Chapter 141: Be Careful When Choosing a Man
Xiao Ran's frank words made the atmosphere on the scene become subtle.
Zhang Jiacheng's face was etched with embarrassment, and he quickly glanced at Xu Sirui. He and Xu Sirui were as unfamiliar as two strangers who happened to sit in the same row on the bus. At best, he had only happened to see him and Zhu Yingning walking together after school. Exposing such a complicated family secret to a stranger was more painful than being carried directly to the execution platform.
Xu Sirui's face remained expressionless, showing neither sympathy nor inquiring interest, as if Xiao Ran's words were no different from the saying, "The sun rises in the east." His indifference, from another perspective, could be seen as thoughtfulness, which relieved Zhang Jiacheng but also made him feel even more embarrassed and ashamed when he realized he was being treated with consideration.
Fortunately, Zhu Yingning kindly broke the deadlock and said, "But you two look alike, so you're destined to be brother and sister."
"Are they similar?" Xiao Ran touched her eyes, clearly pleased with Zhang Jiacheng's. She hoped that this was the only similarity between them. However, she still pouted her upper lip and said with a sly, "Hey, you! Stop fooling me. I'm still evaluating him. Only after he passes the evaluation will he be qualified to be my brother."
"Oh?" Zhu Yingning thought her quirky look was adorable, so she followed up with a question, "So what's the inspection project you set for him? Can I hear it?"
Xiao Ran pointed cunningly at the fairy wand in her hand: "Of course, help me get this."
She smiled and pulled out a handful of fairy wands from the box, handing them to Xiao Ran, while also helping Zhang Jiacheng out of a predicament: "I'm giving these to you. Does that mean you've passed my assessment of your brother?"
Xiao Ran quickly took the fairy wand with her left hand, but stroked her chin with her right hand, pretending to think, leaving herself room to continue to use Zhang Jiacheng in the future: "You can pass half of it at your discretion."
Xu Sirui sneered from the side.
Xiao Ran, who had been concentrating on the fairy wand, finally noticed him. Her pupils dilated, and she first wondered why there was a big star here: "Are you the person on the TV screen?" Then she added leisurely, "Although you are a big star, your personality is not good. My brother's personality is much better than yours."
Xu Sirui: “…”
He just wanted to shoo the brat away with a harsh word, but Xiao Ran, as if she didn't understand his intent, slid down from the back seat nimbly and asked Zhu Yingning to borrow her lighter without any hesitation. Zhu Yingning lit the fairy wand for her, saying it was dangerous for children to use lighters without permission. In the end, they ended up playing together for some reason.
To be precise, it was Zhu Yingning who was playing with Xiao Ran, while he and Zhang Jiacheng were standing awkwardly beside them.
Zhang Jiacheng had one foot on the bicycle pedal and the other on the ground. Xu Sirui stood far away from him, not even bothering to look over. He held a handful of remaining fairy wands in his arms, and between his fingers were his and Zhu Yingning's respective cell phones.
The fairy wand drew a beautiful arc in the air, and the firelight illuminated the night and reflected their faces.
One was smiling heartily, one had a kind and loving look on his face, one was deeply embarrassed, and one star had a sour face.
All kinds of human life.
The fireworks ended, and only the girls were left in a happy world. Xiao Ran gave Zhu Yingning a thumbs-up, still unsatisfied: "You are a good person, a very good person. I will come to play with you next time."
Xu Sirui finally couldn't stand it anymore and said to her: "There won't be a next time. If you have a brother, don't cling to others."
Xiao Ran snorted in dissatisfaction, "What's it to you if I play with her? You're so rude to argue with a child." She turned to Zhu Yingning and said seriously, "Sister, you have to be careful when choosing a man. No matter how handsome he is, you can't marry a stingy man like this. How about I recommend someone to you..."
Zhang Jiacheng listened to her increasingly irresponsible words and quickly lifted her back onto the back of the bicycle. "Okay, Xiaoran, stop talking nonsense and say goodbye to your sister and...this brother." Although he mentioned Xu Sirui, his eyes only turned to Zhu Yingning. He smiled and nodded, "Thank you for taking her out to play. She has to go to bed before ten o'clock. I have to take her back first."
"You're welcome. Be careful on your way." She waved goodbye.
It wasn't until Zhang Jiacheng disappeared at the end of the road on his bicycle that Zhu Yingning turned around, raised her arms and stretched. When she had just been talking to Xiao Ran, she had been trying to bend down as much as possible to avoid putting pressure on her. After a long time, her waist was inevitably sore. Pointing at the remaining fairy wands in Xu Sirui's arms, she smiled and suggested, "Let's continue playing. Let me take a picture of you first?"
Xu Sirui looked like someone owed him five million. He shook his head and said, "You play by yourself. I'm not interested." Then he stuffed the remaining fairy wands in his hand into her arms.
Zhu Yingning hugged the handful of fairy wands, not knowing what to say. "What's the point of me playing by myself? Weren't you having fun just now before Zhang Jiacheng and the others arrived? Are you unhappy just because I gave some fairy wands to that little girl?"
Xu Sirui ignored her subsequent words and only responded to the first one: "If it's all boring, then don't play at all."
She suddenly became furious at his words, which were almost like a fit of anger. She felt that his temper was completely unreasonable, so she stuffed the fairy wand in her hand into the bicycle basket, applied the brakes, grabbed the handlebars, pushed the bicycle and ran forward.
Xu Sirui frowned and stared at her back until he saw that she had run a long way away without any intention of looking back. Then he raised his voice and asked, "Why are you pushing the cart?"
"Go home!" she said angrily. "I'm going to push my bike away so you don't have a bike to ride."
“…”
Xu Sirui was speechless for a while, kicked the pebbles on the soles of his shoes with the toe of his shoes, and then took a big step forward to catch up.
"Okay, I'll pick you up."
She didn't know how to ride a bike, and she hadn't had time to learn since she came to Beijing. He ran to the other side of the bike and pretended to take it, but she turned the handlebars, avoiding his hand, and impatiently told him to go away.
"If I run, don't you have to run too?" He was helpless.
But she said she was happy to run: "Anyway, I don't get tired when I run, but you will be tired when you run home. I just want to tire you to death."
“…”
Xu Sirui was impressed by her powerful logic.
After returning home with only a few casualties, she had not forgotten to park the bicycle neatly in the designated spot and remove the key. She stuffed the key into his hand so roughly that it seemed as if she wanted to chisel a hole in his palm.
The two of them took the elevator back to their home in silence. After entering and turning on the light, Xu Sirui saw her face full of indignation and couldn't help laughing: "What are you angry about?"
"I was going to ask you what you're angry about," she retorted rudely.
He shut up and remained silent, his expression somewhat bewildered. He rubbed his hair and sat on the sofa, staring blankly at the glare-filled black TV screen. After a while, he whispered, "...It's nothing. It's my own problem. Go take a shower first."
His words made her feel uncomfortable. Zhu Yingning hated herself for being so soft-hearted. She hadn't even fully understood why he was angry, but she had already forgiven him. She felt that she shouldn't be so easygoing. To make herself look even more unsympathetic, she returned to her bedroom, dug out her pajamas, and went into the bathroom without looking back.
After taking a shower, he walked towards the living room while drying his hair. He wanted to pour himself a glass of water, but found that Xu Sirui was still sitting on the sofa, still in the same posture as when he just returned home.
The incandescent light in the living room hit his eyelashes, hiding his eyes in the shadow of his eyelashes, making it impossible to make out his expression. But the light made him look a little lonely, which was hard to tell whether it was real or fake.
Her heart softened into a puddle of mud, secretly hating herself for being too easy to talk to. However, she had already walked towards him and asked, "Do you want to take a shower? The water heater is still hot enough."
This is a way out. Who would have thought that Xu Sirui, who is usually so obsessed with cleanliness that he has to take a shower as soon as he gets home, would say, "I don't really feel like moving."
She thought he was deliberately going against her, and her heart, which had just softened, almost hardened again until she heard him add the second half of the sentence: "It's too tiring to run home."
"..." Zhu Yingning curled her lips, "You deserve it."
She nudged his shoulder gently, "Okay, then go take a shower after you've rested. It's only ten o'clock now, so we still have time to find something else to do later. Do you want to play computer games? I can play with you."
Xu Sirui swayed slightly with the force of her push, perked up a bit, and asked with a half-smile, "What are you playing? Saving the apple?"
"I know other games too, okay?" Zhu Yingning pushed him again unconvinced.
He swung back and forth like a tumbler: "For example?"
"Forest Ice and Fire Man." She put her left hand on her waist and counted on her right fingers, reciting the games Wu Bo had introduced to her one by one: "Obi Island, Little Flower Fairy, Mole Manor, Seer."
"Oh...you really know a lot." He leaned on the armrest of the sofa and laughed.
**
The last thing that caught Zhu Yingning's interest was the Forest Ice and Fire Man, because it was a true two-player game that could be played by two people together.
She said Xu Sirui had a bad temper and should play with Fire Man. Xu Sirui asked, "Am I the one with the worse temper, or is he?" The two of them almost got into another argument over who had the worse temper. In the end, Xu Sirui compromised and played with Fire Man. Meanwhile, he discovered Zhu Yingning had a strange habit: every time the little man on the screen took a run-up and jumped over the pool, she couldn't help but dub the little man, making "hey" and "ha" sounds. This new discovery made him laugh for a long time, and finally he completely wiped out the previous incident.
The winter vacation passed quickly and school started soon after the Lantern Festival.
After arriving at school, I said Happy New Year to my friends as usual.
"The last time we met was last year."
"Yeah, it's been a year since we last met."
This kind of conversation is like everyone saying "see you next year" to each other the day before winter vacation. It is a routine every time we return to school after winter vacation.
After greeting Wu Bo, Zhu Yingning also said hello to the dying Shao Yanjun and Dai Yize. They were always in this state at the beginning of each school term; she was used to it. Zhang Jiacheng nodded at her from his seat, and she smiled back.
Since there is usually nothing important to do on the first day of school, apart from explaining classroom discipline, teachers of each subject briefly talk about the course plan, so everyone is lazy and relaxed.
This lazy atmosphere extended to lunch break. Most of the boarding students went back to the dormitory to rest, and the day students were chatting in the classroom. No one was studying. Only those who loved studying like Tan Jingjing would go through the textbooks in advance to prepare for the lessons, occasionally respond to the topics of their deskmates, and complain about the cumbersome process of visiting relatives during the Spring Festival.
If she were in class before, Zhu Yingning would rigidly ask everyone to abide by the school rules and regulations and not make any noise during lunch break. However, after coming to Beijing, she was changed a lot by the friends around her. The biggest improvement she made was that she learned to be moderately accommodating.
Seeing that no one was arguing too much and no one was studying seriously, she turned a blind eye.
Shao Yanjun and Dai Yize were away, visiting friends from other classes. Wu Bo sat at his desk, engrossed in a romance novel. Zou Hao was busy discussing with his student, who sat next to him, who would be the new semester's exam writers. Meanwhile, she was reading a modern Chinese text in her Chinese textbook.
Halfway through, someone poked her with a pen cap from behind.
She turned her head and heard Zhang Jiacheng say from behind: "Yingning, will it bother you if I talk to you now?"
"No, what's wrong?" She closed the textbook.
He lowered his eyes to look at the junction of her chair back and his table, as if he didn't know how to speak. After thinking for a while, he said softly: "Can you please keep what Xiao Ran said that day a secret?"
He laughed at himself before saying this, "Actually, I shouldn't have said this to you. It seems like I don't trust you, but I definitely don't mean that... I just don't want other students in the class to know about this."
She quickly realized that he was referring to the fact that his family was a reconstituted family. Hearing this, she nodded vigorously and said softly, "Don't worry, I will never tell anyone."
"Well, thank you."
"It's a small matter."
Perhaps it was her assurance that gave him the desire to confide in her. After a few seconds, Zhang Jiacheng murmured again, "My stepfather treats me very well, and Xiao Ran is easy to take care of. It's just that I just came to the big city from the village, and I'm not used to many things yet."
Zhu Yingning was stunned for a moment, then smiled slightly: "I understand this feeling. I also came from the countryside. When I first came to Beijing, there were indeed many things I didn't understand. I need to slowly adapt."
This was a heartfelt confession, but Zhang Jiacheng was not very surprised after hearing it. Zhu Yingning felt that he might have heard the rumor that she was sponsored by Xu Zhengkang a long time ago. After all, after Xu Sirui's family affairs were exposed in school, the fact that she was sponsored was no longer a secret worth hiding.
His next words confirmed her suspicions: "The boy you were with on the fourth night of the Lunar New Year...his name is Xu Sirui, right? Was it his family that funded you?"
After asking the question, he realized that the question was offensive, so he tried to make amends by saying, "If you don't want to answer, you don't have to."
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The author has something to say: I am too busy tonight, only one more update orz
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