Chapter 5 Birds of a feather flock together; food is as essential as iron. Your family members might...
"Ugh—" Feng Feng spat the food he had just eaten back into his bowl, then muttered that he couldn't waste food and frowned as he ate it.
She had just bought a lot of food from the cafeteria with great anticipation, saying that food is the most important thing for people, and that people are like iron and food is like steel.
Xia Zhu truly liked Feng Feng because they shared the same thoughts.
But right now, the food was as hard to swallow as steel for Feng Feng.
"Xia Zhu, this food is so awful! How can you possibly nurture the future flowers of our nation?! How can you possibly stand it?!"
Feng Feng seems to have a crazy passion and obsession with food.
"Brother, bring the bento box I made tomorrow. I don't want to eat this anymore. It's making me feel sick and weak." Feng Feng slumped his head but still finished off the food she served.
Feng Mian ate slowly and methodically, maintaining his composure, but his brows were furrowed, indicating that the cafeteria food was also not to his liking. He smiled and said it was fine.
"Let's get one for Xia Zhu too," he said, turning to Xia Zhu.
"Me?" Xia Zhu was a little shocked.
"No need, I think it's fine with me, no need to bother."
"What trouble! Feng Mian's bento is the best in the entire universe!" Feng Feng squinted, as if savoring his brother's cooking.
“That’s right, it’s not troublesome. I usually make a lot, it’s just something I do easily. And Xia Zhu, you have to be serious about food. You can’t just do it half-heartedly, and you can’t just leave it as okay.” Feng Mian suddenly put on a very serious expression, as if this was a serious topic.
Xia Zhu was unsure how to respond. The way the brother and sister stared at her seemed as if they could arrest her for not taking food seriously if she continued to refuse.
"How much is that bento box? I'd like to buy one to try, is that alright?" she replied after thinking for a moment.
"Of course." Feng Mian transformed back into a kind and gentle young man.
"Hmph." Ye Li's signature cold snort is the background music that accompanies his entrance.
Xia Zhu was surprised to see her in the cafeteria.
For Ye Li, wasn't the cafeteria food just for poor people?
Ye Li walked past Xia Zhu with his arms crossed, leaving behind the words, "Birds of a feather flock together."
She wouldn't tell them that the girl who usually paid her to pick up takeout for her was absent today. Ye Li was starving, but she didn't want to walk halfway across the campus to the back gate to pick up her takeout, so she came to the cafeteria when there were fewer people. As a result, she ran into Xia Zhu and those two strange new students again.
It's a small world when enemies meet, although Xia Zhu's role as an enemy is rather inexplicable.
Feng Feng and Feng Mian stared blankly at Ye Li's retreating figure; he seemed to be a classmate.
They seemed quite pleased with the idea that birds of a feather flock together.
Xia Zhu is kind and gentle.
Hehe, so are we.
The Feng siblings exchanged a pleasant glance.
After dinner, the three of them took a walk around the playground for a while.
Along the way, Feng Feng kept asking questions about whether Xia Zhu's ancestors had moved to Dongshan from somewhere else.
Xia Zhu didn't quite understand what she was focusing on, but she still thought about it carefully and answered her questions one by one.
But her answer clearly confused Feng Feng even more, and Feng Mian frowned again.
The atmosphere among the three of them suddenly became somewhat cold.
Feng Feng suddenly looked at Xia Zhu with a serious expression.
"Xia Zhu, I mean, what if, maybe, is there a possibility that you are not your parents' biological child?"
Feng Mian slapped Feng Feng on the head.
"Xiao Feng." He gestured to Feng Feng with his eyes.
"I'm not too sure about that," Xia Zhu thought for a moment and answered honestly.
"Why don't you go back and ask your aunt and uncle?" Feng Feng said, his eyes sparkling.
“My parents left when I was very young, and we haven’t been in contact since. My grandfather raised me.”
"Ah," Feng Feng scratched her head, then softened her tone, "Then let's ask Grandpa."
"Grandpa is gone."
"Xiao Feng!" Feng Mian reached out and tugged at her. "Stop asking questions, now."
"I'm sorry... I didn't know, Xia Zhu, I'm so sorry!"
"It's alright." Xia Zhu smiled at her.
Oh no, he felt even more guilty. Feng Feng wanted to cry but had no tears. He felt that he had done something terrible and wouldn't be able to sleep tonight.
Xia Zhu actually wanted to ask them why they were asking her such questions, but then she thought better of it.
If there are any other reasons, they said they would tell her.
Feng Feng and Feng Mian didn't live at school. Except for weekends, they would stick together with Xia Zhu, eating the bento boxes made by Feng Mian and racing together in PE class. Xia Zhu didn't expect that Feng Feng, who looked small, was incredibly strong and broke the school's men's shot put record with a casual throw.
Feng Feng stood with his hands on his hips, his nose practically pointing to the sky. This ignited Xia Zhu's fighting spirit, and he started practicing two extra sets of boxing every morning in the dormitory.
In her spare time, Xia Zhu would go to the library, search online for information about mandrills and greenstone, or borrow some related books.
Of course, there was still no gain.
Instead of going home this weekend, she plans to spend another day at the school library to do one last check.
There weren't many people on campus, just a few scattered in various corners. On the playground, there were a few teams of physical education students training, and some people taking a walk or jogging.
The building where the library is located is even quieter, with almost no one coming here. Apart from students taking computer classes who occasionally come to the computer lab on the second floor, most of the empty classrooms on each floor are locked and unused.
Xia Zhu looked up from the computer, twisted her slightly sore neck, and decided to take a break to relax her eyes before going to the bathroom.
Xia Zhu was the only one in the corridor. She suspected she was the only one in the entire building. No, there was also a drowsy librarian in the library. Xia Zhu had arrived at nine in the morning. When the librarian was awake, he would play Candy Crush on the computer, playing for a while and then falling asleep.
Perhaps due to the structure of the U-shaped building, the echo of her footsteps seemed particularly loud, swaying from the floor and spreading along the reinforced concrete, finally being blocked by the U-shaped skylight several times, the kinetic energy increasing rather than decreasing.
Remembering the rumors circulating among students last week about the school toilets being haunted, Feng Feng had mysteriously approached her after class and asked if she was afraid of ghosts.
When Feng Feng asked this question, she only thought of mandrills. If ghosts were invisible, they wouldn't be so scary.
"I'm not afraid," Xia Zhu said firmly.
The women's restroom on the top floor is probably unused for a long time. When you push open the door, the air inside smells of emptiness, not foul, but rather the smell of air that hasn't been circulating for a long time.
She stood in front of the sink, somewhat doubtful whether the faucets and other facilities were working properly. Turning on the faucet, a gurgling sound came from the pipes, and Xia Zhu could imagine the water struggling to rise.
With a splash, water finally flowed out.
It looks fairly clean to the naked eye, with no rust or other foreign matter.
She put her hand underwater, and the biting cold made her much more awake.
Turning off the tap, Xia Zhu looked up and saw herself in the mirror. Her bangs were neatly covering her eyebrows, visually lowering her upper eyelids and hiding them behind her thick glasses. Her proud long hair was straight and shiny black, but it made her look a bit gloomy when paired with her face.
She realized again that she was similar to Feng Feng in some ways, but why was Feng Feng so likable? Was it because she didn't have a pretty smile?
She first raised the left corner of her mouth in front of the mirror, then the right. Great, she looked even more stunning.
Xia Zhu shook her hands twice and turned to leave, but the door she had just pushed open was suddenly slammed shut as if by an invisible force.
Xia Zhu, along with the already stagnant air, was locked inside the toilet.
It felt a bit suffocating.
The faucet behind me, which had been tightly turned on, creaked open again, and water gushed into the sewer.
Something blew a cool breath on the back of her neck. She turned her head but saw nothing. Then, a mournful sob drifted from the last stall in the restroom.
“That thing… doesn’t belong to you…” A clear female voice broke off the sobs.
"Hand over what you shouldn't have taken..."
"Stone...green...stone..."
Stone? Xia Zhu was starting to get a clue.
"Stone……"
"Give it back to me..."
A heavy thud came from outside the toilet.
Xia Zhu: "..."
She sighed, reached into her coat hood, and took out the green stone she always carried with her.
"You're here looking for this, right?"
"Feng Feng".
With a creak, the door to the last cubicle was pushed open, and Feng Feng walked out, scratching his head and looking embarrassed.
"Hehe." She grinned foolishly at Xia Zhu, her eyes never leaving the green stone in Xia Zhu's hand.
"Hehe?" Xia Zhu said helplessly, "Let me explain."
She urgently needs a reasonable explanation.
"This...that..."
In an empty classroom on the top floor that had been left unlocked.
The three sat facing each other.
Feng Feng talked about other things for half an hour, but couldn't come up with a clear explanation for the green stone in her palm.
It was Fengmian who broke the awkward atmosphere.
He patted Feng Feng on the shoulder, then turned to face Xia Zhu, his voice gentle yet firm.
"Xia Zhu, for certain reasons, we cannot tell you, including about this stone, including when you first met us."
Staring at Feng Feng and Feng Mian's faces, which were similar yet not quite the same, he finally realized that something was missing.
She stretched out her right hand, bent her thumb and forefinger into a small circle, and moved it to Feng Feng's right ear. Right there, a brown bead was missing, sparkling and very pretty.
Their first encounter was not on the classroom stage, but in Xia Zhu's dream.
"Is the reason you can't tell me because my surname is Xia?"
Feng Mian and Feng Feng exchanged a glance and then nodded.
"You could say that."
"I understand." Xia Zhu nodded.
Feng Feng noticed that she had no expression and couldn't tell if she was angry or sad, so he quickly explained, "Xia Zhu, this stone is extremely important to us, perhaps even a matter of life and death. It's not that we didn't want to tell you, it's just..."
“If we give you the stone, you’ll leave this place, right?” Xia Zhu interrupted someone, a rare occurrence for him.
"Leave school, even leave the city."
Feng Feng remained silent for a while, recalling everything that had happened in the past two weeks, and suddenly felt a little reluctant.
"Yes."
"Alright." She smiled. "This originally belonged to you, so it's useless to me." It neither glows nor floats.
The green stone was returned to its rightful owner and placed back in Feng Feng's palm.
However, the owner of the stone did not feel much joy at having it back; instead, he furrowed his brow.
She exchanged glances with Feng Mian.
Xia Zhu noticed that the brother and sister always exchanged glances and seemed to have a good understanding of each other.
Feng Feng unzipped his school uniform jacket and took out a small cloth bag from the inner pocket. The bag was embroidered with strangely shaped chicks, and a brightly colored feather was hanging from the knotted rope on the bag.
Feng Feng opened the small cloth bag, picked and chose, and carefully placed a small, hard, brownish-brown berry into Xia Zhu's palm.
It's like an exchange for greenstone.
"My precious seed, Xia Zhu, is for you." Feng Feng's voice was light and somewhat unreal, and her toffee-colored round eyes seemed to be sparkling with tears.
A note from the author:
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