Chapter 110 It’s cute. There are only him and her here.
It was impossible to withdraw from the competition. Zhu Yingning adjusted his mood, mustered up the courage to open the attached file, and then was hit hard again.
The Background Guide was filled with technical terms that she couldn't understand. She roughly estimated that she recognized no more than 50% of the words. Just translating those technical terms into Chinese that she could understand was a huge project.
In 2012, AI had not yet emerged, and the fastest way to translate long passages of English was to manually copy and paste it into the translator.
Although Zhu Yingning had been aware of the urban-rural educational gap before, it had never been so profound as it was now. She scrolled through a few more pages, undeterred, and turned to ask Xu Sirui, "How much can you understand?"
"About 70 to 80 percent," he said. "My mom has been hiring me for a one-on-one English tutor since I was five. I even participated in Model United Nations competitions in elementary school."
"I hate you."
"Thanks."
Xu Sirui accepted her jealousy arrogantly.
She turned her head back angrily and stared at the computer screen, not knowing how to start.
Looking up every word she didn't understand would be too time-consuming. The Background Guide was forty pages long, and looking it up would take her until the end of the world. Copying a large paragraph into a translator or using WPS's built-in translation function would save time, but she doubted whether this approach would be beneficial for the competition. After all, the competition was entirely in English, and Chinese could only serve as an auxiliary tool for understanding, not as a distraction. She thought it would be best to develop the habit and mindset of reading directly in English over the next few days, rather than relying too heavily on her native language.
Seeing her frowning, even unconsciously trying to put her fingernail in her mouth, he found it amusing. He reached out and flicked her cheek, like a slap on the head, and said, "Is it that difficult? Just approach it like you're doing English reading comprehension."
This one sentence was like a revelation.
She put down the nail that had nearly killed her, her eyes sparkling: "Ah! Xu Sirui, you are a genius."
He snorted: "Didn't you just say you hated me?"
"That was my slip of the tongue." She boldly distorted the truth and wanted to argue, "I just said I like you," but then she felt that statement would sound odd in every way. So she stopped herself and started assigning tasks. "Is there a printer in the study? Let's print out the background materials. I'll take the first twenty pages, and you take the last twenty. Let's sort out the main content and organize it into a mind map. Is that okay?"
She stared at him intently as she spoke, leaving Xu Sirui helpless even though he wanted to say no. He went to the study, brought in a printer, and connected it to his laptop. Even after doing all this, he still couldn't figure out why he had become as obedient as a dog.
Printing this document successfully used up the remaining ink in the cartridge. She divided the thick document into two parts, bound them together simply, gave the last twenty pages to him, and took the first twenty pages for herself.
Xu Sirui had already accepted it in his heart, but he still struggled a little: "It's so late today, let's do it tomorrow, it won't take too long."
"We will start the competition next Friday. We have classes from Monday to Thursday, so we definitely don't have much time to prepare. The real preparation time is only these two days of the weekend and tonight," she explained.
After explaining, I patted his shoulder and said seriously, "Let's work hard together, shall we?"
He wanted to say, "You are just trying to coax a kindergarten kid. I am not the kind of child who likes to sit in front of CCTV-14 and watch red fruits and green bubbles." However, his face turned slightly red. He sat on his bed with the printed materials, unfolded the bedside desk, and started working.
For a moment, the only sounds in the bedroom were the sounds of writing and turning pages.
The fact that she was in his bedroom made Xu Sirui a bit distracted. Every two or three pages, his eyes drifted towards her like the north pole of a magnet drifting to the south pole. He noticed that she was indeed clever enough to look up the Chinese meaning of unfamiliar words in every sentence without even reading a single word. When he told him to treat the Background Guide like reading comprehension, he read it in one sitting, replacing long, complex technical terms with letters like A, B, C, and D as he went. It didn't matter if he didn't understand the technical terms at first; with their frequency and context, he could eventually figure them out.
From unfamiliar to proficient, she read more and more fluently, her right hand quickly drawing a mind map on the draft paper.
Xu Sirui withdrew his gaze and focused on the information in front of him.
He has always pursued a life of saving effort, and of course he also seeks to save effort in studying. It is impossible for him to study every sentence. Instead of reading word by word, he prefers to focus on the big picture and ignore the small details. Before reading the text, he first looks at the large and small titles to understand what the paragraph is talking about, and then captures the central sentence in the paragraph. With the help of these main sentences, he first types out the overall framework of the mind map, and then judges which part is more important. Finally, he goes back and takes a closer look at the content of the important paragraphs.
Because he had accumulated more extracurricular vocabulary than her and because of his learning method, he finished earlier than her. When he put down his pen, Zhu Yingning was still holding his chin and writing something on the paper.
"How much do you have left? Give me some."
"No, it's just three or four pages." She handed him the dozen or so pages of material she had already read and the part of the mind map she had already completed. "See if there is anything that needs to be supplemented or revised."
Xu Sirui flipped through the book and commented as he read: "You wrote it in great detail."
Especially the mind map, which is much more detailed than his, well organized, and logically rigorous. Even a junior high school student can understand the general idea.
He finished reading the dozen or so pages of information she had compiled. At this time, she had just finished the last three or four pages. She raised her arms and stretched, then asked him if the takeout had arrived.
"I just brought it in and put it on the dining table."
"Well, I'll go out to eat first."
She quickly finished most of the takeout, brushed her teeth, and hurriedly wiped her face with a towel before returning to read the last twenty pages of his summary. His mind map was brilliant, without a single word of nonsense, and the key points were clearly defined. Even so, she still added some details.
Xu Sirui came close to her and muttered dissatisfiedly: "You can understand it without writing so much details, why waste time?"
"Hmm... yes, I can understand it." She chuckled softly, flipping through the information with her left hand while adding to his mind map with her right hand. Without looking up, she said, "But Wu Bo's foundation is weaker than ours. If I write in more detail, she'll be able to understand it better."
This made Xu Sirui feel a little ashamed, because he had completely forgotten that this was a three-person competition, that there was a third person involved, even though he had been the one to remind her that it required three people. He slowly uttered "oh," his gaze focused on her dense, dark eyelashes. They sat at the end of the bed, facing the bedside desk. The halo of the desk lamp enclosed them in a small, private, yet boundless space, like a tank floating in space, with their companions within and the stars outside.
He whispered, "Why are you so nice?" It sounded like a teasing, or like he was talking in his sleep, and his breath lightly touched her eyelashes.
She imitated his boasting and nodded in self-assurance, "I'm just such a good person."
Then, in a rather unpleasant manner, she pushed him halfway away with her elbow, "Don't get so close to me, it's hot."
Only then did Xu Sirui step back a little.
After finishing scanning all the documents, her obsessive-compulsive disorder kicked in. She picked up the stack of documents, put it on the table and tapped it a few times until every page was flush, the edges felt smooth and delicate, and there were no pages that were inexplicably bulging. Then she stretched again and lay back.
"Are you planning on sleeping at my place tonight?" Xu Sirui said this jokingly, yet with a hint of guilt he couldn't quite explain. He deliberately didn't look back, picking up the documents she had sorted out and straightening them out. He felt his words and actions were strange, like a thief about to steal but afraid of being discovered.
"I'll just lie down for a while and be back soon." She mumbled incoherently.
When he sorted out the stack of documents that no longer needed to be organized and looked back, Zhu Yingning had already fallen asleep.
She lay on her back on his bed, with the left half of her body resting on his sheets and the right half resting on his quilt. Her sleeping posture was as straight as her human posture, just like the posture the teacher taught her during nap time in kindergarten. Her hands were folded on her lower abdomen, and her breathing was slow and long.
He felt his throat inexplicably dry, his Adam's apple rolling up and down, and he called her in a low voice: "...Zhu Yingning?"
No response.
In five minutes it would be 2:30 in the morning. She had been busy all day and was exhausted. As soon as she closed her eyes, she fell into a deep sleep without even having to prepare for bedtime.
He sat at the end of the bed and looked at her silently for a long time before he got up, tidied up the bedside desk, and went to turn off the lights and close the door.
The lights went out, darkness descended, magnifying his inner thief's feelings a thousandfold. The door shut, it seemed even more veiled, as if he had ulterior motives, deliberately keeping her in his room. Xu Sirui shook his head, trying to reassure himself that it wasn't like they hadn't slept in the same bed before. They'd slept together for so many days while filming variety shows, and it hadn't felt any different. But as he approached the bed, he had to admit that nothing was different now.
There is no one else to disturb them here, it's just him and her.
And in his bedroom, his scent was everywhere.
She was like a wild deer that had accidentally entered someone else's territory without realizing it. She turned over, facing him, and slept with a hateful look of peace on her face.
Xu Sirui stood there, took two deep breaths, slowly climbed onto the bed, and lay down opposite her.
He remembered lying down not very close to her, but only after he did so did he realize his miscalculation. They were too close. So close that he could smell her breath, fresh with the scent of grass and trees, gently landing on his lips. In the moonlight filtering through the window, he could clearly see her eyelashes. With her eyes closed, they drew a dark line across her lower lid, like a cartoon character with deliberately thickened eyes.
He stretched out his hand, and when he was about to touch her, he was surprised to find that her face was so small that he could hold her face in his palm with one hand.
The hair is as soft as ever.
He lifted the hair on her temples with his fingertips and rubbed it with his fingertips. He stroked his fingers down from her cheek to her nose bridge, and then he was surprised to find that every time his fingers touched the lower end of her nose bridge near the tip of her nose, she would frown and wrinkle her nose, probably because she felt itchy.
Just like playing with a wind-up frog when he was a child, he scratched her spot repeatedly with interest and naiveté. Her brows wrinkled and unclenched, wrinkled and twisted again, pulling the skin on the bridge of her nose up and down with it. This continued several times, and finally she sniffed and hummed twice, as if she was about to sneeze.
Xu Sirui quickly turned over to avoid it.
A few seconds later, a faint "A-sneeze" was heard from behind.
He lay in his arms and laughed like a fool for a long time.
**
When Zhu Yingning opened her eyes the next day, her heart almost jumped out of her throat.
There was no way around it. Anyone waking up to see a beautiful woman's face just a hair's breadth away would be deeply shocked. She quickly recalled everything that had happened before she went to sleep the previous night, cursing herself for being a pig. She'd agreed to just lie down for a while, but she'd ended up falling asleep in his bed. How could that be? She tried to turn over and flee, pretending nothing had happened.
However, as soon as she moved her body, she was horrified to find that she was hugged by Xu Sirui.
It’s not quite accurate to say hugging, it should be said holding.
She had long been aware of his terrible sleeping posture, and now she didn't know what to feel. She lifted his arm with tears in her eyes, mobilized her core strength, and slowly moved down through the gap under his arm. It took her a full two minutes, and she was sweating profusely before she successfully escaped.
After putting his arm back in place, she slipped on her slippers and slid away swiftly.
**
"Huh? What?" Wu Bo had just woken up when he received Zhu Yingning's call. He had a toothbrush in his mouth and couldn't fully open his eyes. He tried to sneak past her. "Haha... isn't it too early to go over now? How about this, listen to me, wait until I finish lunch - after lunch I will definitely come over! How about it?"
"Is it inconvenient for you to come now?" Zhu Yingning asked.
"It's not that it's inconvenient... I just woke up, and the thought of going there makes me feel really tired."
"Oh, that's okay. You can take a rest if you're tired. Xu Sirui and I will go to your house."
"?"
Wu Bo was shocked that the man didn't understand what he was saying, so he quickly changed his tone, "No, no, I'll go to your house. I'll be there right after I finish brushing my teeth."
Just kidding, her room is filled with a bunch of colorful romance novels from street vendors, the contents of which are totally shameful. If they come to her house, it will take her a long time just to destroy the body.
Following Zhu Yingning's instructions, Wu Bo brought his laptop to their house. As soon as he entered the door, he was shocked by the decoration of the living room.
"...Where did you get the whiteboard?" she asked timidly while changing her shoes.
Xu Sirui sat on the sofa, holding his temples, looking over his shoulder. "She borrowed it from a neighbor."
The child of the neighbor in room 1602 is going to enter the first grade this summer. The couple is busy with their child's enlightenment and has bought a bunch of early education products. Zhu Yingning went over and rang the doorbell and asked them if they had a whiteboard to lend, and she actually borrowed it.
Today's tasks are written on the huge whiteboard -
1. Review information on the global trade crisis, IMF reforms, and Greece's political, economic, and cultural background;
2. Study the positions of various countries and establish cooperation camps: IMF-led countries, BRICS countries, and countries affected by the European debt crisis;
3. Write the first draft of the position paper;
4. Learn the format of draft resolutions.
"Help!" Wu Bo walked in with his shoulders hunched. "Is it really necessary to be so serious? Someone who didn't know would think we were participating in some global competition..."
Before she could finish her words, she received a glare from Zhu Yingning, silencing her instantly. Under Zhu Yingning's pressure, she and Xu Sirui sat at opposite ends of the coffee table, hands resting on their knees, looking up at her obediently. For a moment, Wu Bo felt that Zhu Yingning was like a Western priest, and she and Xu Sirui were lost sheep, waiting for this priest to guide them and forgive their sins.
The priest began to assign tasks, and the task that fell to Wu Bo was to look up information.
"If possible, it would be best to go over the Great Firewall and look up some English materials on those foreign websites I just mentioned. Their expressions are definitely more authentic and can help us learn from them."
Wu Bo scratched his head. "But I don't know how to climb over the wall."
"Xu Sirui knows how to do it. He will teach you later."
"I can't understand complex English, so I probably won't be able to find anything useful. Is there a simpler task for me?"
"The website has a translation function, from English to Chinese, so there's no way you won't understand it," Zhu Yingning said. "But if you really don't like it, you can swap roles with me and be responsible for writing position papers and speeches."
"...I'd better look up some information." Wu Bo made a decisive choice and declined to write in English.
Zhu Yingning nodded and said gently, "You can do it, Wu Bo. I believe in your information-gathering abilities. You may not realize it, but you're exceptionally good at gathering fragmented information, noticing a lot of tiny details that others might overlook. Every time you fall in love with a new celebrity, you're able to dig up gossip that others can't. Even for those comics that are said to be sold out, you can find unknown sales channels. Just treat this competition like digging deep into the ground for your favorite celebrity or comic. We're all high school students, so there's no reason why the information-seeking people on other teams are any better than you."
Wu Bo was stunned by what Zhu Yingning said. She didn't even know she had these advantages. On the one hand, she suspected that Zhu Yingning was bluffing her, but on the other hand, she felt that what she said seemed to make some sense. In the end, she was coaxed by her to sit in front of the computer in a daze and start working.
Xu Sirui was feeling mixed emotions as he watched from the side. He felt that although Zhu Yingning looked innocent and dull on the surface, she was actually black at heart. Otherwise, how could she have coaxed and deceived such an unmotivated team member like Wu Bo?
It's so scary.
The black-hearted boss turned his gaze to him again: "Xu Sirui, just come with me to write the information."
**
All day, Wu Bo felt like an ox, a hardworking, uncomplaining ox. Even without a whip, she toiled away, forgetting to eat or sleep. Returning home that night, she wondered if she'd been possessed. Later, on reflection, she realized it might have been the example of the two people across from her that had inspired her.
Especially Zhu Yingning.
Her English grades are good, but her oral English is really average. Education in the mountains does not focus on oral expression. It is considered a great achievement if you can understand English articles and listening. Although she practiced oral English for a semester following classroom teaching after coming to Beijing, her English accent still seems particularly plastic compared with her classmates who have been educated by foreign teachers since childhood, like a mouthful of half-cooked rice, which is hard when you poke it and falls apart when you bite it.
There was no linking or contraction, the stress was inexplicable, and the intonation was unbearable. She would even randomly assign a nonsensical pronunciation to a word she didn't know and hadn't looked up before.
The most terrifying thing is that there is Xu Sirui, a role model who defies fate, as a comparison.
No one knew who taught him spoken English, but he spoke pure RP. Wu Bo would even believe that the Queen of England taught him personally. In short, as soon as he opened his mouth, Wu Bo made up his mind not to speak any English in front of him, so as not to humiliate himself.
But Zhu Yingning dared to say it.
Not only did she speak boldly, she spoke with exceptional loudness, confidence, and cadence. Wu Bo listened to her plastic pronunciation all day and was practically brainwashed by it. He decided that while her pronunciation wasn't quite authentic, it wasn't that bad either.
On Sunday, when she returned to Xu Sirui's house, she couldn't help but take advantage of Zhu Yingning going to the balcony to read her speech and whispered the question that had been bothering her all night: "Um, uh...Xu Sirui, I don't mean anything special, because I don't understand this kind of competition, but do you think it's really okay for her to participate in the competition with this pronunciation?"
She gestured, "The other contestants' English pronunciation is definitely comparable to yours. Take our class monitor, for example; he also has a London accent. I'm so worried it'll be a setback for her during the official competition. Why don't we work on her pronunciation over the next few days? Maybe we can still salvage it a little."
Xu Sirui didn't immediately respond to her suggestion. He just chuckled and asked, "Do you think she will be shocked?"
Wu Bo was stunned and couldn't answer for a moment.
Yeah, would she be hit by such a small thing?
"The function of language is communication. If it can achieve that purpose, it's a success. An accent is just the icing on the cake. The key is whether you dare to speak it out loud." He looked at Zhu Yingning, who was holding up her speech manuscript towards the sun and muttering to herself outside the balcony. "Her accent is really not that great. It's super unfashionable, right? But..."
He smiled and whispered, "It's cute."
-----------------------
The author has something to say: Sun Mingyuan: I understand.
Wu Bo: I understand too.
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This chapter is two chapters merged into one, so there will be no update at 10:30, please don't miss it.
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