Chapter 71 Aunt Fairy Godmother's Magic Disappears
"Don't lift your head up. It's a misconception that you shouldn't lift your head up when you have a nosebleed. It can easily cause the blood to go into your trachea."
Zhu Yingning opened the refrigerator, found ice cubes from the freezer, wrapped the ice cubes in a wet towel, and applied it to Sun Mingyuan's nose.
"What should I do with my head? Hold it upright?" he asked.
“Just lean forward naturally.”
"But then my nose will bleed."
"Then let it flow out." She said calmly.
"Is it true that my nose isn't broken?"
"No, I just touched it for you. If you're still worried, you can go to the hospital for an X-ray later."
After the question and answer session, Sun Mingyuan couldn't help but say in amazement, "Thank you."
He found that Zhu Yingning had a calm and reassuring temperament. He had just rushed out and had already imagined the scene of his broken nose and undergoing repair surgery in the hospital. He even imagined clearly how he would grab Xu Sirui's collar and settle the score with him, crying "Give me back my mother's nose". But now, nothing happened.
"You're welcome." She opened her mouth and asked, "You and Xu Sirui..."
Speaking of this, Sun Mingyuan's eyes wandered. He sighed, scratched his head, and said vaguely, "It's nothing... just a little conflict."
"You guys will get back together later, right?"
"Of course."
After learning that they would reconcile later, Zhu Yingning stopped asking questions. She could see that Sun Mingyuan didn't want to talk.
After his nose stopped bleeding, Sun Mingyuan left.
**
Xu Sirui didn't come home that night. Zhu Yingning woke up and saw that his room was empty. She felt helpless.
He disappeared all day, and by evening, he was still missing. Xu Zhengkang wasn't home much either. He'd mostly stayed out during the National Day holiday, claiming to be busy with work. Sometimes, Zhu Yingning couldn't tell who was actually staying at their house; she, an outsider, had spent more time there than the father and son.
After getting off work from Zhu Zhiwei's store in the evening, she went to the market to buy some vegetables, intending to cook herself a simple bowl of vegetable porridge for dinner.
When she opened the door, she saw that the light in the living room was on. She was wondering who had returned when she saw a woman sitting on the sofa, tilting her head and glancing at her.
On the wall of Xu Sirui's house hung a wedding photo of Xu Zhengkang and Zhou Tianlan. Although Zhu Yingning hadn't yet had the chance to meet Zhou Tianlan in person, she had formed a preliminary impression of her appearance from the photo. The beautiful woman sitting on the sofa at that moment looked like her, yet not her. Zhu Yingning hesitated at the door for a moment before speaking, "Hello...?"
"Hello." Zhou Tianqing nodded with a smile.
After Zhu Yingning changed her slippers and walked awkwardly towards the living room, she calmly introduced herself: "My name is Zhou Tianqing, and I'm Ruirui's aunt. You must be Yingning. He was in the mountains before. Thank you for taking care of him."
Zhu Yingning was extremely frightened and waved his hands, saying, "You're welcome. I didn't take care of him much. He helped me a lot."
"You're being polite." Zhou Tianqing smiled gently and amiably. "We in the family all know Ruirui's temper. Even I don't want to spend much time with him. It's amazing that you can tolerate him. He must have caused you a lot of trouble since you moved in, right?"
"Nothing." She shook her head vigorously.
"Have a seat." Zhou Tianqing pointed to the empty spot on the sofa and said, "I should be leaving soon. Ruirui didn't answer my calls. I wanted to come over and stop him, but I've been waiting since this afternoon and haven't seen him."
Upon hearing this, Zhu Yingning was stunned.
Xu Sirui and Sun Mingyuan's fight was fine; she could understand it as just a normal boy fight, but why didn't he even want to see his aunt? Perhaps it was because of her identity as "Xu Sirui's aunt," or because Zhou Tianqing looked so much like Zhou Tianlan, a man she'd never met in their wedding photos, or perhaps it was Zhou Tianqing's own gentle and approachable demeanor, but she couldn't help but ask, "What do you want from him? I can tell him for you."
But Zhou Tianqing, like Sun Mingyuan, avoided giving a direct answer and just smiled and said, "You're thoughtful, but it's nothing."
"oh……"
Zhou Tianqing stood up, picked up the bag on the sofa, and was about to leave. As she passed by her, she probably found her wide-eyed expression amusing, so she reached out and patted her head, whispering in a confidential tone, "Don't you think Ruirui is particularly timid?"
Although she didn't understand why the topic suddenly turned to this, Zhu Yingning nodded in agreement: "He's afraid of the dark and ghosts. He's very timid. Even frogs can scare him."
Zhou Tianqing chuckled when she heard this: "So what do you think are his strengths?"
"He's very soft-hearted."
Zhou Tianqing raised her eyebrows in surprise, not expecting this answer: "I thought you would say he's handsome or something." After all, in the eyes of those who knew his bad temper, Xu Sirui probably had this one and only advantage.
"He is indeed handsome." Zhu Yingning mused, "But this can only be considered his characteristic, not his advantage."
"Oh?" Zhou Tianqing showed an expression of listening attentively.
"His strengths are not so superficial."
Zhou Tianqing's heart moved slightly.
She has watched Xu Sirui grow up. From childhood to adulthood, the most common comment people make about Xu Sirui is: "This child is so handsome." In kindergarten, because of his fair and tender appearance, he always stood in the center position in cultural performances. In elementary school, because of his handsome appearance, teachers liked to let him sit in the front row. When he was taken for a walk in the mall, he would meet scouts and hand them business cards. When he was taken to the market to buy vegetables, the old men and women were willing to give him an extra chicken leg.
Humans are visual animals. This has nothing to do with men or women. As creatures with eyes and aesthetic sense, they all have an intuitive perception of physical beauty.
However, Zhu Yingning said that his advantages are not so superficial.
Zhou Tianqing couldn't describe her feelings. Was she moved? Not really, she just felt a little sigh. She retracted her steps and stood beside Zhu Yingning. She said softly, "Yingning, can I trouble you with something?"
**
Zhu Yingning saw Xu Sirui again after the National Day holiday.
Hong Qingyang handed out the test papers, along with the monthly exam rankings. When the ranking list came to their row, Zhu Yingning closed her eyes, clasped her hands under her chin, and for a long time, she prepared herself mentally, not daring to open her eyes.
"...Are you going to watch it or not? If not, I'll pass it to the back row." Shao Yanjun said impatiently.
She had no choice but to open her eyes and said awkwardly, "I saw it, I saw it."
I took the ranking list, took a deep breath, widened my eyes, and started looking for my name from the bottom row. Every time I passed a last-place name, I felt like I had survived a disaster.
Shao Yanjun was speechless watching from the side. Seeing her slowly scanning from the last to the third from the last, he finally couldn't help but interrupt her: "Third in the class, thirty-seventh in the grade. Is that enough? I'll pass it on to the back."
He grabbed the ranking list and threw it toward the back row. Dai Yize screamed, "Take it away! Don't give it to me!" It was as if what was thrown at him wasn't a ranking list, but a pile of dog shit. Dai Yize's deskmate angrily said, "Even if you don't want to see it, I will."
Zhu Yingning was still frozen in place because of the ranking Shao Yanjun told her.
"Only third..." she muttered, unable to hide her disappointment.
Shao Yanjun was puzzled and asked, "What's wrong with you? I saw you starting from the last row and thought you had low expectations for yourself. What's wrong with being third? If you dare to say you didn't do well in the exam in front of me, I'll give you a slap in the face!"
“…”
Zhu Yingning then remembered that she seemed to have seen Shao Yanjun's name on the third-to-last line.
Speaking of this, how did Xu Sirui do in the exam?
As soon as the school bell rang, she went upstairs.
Because the timing was early, Xu Sirui hadn't left yet. He sat in the last row, headphones on, an MP4 player in hand, reading a Jin Yong novel. After not seeing him for a few days, he still had that indifferent attitude, but the dark circles under his eyes were more obvious, as if he had been doing hard labor somewhere during his absence.
She walked closer, wanting to ask about his ranking, but she smelled alcohol.
Upon closer inspection, there was no wine bottle on Xu Sirui's table, nor on the table top or legs, but there was undoubtedly a strong smell of alcohol on him. The more Zhu Yingning thought about it, the more shocked she became. She couldn't believe how much alcohol he had drunk in the past few days to have become so marinated.
Smoking, drinking, internet addiction, staying out all night, beating up friends, and ignoring family members.
Does this person really have to be so vicious? !
Just as she was about to explode, she saw someone passing around a ranking list. Out of curiosity, she stretched her neck to look over and discovered that Xu Sirui ranked sixth in their class and eighty-fourth in the entire grade.
This ranking...
It can't be said to be bad, after all, there are more than 900 people in their class. But just like when she saw her own ranking, the first thought that came to her mind was - he is more than that.
Knowing his abilities, her first reaction to seeing such a disappointing ranking was not joy, but compensatory anxiety. She knew that this ranking was the result of him relying solely on his past achievements without any study.
When her anxiety subsided, she looked up and saw that Xu Sirui's seat was empty. She hurriedly ran after him and saw that he was walking downstairs without even carrying his backpack, listening to music. Just as she was about to call him, Feng Da and Guo Yingying passed her and came to meet him. They walked to Xu Sirui's left and right, chatting and laughing with him.
Unlike the abrupt concave shape formed when she walked among them before, Xu Sirui walked among them in a perfect convex shape, like the top of a mountain, a solitary peak protruding, rather than a steep basin.
The three of them walking together are like mountains and water, an oil painting with unified tones, and they have an atmosphere of being a kind that keeps strangers away.
similar.
When this exclusive word jumped into Zhu Yingning's mind, she was stunned.
Passing by Xu Sirui's classmates, she heard them say, "Hey, did you hear? Feng Da, Sirui, and Yingying went to shoot a commercial together during National Day."
"What advertisement?"
"I'm not sure about the specifics. Magazines, accessories, clothes? Yingying has been working as a model for several years, and her channels are pretty stable, so I introduced Si Rui and the others to her."
"Wow, that's amazing! Will they just eat this bowl of rice in the future?"
"I don't know, but I heard from Yingying that her boss really likes Xu Sirui and wants to sign him to a long-term contract."
"It feels like the three of them are not from the same world as us."
"After all, she has that face. She's born to be a star. We ordinary people can forget about it."
Until Xu Sirui and the others completely disappeared, and the students who were chatting also disappeared, Zhu Yingning still stood there in a daze.
She had a vague feeling after arriving in Beijing, but she always deliberately avoided thinking about it, not wanting the idea to take shape, and even less wanting to face the reality that she vaguely feared in her heart.
Until now——
She finally had to admit that the students were right.
It seemed like Xu Sirui and she were no longer from the same world.
Or perhaps they had never been in the same world from the beginning, and it was the variety show that falsely erased the distance between them, like an eraser with an expiration date, erasing the gap between rich and poor, erasing the gap in perception, forcing two lives that were once parallel. And now, after midnight, the fairy godmother's magic faded, and the carriage returned to its original form, transforming into a plump pumpkin. She should have known long ago that all that heartfelt connection and touching moment was a fleeting illusion brought on by the variety show, right?
If there were no variety show, if she and Xu Sirui continued along their respective life paths, would they still meet? Or, if they met, would he be interested in getting to know her?
She didn't dare answer these questions.
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