Chapter 68: Repaying Kindness with Revenge, Do You Remember?
Zheng Zekai's falling posture resembled a goose shot by a bullet. The football, after hitting him, bounced off his head, bouncing leisurely on the track a few times before rolling away.
The overwhelming screams died down in an instant as if the mute button had been pressed.
Zhu Yingning stopped running and looked at Zheng Zekai on the ground in surprise, her gaze naturally shifting towards the direction where the football came from.
Zheng Zekai's subordinates rushed over, hurriedly pulling him up from the ground, and asked anxiously:
"Are you okay, Dakai?!"
"Fuck, which blind bastard did this?"
"Who?! Who on earth is it?!"
Amidst the chaotic sounds of criticism, Xu Sirui appeared.
Zhu Yingning stared at him blankly——
He walked towards them with his hands in his trouser pockets, from far to near, his peach blossom eyes slightly narrowed in the sunlight, and his thick and long eyelashes filtered the sunlight into fine spots, and he looked as lazy as a cat.
He walked up to Zheng Zekai, his eyes curved into an innocent, drooping arc. He opened his mouth and said gently and politely, "Excuse me, classmate, are you okay?"
The tone and expression were as gentle as a spring breeze.
Zhu Yingning shuddered at the metaphor, which absolutely shouldn't have belonged to Xu Sirui, and his hypocritical smile. She silently wondered who this person was... Was it really Xu Sirui? Hadn't someone possessed him?
But, it must be said, this "good student" look was quite effective. After Zheng Zekai was helped up by his younger brother, he surprisingly didn't lose his temper immediately. Of course, Zhu Yingning believed that the bigger reason was that Xu Sirui was followed by a large group of classmates. Although everyone's faces were filled with awkward apologies, the sight of such a large crowd still felt quite oppressive.
"You... don't have eyes!" One of Zheng Zekai's younger brothers shouted in a bluffing manner.
Zheng Zekai rubbed his temples and raised his hand to stop him, saying, "Forget it, we're all brothers...it's just playing football, it's normal." He weakly placed his arm on his brother's shoulder, "Help me get to the infirmary."
Xu Sirui said, "Let me help you go." At first glance, his words sounded very enthusiastic, but his feet were stuck in the same place and didn't move.
"No need." Zheng Zekai refused with a somewhat cold expression.
Xu Sirui didn't insist any longer. He nodded and led a large group of classmates back home, as if this was just a trivial incident. He didn't even spare her a glance when the whole process was over.
Zhu Yingning stared at his receding back thoughtfully.
At this moment, Wu Bo trotted over and stamped his feet in anger. "Hey! You shouldn't have let Zheng Zekai go. I don't think he's hurt at all. He was just looking for an excuse to slip away because he was afraid he couldn't beat you! And just now, he tried to reach out and grab you. I saw it all. How can this guy be like this? If you can't afford to lose, don't play."
Unlike Wu Bo's indignation, Zhu Yingning was very calm and said softly, "I know."
"Why did you let him go if you knew that?" Wu Bo felt regretful and discouraged that he couldn't hear the apology in person.
"He's been hit on the head."
"It was an accident. He deserved it. Even God couldn't stand it and wanted to take away this disaster."
"Really?" Zhu Yingning laughed.
Wu Bo looked at Zhu Yingning and felt that Zhu Yingning's rhythm of action was very strange. When she felt that she should not pursue the matter, she insisted on asking Zheng Zekai to apologize. When she thought she could press the issue, she seemed to be indifferent to the matter.
"Okay, don't be angry." She even tried to comfort Wu Bo, patting her hand and inviting her, "I'm going to practice the single and double poles. Do you want to come with me?"
"Ah? I can't." Wu Bo had no interest in sports at all. She believed that life lies in stillness. However, she did not leave Zhu Yingning. Instead, she followed her to the single and double bars. "I'll just cheer you on."
**
Making friends often only requires an opportunity to break the ice. At the end of the day, Zhu Yingning successfully upgraded her relationship with Wu Bo from being "completely unfamiliar" to being "familiar", and they even started going to the bathroom together holding hands.
This is thanks to Wu Bo's initiative.
When they got down to business, Zhu Yingning discovered that Wu Bo was incredibly talkative with his friends, while she herself seemed rather reserved. While Wu Bo might seem like the quiet, unassuming type in the class, she actually had a wide range of interests, from reading novels and listening to music to idols. In short, her hobbies were a world away from Zhu Yingning's.
She said that the first Chinese female singer she liked was Stefanie Sun. She liked the way she sang "Tian Hei Hei" with her unique and not-so-perfect pronunciation. Because her ancestral home is in southern Fujian, listening to this song made her feel like she was back in her childhood.
She said that SHE was her favorite before they went solo, but now BY2 has taken that position.
She said that "Yilin Little Miss" and "Fireworks" are her two favorite magazines because she loves to read transparent and delicate youth novels.
…
Zhu Yingning listened silently to everything she said.
At the beginning of the millennium, everything was thriving, but this prosperity did not extend to Zhu Yingning's mountain village. The corner where she took root seemed to be abandoned by the world. She was like a savage who grew up on an isolated island. She left the mountain that kept her captive and got a glimpse of the workings of the world's gears for the first time.
The flowers are blooming, but they have nothing to do with her.
I don't speak because I have nothing to say.
She had an unbridgeable gap in her knowledge of the latest trends in the world, but she was afraid that if she remained silent for too long, the other person would find her boring. After a long deliberation, she finally said hesitantly before school was over: "Wu Bo, can I borrow a copy of 'Fireworks' from you?"
Wu Bo's eyes lit up. "Of course! Let me tell you, all my friends from junior high school liked canoeing, but I was the only one who liked Le Xiaomi. You absolutely have to read her books. If you fall in love with her, maybe we can go to her book signing together someday!"
Zhu Yingning was completely unfamiliar with the names of the writers Wu Bo mentioned, but she still raised a faint and curved smile.
The first feeler she extended toward the city was gently caught.
**
When Zhu Yingning returned home from school, she didn't see Xu Sirui. He would sometimes go out to dinner with his new friends, and she had gotten used to his occasional disappearances, so she went home on her own.
It was not until after nine o'clock in the evening, when she finished her homework for the day in the guest room, that she heard the sound of Xu Sirui opening the door in the entrance hall.
She stuck her head out and saw him walking towards the room while playing with his phone. The living room was dark, with no lights on. The light from the phone shining on his face looked like a ghost.
When the "ghost" looked up, he was startled by her head: "Fuck...what are you doing?"
"Nothing." She retracted her head.
Xu Sirui lowered his head again and continued playing with his mobile phone. He walked to the bedroom desk, threw his schoolbag casually on the ground, pulled out a chair and was about to sit down when Zhu Yingning's head suddenly popped in again. Without saying a word, she just stared at him with her round eyes.
He turned to look at her, and after staring at her for a few seconds, he felt an inexplicable itch in his palms, and wanted to grab a hammer and play whack-a-mole.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
This time she spoke, her lips moving as she asked a question in a positive tone: "Did you do this on purpose?"
"What do you mean by intentional?" Xu Sirui didn't follow her train of thought for a moment.
"Physical education."
He finally let out a "oh" as if he suddenly understood something. He didn't say if it was intentional or not. He just used his left hand to support the table, standing slightly crooked, like a ruffian. He raised his eyebrows and chuckled, "Why, are you planning on teaching me a lesson?"
A gentleman takes action instead of talking. He should win people over with virtue and not fight violence with violence. What if he accidentally gives a classmate a concussion? He should get along peacefully with his classmates... You can guess what her old cadre said.
Unexpectedly, this time Zhu Yingning changed his attitude, shook his head and said, "No, you misunderstood. What I wanted to say is..."
He didn't say anything, just kept listening, wanting to see what she would say.
"I just wanted to say..." She scratched her cheek and suddenly gave him a thumbs-up. The corners of her mouth couldn't help but curl up to the sides. Despite repeated restraint, her smile continued to grow, spreading to the corners of her eyes and eyebrows, and her whole body was filled with joy from head to toe. Her voice was sonorous and powerful, resounding, as if she was reciting a military oath, "It's so cool!"
"?"
Until Zhu Yingning returned to the guest room and disappeared at the door of his bedroom, her words "It feels so good" with a righteous tone but the content had nothing to do with righteousness were still ringing in his ears.
This makes me feel good. Do you really want to achieve this?
Xu Sirui complained silently in his heart, sat back in the chair, crossed his legs, crossed them for a few seconds, then put them down again, rubbed his chin with his fingers, grabbed the mirror on the desk and started to admire himself.
After admiring his own beauty for half a minute, he realized that the corners of his mouth seemed to have been infected by her, and were always curled up in a smug arc.
……All right.
He admitted that it was quite cool.
**
However, Xu Sirui soon experienced Zhu Yingning's ability to repay kindness with enmity.
It was simply because the monthly exam was approaching. As the first exam since the start of the school year, Zhu Yingning not only took it very seriously and prepared for it, but also forced him to do the same.
Xu Sirui originally thought that a balance had been formed between him and her, where "he plays his own thing, she studies her own thing, and they don't interfere with each other's business." But it was obvious that this was just his one-sided illusion.
Zhu Yingning had ignored him before simply because the big exams hadn't arrived yet. She felt Xu Sirui might have his own learning rhythm, and perhaps a balanced approach to work and rest was a reasonable and effective learning method. She felt she should give him some basic trust.
But as the monthly exam was approaching, she waited and waited until the flowers were about to wither, but Xu Sirui never showed any sign of "working hard" or "working hard". His lazy and carefree attitude finally made her unable to sit still.
A week before the monthly exam, Zhu Yingning launched her all-around and comprehensive attack on Xu Sirui.
To what extent will the encirclement and suppression reach?
Whenever Xu Sirui wanted to go back to the classroom to take a nap after lunch, she would quickly drag him into the stairwell to recite politics.
"Xu Sirui, what is the function of currency?"
“…”
He asked from the bottom of his heart, "Is there something wrong with you?"
She was completely unmoved: "It's a measure of value, a means of circulation, a means of storage, a means of payment, a means of payment, and a world currency. Do you remember? How do you distinguish between a means of circulation and a means of payment?"
“…”
"See if the transaction and the monetary payment are synchronized. If they are synchronized, it is a means of circulation. If they are not synchronized, it is a means of payment. Do you remember this?"
After school, he wanted to avoid her and go to the baseball field near the school with Feng Da and the others to play basketball. But after walking 600 to 700 meters, Zhu Yingning kept following them like a ghost, yelling relentlessly: "Xu Sirui—Xu Sirui—! You haven't reviewed physics yet!"
Feng Da looked around and said uncertainly: "Si Rui, I seem to have heard someone calling you all the time. Am I hallucinating?"
Xu Sirui was terrified, afraid that someone would find out that he actually needed Zhu Yingning's supervision, so he had to say goodbye in a hurry: "Did you hear wrong? I suddenly remembered that I have something to do at home. Let's talk about playing basketball next time."
He didn't know if it was her magical brainwashing of knowledge that worked, but even though he hadn't paid much attention in class and hadn't done any homework since the beginning of the school year, when he sat in the examination room, he glanced at the questions and found that they were all quite familiar.
What made him even more speechless was that before the exam, as if worried that he would miss it, she even came to their class. After finding him sitting obediently in his seat, she smiled with a motherly satisfaction, nodded, and said to him in a condescending manner, "I knew you loved studying. Keep up the good work."
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