He Yiyang stood at the door for a moment, then turned and went downstairs.
Chu Yang sat on the floor, lost in thought. She wasn't sure if this step was the right one, or if she had left herself a way out. She was certain He Yiyang would help her, but could she keep it a secret from the other two? And for how long? Neither of them were easy to fool. The more she thought about it, the more confused she became. Chu Yang shook her head and decided to stop thinking about it and just take it one step at a time.
March arrived quickly, and the postgraduate entrance examination results, eagerly awaited by millions, were finally revealed.
Chu Yang's grades were quite good. While they didn't reach the level of the top geniuses, they were still quite outstanding. It was unclear whether this was because she was genuinely intelligent or simply the kind of person who excelled at exams. From childhood to adulthood, regardless of how hard she studied, her exam results were always excellent, and her cousin Zhang Jingzhi often called her an "exam machine."
Except for that year's high school entrance exam, almost no one could believe it. Grandma even thought that the teacher grading the exam had made a mistake with her granddaughter's score, such as forgetting to add the score for the second paper. Only her mother was still rational. She just patted her head reassuringly and said that everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Occasional poor performance is nothing. Just try harder in the future.
In fact, she knew very well that it wasn't a slip-up or a lapse in performance.
Seeing that Chu Yang's grades were quite good, and considering that she had been forced to work for her a few days ago, Fan Xiaojuan insisted that Chu Yang treat her to a meal. Chu Yang was unwilling, as every penny of her money was valuable. Fan Xiaojuan sat beside her for a while, pouting, but still feeling resentful, she came over to vent her anger. She snatched the book from Chu Yang's hand, looked at the cover, and exclaimed in surprise, "Why are you still studying English? The interview will only involve a few spoken words. What are you doing studying this for? Hurry up and prepare for your major courses!"
Fan Xiaojuan's voice wasn't actually very loud, but the environment was too quiet. There were thirty people studying in the room, and her shout attracted disgusted looks from twenty-nine of them. The one person didn't look because he was asleep at his desk.
Chu Yang
Chu Yang quickly pulled Fan Xiaojuan out sheepishly. Once outside, he said irritably, "Little miss, you might end up on the school's BBS tonight. Don't you know how venomous the boys at our school are? Who knows if anyone's got a phone on them? If someone takes a video of you, you'll be famous!"
Fan Xiaojuan stuck out her tongue. "It's okay. I'm so pure and cute, even if I get photographed, it's nothing! It's your fault for not treating me to dinner."
Chu Yang was helpless seeing her like this, thinking to himself, "How can there be such a heartless person?" "Let's go, I'll treat you! It'll save you from nagging. It's just that I tidied up the house, look at you, is it really that big of a deal? You keep bringing it up!"
Fan Xiaojuan chuckled and asked, "What are you treating me to? I want to eat something from outside the school."
We've been eating in the cafeteria for almost four years now. I don't know if it's really that bad, but the students all say it's pig food and they absolutely won't eat it if they can avoid it.
“No problem,” Chu Yang said. “There’s a wonton shop across from the north gate of the school. I’ll give you two bowls. Eat one and throw the other away!”
After finishing dinner, the two strolled back to the school. Chu Yang wanted to go back and continue studying English, but Fan Xiaojuan insisted on having him accompany her to her evening lecture. Chu Yang found this strange and asked, "Do you still have evening classes?"
Fan Xiaojuan replied with a smile, "It's an elective general education course."
Chu Yang was even more surprised. Most students would have earned their credits for the school's general elective courses by their sophomore year. Fan Xiaojuan was almost graduating, so why was she still taking such a large course?
Chu Yang asked, "You haven't earned enough credits yet?"
Fan Xiaojuan chuckled twice, "That's enough, but the teacher for tonight's class is an incredibly handsome guy. All the girls in our college are obsessed with him." As she spoke, she made a horizontal slashing motion from left to right, a bit like a fake medicine vendor on Tianqiao in Beijing. "He's got girls from freshman to senior year! A whole bunch of girls are smitten! Anyway, you're free tonight, so come with me. I guarantee you won't regret it!"
"boring!"
"Go ahead!" Fan Xiaojuan said coquettishly, shaking Chu Yang's arm. Chu Yang shivered and quickly shook off her arm, saying, "My books are still in the study room."
"I'll go with you to get it! Then we'll go to the lecture hall together, okay? If we're late, we won't get a seat in the front row!"
Just as they were about to reach the study room, Chu Yang, annoyed by Fan Xiaojuan's persistent pestering, said a few harsh words. After he finished speaking, seeing Fan Xiaojuan pouting and not saying anything, Chu Yang realized that he had gone too far. Just as he was thinking about how to apologize to Fan Xiaojuan, he saw her tugging at his sleeve and saying in an extremely excited voice, "Chu Yang, look! A beautiful car and a beautiful woman!"
Chu Yang didn't pay any attention and just glanced at it casually.
A silver-gray car was parked on the side of the passageway next to the teaching building. The driver's side window was rolled down to its lowest position, and a man's arm was stretched out from inside and resting on it. His shirt cuffs were casually rolled up twice, revealing a nearly perfect half of his forearm and wrist, with a lit cigarette between his slender fingers.
Chu Yang's expression suddenly changed, and he pulled Fan Xiaojuan behind the phone booth.
"What's wrong?" Fan Xiaojuan asked, puzzled.
Chu Yang paused for a moment, then said, "I've been thinking about it, so I think I'll go with you to see the handsome guys."
Fan Xiaojuan was overjoyed, but Chu Yang quickly pressed her down and said, "However, I suddenly remembered something and need to call home. Could you go to the study room and pack my bag for me and bring it down? I'll call home from here."
"You're not just trying to fool me so you can stand me up, are you?" Fan Xiaojuan looked at Chu Yang suspiciously. "Where's your cell phone? What kind of public phone are you using?"
"My phone is dead."
“Then I’ll use mine!” Fan Xiaojuan readily pulled out her phone.
"There are some things I can't let you hear. Go get my bag for me, I'm going to make a call. Hurry up, or we won't be able to get a front-row seat. The lecture hall is so big, and you don't have binoculars, it would be a waste of your time if you went."
Upon hearing that there was something else she had to keep from her, Fan Xiaojuan looked at Chu Yang with displeasure and pouted, "Tch! Why do we have to hide it from people? Honestly, I'll go, you wait for me here, don't run away! Or I'll throw your backpack into the lake!"
"Okay, I understand. Go quickly."
Fan Xiaojuan ran into the teaching building with small steps. When she passed the car, she couldn't help but slow down and glanced at it casually. Inside was a very young man with a handsome face and slightly thin, arched eyebrows. He looked a little effeminate but had a bit of a roguish air about him. He would take a puff of his cigarette from time to time and then put his arm out of the car.
Wow! What a beauty! Fan Xiaojuan exclaimed, wondering if he was waiting for some girl. It's like something out of a romance drama! How romantic!
He Yiqian noticed the girl's gaze, glanced at her coldly, and curled his lips into a mocking smile before turning his head away to continue staring at the entrance of the teaching building.
He found out Chu Yang's department and happened to ask one of Chu Yang's classmates. The girl enthusiastically told him that Chu Yang was studying in this building and even volunteered to help him look for him. However, after a while, she came down and told him shyly that Chu Yang was not there and must have gone to eat, because her books were still there.
So he waited for her here. Since she was avoiding him, fine, he would come and find her.
Girls would occasionally walk past him, some bold, some shy, glancing at him intentionally or unintentionally. He would chuckle mockingly, take a drag of his cigarette, flick the ash out of the car, and wonder why Chu Yang never looked at him like that, never in his entire life.
If Chu Yang looked at him like that, even just for a moment, he would be content.
Exuberant, mischievous, playful, angry, sorrowful, disdainful, disgusted...
There was never anyone I loved.
At that time, he was sixteen years old, naive and stubborn. He had just returned to his parents' side from another place. They treated him very well, but were also very polite. Sometimes, they would even carefully observe his expression, afraid of wronging him. This was not like how they treated his younger brother, where his father would scold him and his mother would coax him.
However, he envied his younger brother very much, from the bottom of his heart.
On the first Saturday morning after arriving home, he was sound asleep under the covers when he heard someone downstairs calling his younger brother's name loudly. He didn't want to respond, but the girl's voice was so loud and clear that even though he covered his ears with his pillow, it still got into his head.
He was furious. He got up, went to the window, pulled back the curtains, looked down, and saw her downstairs.
She rode her bicycle, supporting herself on her feet like a boy, and shouted loudly at her brother's window, "Lazybones! He Yiyang, are you getting up or not? If you don't come out, I'm going to go by myself!"
She had just turned twelve and was just beginning puberty, but she was already very tall and thin. Her long hair was tied up haphazardly and hung down to her chest. Her features seemed not to have fully developed yet, and she had a lot of childishness, except for her bright and radiant eyes.
At the time, he thought, how could such a wild girl have such long hair?
She heard him open the window, turned to look at him, paused for a moment, then smiled again, revealing her neat teeth. The smile was bright and warm, instantly suppressing the complaints on his lips.
She looked up at him, her smile triumphant: "Hey, He Yiqian? The eldest son of the He family, right? Do you remember me? We've met before!"
He nodded.
Her next words were even more arrogant: "My name is Chu Yang, Feng Chen Chu Yang, remember that. I'll protect you from now on. If He Yiyang dares to bully you again, come find me, and I'll beat him up for you! He can't beat me!"
She's protecting him?
The sixteen-year-old boy stood at the second-floor window and chuckled to himself...
After Fan Xiaojuan finished packing Chu Yang's schoolbag and went downstairs, she saw Chu Yang still standing in the shadows when she returned to the phone booth.
"Playing hide-and-seek? Still hiding from me?"
Chu Yang, as if avoiding someone, glanced warily behind Fan Xiaojuan before pulling her quickly toward the lecture hall.
Fan Xiaojuan was a simple-minded girl. Although she vaguely felt that Chu Yang was acting strangely, she didn't think too much about it. She pulled Chu Yang aside and told him about the handsome man in front of the building, and even pointed him out to Chu Yang.
Chu Yang seemed a little impatient and pulled her hand back. "Let's go. Didn't you say there wouldn't be any seats if we got late?"
Fan Xiaojuan took out her phone to check the time, exclaimed "Oh dear!" and quickly pulled Chu Yang forward, "It's really too late! It's ruined, it's ruined! It's all that handsome guy's fault, he made me waste so much time!"
Sure enough, the first few rows of the lecture hall were packed with girls, a dazzling array of colors that made Chu Yang a little dizzy. Fan Xiaojuan hurriedly went to find a seat near the front, while Chu Yang went straight to the last row. Anyway, she wasn't in the mood to look at any handsome guys; it would be good to memorize some vocabulary words in the back.
Fan Xiaojuan finally found two seats in the middle of the front area. When she turned around to look for Chu Yang, he had already disappeared. Fan Xiaojuan was so angry that she jumped up and down. She knew that Chu Yang must have sat in the back. She wanted to go find him, but she was afraid that if she left, the seats she had worked so hard to find would be taken by someone else. She was really conflicted!
The girl next to her who stood up to make way for her got a little impatient and asked, "Are you going in or not?"
"Come in! Come in!" Fan Xiaojuan responded, craning her neck to look for Chu Yang. However, there were too many people in the classroom, and Chu Yang was dressed too plainly. Fan Xiaojuan searched for a long time but could not find her. She had no choice but to turn around dejectedly. Just as she was about to sit down inside, her eyes casually swept forward and she saw Zhang Jingzhi coming in from the front door of the classroom.
Fan Xiaojuan was taken aback at first, then laughed.
Zhang Jingzhi
Fan Xiaojuan was taken aback at first, then laughed.
"Are you going in or not?" the girl next to me asked impatiently.
"Go in!" Fan Xiaojuan rolled her eyes at her, thinking to herself, "Why are you rushing me like this? It's like you're killing me." Then she waved to Zhang Jingzhi and shouted, "Sister Jingzhi, over here, there's a seat!"
Hearing the sound, Zhang Jingzhi looked over, paused for a moment, then quickly turned around, shrank her neck, and tried to slip away.
Fan Xiaojuan thought she hadn't heard her, so she shouted even louder, "Zhang Jingzhi!"
He managed to quiet the entire noisy classroom with just one shout.
The students first looked at Fan Xiaojuan, and then looked in the direction she called out.
Fan Xiaojuan was stunned when she heard such a loud noise. She turned her head and met several shocked gazes. Her face turned red, her legs went weak, and she plopped down on the chair.
Zhang Jingzhi had only turned halfway around when she was caught in a dilemma: she couldn't move, nor could she stay still. She froze on the spot, feeling as if almost everyone in the classroom was staring at her back. She truly understood what it meant to feel like she was being pricked by needles.
Because she was coming to listen to Yang Lei's class, she was afraid that people would realize she wasn't a student, so she specifically dug out her old school outfit: a dark pullover, light blue jeans, and sneakers. She even tied her long hair into a ponytail. She was already worried that people would see that she was trying to look young, but she didn't expect that even though she was being so low-key, she would still become the focus of everyone's attention. And the focus was brought out by Fan Xiaojuan!
Zhang Jingzhi looked around at the people, and they looked at her. She looked back at them, and they looked back at her...
Just as the atmosphere was getting strange, a loud whistle suddenly came from the back row in the distance.
Clearly, the whistle is directed at her!
Someone once played the xiao in a large class, and the xiao's reaction was to walk over, raise its chin, and ask, "Who played that? Stand up! If you have the guts to play, you have the guts to admit it!"
Xiao Xiao was so cool back then!
But what should she do now? Zhang Jingzhi didn't have Xiao Xiao's courage. Should she pretend nothing happened and leave, or should she join the others in searching for the person named "Zhang Jingzhi"? She was conflicted.
Her thoughts raced through her mind, but only a little time had passed. Finally, Zhang Jingzhi straightened up, raised her neck, and continued walking towards Fan Xiaojuan.
The classroom quieted down, finally returning to its initial noise level, and Zhang Jingzhi secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Fan Xiaojuan looked embarrassed and kept bowing and scraping to Zhang Jingzhi: "Hehe, Sister Jingzhi, I'm so sorry, I really didn't mean to."
Zhang Jingzhi was quite hypocritical. No matter what she was thinking, she still wore a gentle smile on her face. "It's okay, you didn't do it on purpose. Besides, it's nothing. They don't even know who Zhang Jingzhi is, hehe."
Fan Xiaojuan nodded and asked, "Sister, what brings you here? Are you looking for Chu Yang? I just got separated from her."
Zhang Jingzhi readily agreed, nodding quickly, "Yes, I was just passing by and heard she was taking classes here, so I came to see her."
Fan Xiaojuan was puzzled, thinking to herself, "Who is this amazing person? They even know that I dragged Chu Yang to listen to the handsome teacher's class? That's incredible!"
Fan Xiaojuan said, "I don't know where she's sitting, and to make matters worse, her phone is dead so she can't make a call. Is there something you need her for? Or should I help you look for her?"
Zhang Jingzhi quickly declined Fan Xiaojuan's offer, waving her hand hastily, "It's okay, it's okay, no rush, let's go to class first, I have nothing to do anyway." Then, worried that it might be inappropriate for her to sit here and listen to the class, she quickly added, "What kind of class are you having? Is it interesting? It feels really good, it reminds me of my school days, I might as well listen to it too."
"The professor of Western Cultural History is incredibly handsome!" Fan Xiaojuan whispered. "Hehe, we're all here to see the handsome guy!"