Ying Yunsheng: "Coming right away."
Meng Xingxian left.
The two had already let go of each other's hands. Ying Yunsheng and Ji Li walked back the way they came, their eyes falling on the people next to them several times.
“Ji Li”.
"Um?"
Why did you tell him it was just a coincidence that you ran into him?
Ji Li listened and said, "Wasn't it just a coincidence that we ran into each other?"
Ying Yunsheng was silent for a moment: "No."
"What?"
"I heard from others that your class was having a farewell dinner by the river, so I got off the boat to come and find you."
Ji Li was taken aback.
Ying Yunsheng said, "So it wasn't just a coincidence."
Ji Li responded with an "Oh".
Ying Yunsheng then asked, "Why did you tell him it was just a coincidence?"
"Uh..." Ji Li couldn't help but laugh: "You don't like me saying that?"
I don't like it.
She had already agreed to be his boyfriend, but when others asked, she wouldn't reveal a single detail.
It's like having a secret affair.
Ji Li said, "They just finished the college entrance examination and haven't yet changed their mindset from the ironclad rule against early relationships. They haven't even attended the graduation ceremony yet. If we reveal our relationship now, people will mistakenly think that we are actually dating."
Ying Yunsheng really wanted to ask others what the misunderstanding had to do with them, but he couldn't bring himself to ask, which made him seem particularly childish.
Ji Li grabbed his finger and shook it: "Don't be angry, you can say it next time you have a chance, okay?"
Ying Yunsheng couldn't muster any anger, and lowered his head, saying, "Oh."
The place next door was where Ji Li's class had their farewell dinner. Ying Yunsheng let go of his hand and said, "Go in."
"Um."
Ying Yunsheng ran two steps toward the fishing boat, then suddenly turned around.
Ji Li remained standing there, and upon receiving his gaze, smiled slightly at him.
It was a very faint smile, so faint that you couldn't even see the curve of the other person's mouth unless you looked closely, but Ying Yunsheng could clearly feel the heat rising up his face little by little, and he felt that he was becoming more and more pathetic.
.
The period between the release of the college entrance examination results and the release of the results is often described by many as "the calm before the storm," "the revelry before the end of the world," or "the last happy time of life." At least, that's what Lin Chengshuang has always thought.
"I remember your mock exam scores were pretty good, weren't they?" Ji Li asked.
When Lin Chengshuang was in his second year of high school, he always avoided the tutors his mother hired. He tried every trick in the book to avoid tutoring. But after entering his third year of high school, he didn't know whether he finally succumbed to the tutor's encouragement or had a brain fart and abandoned the theory that "as long as he doesn't do anything wrong, his parents will never be short of money to support him." His grades finally started to improve.
Although it's far from being excellent, it's at least possible to achieve the goal of "starting with a first-tier university in the college entrance exam" that was forced upon us.
“You don’t understand.” Lin Chengshuang shook her head. “If you’re not completely sure, you won’t have any premonition even if you really mess up.”
Ji Li looked puzzled.
“To give you an example, those of you with good grades usually know your results right after the exam, and you have plenty of time to mentally prepare for the worst. But for us, we have no certainty about the results after the exam. Waiting for the scores is like going to the execution ground. No one knows if the knife will fall on their head until they actually kneel down.” Lin Chengshuang said with a worried expression, “You, a member of the nobility, would never understand the suffering of ordinary people like me!”
Ji Li: "..."
Lin Chengshuang glanced at him and asked, "You're not going to class anymore, what are you doing every day?"
"Read books and do exercises."
"Isn't the college entrance exam already over?"
Learning has no end.
"Class struggle should indeed be irreconcilable."
Lin Chengshuang had just declared during the day that they were irreconcilable enemies, and that very night she called Ji Li on her phone to go to the airport together, determined not to waste this calm before the storm.
Time passed slowly and leisurely, and finally the day the scores were announced arrived.
The notification stated that the results could be checked starting at 10:00 AM. Lin Chengshuang stayed up until 6:00 AM the day before, or rather, the day before, saying that she wanted to avoid the peak period for checking scores and that she would ideally wake up without having to log into her account and have someone tell her the results directly. However, she did not expect to wake up in a fright three hours later.
Then, with a pained expression, he grabbed his laptop and knocked on the door next door.
Connect to the internet, enter your account and password, and wait for the time to arrive before pressing the login button.
The class and grade-level group chats on the phones were filled with drum-like emojis, and everyone was tagging each other to remind each other to get ready to compete in a speed-clicking contest.
Ji Li put down the plate of purple sweet potato buns: "Would you like some?"
Lin Chengshuang grabbed the bun, but his phone alarm, set for 10:00 AM, suddenly went off. Startled, he took a big bite out of the bun, nearly burning his tongue with the splattering soup. He frantically pressed the login button while breathing heavily.
The webpage spun for a while before displaying the message: "System busy, please try again later."
Lin Chengshuang: "What a terrible internet!" He turned his head, "Did you even log on?"
Ji Li shook his head, and his phone suddenly rang.
He answered the phone: "Hello."
There was no one else in the living room besides them. Even without the speakers on, Lin Chengshuang could still clearly hear the voice from the other end: "Excuse me, is this Ji Li? I'm a teacher from the admissions office of Imperial University. I just learned that your college entrance examination score this year was 721, ranking first in liberal arts in Huwan Province. May I ask if you..."
Lin Chengshuang couldn't hear anything else; all she could think about was "ranked first in the humanities."
Ji Li took his phone to the balcony, chatted with the person across the street for a while, and then hung up. He had just found Ying Yunsheng's number in his phone book, but before he could dial it, the other party called him first.
He smiled and replied, "You know your results?"
Ying Yunsheng hummed in agreement: "I just received a call from the admissions office."
The results had just been released, and to receive the privilege of being called by the admissions office immediately, Ji Li asked, "How did you do?"
Ying Yunsheng said, "First place in the provincial science exam."
"Then what?"
"He is the top scorer in the province."
"Hmm, and then what?"
"The highest score among science students in the province."
The desire for praise was impossible to hide in his tone.
Ji Li sensed his thoughts, but deliberately teased him: "I know about that. Is there anything else?"
Ying Yunsheng remained silent for a while.
Ji Li laughed.
Ying Yunsheng finally realized his deliberate act and raised his voice in anger: "Don't laugh!"
“Okay.” Ji Li stopped laughing and said to him seriously, “My boyfriend is really amazing.”
“Uh…” Ying Yunsheng’s face almost caught fire.
Ji Li: "Will you go to school on the day you fill out your college application?"
Ying Yunsheng nodded subconsciously, then realized the other person couldn't see him: "Yes."
"I'll be waiting for you in my classroom. Remember to come find me after you've finished filling out the form."
"good."
.
The day I returned to school was a bright and sunny day. At that time, the students who were about to enter their senior year of high school had not even had their summer vacation yet and were making their final sprint for the final exams at school.
Ji Li went to the computer room a little early, filled out his college application, and then returned to the senior high school building.
The doors to the teaching building were only ajar, not locked. The school wasn't in a hurry to clear the area; most students were exhausted after the college entrance exam and were either rushing home or attending class parties, leaving their textbooks unpacked in their drawers.
Mao Xianzhi announced in the group a day in advance that all the class officers had to take on the role of volunteers again before leaving school after filling out their applications. They were responsible for restoring the classroom that had been requisitioned for their class to its original state and cleaning it.
When Ji Li arrived, he saw Ye Ruhui sitting on the desk outside, looking down at his phone.
Ye Ruhui was used to being oblivious to things outside of school when it came to academic performance, but this time, upon seeing Ji Li, he raised an eyebrow and called out towards the door, "Our class's star has arrived!"
Suddenly, a large group of people magically emerged from under the desks, behind the podium, and from the water room, surrounding the classroom and shouting, "Class monitor, you're so unfair!"
"Exactly, why didn't they say a word when they got the top score in the exam?"
"If I hadn't come here today and seen the banner hanging outside, even I, your classmate, wouldn't have known. Listen to this, is this even acceptable?!"
Ji Li was surrounded by people in the middle. He didn't say anything, but just took out his phone and fiddled with it for a bit.
"Ding-dong—"
"Uh..." After several crisp notification sounds, someone suddenly exclaimed, "Damn it!": "The class monitor sent out red envelopes in the group!"
Everyone scattered in a flash, rushing back to the classroom to retrieve their phones.
There were more than a dozen class officers present. Because there were so many people, and the class had already cleaned up once before the college entrance examination, everyone worked together and it wasn't too tiring.
As usual, Ji Li stayed until the very end to close the door, and when he turned around, he saw Cui Zhuoyue in the corridor.
"What's wrong?"
Cui Zhuoyue quickly shook her head: "It's nothing." After thinking for a moment, she added, "Shall we go downstairs together?"
Ji Li sensed that the other person had something to say, but since the person was still hesitating, he didn't press further: "Okay."
Cui Zhuoyue followed half a step behind him, looking at the forum page on the screen as she walked.
The original "Arts & Sciences" thread has grown to thousands of posts over the past two years, and it still firmly occupies one of the top three spots in terms of number of posts on the entire Changqiao Forum, second only to the meaningless spam thread.
After the college entrance examination, the number of replies to the post actually surged again, but it wasn't as enthusiastic as before. Instead, most of them were in a tone of detachment from worldly affairs, advising newcomers to leave and not fall into this abyss.
Cui Zhuoyue has been worried for half a month now, ever since she saw someone suggesting that the administrator delete the post to prevent new students from accidentally entering it.
Whether it was because this building served as a source of joy for her during the two toughest years of high school, or simply to commemorate her youth, she was genuinely reluctant to see it disappear.
But how exactly can we save it?