Seventeen
"Look," Yu Cong showed Ning Yi'en the phone screen.
It's a question box.
Q: Do you have any regrets about your high school years?
A: I didn't receive a single serious love letter or even a simple "brother".
"Okay. But this isn't my question box."
"Not yours?! This question box isn't yours?" Yu Cong seemed incredulous. "I asked you guys one by one to get it, and this website address, isn't it obviously yours?"
“It does look like mine, but unfortunately,” Ning Yi’en said, shrugging.
After a moment of silence, Ning Yi'en figured out what had happened: "Song Moxiao helped me register the website, but I don't like playing these games, so he took it back and used it himself."
"You two can use this kind of thing together, isn't that a bit ambiguous?" Yu Cong was a little discouraged, but that didn't stop her from joking.
Ning Yi'en glanced at Qiao Song beside her and gave Yu Cong a look.
“No…” Yu Song’s mind raced. “It’s probably an eternal brotherhood, haha.”
It seems like it would have been better not to make amends at all.
"Qiao Song, do you need to see Ning Yi'en? You two go ahead. Don't worry about me. Ning Yi'en, let me take your seat."
Then she quickly slipped into the classroom.
There is a long distance between the senior high school teaching building and the old art building.
Neither of them spoke. The noise from the playground was incredibly loud, but it gradually faded and became a blurred background sound.
The new building was built two years ago, and this building has long been abandoned here, but perhaps due to funding issues, it has not been demolished.
It didn't take much effort to get to the third floor. In the past, when they didn't want to take a lunch break or study, they would sneak into this classroom. Of course, there were also young couples who secretly talked about love behind people's backs.
The desks and chairs were scattered haphazardly in the middle of the classroom. Ning Yi'en picked out a desk that looked pleasing to the eye. She was about to reach out and dust it off, but then she remembered that she was wearing a matching school uniform, so she just sat down.
"I never thought that you would be the one still in Jiannan this September." Qiao Song squatted by the wall—which had long since become a wishing wall, with layers upon layers of colorful words telling the thoughts of a seventeen or eighteen-year-old boy.
Ning Yi'en also sighed, "Right, who would have thought?" He gave a self-deprecating laugh.
"The three of us..." Qiao Song hesitated for a moment, but ultimately did not continue the topic. "We were originally going to come to you in July or August, but before we could... we were both in bad shape."
"It's okay, it's the same now." Ning Yi'en looked down at her phone. "But there are some things I won't tell you if he doesn't agree, you understand?"
"I didn't intend to ask anything. I don't want to know anything about him anymore... I never want to know anymore... I guess so... I'm not thinking about it anymore."
He suddenly noticed a line of words on the wall.
—I want to be with my brother for the rest of my life.
He wrote it secretly by himself when he was in his second year of high school.
The boy's unspoken and secret love, which could not be made public, quietly took root in the corner of his heart.
But after that sentence, two more sentences were added at some point, in handwriting he recognized—Song Moxiao's.
—Yes, a hundred lifetimes.
—You need to take good care of yourself, you know?
The two lines are not the same color, so they were probably not written at the same time.
Another long silence followed.
Qiao Song kept staring at those two lines of text, while Ning Yi'en looked down at her phone indifferently.
Did you bring a pen?
"Who goes out with a pen for no reason?" Ning Yi'en rummaged in her pocket. "I'm not a big star who has to be ready to sign autographs all the time."
“Ning Yi’en, you’ve changed. You would never have answered this kind of question with so many words before.” Qiao Song stood up and walked outside.
“Here,” Ning Yi’en suddenly handed him a pen, “I happen to have nothing to do.”
"Thank you, big star."
Qiao Song walked back there, quickly wrote a few words, and then looked at the side.
“Celebrating in advance…” The reading stopped abruptly halfway through—q celebrating in advance the new champion Ning Yien’s victory.
“I always feel that it shouldn’t be like this… none of us should be like this now. It feels like I’m dreaming. Maybe when I wake up, it will just be an ordinary day in my senior year of high school. I haven’t even had a fight with my brother yet, and I can still tell you that I’ll be leaving home a little late on the afternoon of June 9th. Everything for the three of us can still be salvaged.”
“Everything will be alright,” Ning Yi’en gave him a smile. “Everything, everything.”
“That’s not how it used to be… He and I can’t go back to the way things were.” Qiao Song lowered her eyes, but quickly forced herself to pull herself out of that mood. “Yes, everything will be alright.”
“To be honest,” the two sat down at opposite ends of a bench by the playground as they walked out of the art building, “I’ve always thought you were the kind of person who has no feelings whatsoever.”
“Back in the third year of junior high, I thought we had a pretty good relationship, but you were only Song Moxiao’s friend, always remaining outside of us. Later, during the military training that Yu Cong just mentioned, I never expected you to stand up for Qiao Zhi.”
“What,” Ning Yi’en tossed him a piece of candy, “suddenly missing the old days and wanting to break off our friendship? Or are you just being overly attentive for no reason?”
"What do you mean, Ning Yi'en? Can't you just reminisce a little?"
"Okay, you can continue."
"Okay, actually I just wanted to express my feelings. For a long time, I thought you were the kind of good student who would do anything for your future and give it your all."
"I can still be a good student?!" Ning Yi'en said, her mouth full of a lollipop, her words slightly muffled. "Why did you have such a soft spot for me before?"
"Right, even though you're good at fighting and breaking the rules, I still think Ning Yi'en is a good student of yours, I don't know why."
Ning Yi'en shook her head, indicating that she couldn't understand it.
"But I am indeed a selfish person who can give up anything for myself. However, that doesn't mean I'm a cold-blooded monster. Even if I had just treated my hand and gone to the exam, how many more points would I have gotten? If I hadn't met my expectations, we would have ended up in the same place anyway. Perhaps that path was never meant for me."
"So open-minded. Actually, I think you've changed a lot, even though this is the first time I've seen you since June. Even though you still always have a long face and don't smile, and you still have that dry humor, it just feels very different, you know?"
"Is that a compliment? Thank you. But I really did stick to my own way. If I hadn't been so persistent, I would have flown abroad long ago. I will persevere on the path I've chosen until I have the best future I deserve."
Are we on the same wavelength?
"Haven't we always been like this, ever since we first met?"
“That seems to be true,” Qiao Song pretended to ponder for a moment, “Although it’s a bit childish, Ning Yi’en, your future will definitely be exceptionally bright.”
The two reached out their hands and bumped fists.
The cheers and shouts of encouragement on the playground, the rustling of camphor tree leaves behind us, and the clamor of cicadas in the height of summer drifted towards the sun along with the summer breeze.
"I'll treat you to drinks when I have time," Ning Yi'en said.
"Don't even think about corrupting me, but I can still treat you to a meal." Qiao Song looked at the energetic classmates on the playground. "Is this how emotions need to be expressed? If so, you're more like an art student than me."
"I just like it, but I don't want to go anymore."
Ning Yi'en casually slung his school uniform jacket over his shoulder. The light blue uniform surprisingly matched his hair, but the hairstyle combined with this posture made him look a bit like a school bully about to start a fight. "Let's go."
“Let’s go,” Qiao Song stood up as well. “Are you in a hurry to go back and watch a horror movie?”
"You can keep sunbathing, I'm going back to the air-conditioned room."
Let's go.
Yu Cong sat in Ning Yi'en's seat playing on her phone, while Yan Ting and Lu Yunian switched seats and chatted casually next to her.
Actually, Yan Ting knew about her when she first enrolled in school.
Yu Cong has striking features and a tall, slender figure; she's the type who stands out in a crowd. As a performing arts student who studied broadcasting and hosting, she's often asked to host various school events.
Although Jiannan University's bot adheres to the principle that everyone has their own unique beauty and has never conducted any campus beauty pageant or voting, if you randomly grab a Jiannan University student and ask them who they think is the campus goddess, 80% of the answers will be Yu Cong.
Of course, this is also inseparable from her inner beauty, including but not limited to her easygoing, generous, cheerful, and helpful personality.
The obvious contrast is that if you ask a student wearing a Jiannan uniform on the street who their ideal man from Jiannan is, 98% of them won't say Ning Yi'en.
Although quite a few people in the school knew him, and those who knew him probably also knew that he had an incredibly handsome face, most people's deeper impression of him was that bitter-faced boy who often dominated the top three in the grade, or that he was often in fights and not someone to mess with.
(And most people would give a joking answer to this kind of question to their friends.)
However, if the question happens to specifically target Lu Yunian, that's a different story.
"Senior, can I add you on WeChat?"
“Of course,” Yu Cong opened the QR code, “If you want to learn makeup or anything in the future, you can ask me. Of course, anything else is fine too, I’ll reply when I see it. We can chat casually too.”
“Senior, I also…” Lu Yunian, who was playing 2048, suddenly seemed to have triggered some keyword, slammed her phone on the table, and then realized it was inappropriate halfway through her sentence, “Uh, is that okay? Sorry.”
"Do you also want to share your makeup tips?" Yan Ting looked at him with a puzzled expression.
"no."
“It won’t work if there’s no specific purpose. I don’t add guys I’m not familiar with.” Yu Cong smiled at him. “Besides, I don’t like guys.” She joked.
"Um... well... actually, I was thinking that you and Ning Yi'en must have a good relationship." Lu Yunian's voice trailed off.
"Hey, this works." Yu Cong gave a knowing look and held out the QR code. "Actually, I think making friends with Ning Yi'en is quite difficult; it requires the right timing, location, and people. I wish you success."
"Ah, what?" Actually, during his interactions with Ning Yi'en, Lu Yunian experienced nothing except for a sudden, inexplicable increase in his heart rate.
"Because she is good-looking and academically excellent, even though she has a rather aloof personality, people still want to be her friend."
Even if you're not close friends, just taking a photo together and pinning it to the top of your WeChat Moments will make you look good when someone asks, "Hey, is this handsome guy your friend?"
Yu Cong twirled the end of her hair with her fingers, tilted her head to look at Lu Yunian, and said, "Moreover, Ning Yi'en has a really strong sense of personal boundaries, and sometimes she even has a kind of detached feeling. Many people who swore they would get along well with her eventually gave up."
However, it could also be due to incompatible energies. Some things do have a bit of a mystical element. Good luck, classmate, I believe in you!
"Thank you, senior." While listening to her speak, Lu Yunian kept thinking that he had quite a good personal charm.
"But to be honest, although you're a little less handsome than Ning Yi'en, you're still very good-looking." Yu Cong pulled his chair closer to Yan Ting and joked with him, "Do you... have a girlfriend?"
"Oh, what? No, there isn't one."
"You think you can find a girlfriend just because you're handsome? No, you're wrong. In her eyes, you're just..."
Lu Yunian didn't know why Yu Cong changed the topic so quickly, and at the same time, the background music of the video playing in front of him probably wasn't set up properly, so it started playing abruptly but also inexplicably at the right time.
"It's alright, it's alright. Sorry for being a bit abrupt, but I have high hopes for you." Yu Cong couldn't stop laughing when he heard this music.
"Are you coming or not?" Ning Yi'en returned at some point, patted Yu Cong on the shoulder, and pointed to Qiao Song outside the classroom.
"It's so hot now, let's go later." Yu Cong shrugged indifferently. "We didn't come together."
"I'll treat you to dinner."
"Really!" Triggered by the keyword, Yu Cong immediately stood up from her seat. "Wait, you skipped evening self-study again?"
"Are you going or not?" Ning Yi'en frowned.
"Go! Go! Go."
"Want to come together?"
When Ning Yi'en sat down to collect her things, Lu Yunian and Yan Ting switched places back.
"You probably can't get leave, are you really going to skip evening self-study?" Lu Yunian looked at him with bright eyes. "What I mean is, I'm willing to cover for my good friend."
"Don't listen to their nonsense. I haven't skipped class. I even got a leave slip today."
"What did you say?" Yu Cong leaned in again. "Never skipped class? Ning Yi'en, have you been possessed? You weren't the one who went out to eat during evening self-study before."
“I always brought a leave slip.” Ning Yi’en picked up the paper in her hand and waved it.
"I feel betrayed." Yu Cong clutched his chest, expressing his heartache. "It's so much easier for you good students to get leave than for us bad students. I wonder how you can always be so calm and collected."
"Didn't art students used to be able to come and go as they pleased?"
"Then can't it be betrayal?"
Ning Yi'en shook her head at her, indicating that there was nothing that could be done.
"Didn't Zheng say that he wouldn't approve any leave requests these days?"
"I got it from Zhang Zixu. He probably went in with Qiao Song. I asked him and he gave it to me."
"Good grades are really good." Lu Yunian finally sighed, "You can go now. I'll miss your deskmate during those boring and agonizing evening study sessions during the sports meet."
"How about I bring you some food tonight? Is there anything you want to eat?"
"No need, that's too much trouble. Have fun."
"No, you can consider it payment for helping me cover for you."
"Ning Yi'en, I really think you've been possessed." Yu Cong had been holding it in all the way, but finally decided to say it.
Then, in a very dramatic way, she said, "I don't care who you are, just give us back the cold and ruthless Ning Yi'en you used to be."
"Get lost."
"Oh!" Yu Cong pretended to suddenly realize, "So it's a dual personality." Then she laughed and hopped to the front.
"But you really have never skipped class? What a good student, Ning." She turned back after walking a short distance.
"Maybe, it's been too long and I can't remember clearly."
"Okay, I get it. It seems that the campus heartthrob still needs to maintain his image."
"You'd better not try to understand."
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