Chapter Thirty-Six: The Start of School
The main hall is tall, spacious, and magnificent, featuring a raised-beam wooden structure with sturdy wooden pillars supporting the entire roof.
The beams and rafters are painted with exquisite colorful paintings, featuring various patterns such as dragons and phoenixes, flowers, birds, fish, and insects, all in vibrant colors and lifelike.
Uncle Liu: "Mr. Bai and Xia Bei are planting vegetables in the backyard, while Mr. Xia is playing chess with your mother."
When Xia Yan heard that her grandfather was planting vegetables, she felt a wave of dizziness, but she had no choice but to go and greet him.
A clear spring flows gently down the artificial hill in the backyard, splashing into the pond. Fish frolic in the water, lotus leaves sway in the breeze, and occasionally a few turtles bask in the sun on the rocks.
The land next to them had been renovated, and the three of them, with their sleeves rolled up, bent down to plant vegetable seedlings.
Old Master Bai climbed his way up from the bottom, earning every military merit with his life. As he grew older, he developed a particular fondness for rural life, raising fish, growing vegetables, and enjoying a very pleasant existence.
"Dad, Grandpa, Brother," Xia Yan greeted from a distance, not wanting to get a speck of dirt on her.
Immediately afterwards, a clod of dirt hit him on the forehead. He was speechless.
Grandpa Bai said in a strong voice, "Look at you, it makes me angry just looking at you."
Xia Bei, wearing a white shirt and silver-rimmed glasses, smiled slightly and said, "Little brother, the land is our mother who nurtures us. Without it, we would have no food. You shouldn't despise it."
Xia Yan looked at her brother. He had been a germaphobe since childhood, but his germaphobia suddenly disappeared after he embarked on a political career.
All I can say is that they're too good at pretending.
"Hehe, this is called making a fuss over nothing. Since you don't like me, I'm going to go play chess with Grandpa."
Xia Yan shrugged and left, having already said goodbye anyway.
"Damn it, this damn jerk looks exactly like his grandfather," Old Master Bai said angrily, turning to look at Xia's father, who was silently planting vegetable seedlings.
"All his bad habits are inherited from you. I should never have married my daughter to you."
Xia's father: Ah, yes, yes, the good things are inherited from your family, and the bad things are inherited from mine.
Xia Bei smiled even more gently: "Grandpa, Xia Yan is being too outrageous. I'll go talk to him."
He got up and walked out.
"Xiao Bei is so filial," Grandpa Bai said, looking at his grandson's back. He then turned to Xia's father and said, "It's just the two of us left. Go and get the fertilizer later."
Thinking of the excrement, Xia's father thought, "..." That kid is really cunning; he runs pretty fast.
The area outside the teahouse.
Xia Yan sat in a chair, her upper body slumped on the table, her amber eyes staring blankly at her phone.
"Brother waits for sister to come find me~, waits for sister until the flowers have bloomed, but sister still hasn't come to find me~"
Startled by the sudden sound, he sat up and said, "Brother, what are you doing? Your singing is awful."
"Is it unpleasant to listen to? I think it's a Yunnan folk song, and it perfectly suits your current mood."
Xia Bei changed his clothes. He straightened up, his back slightly bent from peeking at his younger brother's phone. He sat down to the side, his long legs in suit trousers casually bent. He rested his chin on his hand, looking at his brother with a half-smile.
"It seems the little girl doesn't really like you."
The chat interface is mostly dominated by the younger brother, with the occasional emoji from the girl making him very happy.
"What do you know, you single dog? She's been moving dorms these past few days and is very tired, that's why she hasn't had time to reply to my messages."
"Oh? What do you mean by moving dorms in a few days? Actually... you know in your heart that she doesn't want to talk to you, and she's just making up an excuse. Otherwise, why would she be so distracted?"
Xia Yan opened his mouth, he didn't know, he only knew that he felt particularly uneasy. He also asked Lu Shi'an to go see the girl under the pretense of giving her a gift, but everything seemed normal.
Xia Bei smiled without saying a word, watching her younger brother's anxious and uncertain expression. It was truly the first time she had ever seen him like this.
****
School starts on September 1st. If the schedule for freshmen is relatively relaxed, then the schedule for sophomores is packed full, making it hard to breathe.
After Jiang Yousheng received the relevant documents with a sense of despair, he also helped Song Yun receive a copy.
That day at the teahouse, Song Wenxi hired her as Song Yun's guardian for 20,000 yuan a month.
***
Outside, Song Yun sat obediently on a bench, dressed in a black hoodie and pants, wearing a black mask, covering herself up completely.
Several people walked past him, their bodies slightly shrugging.
At the beginning of September, the weather was extremely hot and dry, with suffocating heat waves washing over our faces, and the oxygen in the air was extremely thin.
"Song Yun, this is your book."
"Thank you," Song Yun looked up at her, his clear, innocent eyes, like a doe's, were captivating and pure.
"It looks really good," Jiang You scratched his face awkwardly and said, "You're welcome, after all, your sister paid for it. Um, shall I take you to the cafeteria?"
“Alright,” a faint voice sounded, and Song Yun slowly stood up from his seat.
He was lean but not skinny, and his height of nearly 1.9 meters made him stand out in a school where the average height of the students was only 1.7 meters.
Even with his head down, minimizing his presence, he was still impossible to ignore.
As the two stepped into the cafeteria, a wave of noise washed over them. Rows of tables and chairs were neatly arranged and occupied by bustling students.
Song Yun suddenly stopped in his tracks, frozen in place as he watched the figures of the normally moving crowd become increasingly blurry, like figures in an abstract painting, gathering towards him and forming a circle around him.
Each face is obscured in detail, with indistinct features and expressions, yet an invisible sense of oppression seems to be pressing down from all directions.
'You're Song Nanfeng's son?'
"Damn it, they just halted the project like that! I'm losing tens of millions every day. How am I supposed to calculate this loss?"
'I begged him like a dog every day, and what was the result?'
'If you have someone to blame, blame yourself for having a good father who drove you to your death.'
He doesn't remember, he doesn't remember... He only knows it hurt so much, it hurt terribly, the needle pricking his fingernail hurt so much, being pulled out hurt so much, being hung up and beaten hurt so much...
"Song Yun!"
A panicked female voice rang out, and in that instant, the surging, incessant ringing in her ears abruptly ceased.
The noise and clamor subsided into silence, and the people who had been gathering were shattered like a mirror, gradually dissipating into the air piece by piece until they disappeared completely.
In the end, only the girl standing in front of him remained in the whole world, like a ray of light shining into the darkness, and thus, withered trees came back to life.
The moment the light appears is salvation.
Jiang You breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that Song Yun had returned to normal, forgetting that Song Wenxi had said he couldn't suddenly appear in crowded places.
I guess I'll have to order takeout from now on. I'll ask Song Wenxi on WeChat later to see if we should order takeout every day or what to do.
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