31/Chess Piece
Shen Yu acknowledged that Chen Mian was special.
Just like now, he could clearly respond coldly or turn away and leave without serving her, just like he would with other girls, but he couldn't do that with Chen Mian.
His clothes were still wet on his shoulders, and the evening breeze made them quite cool. It was all from the girl crying earlier. She was so thin and frail; it was hard to hold her. He wondered where all her flesh had gone. She was even worse than the stray cats that roamed the school. The cats were more affectionate and knew to meow softly when begging for food. But Chen Mian's temper was as hard as bone. She would only stare at you with those eyes and would only say a few soft words when she needed something from you.
They called him by his full name.
Sinking Domain.
Please help me.
—Give me a hug.
Being soft-hearted is true, and so is possessiveness, but defining someone solely by these traits is too simplistic.
Shen Yu let go of her hand, too lazy to argue with her. He picked up a pen from the table and scribbled a few lines on the draft paper. "Fine, you're this one."
The drawing was hastily done, and the words "Chen Mian" were written at the bottom.
The characters are upright and vertical, with the brushstrokes reversing and entering from the starting point.
Chen Mian stared at it for a while, then pointed to the painting and asked, "A thumbs up?"
"No, it's the 'Along the River During the Qingming Festival' scroll." Shen Yu lied without thinking.
Chen Mian ignored him and picked up a pen to start correcting the test paper. The paper was spread out. Since the countdown to the college entrance examination began, every monthly test had strictly followed the college entrance examination model. The humanities paper was out of 300 points. The three papers of politics, history and geography were stacked together, and each paper had a score of no less than 90 points. If he performed steadily, he could get 270 points.
Shen Yu also saw the score on the test paper and asked her, "Which university do you plan to attend?"
Chen Mian lost control of her strength for a moment, and the red pen tip dragged out, leaving a long mark. She then took out correction tape from her pencil case and covered it up, saying to Shen Yu, "I haven't thought about it yet."
Chen Mian's grades are currently stable, with scores roughly the same in each exam. Her scores are 270 in humanities, 125 to 130 in Chinese, and 130 to 135 in English. Her only weakness is math, where she usually only gets 110 out of 150.
Overall, a score of 630 or above is enough to get into a top-tier university, but getting into a more prestigious one is a bit risky.
Shen Yu flipped through Chen Mian's math test paper. She didn't get many multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank questions wrong, and the points were mostly deducted in geometry. She wrote the long-answer questions quite concisely, leaving the ones she didn't know blank and saving the time for the ones she could do. She guessed that's how her teacher taught her not to waste time on questions she didn't know how to do.
Chen Yu tapped his pen cap on the table and said to Chen Mian, "Want to go to the same university as me?"
His casual tone made it sound like a joke he made off the cuff.
We'll see.
Chen Mian spoke softly as she turned the page of the exam paper.
She thought Shen Yu would say something more about this topic, but Shen Yu didn't say anything.
He simply put down his pen, got up, and went inside.
She sat there and wrote a few words, but couldn't continue. She turned her head to look at the deep night outside the window, and when she looked back, she had no intention of continuing to study. She packed her things into her bag and heard her phone ring once inside.
It was a text message sent to her by Song Ai.
There are only five words at the top.
—Chen Song is looking for you
There are no punctuation marks, and it was sent this morning.
Chen Mian was not surprised.
She spent most of her seventeen years with Chen Song, and she had anticipated that Chen Song would look for her when she left.
However, the security at Shengshi Haoting is always in place. A room card is required to enter the community, and each building requires residents to unlock it with their fingerprints. This is not an old and dilapidated apartment that just anyone can enter. In case of danger, pressing the video doorbell and calling the management office will bring people to the scene immediately.
She replied with a thank you to Song Ai.
She doesn't check her phone often. Before, she would only take it out to look at it occasionally when she was doing odd jobs for Chen Yin. But ever since Chen Yin discovered her connection with Shen Yu, she has stopped contacting her. As a result, she checks her phone less frequently, which leads to a mountain of messages every time she opens it.
Zhao Lili knew that she didn't rely on electronic products, but her desire to share was getting the better of her. Every time she saw interesting news or rumors from school, she would forward them to her. After replying to Song Ai's message, Chen Mian opened Zhao Lili's message box to take a look. The most recent message was the confession wall that she had mentioned.
The confession wall is a secret base run by students of Suizhong High School. It sounds quite plausible, but it's actually just a private QQ space for receiving and posting submissions. Zhao Lili explained to Chen Mian that this account was originally a secondary account opened by a senior from many years ago. She posted a lot of pictures of boys she liked in the space. Later, it was accidentally discovered, and the style gradually went astray. People started submitting articles to her, and it gradually developed into a place for rescuing people from confessions and gossip.
After graduating, this senior found a successor, and the family business has been passed down from generation to generation. Only students know about it, and you have to show your student ID to add her as a friend, all to avoid those teachers who check for early relationships.
Zhao Lili posted a screenshot.
[Department of Ideological and Political Education Tag (Note: Suizhong Confession Wall):]
I received a submission. Here's what happened: On Thursday, before evening self-study, my friend and I took a shortcut up the stairs near the senior teachers' office. What we saw was astonishing. We saw SY from the science class and CM from the humanities class kissing in the restroom. Who would have thought? I always thought SY and QZW were a good match, and I even told my friend they were quite compatible. Who knew it would end so quickly? I really liked QZW; she's beautiful, kind, and has a great personality. Once, during PE class, we were running and sweating profusely without toilet paper, and she even gave me some. It was truly heartbreaking.
Anonymous.
The comment section below was full of question marks, and Zhao Lili circled a few of them in red.
—I saw qzw and sy in the cafeteria once before, and I thought they were eating alone. Not long after, a group of people came, and the two of them didn't interact much. To be honest, I've been listening to gossip about sy for as long as I've been studying at Suizhong, but in the end, it all fizzled out. I've never heard of sy dating anyone. My opinion is, don't ship them. I feel like sy has a strict upbringing and isn't the type to date early.
—Is the kiss real or fake? That can't be right, do CM and SY have any connection? To be honest, I even think they don't know each other, and I'm a little skeptical about the authenticity. Also, to echo the comment above, it's true, during the period when the rumors about SY and QZW were at their peak, I saw them walking together, and only QZW was talking the whole time. SY seemed quite indifferent, not like there was anything going on between them.
Lily Lily: Wow, I was so tired from studying last night that I went back to the comments section of your post with Chen Yu and dug up these comments like I was digging up an old grave. But they are not quite the same as what my friend and I said.
Lily: My friend is in the art class and has a good relationship with Qiao Zhiwan. She said that Qiao Zhiwan has always liked Shen Yu, but they never got together until they had a dinner party. Shen Yu even gave Qiao Zhiwan a ride home that time. Doesn't that sound like there's something going on?
Lily: I'm really impressed. I actually hope Qiao Zhiwan wins over Chenyu. It's not for any other reason than I can't stand Lin Lin and Chen Yin. If they're unhappy, I'm happy.
Chen Mian paused when she saw the words "Shen Yu took Qiao Zhiwan home on his way."
Something seemed about to jump out suddenly, and she asked Zhao Lili: When did Shen Yu take Qiao Zhiwan home?
Zhao Lili was surprised that Chen Mian would reply. She simply regarded Chen Mian as a confidante, and seeing the reply was as rare as finding a message in a bottle.
Fortunately, she never deleted her chat history. She found the chat with her friend from the art class, scrolled up a few pages, found the date, and said to Chen Mian, "Around the 20th of last month, right? What's wrong?"
The 20th of last month.
Shen Yu asked her for a kiss; Chen Song returned from the mahjong parlor; Shen Yu sent her a message.
As the timeline progresses, she and Shen Yu are having a cold war, rumors about Shen Yu and Qiao Zhiwan are flying all over the school, Qiao Zhiwan goes to Shen Yu's house for a dinner party, Chen Song knocks on her door at night, she has to ask Shen Yu for help, and then she moves into Shengshi Haoting, meets Ruan Yanmei, and learns that Ruan Yanmei is Qiao Zhiwan's stepmother.
All the threads were strung together.
That night, when she saw Chen Song and Song Ai having an affair and was even being lewdly looked at by Chen Song, she hid with him and wished for Chen Song to die.
Shen Yu didn't ask any questions, he just said okay to her.
Shen Yu did it on purpose.
When those words came out, Chen Mian shivered inexplicably. The tightly closed door seemed to sense something and opened from the inside. The room Chen Yu went to had a bathroom. He took a shower and came out with wet hair. He changed into a gray pajama. Under the warm light, he looked gentle and had a soft aura, like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The phone was placed face down on the table.
Chen Mian looked at him and suddenly asked, "You knew all along that I would ask to live alone, didn't you?"
The question seemed abrupt and didn't connect to their previous, broken conversation, but Shen Yu admitted it frankly, "Yes, I knew it all along."
"When did you find out that Qiao Zhiwan's stepmother is my biological mother?"
“When we took her back, you two looked very similar, so it wasn’t hard to find out.”
"Was getting close to Qiao Zhiwan intentional?"
“Chen Mian, you can be more direct in your questions.” Shen Yu walked towards her, his shadow looming over her and blocking the overhead light. He bent down, reached out and picked up Chen Mian’s phone from the table. The screen was still on, and Zhao Lili’s chat history with her was exposed in front of him.
He chuckled and said to Chen Mian, "It's not a smart move to go the long way around. You can ask me directly if I'm taking advantage of Qiao Zhiwan."
A drop of water fell on the table, spreading out as a puddle.
“You’re not using Qiao Zhiwan, you’re using Ruan Yanmei.”
Chen Mian already understood what Shen Yu was planning. Using someone else to do his dirty work was Shen Yu's forte, just like how he sent Chen Song home to give her a wake-up call after she refused his kiss request.
He was not a kind person. Chen Mian understood this when he reached out to him. A truly kind person would not take advantage of someone in distress. He would not have held up an umbrella for her on a rainy night two years ago and asked her if she wanted to sleep with him.
The most astute businessmen are those who clearly distinguish between different regions.
"Chen Song will come looking for me. As long as I come here, I will eventually run into Ruan Yanmei."
As long as they bump into each other, their gazes will inevitably shift. In the end, Chen Mian is just a poor student to Chen Song, with limited money to spare. But Ruan Yanmei is different; she is his ex-wife, the woman he slept in the same bed with.
For someone like Chen Song, even though Ruan Yanmei had left him, she was still essentially his personal property.
A personal item, however, set him apart from others in terms of social class, allowing him to live in an upscale neighborhood, dress elegantly and luxuriously, and instantly become a wealthy woman.
How could Chen and Song possibly stand it?
Even an extreme egoist like Ruan Yanmei was alarmed when she saw her, let alone Chen Song.
Each harbored their own thoughts, and whenever they saw each other, they would fully demonstrate what it means for enemies to be extremely hostile towards each other.
"What about Song Ai?" Chen Mian asked him.
Shen Yu smelled of lime after his shower, a refreshing scent that wafted over him. He then sat down on the coffee table.
Like a teacher imparting knowledge and resolving doubts, he said to Chen Mian, "Have a backup plan. You can't only have one piece in your hand."
Each piece should be placed in its designated spot.
Ruan Yanmei felt uneasy about Chen Mian's appearance, and Chen Mian's departure prompted Chen Song to begin searching for her.
After a moment of silence.
Chen Mian asked him, "One last question. Did you do all this just to help me get rid of Chen Song?"
The wind rustled, the night was quiet, and the lights overhead were bright.
"Isn't the answer pretty obvious?"
Shen Yu said to her, "Chen Mian, I want you to only come to me."
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