Chapter Thirty-Seven
After the case was closed, Tang Miaosong watched the two leave the office and secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
The homeroom teacher of Class 6 next door draped his arm over the partition between the two of them and raised his eyebrows at her: "How are you, Ms. Tang? Are you alright?"
Tang Miaosong picked up the cup and took a sip of the steaming hot cocoa, squinting her eyes in enjoyment. Luckily, she had put the lid on before the students arrived, otherwise she would be drinking cold cocoa now.
She said in a weak voice, "Still alive."
The homeroom teacher of Class 6 turned around, took a bag of cookies from his desk drawer, and threw it on her desk, saying sympathetically, "This promising student is not someone that anyone can handle, except you. I really admire you for taking care of him since the first year of high school. If it were me, I would have gone crazy long ago."
Tang Miaosong tossed her a bag of small bread rolls as a return gift, and upon hearing this, paused in the act of tearing open the biscuits.
She slowly tore open the cookie packaging, and after a moment, said, "Actually, it's not bad. Shen Yue is actually a pretty good kid."
She tossed a cookie into her mouth and chewed it. She remembered her first year of high school. Not long after the start of the semester, and being a homeroom teacher, she had a mountain of garbage to do, which was both smelly and plentiful.
During that period, she was so busy that she was like a spinning top that never stopped. She slept at 2 a.m. and woke up at 6 a.m. every day. She was like a walking corpse, working non-stop for several days. Her eye bags were almost hanging down to her feet.
Every day there were meetings, big and small, and in between, she would listen to teachers from various subjects complaining to her about who was talking in class, not handing in homework, or interrupting and disrupting the class... The name that appeared most frequently, and the first name that Tang Miaosong remembered, was Shen Yue.
She remembered this name vividly because he was always on the list of teachers complaining about him. In the first year of high school, he ranked first in the district, far ahead of the second-place student.
At the time, her colleagues in the office envied her for having such a promising student, a sure-fire candidate for A University. They thought that if the student achieved great results, the supervising teacher would also benefit. Not long after, when Shen Yue was mentioned again, her colleagues only felt sympathy for Tang Miaosong.
Tang Miaosong felt that Shen Yue was incorrigible and had considered giving up on him countless times, but his sense of responsibility as a teacher always prevailed.
Two months after the start of the school year, after the flag-raising ceremony, Tang Miaosong watched them enter the classroom and planned to go back to the office to get the meeting notes for a meeting.
As a result, I found bread, milk and a few pieces of candy on the desk.
She paused for a moment, then picked up the note next to her.
Teacher, skipping breakfast can easily lead to low blood sugar.
Tang Miaosong took another sip of hot cocoa: "I was stunned. I thought, which child is so thoughtful that they can tell that their homeroom teacher was exhausted and almost fainted during the flag-raising ceremony?"
The homeroom teacher of Class 6 exclaimed in disbelief, "Don't tell me..."
Tang Miaosong said, "Yes, it was Shen Yue. You wouldn't believe it, would you? I didn't believe it at the time either, but the handwriting on that note was definitely his. And from that day on, he became much more well-behaved. He would even occasionally help the gentle teachers in class to maintain discipline."
The homeroom teacher of Class 6 remarked, "I never expected this. It seems even a scoundrel has a kind side."
Tang Miaosong nodded: "Once I was chatting with our Chinese teacher, and she said that Shen Yue seems cold and aloof on the surface, but he's actually very sensitive. She even gave him a nickname, what was it again..."
"Leng Daiyu".
Qu Qi whispered to You Congxi during class.
"What?" You Congxi asked in confusion, "Why are you cold?"
Qu Qi said, "Daiyu."
"Leng Daiyu?" You Congxi's confusion deepened. "Who?"
Qu Qi was convinced; it turned out the other person hadn't listened to her at all during her earlier chatter.
"Your mortal enemy."
"Who is my mortal enemy?"
"Well, you could also say he's your boyfriend."
"......"
“Chen Yue,” Qu Qi said.
You Congxi looked at her with a complicated expression: "Which group did this rumor come from, or from the washroom?"
Qu Qi glanced at the political teacher on the podium, and seeing that she didn't seem inclined to look in their direction, she confidently took out her phone from her desk drawer and showed her the group chat messages.
"Look, it was a huge uproar last night. The last time it was this exciting was when Shen Yue came out as gay."
You Congxi glanced at it briefly, then, recalling the probing looks he received when he arrived at school this morning, he finally understood.
So that's why.
Looking at her classmates in the group chat, who seemed to enjoy watching the drama unfold, and recalling Chen Yue's childish remarks from yesterday, she couldn't help but chuckle.
Qu Qi was startled: "Are you so angry you've gone mad??"
You Congxi glanced at her, said nothing, and simply tossed the phone back to her.
Qu Qi barely caught it, and became even more certain that You Congxi was angry. Fortunately, she had anticipated this and brought out the comforting words she had prepared in advance, saying, "Don't take it to heart. These people are only good at making wild guesses. They will never know the truth."
You Congxi looked at her without saying anything.
Qu Qi waited for a long time without getting the question she wanted to hear, then sighed and simply said it directly: "The truth is—"
After waiting a while longer, seeing that You Congxi really had no interest at all, Qu Qi clicked his tongue in regret.
"Qu Qi." A voice called from above.
Qu Qi jolted awake, slowly raising her head, and as expected, met the gaze of her political science teacher, whose kind eyes concealed a fierce edge.
"Come on, tell the teacher how many times the teacher said 'de' in this lesson."
Qu Qi: "......"
The classroom was completely silent. As the politics teacher once again used her trump card to punish the students, everyone felt a chill run down their spines when they saw Qu Qi standing alone and helpless. They felt a sense of shared sorrow for the fallen.
"Can't say it?" The politics teacher smiled and looked at the girl who was almost bowing her head to her feet. He said understandingly, "How about this, go to the teacher's office after class and I will check your recitation. After all, you have time to talk in class, so you must have learned it."
The politics teacher said she would check the memorization, meaning she would pick from the entire book, including the knowledge point templates she had given out. Qu Qi felt like dying.
Before she could finish, her political science teacher slowly added, "If you can't memorize it... you know the consequences, right?"
Qu Qi closed his eyes peacefully, and in the darkness he seemed to see a massive amount of writing punishment beckoning to him.
"......"
You Congxi didn't hear what the truth was when Qu Qi told her. She watched Qu Qi's withered mushroom-like figure walk out behind the political teacher, and silently prayed for her for two seconds.
That half-class was the most attentive half-class she had ever seen Qu Qi teach.
A soft voice of concern came from behind.
It looks like Liang Jing is back.
I don't know what they argued about, but the two of them ended up staying in the office for an entire class period.
You Congxi took a sip of water, pulled out her physics workbook from her desk drawer, and planned to do a few problems during the break. What did the argument have to do with her? She twirled her pen and looked down at the problems.
Yin Zixuan's voice was very low, like a drop of water merging into the ocean in the noisy classroom during break time. Even the tone was inaudible, let alone Liang Jing, who was speaking to her, whose voice was even lower than hers.
You Congxi placed his left hand steadily on the table, pressing down on the test paper, while his right hand scribbled on the draft paper. He had already finished half a page of multiple-choice questions in half a break, seemingly unaware that the people behind him had already returned to their seats.
Just before class was about to start, she heard He Qi's worried voice: "Brother, why don't you go to the infirmary? Are you just going to tough it out like this?"
You Congxi didn't stop writing for a moment. The next class was Chinese, so she couldn't secretly work on other subjects' papers. She had to finish this question before Xun Songyue entered the classroom.
Xun Songyue entered just before the bell rang, and the class representative had just finished wiping the blackboard and was returning to his seat from the podium.
You Congxi wrote the last letter, tapped it, moved her thumb slightly, retracted the pen tip, folded the paper, and put it back in her desk.
Qu Qi rushed to the front door, rang the bell, and shouted "Report!" After receiving permission, he ran back to his seat, panting.
You Congxi stepped aside to let her pass through the aisle. The bell had already rung, and the whole class was so quiet that you could hear the breathing of the person next to you. After Qu Qi returned to her seat, Xun Songyue on the podium said, "Class begins."
The class representative called out "Stand up," and You Congxi stood up with the whole class. As they shouted "Hello, teacher!" in unison, Shen Yue, whom she had just caught a glimpse of, flashed through her mind.
His brows were furrowed, his hand rested on his stomach, and his face was as white as paper.
The classroom was filled with the screeching of desks and chairs being dragged around. The noise made by the forty-odd students at the same time was no less than the sound of four hundred fingernails scratching the blackboard simultaneously. You Congxi frowned and sat down, his gaze falling on the cover of the Chinese textbook in front of him. No matter how he looked at it, he felt that the grinning little boy on it deserved a beating.
She has a face like a winter melon and still has the nerve to smile.
She stared at the person with the gourd-shaped face with a competitive look, as if whoever looked away first would lose.
How could You Congxi allow himself to lose to a winter melon?
"......"
After a while, Qu Qi gave her a whack on the head: "What's wrong? Xun Songyue has been staring at you for several days."
You Congxi then reluctantly declared a truce in his mind to Donggualian.
She opened her Chinese textbook and listened attentively for half the lesson.
"You should focus on your lesson, don't worry about me, I'm really fine." Shen Yue clicked his tongue and waved to He Qizheng.
He Qi was scolding him for being an ingrate, but couldn't help asking with concern, "Why the sudden stomachache? Even I get stomachaches when I'm under a lot of academic pressure. Could it be that even the top student, who's always so far ahead, experiences pressure...?"
"You caught a chill from eating steamed buns this morning," Shen Yue interrupted him.
He Qizheng: "...Oh."
He Qizheng was speechless.
The people around him finally quieted down, and Shen Yue breathed a sigh of relief. His stomach was cramping, and a thin layer of sweat appeared on his forehead. He pressed his left hand hard on his stomach, and the pressure slightly relieved the pain of being tightly gripped by an invisible hand.
His eyes involuntarily drifted to the back of You Congxi, whose body was half-obscured in front of him. He paused for a moment. They had had an unpleasant argument that morning, and the two of them hadn't exchanged a single word all morning.
She has a really bad temper.
He hunched over slightly, freeing his right hand to open the book, hoping to distract himself by listening to the lesson for a while. However, he was so focused on enduring the pain that he didn't hear a word the teacher said.
He slowly stood up and said "Goodbye, teacher." All the strength in Shen Yue's body seemed to fly away with the bell. He slumped onto the desk with a "whoosh," his right hand under his forehead and his left hand pressing firmly against his stomach under the desk.
This position made his stomach feel a little more comfortable, but perhaps it was too comfortable. Shen Yue closed his eyes in a daze and felt that only a few seconds had passed. When He Qizheng woke him up, half of the self-study class had already passed.
"Yue'er," He Qizheng lowered his voice, "get up, drink your medicine, and then go back to sleep."
Shen Yue was still half asleep.
Seeing that his eyes were about to close again, He Qizheng quickly dropped the bombshell: "Drink it quickly, You Congxi bought it for you."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
