Chapter 53 The Budding of Feelings "You like him?"
Jiang Yueming changed her school uniform.
According to the original plan, there was no need to change it, but the plan went wrong. The original one was a bit too small. Although it was originally a size 180, Jiang Yueming had grown taller in the past two years, successfully surpassing 180cm. In addition, he always messed with it, tearing here and there. The trouser hem and sleeves had to be sewn twice by Li Leshan. He was originally willing to throw it away, but after Li Leshan sewed it up, he couldn't bear to throw it away.
After entering the third year of junior high school, I felt that the pace of life had become much faster. The intensity of daily morning exercises was significantly higher, and I also started practicing basketball. We had two physical education classes a week, one of which was a physical fitness test.
Liu Qi's third-year class had already graduated. Before leaving, she left a note for Li Leshan, secretly slipping it into his desk next to a bag of milk. She said it was a pity that although they had gone to the same junior high school for the past two years, they hadn't had much interaction. She said she had applied to Shishi High School, and if she could get in, they would still be classmates.
Unfortunately, Liu Qi's application to her desired high school didn't go well. She didn't get into the top high school in the city, but instead went to an ordinary high school in the city. Her grades ranked around 300th in her junior high school class, and her teachers told her to play it safe and put the second-best high school or the fifth-best high school as her first choice. But Liu Qi didn't do that; her true feelings were already quite clear at that moment.
However, Li Leshan was unaware of this. If they were not in the same grade, there was already such a great distance between them, let alone not being in the same school.
Despite Xu Qing's always energetic demeanor, physical fitness tests, especially the 800-meter run, are a major challenge for her. It's common for her to finish the 800-meter run in four or five minutes, prompting Jiang Yueming to jokingly ask if she'd done two laps. Although interventions were started years ago, the results haven't been significant. However, Xu Qing's goal is to attend Shishi High School, and failing the long-distance running test would severely impact her grades.
"Xu Qing, give it your all, only 200 meters left!" Jiang Yueming shouted, holding up the timer. The timer was a cheap find from a two-yuan store; it was quite old, and the shopkeeper charged them five yuan each.
Li Leshan and Jiang Yueming stood together to supervise Xu Qing. In order to motivate the girl, they even used the "honey trap".
Xu Qing felt her vision blur, and she vaguely tried to catch a glimpse of Li Leshan's face to encourage herself. Suddenly, Han Jiang darted out from the side, running alongside her and completely blocking Li Leshan's view, so that not a single hair on his head could be seen.
"Han Jiang..." Xu Qing gritted her teeth. But because she was too weak, her tone didn't sound disdainful to Han Jiang; instead, it carried a hint of gratitude. He felt a surge of joy.
"Hurry, hurry, hurry!" Jiang Yueming felt like he was the only one on the entire track who was worried about whether he could run the 800 meters in under four minutes. Han Jiang was thinking about Xu Qing, Xu Qing was thinking about Li Leshan, and Li Leshan was thinking about someone else. "Xu Qing, give it your all! Imagine there's a dog chasing you!"
"Bite me to death—" Xu Qing said, feeling utterly hopeless.
"It's not that simple!" Jiang Yueming shouted.
"Thank you for your help, helping Xu Qing practice running under the scorching sun," Jiang Yueming turned to Li Leshan and whispered, "She can't run fast without you watching her, I don't know what's wrong with her."
So, is Li Leshan some kind of accelerator or something?
Li Leshan shook his head, indicating that he was fine. He had nothing to do anyway, and was just free anyway, at most he would go back to class early to study.
"A few minutes..." Xu Qing finally finished running, panting heavily.
Han Jiang quickly handed her a bottle of water with the cap already unscrewed.
"Four and a half minutes." Jiang Yueming, holding the stopwatch, said sarcastically, "You couldn't pick up the pace in the second half, and you weren't fast in the first half either. You were walking the whole time. If you really can't keep up, I'll ask Lao Yang to let you train with the school team for a few days."
"Are you crazy?" Xu Qing's face was flushed. She was already fair-skinned, and after running the 800 meters, she was even redder. But that was good, because now she could openly look at Li Leshan.
The third year of junior high is a big turning point. Everyone grows up very quickly, no matter what. Li Leshan has grown taller again. He was measured a few days ago and is 1.77 meters tall, only 3 centimeters shorter than Jiang Yueming now.
As the boy grew up, his youthful innocence transformed into a more mature naiveté. Coupled with Li Leshan's seemingly aloof demeanor—at that time, the taciturn type of handsome guy was all the rage—Li Leshan was exactly that. He was incredibly cool, incredibly aloof, and incredibly popular. Girls in his grade lined up to have a crush on him.
Li Leshan calmly handed over a jump rope.
This was an extra event after running the 800 meters. Xu Qing would get angry and refuse to jump no matter who offered it to her. Only when Li Leshan offered it would she accept it shyly, like receiving a rose.
In addition to excelling in academic subjects, Li Leshan was also an all-rounder in sports, truly as if he had a cheat code.
In the 1000-meter test, the boys were divided into two teams. Li Leshan and Jiang Yueming were not in the same team due to their different academic performance. Jiang Yueming could see Li Leshan leading the pack from afar, leaving the second-place runner far behind. When passing him, Li Leshan would deliberately slow down. Every time Li Leshan ran, the girls in the class would stand beside him, not for any other reason than that they had all noticed that Li Leshan would only slow down slightly when he was in front of Jiang Yueming.
At that moment, as Jiang Yueming watched his retreating figure, his school uniform hem fluttering in the wind, the image of fifteen or sixteen-year-old Li Leshan slowly overlapped with that of Li Leshan from many years ago. The little boy who was once so small seemed to have grown up in an instant. Jiang Yueming suddenly felt that time was passing very quickly, exceptionally quickly.
By this calculation, it's been almost five years since I started dating Li Leshan; a third of my life has been spent with him.
"You didn't... you mistimed it, did you?" Xu Qing finally finished jumping rope two hundred times and could catch her breath.
Li Leshan was just called away by the class monitor to organize the test papers. Since the beginning of the third year of junior high, there has been a small test every week and a big test every two weeks, resulting in a mountain of test papers. This is the "sea of questions" strategy set up by the No. 1 Middle School, which basically means doing tons of practice questions. They've dug up mock exam papers from junior high schools in the city and province. They've even dug up old papers from 2001 and 2002, some of which were handwritten by teachers and then printed in batches.
After Li Leshan left, Xu Qing reverted to her "little tyrant" persona and became less confident in her achievements.
She wants a reconsideration!
"You pinched the wrong finger." Jiang Yueming didn't even lift his eyelids.
"I told you! I think I run really fast," Xu Qing said excitedly. She felt like she was going to die from running, thinking that she could at least get under four minutes and ten seconds this time.
“It was originally four cents and thirty-seven, and I haven’t even rounded it up for you. For your own good, I’ve saved such a big 7.” Jiang Yueming said, “I’m so good to you. Let your little follower buy me a drink.”
"Jiang Yueming, you!" Xu Qing, not believing it, picked up the timer and looked at it. Her vision went black, and she immediately puffed up with anger, sitting down on the ground like a coward. She didn't care about her school uniform anymore. She was usually such a clean girl, "She's always causing trouble."
"What's wrong?" Jiang Yueming comforted her, thinking that Xu Qing was quite lucky. This would cost at least an hour in psychological counseling, but he didn't charge her. She really got a good deal. "Who made our beautiful lady angry?"
"Jiang Yueming, I have a question for you." Xu Qing was somewhat serious, her face stern, her big eyes shining brightly. "Am I good-looking?"
...
Xu Qing was indeed very beautiful, perfectly inheriting her mother's tall stature and slender figure. Her eyes were large and bright, and her features were delicate; Jiang Yueming couldn't find a single flaw in them. He didn't know why Xu Qing asked that question, what she wanted to do, or what she planned to do.
"She's alright, but still a bit inferior to Jingyi." Jiang Yueming praised her in his heart, but didn't say it aloud.
"Hey, be serious!" Xu Qing punched his arm. "I'm actually not bad looking, right?"
“Okay, who said anything about you?” Jiang Yueming asked.
"No, not at all." Xu Qing frowned. "I don't understand why Li Leshan is like a block of wood. He just nods and shakes his head no matter what I say. We've known each other for at least five years. Although we're not as close as you two, we're still closer than he is to other girls. I try to get close to him every day. Do you know how far Class 3 is from Class 6? Do you know how far I have to walk? In the end, I can only stay for two minutes at most each time."
"Because he's busy, he has to review his studies," Jiang Yueming said. "He has to write three sets of mock exams every day, he really didn't ignore you on purpose."
Shishi High School also has elite classes and regular classes. Of course, the high school entrance exam scores directly affect the class placement at Shishi High School. Among the elite classes, the most important one is the Tsinghua-Peking University class. If you study diligently in the Tsinghua-Peking University class for three years, you will at least get into a 985 university. This is Li Leshan's target class.
“I know,” Xu Qing sighed. “I didn’t mean to influence him. I know Li Leshan needs to study hard. I just wanted to be a little closer to him, is that not allowed?”
Jiang Yueming pondered for a moment. He had thought about this problem five years ago, and now that he no longer had to think about it, he had to think about it for others again.
"Are you serious?" Jiang Yueming asked, "You like him?"
It's perfectly normal for feelings to blossom during adolescence. It's as normal as eating and drinking. Take himself for example, since elementary school, a girl has confessed her feelings to him with a blush on her face. It should be a confession, but Jiang Yueming didn't even get to hear it before the girl ran away with a blush on her face. Thinking about it, there are quite a few people who like Li Leshan.
Xu Qing blushed slightly, feeling a little embarrassed to say it aloud. She also felt that asking Jiang Yueming wasn't a reliable idea, so she stubbornly insisted, "No way! That taciturn guy would be incredibly boring with me—"
Xu Qing elongated the tone of the three words "extremely boring".
She suddenly stood up, her gaze fixed firmly on the track, with a sense of "ready to die." She was determined to keep practicing running, three laps, four laps, she was determined to run them in under four minutes.
Jiang Yueming gazed at the direction of the teaching building not far away, his eyes calm and deep, only feeling a slight pain when his fingers clenched so tightly they dug into his palms. Li Leshan's figure appeared before him again in a daze, then grew farther and farther away... He couldn't grasp it, nor could he catch up with it.
"I must go to Shigao High School," Jiang Yueming thought to herself.
He insisted on continuing to be classmates with Li Leshan.
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