Chapter 35: Xu's House and the Tennis Court Part 5
Miya was genuinely curious: "Who is this person who could have moved Miss Lin? Is he in Hong Kong?"
Yun Yan felt extremely guilty, his face turning pale and blue: "You guys are waiting for me here today, right?"
Chu Wang ate two orange halves, nodded seriously, and said, "Yes."
Yun Yan had never expected her to answer so confidently, so he smiled and said, "You heard it too. These two have always been at odds with me. They discussed it privately and came up with this trick to embarrass me in front of everyone. But what I didn't expect was that my own sister would also join forces with outsiders to make things difficult for me."
With just a few words, she put herself in a helpless position, as if she was being bullied.
Miya exclaimed, "Did we bully her?"
Chu Wang nodded: "Bullying."
Zhenzhen glanced at her lightly: "What are you bullying?"
Chu Wang finished his orange, clapped his hands, and stood up. "I sincerely invited my sister to come, and she clearly rejected my invitation. I had expected this. But I don't know what happened in between, but my sister came again. I knew she wouldn't come, but I secretly left her and came with her friends. This is bullying. Don't you agree, sister?"
Yun Yan had no idea what she was up to, so he just cautiously avoided Chu Wang who was approaching him to ask friendly questions, but did not answer.
Chu Wang put his hands behind his back and asked with a smile, "But just now, sister said that we 'had agreed to join forces to bully you', so we thought you 'would definitely come' today. But this is a question I want to ask sister. What exactly makes you 'would definitely come'?"
Yun Yan said: "Of course I come whenever I want."
Chu Wang smiled again. "Sister said she wouldn't come, but she actually came. So I'll assume that Sister still has some feelings for Mr. Ye. So, knowing that Sister and Mr. Ye are somewhat compatible, you brought so many of Sister's sworn enemies to disturb us. That's my fault. This is bullying."
"I... I don't like him!" Seeing Ye Wenyu looking at her with a sharp gaze, Yun Yan denied it.
Chu Wang suppressed his smile. "Since you don't like it, let's start from the beginning, with Jenny Pei. Before your sister's poem was published in the Hong Kong Student Newspaper, besides your sister and Jenny Pei, there was also Mr. Ye who read it, right?"
Yun Yan didn't answer, so she went to see Ye Wenyu. Ye Wenyu was slightly stunned, then nodded, "Yes."
"I remember that the only way to publish an article in the student newspaper was to submit it. So who submitted it? Was it Pei Zhenni? And was it signed as Lin Yunyan?"
Everyone laughed.
Chu Wang turned around and asked Ye Wenyu: "Did you vote for my sister?"
Ye Wenyu shook his head in shock.
"The Department of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong is still in its early stages of establishment. There are many newspapers in Hong Kong that could make my sister's name known far and wide. Why did they choose the student newspaper, which every Hong Kong student has a copy of?"
Miya burst out laughing and tilted her head, saying, "Second Miss Lin is really hypocritical."
Zhenzhen sneered and said, "Go ahead, tell Ye Wenyu the name of the person you like clearly, so that you can fulfill your wish and make him give up on you here today."
Lin Yunyan laughed: "If he gives up, will he like you?"
"He likes you now, and I just think he has no taste in people. Whoever he likes in the future has nothing to do with me. If he doesn't like me, it's because we are not destined to be together," Zhenzhen answered frankly without even looking at Ye Wenyu, "I can naturally tell you who I like. Miss Lin, can you tell me? If I like you, I like you. If I don't like you, I don't like you. Miss Lin, why can't you be more straightforward and clean?"
Miya tilted her head to look at Ye Wenyu, only to see him sitting there stupidly, his eyes dazed, and he didn't know what he was saying. She patted Ye Wenyu's head in disapproval, "Why don't you say something?"
"Oh, I..." Ye Wenyu was suddenly enlightened by her pat. He calmed down and said, "Forget it. If she doesn't want to talk, don't embarrass her."
Chu Wang also said: "If you don't like him, then let him give up as soon as possible; if he does, I think he will be willing to wait for you, until you wipe out the past and be together with him cleanly."
Lin Yunyan gave her a cold look: "What does this have to do with you?"
Chu Wang smiled and said, "Yeah, who you like or who you don't like has nothing to do with me. Even a dog knows to pee and mark its own territory. If another dog comes, it will bite. Not to mention people. I'm just cleaning up my own territory today, and I'm also trying to tidy up my own territory."
Yun Yan's face flushed. "You... who are you calling a dog?" Then she realized, startled, that Chu Wang hadn't excluded her when he said that. She looked at Zhen Zhen again. "Are you guys done?"
Zhenzhen said, "We have finished our talk. You are the only one left."
"What do I have to say?"
Yunyan pushed Zhenzhen away and walked out, and Zhenzhen didn't try to stop her.
Everyone was silent for a while, and Miya asked Ye Wenyu, "What do you like about her?"
Ye Wenyu thought for a while, then smiled and said, "She... is quite special."
Staring at Yunyan's back, Zhenzhen sneered and said, "If she really told everyone today who she likes, I would admire her and look at her with new eyes."
Miya sighed and asked Zhenzhen again: "What do you like about him?"
Ye Wenyu then turned to look at Zhenzhen, who felt her ears burning. She said, "The man has run away, and you're not chasing him. Where's your composure?"
Ye Wenyu shook his head: "She's already lost all her dignity, what grace do she have left? I won't chase her today."
Miya narrowed her eyes slightly and looked up to see a man standing under the eaves of the old Xu residence. He was wearing an old dark brown coat, looking quite elegant and upright. She smiled and said, "Take a good lesson from your uncle."
——
It was unknown how long Xu Shaoqian had been there. Perhaps he had seen the young men arguing, and as an elder, it was inappropriate for him to come over, so he had been waiting at a distance. Seeing him raise the photo in his hand, Chu Wang got up and went to the corridor to look for him.
The photo was placed in an envelope to prevent it from getting accidentally dirty or damaged. Chu Wang took it respectfully and said with immense gratitude, "Thank you, Professor Xu."
He hummed, frowned, and said, "Watch your things."
Hearing the double entendre in his words, Chu Wang stared at the photo in his hand and smiled: "Professor Xu, did you hear that?"
"Yeah. But not much. Probably in..." Xu Shaoqian looked up and thought for a moment, then smiled, "Even a dog needs to mark its territory?"
"……oh."
Xu Shaoqian actually praised: "Well said, he is my student."
Chu Wang narrowed his eyes and smiled: "That's right."
——
As one of Xu Shaoqian's students, Chu Wang paid little attention to his studies. Even though he visited Huayuan Street four times a week and occasionally visited Mrs. Xu at the new Xu residence, he saw Xu Shaoqian only a handful of times and exchanged no more than ten sentences, mostly with inquiries like, "Has Wenjun been naughty?" or "Did Madam smoke again today?" He only called the Qiao Residence the day before the exam, telling her to "come on time and don't be late," before hastily hanging up. Even so, Chu Wang was flattered.
A few days after the exam, Christmas holiday came. Mr. Xue wanted to take Zhenzhen back to Shanghai to celebrate Christmas and New Year, but Zhenzhen refused for the first time. This made Mr. Xue sigh with great sadness before leaving: "My daughter has grown up and no longer needs a father."
Zhenzhen stared at her father's back and stuck out her tongue. She turned around and blamed Chu Wang, "It's all your fault! You made me bear the crime of being an unfilial son."
After playing tennis that day, Yunyan naturally cried bitterly in her aunt's arms, telling Mrs. Qiao everything about how Zhenzhen and Chu Wang had bullied her. When they got home, Mrs. Qiao was about to sentence them, but the two of them gave the same confession: "How could we bully our second sister?"
With no witnesses and no evidence, Mrs. Qiao couldn't punish the other two based on Yunyan's one-sided statement. Moreover, Mr. Xue had sent a telegram early in the morning, saying that he would visit her in a few days.
Therefore, Mrs. Qiao naturally weighed the pros and cons in her mind. She said a few words of comfort and agreed, and the matter was temporarily dropped.
Lin Yu and Si Ying recently traveled to Southeast Asia and wouldn't be back until March, so Chu Wang and Yun Yan remained in Hong Kong this year. Chu Wang knew Zhen Zhen refused to go home for the Lunar New Year because she feared that if she left, Mrs. Qiao and Yun Yan would gang up on her. She was deeply grateful and, as such, allowed Zhen Zhen to harass her.
English classes were temporarily suspended during the holidays. This year, many wealthy ladies were into perming their hair. In winter, covering their curls with a woolen elastic hat made their faces look small and delicate without being too monotonous. So she made one for both Mrs. Qiao and Mrs. Xu.
Wenjun and Leon were both nearly ten years old. She wasn't quite sure what boys their age would like, so she put her mind to it. She asked Xu Shaoqian for some copper and cotton thread, went to a foreign company, bought some Night Pearl brand batteries and some colored cardboard, and made two slightly unsightly electric cardboard cars.
One of the cardboard cars, during its first test run at a tailor shop in Yau Ma Tei, crashed headfirst into a mannequin and was completely shattered. The car shell was gone, and the body of the car sped out onto the street, where it was crushed by a passing bicycle.
Chu Wang silently put away the other car, and the next day he went to the foreign company and bought two more "National" brand pens as Spring Festival gifts for Leon and Wenjun.
When he handed the pen to Wenjun, Xu Shaoqian saw it.
"Did the car production fail?" he asked with a concerned smile.
"I lost the teacher." Chu Wang said very apologetically.
"So where is the teacher's gift?" Xu Shaoqian was extremely shameless.
"I should have had the highest score on the exam after Thanksgiving, right?" Chu Wang said with a smile, "Isn't this the best gift I could give Professor Xu?"
"The scores haven't been announced yet, yet you know this." Xu Shaoqian laughed, but didn't deny her results. "Why didn't you get a weighted 85 this time?"
"Because I'm on the teacher's territory and you're protecting me, of course I can act wildly." Chu Wang said with a smile.
Although she didn't prepare a gift for Xu Shaoqian, her student Wen Jun did prepare a large gift for her—a set of four treasures of the study, not expensive in price but exquisitely crafted. The brush, inkstone, paper, and inkstone were embedded in one side of the wooden box, and an abacus on the other.
After visiting the Xu family, when Wen's mother saw her out, she said sarcastically, "Master Wenjun really likes you very much. Master and his wife have kept him by their side for so long, but they have never received any gifts from him."
Chu Wang was stunned, but didn't think much about it. "Professor Xu and Mrs. Xu must have told him to be more polite. The Xu family taught him well."
Wen's mother glanced at her, her expression unclear.
Wen Ma was the maid that came with Mrs. Xu as a dowry. She was old and had a strange temper, so she didn't take this matter to heart.
One day in Yau Ma Tei, Mr. Saumier went out in the afternoon. Mrs. Ruan came over mysteriously and asked Chu Wang, "Mr. Luca has been in Hong Kong for so many years, but he always keeps to himself. I wonder if he will come alone for the New Year this year?"
Chu Wang thought for a moment and said, "Mr. Luca may have a lover in France, so he doesn't interact with others very much."
"If you have a lover abroad, you wouldn't be so isolated and have so few daily interactions..." Mrs. Ruan said, then she felt it was inappropriate to discuss Mr. Saumur's private affairs, so she stopped talking. After a while, she said, "What do you think about me inviting Mr. Luca to my house for Easter?"
Chu Wang was happy: "Of course that's fine, as long as Mrs. Ruan doesn't mind your husband."
"If he dares!" Mrs. Ruan said harshly, "I'll make him kneel down at the sewing box."
After they talked for a while, Mr. Saumur came over from the tram station carrying a stack of letters. He asked with a hint of doubt, "Who's kneeling by the workbox?"
Chu Wang and Mrs. Ruan both laughed and had no energy to answer him.
Mr. Saumier thought the two were making fun of him, so he raised the letter in his hand and said, "The angry Mr. Luca will not forward the letter from England to Chu Wang."
Chu Wang begged for mercy for a long time before Mr. Saumier finally calmed down and returned the letter to her.
I took the letter and sat down in a corner, finding a piece of paper and a pen, ready to read the letter and draft my reply as usual. But when I cut the letter open, I found only a thin, narrow half sheet of paper with a single line of words written on it:
May 13, Central Ferry Pier 5, the Letan.
Yan Sang.
The author has something to say: I went to read other Republican literature, and found it concise and to the point. I felt it was particularly well-written, and the writing style was really amazing. But when I saw the letter-writing plot, I realized that a letter had been running for a year... and I quietly withdrew.
I remember reading about cruises departing from Shanghai to Marseille, France, taking anywhere from three to four weeks, or even a month and a half, depending on the type of ship. I looked it up on Baidu and it said it takes three or four months... Three or four months at sea, your mouth should be pretty rotten, right?
I received a message saying that an author sent me two red envelopes. What's going on? Hahaha, I haven't read it recently.
——
I spoke out of turn. Please come back later.
——
Post it first to avoid getting your dick chopped off, and then post the picture later.
——
abacus
Deyu and Yemingzhu brand batteries
——
I've been really busy lately: I'm returning to China after graduation, and tomorrow morning I'll have an appointment with the dorm manager to make my doghouse as clean as if I'd just moved in. I'm flying the day after tomorrow, and the day after that I'll take a high-speed train from Chongqing to a mountainous area where even Taobao couriers can't deliver. So if I don't finish three days' worth of drafts tonight, I might be hard to find for a few days.
I won't abandon the game, so don't worry, my dears.
——
Also, I often have a lot of ideas, but not all of them will be written. So I've put some of them in the "Test Writing" section next to me. They're basically just copywriting and first chapter content. If you find them interesting, please leave a comment. If there are a lot of people interested, I'll just open the one with the most comments.
I'll probably start my test paper around midnight on the 29th. One of the pieces I wrote was nearly finished last year, but it's been sitting idle on my computer. I'm not satisfied with many parts, so I'll revise them.
All pits will be opened after this article is finished, but it will take a long time.
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