Again and again, she drew back the curtains, sat on the bed, and stared at the dark sky outside the window, watching it gradually brighten and the moon set. The question she couldn't answer kept playing over and over again. Her eyes were sore and dry, and her mind couldn't think straight. She wondered why she couldn't sleep.
But this was only occasional; most of the time, she slept soundly through the night because she didn't think about why.
While aimlessly scrolling through her WeChat Moments, You Congxi glanced at the moving truck at the entrance of her building. It was quite different from the one from a few days ago; it looked much more upscale.
She didn't pay attention, stepped aside to avoid the movers, and liked the photo of the roadside kitten that Qu Qi posted.
Standing at the elevator entrance, You Congxi paused in scrolling through her WeChat Moments.
-Daiy: Moving [Image]
Clicking on the Youcongxi page reveals a picture of a living room with so many things piled up that its original shape is obscured.
bite.
The elevator arrived, and she entered with the movers. Her shadow was reflected in the metal furniture next to them.
In the enclosed space, with You Congxi's nose still buried in her collar, the orange scent was even stronger.
The phone vibrated with a message, and the screen, which had been almost black, lit up again. You Congxi stared at the picture with his dark eyes, and a guess suddenly rose in his mind.
She quickly suppressed it again.
What a coincidence! Besides, only a crazy young master like Shen Yue would marry into a tiny school district apartment instead of a mansion.
With a ding, the elevator doors opened.
As You Congxi stepped out of the elevator, he found the door across the hall ajar, and the movers followed him into the house.
"You can leave it here."
"Stop eating, will you? Pass it over here!"
That sound...
I paused in my steps as I strolled along the stream.
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