Chapter 34
The thin sheets of draft paper were filled with Li Ye's efforts over the past week. She was very good at theoretical knowledge. "How is it? Did you make any mistakes?"
Even after being asked this question, Zhou Yuan still carefully checked the answers and only announced the results after confirming that there were no mistakes: "All correct."
“I’m improving very quickly,” said Li Ye. He snatched the draft paper back from Zhou Yuan’s hand. “What do you think tomorrow’s practice will be?”
For the past week, Li Ye and Zhou Yuan have been practicing the piano together in an empty classroom every day after school. However, Zhou Yuan is practicing normally, while Li Ye is still practicing open strings.
She felt she had become much more proficient, but every time she looked at Zhou Yuan and the music teacher's expressions, she probably thought she still needed to practice more. However, her posture while holding the cello was about 70-80% like that of a professional.
Zhou Yuan: "Ensemble practice."
Yes, Li Ye remembered that this performance also involved Zhou Yuan. "I heard that collaborations and solos are very different. Are you good at both?"
"..."
Zhou Yuan: "I am still a member of the band."
Almost forgot about that, Li Ye awkwardly scratched his head, "It's just that I haven't seen you go to that classroom in a long time!"
The next day after school, the English teacher indeed began to teach Li Ye how to match Zhou Yuan's rhythm.
This is a difficult process, especially since Li Ye is a complete novice. The process of getting along is painful for both of them.
What surprised Li Ye the most during this process was being allowed to string the violin and play it, more than ten days after she first touched the strings directly.
This ensemble performance was much more pleasant to listen to than the last one. The practice was effective, a result that made Nareno very happy, and she felt even more excited about practicing after school every day.
Zhou Yuan saw all of this and tried several times to explain things directly to Li Ye, but he was forced to swallow his words back by her inexplicably high emotions.
If you walk by the river often enough, you're bound to get your shoes wet. For the past month, Li Ye has focused primarily on practicing the cello.
Fortunately, it didn't interfere with her studies. However, judging from her behavior, she used all the time she would have spent playing games to listen to newly downloaded instrumental music and didn't notice the changes in the house.
On a weekend morning, Li Ye didn't go out for breakfast immediately after getting up. Instead, he stayed in bed listening to music with his headphones on. He also didn't notice that his busy schedule had ended and Ms. Li had prepared an extremely lavish breakfast to make up for the neglect she had shown the family recently.
Ms. Li had already served breakfast, but Li Ye still hadn't appeared in the dining room. She thought something was wrong; Li Ye wasn't the type to stay in bed, so maybe he had a cold and fever and couldn't get out of bed.
So he went to the bedroom door and knocked gently a few times, but there was no response. In a panic, he opened the door and barged into his daughter's room.
What came into view was Li Ye sitting at his desk, wearing headphones and intently listening to music. In an instant, anger surged within him, and he roughly ripped the headphones off Li Ye's head.
Li Ye was a little confused by this. Her headphone cord was pulled off, but the music software on her computer was still playing the collection of introductory cello pieces that she had just been listening to, recommended by Zhou Yuan. She was just getting familiar with the pieces.
The background noise was the sound of musical instruments that had never been heard in the house before, and Ms. Li's face fell completely.
It wasn't a pop song that young girls would talk about, nor was it the violin that the boy next door would play; rather, it was the sound of a cello that should have nothing to do with Li Ye, emanating from the speakers.
The image from her distant memories overlapped with the bewildered Li Ye sitting before her, causing Ms. Li's emotions to spiral into rage.
"Get out of here right now! Get out of this house!"
Li Ye had no idea what was going on, or why he was suddenly being kicked out of his home.
Seeing that Li Ye was still standing there without making a move, Ms. Li, who was in a fit of anger, once again took action and grabbed the girl from the chair with one hand, forcibly dragging her out of the bedroom.
The unusual commotion puzzled Teacher Li. He could tell what was happening from the music coming from deep inside Li Ye's room.
As a devoted husband who always sides with his wife, Teacher Li hugged Ms. Li tightly, pried her hands off, and released Li Ye first. Then, he gently began to persuade her not to be angry, while also giving Li Ye a meaningful look, signaling her to quickly grab the female lead's schoolbag and head out.
Kicked out of the house early in the morning, with inexplicable grievances and a rumbling stomach, Li Ye carried her drawing board and schoolbag to the Youth Palace for a morning of painting class.
After class, Li Ye went upstairs to find Zhou Yuan as usual. When she opened the classroom door, she realized that she hadn't brought any food with her, and now the two of them would be hungry.
She hoped Zhou Yuan had brought lunch today; she had been hungry all morning, and her stomach was growling louder than she could hear. During the last half hour of class, Li Ye saw the girl next to her turn to look at her more than once, her expression seemingly even more embarrassed than hers.
"You don't look well." Zhou Yuan, who thought it would be the same as usual, came out of the classroom and immediately noticed that Li Ye was not in a good condition.
Li Ye prioritized the matter that was most urgent for her at the moment: "I didn't bring lunch with me, did you?"
Zhou Yuan: "What happened?"
Li Ye chuckled, but didn't insist on hiding it under Zhou Yuan's gaze, mainly because he was so hungry he was almost seeing black: "Well... I didn't eat this morning either, I'll eat lunch first."
Zhou Yuan: "Wait a minute."
Zhou Yuan turned and went back to the classroom. A little while later, he came out with his packed violin case on his back: "Let's go have lunch. I have something to say too."
"oh."
Starving to the point of almost losing the ability to think, Li Ye could only follow behind Zhou Yuan, completely ignoring what Zhou Yuan's action of carrying the zither case away meant.
Zhou Yuan took Li Ye to a nearby fast food restaurant and ordered two servings of fried rice. It was lunchtime and the restaurant was busy, but the staff quickly brought the two freshly made fried rice to them.
Starving, Li Ye didn't care whether they were outside or not; his eating manners appeared to the male protagonist as wolfing down his food.
Zhou Yuan: "Eat slowly, you can have more if you're not full."
As a boy in his growth period, Zhou Yuan was naturally very hungry, but he couldn't act like Li Ye.
"That's because you're not hungry enough!"
After finishing a bowl of fried rice, Li Ye quickly regained some of his energy and even had the energy to argue with people.
At this moment, only a third of the fried rice on Zhou Yuan's plate had been eaten. Li Ye touched his slightly bulging belly, trying to estimate how much room there was left in his stomach.
Zhou Yuan caught Li Ye's action out of the corner of his eye: "Just add another plate of stir-fried vegetables, your stomach can't handle eating too much at once."
Li Ye obediently waited for Zhou Yuan to order another plate of meat and vegetables. The food was served faster than fried rice. Upon closer inspection, he asked, "Braised beef?"
Zhou Yuan: "The name of the store."
“That’s because I wasn’t paying attention before.” Seeing Zhou Yuan’s chopsticks pointing at the slices of meat, Li Ye was not to be outdone, and wielded his chopsticks even more fiercely than before.
“I always feel that you need to know the surrounding shops better.” For example, Li Ye has a hard time finding these kinds of shops right away. Her range of movement is very narrow, and she doesn’t have many memories of the surrounding environment. She is the type who easily gets lost when familiar landmarks change.
"Ouch! It's so spicy!" Li Ye quickly put down her chopsticks, not forgetting to complain to Zhou Yuan. The vegetables she had just eaten were coated with a lot of chili oil. "I said why didn't you pick up some vegetables to eat? Did you know this is very spicy?"
Zhou Yuan didn't reply, but got up, went to the freezer, took out a carton of milk, and handed it to Li Ye: "Suck on it to relieve the spiciness."
Taking the iced milk from Zhou Yuan, Li Ye waited for the spiciness in his mouth to subside as instructed: "Drinking iced milk at this time is practically suicide."
Zhou Yuan had already taken a physiology and hygiene class and knew what Li Ye was referring to. His ears immediately turned bright red, and he dared not speak. He just kept picking at his food and eating, and almost finished all the remaining vegetables by himself.
Li Ye knew very well that Zhou Yuan was also not very good at eating spicy food, only slightly better than her, so she got up and put a box of iced milk in front of him.
When paying the bill, Li Ye specifically picked up a carton of room-temperature milk, asking, "Would you like one too?"
As expected, they were rejected. Zhou Yuan paid for lunch, and Li Ye didn't try anything more. The two of them then made their way to a cake shop after a series of twists and turns.
"You're being so generous today, what important thing do you want to tell me?"
Li Ye skillfully pulled Zhou Yuan to sit in a corner, asked the shop assistant for a box of donuts, and couldn't resist adding a slice of buttered bread when passing the counter—all desserts that could be taken home.
The thought of going home, and Li Ye returning to his seat with a plate of spoils, was not as happy as Zhou Yuan had imagined.
Zhou Yuan recalled that Li Ye had looked rather unhappy when she came to the classroom to find him, but at the time, her eagerness to eat had led to misunderstandings. Now that he thought about it, it was strange that Li Ye hadn't eaten breakfast; she didn't seem like him who couldn't get out of bed.
Zhou Yuan: "What happened to you?"
"What do you mean I've done something wrong? I'm perfectly fine now!" Li Ye still felt confused when he thought about it, but Zhou Yuan's question stirred up his emotions.
"This is the first time in my life I've ever seen Ms. Li so angry. All she did was skip breakfast at the restaurant!"
Li Ye took a big bite of the donut. The soft texture prevented her mood from plummeting. She spoke calmly about the biggest grievance she had suffered today, and perhaps even in her entire life.
“Zhou Yuan, I was kicked out of Ms. Li’s house, and Teacher Li also gave me a look that told me to leave quickly.”
"Do I have nowhere to go?"
Now Zhou Yuan is in a dilemma again. He originally planned to explain the music teacher's intentions to Li Ye today, otherwise, given Li Ye's personality, he might really quit on the spot.
Zhou Yuan: "Didn't you have breakfast?"
Zhou Yuan chose to calm Li Ye down first, hoping to resolve her issues, starting by identifying the key to the problem.
Li Ye had already taken a big bite of a donut. The sugar and oil she consumed had relaxed her mood. "She was promoted recently and had to adapt to her new job. She was so busy that she was nowhere to be seen. Today, she suddenly started making breakfast herself again."
"I was listening to the compilation you recommended in my room at the time, I didn't pay attention to the time, and I didn't hear her knocking on the door. Did she knock?"
Zhou Yuan: "?"
Li Ye continued to recall the scene, trying to make his description more objective: "Anyway, she just barged in and threw my headphones far away, even pulling the plugs off the computer."
"I was terrified at the time. The last time she was this fierce to me was when I was a kid playing a rhythm game on her phone."
Zhou Yuan seemed to be deep in thought.
"I don't know what happened after that, but she suddenly became very, very, very angry. She pulled me up from the chair and dragged me out of the room, telling me to get out."
Li Ye used "very" three times in a row, his tone inevitably becoming aggrieved, "So, did Detective Zhou Yuan find anything? I've tried my best not to show any emotion."
Zhou Yuan points out a common element that was overlooked in Li Ye's description: "music".
Zhou Yuan: "Auntie doesn't like my house, she doesn't like you playing rhythm games, and she doesn't like you listening to music."
Li Ye was searching for loopholes in this conjecture when he suddenly remembered that Teacher Li had an "I see" expression as soon as he approached her bedroom earlier today. Perhaps the answer was that simple.
"So, Ms. Li doesn't like any music? Her phone is always on vibrate, no matter how busy she is, and so is Teacher Li. Working people usually don't do that, right?"
Zhou Yuan confirmed her guess: "Mom and Dad have their own special ringtones."
“However, your family can’t be considered in the usual way, and the sample size is too small.” Li Ye was noticeably more relaxed, even joking with Zhou Yuan. Although the adults’ anger still seemed inexplicable to her, the fact that it had a reason put her at ease; she should be able to go home tonight.
"Zhou Yuan, what important thing do you want to tell me?"
Looking at the girl in front of him who had regained her relaxed demeanor, Zhou Yuan suddenly felt his throat was extremely dry, and he had run out of excuses.
Li Ye was debating what to eat next. The bread slices smelled delicious, and the donuts had the glaze and filling she liked.
Zhou Yuan's voice suddenly appeared. She looked up and saw that the sweet sunlight in the cake shop seemed to be backlighting him, making his face blurry. She could only see Zhou Yuan's lips moving constantly and hear his words that she could no longer hear.
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