Chapter 37: Stealing someone but the person he stole was a classmate
Xu Sirui's aesthetics dictated that double eyelids were essential for beautiful eyes. Zhu Yingning's eyes undoubtedly fell short of his ideal, as they were clearly single. But now, looking closely, he suddenly realized that single eyelids had their own charm. The simple, sharp lines of the eyelids drew the eye's attention, making the pupils appear larger, darker, rounder, and purer, with a sense of weight and volume.
He stared into her eyes, so close that he could even count her eyelashes.
...and it's quite long and dense.
His ears felt strangely hot, and he stared at her with his eyes wide open, as if by daring to look her in the eye he could prove that he had nothing to hide.
After staring at him for a few seconds, Zhu Yingning, who had been concentrating on his bangs, finally couldn't help but roll her eyes, looked into his eyes, and asked, "Why are you staring at me?"
"Just stand in front of me. If I don't look at you, who else can I look at?"
After Xu Sirui finished speaking, he almost applauded himself. What a righteous and perfect answer.
But after he finished speaking, she immediately looked down at him with the eyes of a fool, opened her mouth, and sighed, "...Okay, but this is the first time I've seen someone cut bangs without closing their eyes, and open their eyes so wide. Aren't you afraid of your hair poking your eyes?"
Xu Sirui was choked by her, and became angry and embarrassed. He nodded with red cheeks and said: "Yes, I just like the sour feeling of hair poking into my eyes, is it not okay?"
“…”
Her expression seemed to say as long as you are happy.
When she bent down to cut his hair again, he was no longer as calm as he said. He glanced around, looking left and right, and saw the package in the corner. An idea came to his mind and he said, "Well, thank you for cutting my hair. The package in the corner is my thank you gift."
"A thank-you gift?" She glanced back in surprise. "Isn't that something your mother sent you?"
"Yes, but..." Xu Sirui didn't want to explain clearly. He had a common problem among boys his age: he would feel embarrassed and awkward if he tried to explain anything. He bit the flesh on the inside of his mouth and said vaguely, "Anyway, you'll know when you see it yourself."
After cutting his hair, Xu Sirui used the mirror on the desk to look at Zhu Yingning 360 degrees to see if there was any damage done to her hair. Then she bent down beside the package and started to open it with the scissors she had used to cut his hair.
He caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye and felt inexplicably nervous.
After opening the package, she took out a stack of exercise books from it, let out a soft "ah", and looked very confused.
She flipped through the books and noticed that most of them were written by Xu Sirui. She wondered what he meant. Did he want her to help him with his homework? That wasn't the case...
It wasn't until he carefully looked at the exercises that he suddenly realized what was going on. He exclaimed "Ah!" again, this time with even greater emotion and a bright expression. "Are these lent to me?"
"It's not really a loan." Xu Sirui looked away awkwardly. "If you don't mind it and find it useful, just use it. It's easy for me to buy a new one."
"ah--!"
She uttered another aria-like sigh.
Xu Sirui was so frightened by her loud "Ah" that he almost dropped the mirror in his hand.
"Don't you have any other words besides 'ah'?"
She didn't care about his teasing at all. Her cheeks flushed with excitement. She looked at him with wide eyes and said, "Xu Sirui, I didn't expect you to be willing to give me these. Thank you, you are so thoughtful. Really! Thank you so much!"
**
From the moment he got the exercise book, Zhu Yingning stopped doing anything else and just laid down on the desk to study day and night. He studied from Sunday to Monday and was even muttering to himself during the flag-raising ceremony.
It was not until the morning reading was over and Chen Bin came in to remind her to collect the weekend homework that she came out of her intoxicated state and stood up to collect the homework.
When she received Zhou Li's group, she found that Zhou Li's seat was empty. She asked her deskmate what was going on. Her deskmate said, "I'm not sure, but Teacher Chen said she won't be coming."
"Not coming?"
Zhou Li was considered the most difficult child in her class to attend school. Her father didn't want her to go to school, believing that a girl with an elementary school diploma and the ability to count was enough. He always found excuses to keep her at home doing farm work, and from time to time he would issue a warning to drop her out of school. However, every time Zhu Yingning and Chen Bin came to persuade her, Zhou Li's father would scold her and send her back. So this time, she naturally assumed the same thing would happen, and sighed softly: "Then I'll go to her house after school to see."
Zhou Li, her deskmate, stammered, "Class monitor, Teacher Chen told me to tell you to leave it alone this time."
"Why?" she was stunned.
"I don't know, but that's what he said."
She was puzzled, and when she went to Chen Bin's office with the homework she had collected, she couldn't help but ask him about it.
Upon hearing this, Chen Bin also sighed, took off his glasses, wiped the lenses with a tissue, and said earnestly, "Yingning, I know you are kind, but we should do our best and leave the rest to fate. This time, we really can't do our best. This is fate."
She still didn't understand: "Why? What happened to Zhou Li?"
“She dropped out of school.”
“Why did you drop out of school?”
Chen Bin knew that this child was very honest. If you didn't tell her, she would keep asking. So he had to tell her the truth: "She went out to work. Her brother was getting married, but he couldn't afford the bride price, so the girl refused to marry him. Zhou Li's father thought about it and decided to send Zhou Li out to work to earn some money for her brother's bride price, so she dropped out of school. It just so happened that Zhou Li had a cousin who worked in the beauty and hairdressing industry in the city and was doing very well. She recently came home to visit her family. She returned to the city today, and Zhou Li followed her cousin."
Zhu Yingning stood there for a long time with a blank expression before asking, "When did she leave?"
"I went to her house last night to try to convince her. Her father said he was leaving today. I think he's probably already left by now."
"Leaving today..." She muttered to herself, "Leaving today means there's still time. Teacher—" She raised her eyes to look at him, "I want to ask you for a day off."
Chen Bin had been teaching her for so long, how could he not know what she was thinking? He immediately refused and said, "You...can't!"
**
The first-period bell rang, and Xu Sirui, who had been sleeping on her desk the entire morning reading period, finally woke up drowsily. Rubbing her neck, she yawned lazily. She was a little surprised to see Zhu Yingning wasn't in her seat. She was the kind of person who would immediately go back to her seat and sit down when the bell rang. Now that the bell had finished ringing, she wasn't there yet. How strange!
Even stranger was the fact that there were people leaning over the railings in the hallway, excitedly shouting things like "Run!" and "Catch up!" They sounded quite excited. Since he had nothing to do anyway, he'd be a fool not to join in the fun. He stood up from his seat, put his hands in his pockets, and lazily wandered over, leaning against the railing to look down.
It didn't matter that Xu Sirui almost popped his eyes out of his head when he saw it.
He saw Chen Bin chasing Zhu Yingning towards the school gate.
Chen Bin was in poor health and was running out of breath. He stopped after running for a few steps, pinching his waist and pointing at Zhu Yingning's departing back, mumbling something inaudible. Zhu Yingning had already rushed out of the school gate and disappeared like a rabbit.
An incredible picture.
He asked the person next to him, "What's going on?"
The person next to him said excitedly: "Oh, the monitor skipped class, and Teacher Chen is trying to catch her."
Skipping classes? No one could deny that Zhu Yingning's skipping classes shocked him. The fact that Chen Bin would arrest someone was also quite bizarre. Xu Sirui was extremely puzzled: "Why is she skipping classes? Is she crazy?"
"I don't know." The man said, "But it's probably because of Zhou Li again."
The name sounded familiar. Xu Sirui tried hard to recall and remembered that Zhou Li was the one whose hair had lice and was cut into a buzz cut by her family.
He casually asked, "What happened to Zhou Li?"
“She dropped out of school.”
drop out?
Why is it that every day in this school, someone is either absent or someone else has dropped out? Xu Sirui was dumbfounded.
He now fully realized how accurate Chen Bin's words were when he first founded the school: "It is a rare fate that you can become classmates." This bond between classmates was broken at any time and was even more fragile than a kite string on a windy day.
Xu Sirui stood in the corridor and watched for a while. He saw Chen Bin slowly walking back. The students who were watching him had lost interest and dispersed. He also slowly walked back to his seat.
**
After a day of classes, Zhu Yingning didn't show up. This was the first time Xu Sirui hadn't seen her for so long since he came to the mountains. Although he didn't necessarily find her particularly interesting when she was around, it was still a bit boring to be without someone alive. He waited until the afternoon after school in boredom, and then walked home alone in boredom.
Unexpectedly, when he reached the door of his house, he found Zhu Yingning squatting at the door picking vegetables.
When she saw him, she immediately stood up, wiped her wet hands on her pants, and looked a little unnatural.
"Where did you go today?" he asked her as he walked home.
Before he even entered the house, Zhu Yingning stopped him and said with an awkward smile, "Xu Sirui, I have something to tell you."
By now, Xu Sirui was already very familiar with her guilty expression after doing something wrong. Hearing this, he frowned and said, "What did you do? Did you hit someone? ...Wait, did you dirty my things?!"
"No, no, no! How could that be possible?" She denied it flatly, shaking her head and waving her hands. "How could I possibly soil your things? What I want to talk about is...that...you know, the matter about Zhou Li."
He squinted his eyes suspiciously at her: "I heard about it at school today, what's the matter?"
"When I chased her home today, I stopped her on the road and asked her if she really didn't want to study anymore. She hugged me and cried for a long time, saying that she still wanted to continue studying. She also said that her cousin was not engaged in the legitimate beauty and hairdressing industry, but in the pimping business. She was very scared and didn't want to go there at all. So... you know, she is very pitiful and needs help."
The more Xu Sirui listened, the more defensive he became: "What exactly do you want to say?"
"I just wanted to say that she has nowhere to go. If she goes home, her father will beat her up, so..." She slowly stepped aside, revealing Zhou Li who was hiding inside and peeking out, "I secretly hid her at home. Please don't tell anyone."
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