Chapter 17 Chapter 17
"Hey, what's the connection? We're just desk mates." Ren Li laughed and changed the subject lightly. "So now you want to tell me the real reason why you're unhappy tonight? Because of Zhou Qi, or... because of me."
Sincerity is always a killer skill. Friendship between girls has always been magical. Ren Li's idea is very simple. She hopes that Zhang Xintong will be happy, and Zhang Xintong must have felt her sincerity.
Zhang Xintong sniffed when she asked this, and tears began to well up in her eyes: "I'm sorry, I was indeed a little angry with you just now."
Ren Li: “Huh?”
Zhang Xintong: "I don't know how to tell you this. I hope you're not mad at me... It's just that, just now, when I saw your test scores, I suddenly felt that you always act like you know nothing, but in the end, your test scores are better than anyone else's. I once thought you were just pretending... Ah, I'm sorry, Lili, I shouldn't have thought of you like that. Just think of it as me being jealous of your academic performance."
Ren Li: "Is it because of this?"
Zhang Xintong nodded.
After a long pause, Ren Li shook her head and said softly, "It's not your fault. Someone did say that before."
She recalled the bad things that had happened at the Affiliated High School. Back then, she had just started high school, and because she was easygoing, she didn't like to argue with others. One day after school, a girl stopped her at the school gate and said she was really "pretentious," and that she was deliberately pretending to be innocent for someone to see... The girl's tone was so harsh that Ren Li was surrounded by people. She couldn't leave, and tears welled up in her eyes. Fortunately, Lin Yuan picked her up later, and she finally dared to cry on the car ride home.
She didn't tell Lin Yuan why she was crying. She only found out later that the misunderstanding was caused by the boy the girl liked once slipping her a "love letter"...
But none of this matters anymore. To this day, Ren Li has forgotten what that girl looked like, as well as some of the details, but she will never forget those hurtful words and tone.
Sometimes being too kind can become a sin.
Ren Li recovered from that not-so-nice memory and continued, "Actually, I'm a natural pessimist. I always like to prepare for the worst when encountering anything. So don't look at me as if I always look indifferent. I don't know how entangled I am when encountering things. Sometimes I envy you. You are not like me. You can handle everything with ease and get along well with everyone. I will never be able to learn that."
Zhang Xintong quickly explained, "It's my fault. I forgot you're usually quite low-key and don't like to show off. Maybe you're just used to being in No. 4 Middle School and seeing too many people like Wen Shuo, so...how could I have thought of you like that just now? I was too stingy."
"I've been hiding it from you and haven't explained it to you clearly..."
“It’s me…”
The two of them stood on the side of the road and talked for a long time. Then at a certain moment, they looked at each other and suddenly laughed.
"Why don't we stop discussing these meaningless topics?" Zhang Xintong concluded, ending the boring debate. "This is really boring. Why don't we go back and do two more sets of questions?"
She said this as if coaxing a child, and Ren Li couldn't help but laugh after hearing it: "Yeah, I think so too."
Zhang Xintong's reminder reminded Ren Li that she still had to attend evening self-study classes. Coming to her senses, they both said in unison, "Run?"
"Haha..." Zhang Xintong held Ren Li's hand, and the two of them jogged across the campus. It wasn't clear who started it first, but they both couldn't stop laughing. They ran breathlessly to the teaching building. Fortunately, Teacher He wasn't checking on them today, so the incident of being late was over.
It was the last evening study session, and the classroom was as quiet as usual.
Ren Li sat in her seat for a long time before she calmed down. In her free time, she began to think about getting Wen Shuo to agree to tutor Zhang Xintong.
The seat next to her was empty; Wen Shuo wasn't there. Throughout the entire evening, Ren Li couldn't help but glance over there no less than ten times. However, no miracle happened; Wen Shuo never showed up.
As usual, the cell phone was locked in the cabinet during evening study. Now Ren Li had no choice but to wait.
Just as I was thinking about it, Zhang Xintong, who was sitting in front of me, leaned back slightly and quietly handed me a note.
Ren Li understood what she meant and pretended to organize her textbooks and took the note from her hand.
The two people's behavior is like that of "elementary school students", but there is a saying that can explain it perfectly: elementary school students are too childish, but high school students are just right.
Ren Li held the note in her palm and spread it out on the table. Zhang Xintong wrote a sentence on it in a relaxed handwriting:
[Do you think Wen Shuo will agree?]
Her words were vague and incoherent. Ren Li looked at them for a while before she realized that she was probably talking about asking Wen Shuo to tutor everyone's homework on the weekend.
Although Ren Li was not 100% sure about this matter, seeing that Zhang Xintong was so concerned, in order to reassure her, Ren Li boldly skipped all the intermediate processes and wrote the final result:
【It will definitely be fine】
I feel a little guilty, as the saying goes, if you don't succeed, you will die.
What a mess! Ren Li put the thought aside for the moment and handed the note back to Zhang Xintong. Soon, the note returned, and this time the reply was simple, with only one emoticon:
【^.^】
Ren Li couldn't help but laugh at that cute expression. She looked up and saw Zhang Xintong handed her another note. As expected, she couldn't contain her curiosity and this time asked all kinds of gossip:
[By the way, you haven't answered my question directly yet: What is your relationship with Wen Shuo? Does he like you? No lying (serious face)]
Ren Li: ...
To be honest, she had thought about the possibility of whether Wen Shuo liked her.
Lin Yuan had always been very strict with Ren Li's education. During the summer vacation before her transition from primary school to junior high school, she called Ren Li to her study and gave her a serious sex education class, which she had never done before.
Lin Yuan taught very seriously in that class, but Ren Li was stunned. His three views were greatly impacted and he couldn't recover for a long time.
However, from that day on, the thing Lin Yuan told her most was not to fall in love too early.
Before this, Ren Li had never thought about what premature love was. But after entering middle school and entering adolescence, she began to understand a little because she received a love letter.
Looking back now, each boy's behavior was more outrageous than the last. But Ren Li dealt with them all coldly. She rejected every confession she made. Eventually, these incidents became less frequent because everyone realized she was serious about her studies, and the teachers liked her. Plus, with Lin Yuan around, the boys stopped bothering her.
From that time on, Ren Li deliberately kept a distance from the boys in school. Lin Yuan had said that there was no such thing as true friendship between boys and girls, and she didn't want Ren Li to be deceived by the boys' sweet talk. Although Ren Li still didn't quite understand what that meant.
Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted, Ren Li's hand loosened and the note was snatched away.
"Hmm?" Zhou Qi narrowed his eyes, holding up the note, and asked, "What do you want to do with Wen Shuo?"
Perhaps it was because the classroom was too quiet, and Zhou Qi, who always had trouble controlling his voice, had the students in the front row turning their heads repeatedly. Ren Li suddenly remembered the topic she had just discussed with Zhang Xintong—whether Wen Shuo liked her or not.
Alarm bells rang in her heart. At that moment, she was obviously panicked and her brain even went blank for a moment.
It felt like a little person in my head was pulling my hair and screaming, "Ahhh, what if Wen Shuo finds out about this?! What would he think? I'm really going crazy..."
In a hurry, she reached out and almost snatched the note back from Zhou Qi's hand:
"Give it back to me."
Ren Li's voice wasn't loud, but it startled Zhou Qi. Recovering from his rage, Zhou Qi saw her cheeks flushed pink and her entire body swelled with anger. He realized his joke had gone a bit too far, so he quickly raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, I'm wrong. I was just teasing you. I didn't mean to do anything else."
"You still have to say it." As soon as he finished speaking, Zhang Xintong glared at him.
So Zhou Qi quickly shut up.
The classroom returned to silence, and everyone lowered their heads to do their homework. Ren Li sat at her desk, clutching the note tightly in her hand. Her heart was beating fast, and she hadn't recovered from the turmoil just now.
Turning her head, she happened to see Zhou Qi playing with his mobile phone in the hole of the table. His hands were typing quickly and his hands never left the screen. When she thought that the other person might be Wen Shuo, Ren Li felt that she was going crazy with nervousness again.
She began to regret why she passed notes to Zhang Xintong during evening study.
There was no point in escaping, so Ren Li finally came to terms with it. If Wen Shuo knew about this, she would go and clarify it in person, telling him that she didn't like him. That would be the end of it.
Even though she thought so, she didn't feel any better. In the end, Ren Li just gave up, regardless of what Wen Shuo thought. She was "upright and not afraid of shadows."
Ren Li sighed, and for some unknown reason, she reopened the note in her hand. She was stunned on the spot, and tears of happiness welled up in her eyes.
There are only three simple sentences on the paper in front of me:
[Do you think Wen Shuo will agree?]
【It will definitely be fine】
【^.^】
It turned out that Zhang Xintong had passed two notes to him tonight. The one Zhou Qi had taken was just a casual chat, while the one discussing whether Wen Shuo liked him was on the other note, which was now tucked under his arm.
It was all because of the guilty feeling I had just felt that I had the illusion that my inner secret had been discovered.
Ren Li couldn't help but feel annoyed, because her performance just now was really embarrassing.
Fortunately, the storm finally subsided. Ren Li regained her spirits and focused on tonight's homework. She was finally willing to accept the reality of what had happened. Then she crumpled up the note from the culprit and stuffed it into her pocket.
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