Chapter 23
As soon as Tao Xi returned to the dormitory, Pan Yan couldn't wait to say to him: "Xi Da, I have a few big clients to introduce to you. They all want you to help them with painting. Do you want to take the order?"
Pan Yan couldn't control his mouth. Several of his friends in the art class knew that he had a roommate who would help draw an assignment for 200 yuan, and the result would not be much different from the original. How could these rich guys, who were not short of money, miss such a good opportunity to be lazy?
Tao Xi was a little moved.
He knew that Tao Jian was not joking when he said he would come to see him again in a few days. This time he didn't get the money because he was angry and embarrassed, so he might not be so easy to deal with next time. Given Tao Jian's temper, it is not impossible that he would make a scene at the school gate and let everyone in the school know about it.
He didn't want to let people at the school know, but he couldn't give all the subsidy to Tao Jian.
Tao Le suffers from systemic lupus erythematosus, which requires long-term use of hormones and medication, and the monthly expenses are quite high. He has to regularly send back the money he has saved with great difficulty to buy medicine for Tao Le.
Although he hated Guo Ping and Tao Jian, Tao Le was the closest person to him in the world.
Tao Xi hesitated for only a few seconds before agreeing: "Okay, but I won't do it for 200 yuan. The midterm exam is in a month, and I don't have that much time to paint."
Pan Yan said: "No problem, I will discuss with them and raise the price for you."
Tao Xi eventually took on four more paintings at a price of 300 yuan each. Due to lack of time, he could only paint before lights out at night and leave his homework to be done under the quilt.
The result was that he only slept for less than four hours. Because he used the flashlight for too long, his eyes were bloodshot when he woke up the next day, and there were many red bloodshot eyes on his usually clear whites.
But Tao Xi didn't notice that he was still in good spirits and rushed into the classroom early in the morning with a fully charged mobile phone.
Lin Qinhe came in from the back door holding a bottle of ice mineral water. Before he put down his schoolbag, Tao Xi took the schoolbag from Lin Qinhe and helped him hang it on the back of the chair. Then he pulled the chair back with both hands, the distance he pulled it back was exactly the same as usual. He performed the whole set of movements skillfully like a doorman opening the door of a five-star hotel.
Lin Qinhe stood aside, watching with a frown, saying nothing.
After Tao Xi finished doing all this, he took out a self-made business card from the drawer, on which was written his name and WeChat ID. He handed it to Lin Qinhe with both hands, raised his head, raised the corners of his mouth, blinked his eyes and said flatteringly:
"Master Lin, could you please add me on WeChat?"
Lin Qinhe lowered his head to look at the business card, then looked at Tao Xi's expectant eyes. Those eyes were very red and swollen, as if he had been hiding in the quilt and crying all night.
He took the business card from Tao Xi, unlocked his phone and put it directly in Tao Xi's hand, saying, "Add it yourself."
"?"
Tao Xi stared at the phone in his hand in a daze. He didn't expect Lin Qinhe to give him something as personal as a phone directly.
Lin Qinhe sat down and saw Tao Xi still staring at his phone in a daze. He asked patiently, "No?" He stretched out his hand as if to take the phone back to help him add the number.
Tao Xi came back to her senses, took Lin Qinhe's phone away as if it were her own treasure, shook her head and nodded: "Of course!"
Lin Qinhe's mobile phone desktop background is a solid color background. Tao Xi didn't dare to look at it for too long. He directly opened WeChat without looking at the specific chat box. He quickly clicked on the QR code of Lin Qinhe's WeChat account, scanned it with his own mobile phone, and added a friend. After it was approved on Lin Qinhe's mobile phone, he quickly returned the phone to Lin Qinhe.
"Okay, from now on you will be my first WeChat friend!" Tao Xi took out her mobile phone and showed it to Lin Qinhe. There was only Lin Qinhe on the WeChat interface.
He raised his chin slightly, with the corners of his eyelashes and mouth curled up, like a primary school student who had scored 100 points in the exam and was showing off his test paper.
Lin Qinhe looked into Tao Xi's eyes, then looked away after a while. He said nothing, but rubbed his fingers on the unopened bottle of ice mineral water, and the cool water vapor stained his fingers.
Tao Xi wasn't finished being happy yet, he looked down at his phone. Lin Qinhe's WeChat name was just a name like his, and his avatar was a solid white picture. He clicked on the Moments and found it was also blank, with no content at all.
Tao Xi had just changed Lin Qinhe's note to "moon" when suddenly a bottle of ice mineral water was placed on the table in front of him. Lin Qinhe said to him, "Apply some to your eyes."
The tone was unusually gentle.
Tao Xi was stunned and subconsciously raised his hand to rub his eyes, but just as his wrist touched the corner of his eye, a hand grabbed it. The hand lightly brushed his lips while moving, with some residual cool moisture between its fingers.
He unconsciously extended the tip of his tongue to lick his lower lip, and the hand quickly loosened, leaving behind a sentence: "Don't rub your eyes."
The owner of the hand withdrew his hand, picked up a pen, unscrewed the cap, lowered his head and wrote something on the draft paper, with no emotion on his face.
Tao Xi was stunned for a while, and suddenly felt that his lips seemed to be getting hot.
"Thanks."
He quickly picked up the bottle of ice mineral water, closed his eyes and applied it. The cool touch made his eyes, which were swollen and dry due to staying up late, feel much better, but his lips became hotter and hotter, and his heart began to beat fast.
Jin Jing, the English class representative, walked to the last row to collect English homework. Ever since the last incident with Jiang Xinyu, she no longer dared to take the initiative to talk to Lin Qinhe. She nervously took the homework book from Lin Qinhe, but inadvertently saw a few meaningless circles drawn on the draft paper in front of Lin Qinhe.
She didn't say anything and looked at Tao Xi beside her. Tao Xi was biting her lip and applying ice mineral water to her eyes. Just as she was about to ask Tao Xi to hand in her homework, Lin Qinhe accurately pulled out the homework book from Tao Xi's desk and gave it to her directly.
Tao Xi applied the cream for several minutes before putting down the bottle of ice water. There were many water droplets on his fine eyelashes. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Lin Qinhe was reading a book as usual, and he secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
That was really embarrassing just now.
Fortunately, Lin Qinhe didn't react.
Bi Chengfei swooped in like a moth at this moment and rescued Tao Xi, who was in the late stage of cancer.
"Brother Xi, what's wrong with you? Why are you crying? Who bullied you?!" Bi Chengfei looked at Tao Xi's red and swollen eyes in surprise. There was still moisture hanging on the eyelashes of those beautiful eyes, and she looked like she was about to cry.
Tao Xi was stunned and said in confusion: "I didn't cry."
What's going on? Does he look like the type of person who cries easily?
Bi Chengfei didn't believe it and thought Tao Xi was showing off. He skillfully took out a small mirror from his deskmate Hu Tong's drawer, showed it to Tao Xi, and said, "Look at your swollen eyes, just like my Korean idol who had a broken leg and cried all night."
It’s just that Bi Aoxue cried like a ghost and looked extremely ugly after crying, while Tao Xi looked... pitiful after crying. A strange word popped up in Bi Chengfei’s mind.
Tao Xi looked in the mirror. She had washed too quickly in the morning and didn't pay attention. Her eyes were indeed quite red and swollen.
He smiled in realization and said, "No, I spent too long last night doing my homework under the covers with a flashlight. My eyes become like this when I stay up late."
Bi Chengfei finally felt relieved. He saw the phone on Tao Xi's desk and his eyes lit up: "Brother Xi! You finally bought a phone! Add me now, I'll add you to our group right away!"
He moved closer to Tao Xi, half covering his mouth with his hand, his eyes a little obscene, and whispered: "Our group benefits are super good, there are all kinds of gossip and resources. If you want, I will pack all my treasured resources and send them to you."
This is the biggest selling point of the group of boys he established. Except for Lin Qinhe, almost all the other boys are in it, sharing their seeds and communicating and learning from time to time.
Tao Xi thought Bi Chengfei was talking about learning resources, such as test questions and listening audio, so he quickly picked up his phone and said, "Okay."
He had just added Bi Chengfei's WeChat ID and was about to ask him to add him to the group when he heard Lin Qinhe, who had been reading a book and not saying anything, say in a deep voice:
“You are not allowed to join the group.”
When Bi Chengfei saw Lin Qinhe looking at him coldly, he trembled subconsciously and silently withdrew his finger that was about to pull someone into the group.
Tao Xi was stunned. Lin Qinhe's tone was full of irresistible command. The sudden gentleness from before was gone. He was a little unhappy and couldn't help but retort:
"Then you can send me the resources?"
Lin Qinhe frowned and looked at Tao Xi, then paused and said, "Okay."
Tao Xi was stunned. He didn't expect Lin Qinhe to agree so easily. His dissatisfaction disappeared. He raised the corner of his mouth slightly and didn't insist on joining the group.
Bi Chengfei, who was watching from the sidelines, looked calm on the surface, but his heart was filled with turmoil.
Oh my god, when did the two people sitting behind him become close enough to share seeds privately? !
Lin Xue Shen looks like a serious person, but I didn’t expect that he has an exclusive collection?
Bi Chengfei didn't dare to mention the boys' group and resources anymore. He hurriedly pulled Tao Xi to look at the photos he took when traveling in South Korea, and said proudly: "My photos are good, right? I took them with my grandma's camera that cost more than 100,000 yuan. I have to say that the photos taken with more expensive cameras are different."
Tao Xi lowered his head to look at the photos taken by Bi Chengfei. When he was in Taoxi Bay before, he often met various photographers and saw many excellent photographic works. The photos taken by Bi Chengfei could only be said to be barely in focus.
He didn't have the heart to disappoint this foolish boy, so he smiled and said, "Not bad, this one is the best." He pointed to a photo of the seaside that was acceptable.
"Yeah! Brother Xi said it's a good idea. I want to learn photography and become a director in the future!" Bi Chengfei was full of confidence.
“…”
Tao Xi wondered if he had done something wrong.
"Brother Xi, if you think this one is the best looking, I'll give it to you and you can use it as your screen saver." Bi Chengfei sent the photo taken at the beach to Tao Xi.
"...Thank you." Tao Xi didn't really want to use this photo as a screensaver.
When Tao Xi returned to the dormitory at night, he was still thinking about the resources that Lin Qinhe had promised to give him.
In fact, he was not very interested in learning resources, he just wanted to chat with Lin Qinhe on WeChat.
He looked at the dialog box marked as moon, which only contained the message automatically sent by the system in the morning: "I have passed your friend verification request. Now we can start chatting."
We can start chatting.
This sentence gave Tao Xi inexplicable courage. He took a deep breath and started typing in the input box.
He types very slowly, his fingers are clumsy and he often makes mistakes, after which he has to delete a long string of words.
What to post?
He typed slowly: "Classmate, where are the resources you promised me?"
After typing it, I felt that this was not natural, so I deleted all of them at once, took out a math exercise book, randomly found a difficult problem, took a photo with my phone, and typed it again in the input box: "I don't know how to do a problem, can you help me take a look?"
I was afraid that this question was too simple and people would find it annoying, so I deleted all the words again.
After going through this several times, Tao Xi suddenly didn't want to post anymore.
He simply threw his phone aside, picked up the paintbrush and started painting, as he had to hand it in to an art student tomorrow.
Before he could draw a single stroke, a message alert sounded from the phone on the table. Tao Xi quickly picked up the phone and saw that it was Lin Qinhe who sent him a message.
"?"
A simple question mark.
A “?” also popped up on Tao Xi’s head.
He replied puzzled and guilty: "What's wrong?"
Lin Qinhe sent him a picture, which was a screenshot of the WeChat interface. At the top was "The other party is typing...", and the time was ten minutes ago.
Depend on!
Why didn’t anyone tell him that WeChat has this stupid function? !
Tao Xi's ears quickly became hot. He hurriedly sent the photo of the question he had just taken, and then typed: "I don't know how to do this question."
Lin Qinhe didn't reply.
Tao Xi breathed a sigh of relief but also felt a little disappointed.
But not long after, Lin Qinhe also sent a photo. It was a photo of a piece of draft paper with the detailed solution process of a math problem written on it, with clear and sparse handwriting.
Tao Xi became happy again, his face slightly hot, and he quickly replied: "Thank you, deskmate!"
Lin Qinhe didn't say anything, but just threw a cloud disk file package over.
Tao Xi didn't quite understand other software, so he asked Pan Yan to figure it out. After downloading the cloud disk and opening the file package, he found that it contained learning materials for various subjects organized into different categories.
He thought this must be much better than the information collected by Bi Chengfei, so it would be better not to join that group.
Then he replied "thank you" to Lin Qinhe.
But Lin Qinhe never replied.
Tao Xi stared at this chat record in a daze. After a while, he clicked on Lin Qinhe's blank avatar again, but suddenly found that Lin Qinhe's circle of friends was no longer blank.
He actually updated nine photos an hour ago without any text.
Tao Xi clicked on the photos one by one and soon realized that these photos should have been taken by Lin Qinhe when he was on vacation in Japan. However, compared with Bi Chengfei's "masterpiece", the photos taken by Lin Qinhe could obviously be called professional.
Those ordinary streets at dusk are like the quiet and lively October fireworks in his lens. The magnificent twilight is spread on every figure in the streets, as if the mountains of Hokkaido are covered with red leaves.
Tao Xi suddenly remembered yesterday evening, also at such dusk, Lin Qinhe was sitting at the piano in the middle of the empty concert hall, playing a song "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" that only he could hear.
At that time, it seemed as if all the resentment, injustice, jealousy and embarrassment in my heart slowly settled in the piano piece, like red leaves falling into a puddle or raindrops falling into a stream.
After being distracted for a while, he liked the post, then saved all nine photos, selected one of them to set as the phone screensaver, and selected another photo to set as the chat background in the dialog box with Lin Qinhe.
The author has something to say:
The application deadline is 555, the author of "Standing in the Heart of the Earth" begs the starfish
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