Chapter 140: Reconstructing the Family to Destroy the Hot Potato
“…”
Zhu Yingning felt like a dumb person swallowing bitter herbs, unable to express his pain, and was deeply impressed by the cleverness of the old man in front of him.
Her face was burning, and she hesitated for a long time without being able to explain what was going on. Fortunately, Zhou Tianqing came upstairs and helped her out in time: "I ran out of toothpaste."
Grandma and grandpa's attention was drawn to the toothpaste, and they competed to explain the location of the toothpaste. She breathed a sigh of relief and patted her chest. However, before her heart could fall back into her chest, she saw Xu Sirui staring at her.
It must be said that being stared at by him is quite lethal.
When he looked intently at someone, the shape of his eyes became particularly striking, their corners curved ever so slightly, their arcs graceful, like two delicate petals. She was about to bluff and yell, "What are you doing?" when he said, "Are you waiting until college to have a relationship?"
This question made her spine tingle and her heart tighten, as if it was being roasted on something, as if answering this question was like making some kind of promise in advance, although they tacitly pretended to be stupid and never said anything.
She believed that a student's job was to study, and of course, college students were still students. But when she fell in love with someone, it was hard to control her feelings. She once stalked the internet late at night, searching for "Can college students date?" and was surprised to discover that university wasn't considered premature love anymore; her definition of it was simply too old-fashioned.
In that case—
"Yes." She looked into his eyes and nodded.
This time, it was his turn to look away as if he'd been burned. He stared at the TV and said slowly, "...I know."
What do you know? She wanted to laugh a little, and even wanted to reach out and pinch his face to bully him, but there were so many people here that she ended up doing nothing.
After having lunch at Zhou Tianqing's house and receiving her red envelope, they went to Zhu Zhiwei's house to pay New Year's greetings.
On the second day of the New Year, I went to Sun Mingyuan's place.
Wang Xiaoqian really cooked a table full of dishes and invited them to have dinner at her house. Before leaving, she stuffed half a box of fairy wands in them, saying that she had accidentally bought too many before and asked them to help use up some of the stock.
It was a bit tricky to keep this box of stuff around because fireworks were prohibited in their neighborhood, even something as mild as a fairy wand was not allowed. After all, it was dry in winter, and a fire was no joke.
To use them up, they had to find a vacant space, and they had to be wary of the urban management. Zhu Yingning squatted in front of the fairy wand, feeling overwhelmed. This box of stuff was beautiful, but it was a bit flashy and impractical.
After several days of scouting the area, on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, they discovered a deserted street where even stray cats and dogs rarely visited, let alone urban management officials. They decided to ride their bikes over to dispose of the box of hot potatoes.
After eight o'clock in the evening, Xu Sirui wrapped the box of fairy wands in three layers of black plastic bags, put them in the basket in front of the bicycle, and took Zhu Yingning to the deserted street.
"Why did we do such a wonderful thing so secretly?" Zhu Yingning sat in the back seat, wondering what had gone wrong. "It's like we're going to steal an electric scooter somewhere." She pointed at the black plastic bag in the basket. "If we get caught, we can just pick this up and put it over our heads. It makes us look even more like thieves."
"...Can you please stop talking?" Xu Sirui pedaled the bicycle with great effort. This was an uphill slope with a gradient of 43 degrees. He had wanted to gather up all his strength and rush up in one breath, but when he heard Zhu Yingning's words halfway, he accidentally laughed and lost at least 43% of his strength. As a result, he could only struggle with the bicycle pedals with all his strength in the second half.
"How about I come down first?"
"Need not."
As soon as he said no, the back seat felt lighter. Xu Sirui didn't regain his strength and accidentally pushed himself to the top of the slope. Zhu Yingning jogged after him and said, "Although there are few people and it's still dark, the air is pretty good."
"Don't worry, the good air will soon be polluted by us."
Xu Sirui propped himself up on one foot, staring at the fairy wand in the basket in deep thought. After a moment, he gave a command, "You keep watch around, I'll test it with a lighter first."
She agreed, standing on tiptoe and looking around.
Just as Xu Sirui lit one of the fairy wands, she heard her say, "Someone seems to be coming over there."
"Who? Urban management?"
"It doesn't look like that. It's a man riding a bicycle with a child."
"That's alright."
They were openly breaking the law here, their fairy wands ablaze, sending tiny golden sparks spurting out in the shape of rice ears. Just then, the man with the child on his bike happened to pass by. The child sitting on the back seat seemed to have his eyes glued to the fairy wand and screamed, "Ah—fairy wand! Stop the car, stop the car, I found it!"
The child looked no more than four or five years old. The young man driving her stopped the car and sighed, "Stop it, Xiao Ran. That's someone else's fairy wand."
His voice sounded very familiar. Zhu Yingning looked in his direction a few more times and was surprised to find that the person speaking was Zhang Jiacheng.
He also saw her and was surprised: "Yingning?"
After saying this, she glanced to the side and noticed Xu Sirui standing next to her. Xu Sirui was busy taking pictures of the burning fairy wand with his phone. It was not until he heard Zhang Jiacheng call Zhu Yingning's name that he looked up. His face was a little confused at first, as if he was struggling to figure out who this person was. After thinking for three or five seconds, he remembered that this was the transfer student sitting behind Zhu Yingning - he had seen him a few times when he went to visit her in her class after school - and his face suddenly turned sour.
It's said that if you dislike someone, everything they do is wrong. Xu Sirui felt that this statement was true, because he felt uncomfortable even when he heard the person opposite him calling Zhu Yingning's name.
He didn't call the surname, but only the name.
It's so funny, who is he? Why is he pretending to be so familiar?
Although he knew rationally that calling someone by their surname was just a personal habit, just like he and Zhu Yingning were used to calling everyone by their first and last names, some people were born with the habit of omitting their surnames, thinking that it was more polite and intimate, and less unfamiliar - although he understood this rationally, he still felt inexplicably annoyed.
Zhu Yingning didn't notice that Xu Sirui had been secretly throwing a tantrum. With a smile on her face, she used a fairy wand to tease the little girl in the back seat of Zhang Jiacheng: "Do you like fairy wands?"
The little girl nodded vigorously and said in a loud voice, "I like it!" She thought for a moment, then said hesitantly, "Can you lend me a few? I'll return them to you after I've burned them."
"?"
After it's burned, there's only a bare stick left, right? Xu Sirui thought impatiently, "These kids are really more shameless than each other." However, Zhu Yingning seemed to be touched by the other person's answer. She actually touched her head and said generously, "Of course, we have a lot here. If you like, you can take a few more."
Xu Sirui became even more annoyed. Just as he was about to ask Zhu Yingning, "Why are you pampering her like this?", he heard Zhang Jiacheng speak for him: "Xiao Ran, no, this is too rude." Turning to Zhu Yingning, he said apologetically, "I'm sorry, my sister speaks in a rather blunt way. You don't have to pamper her."
"She is your biological sister?" Zhu Yingning asked as he straightened up.
"Yes." Zhang Jiacheng nodded.
Unexpectedly, Xiao Ran immediately interrupted and said, "You're lying! We are not siblings."
“…”
Zhang Jiacheng was extremely embarrassed and tried to stop Xiao Ran from talking too much, but Xiao Ran seemed to think that this was not a secret worth hiding. She immediately revealed everything about Zhang Jiacheng and herself, and followed through with Zhang Jiacheng's rough description of her, "He is my half-brother, and we are a reconstituted family."
When he mentioned the word "reconstituted family", he showed a smug look - he was proud of using a sophisticated vocabulary that was beyond his age.
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