Ji Li, however, walked towards him instead: "Smoking on campus will result in a warning or more severe punishment; gathering or instigating others to smoke will result in a demerit or more severe punishment; brandishing weapons during an argument, including any items that could cause injury in a fight, will result in a serious warning or more severe punishment, depending on the severity of the offense; committing two or more offenses at the same time will result in suspension, probation, or even expulsion, depending on the severity of the offense."
Tong Siliang's hand trembled, and the stick fell to the ground. His face turned pale and then red.
Ji Li stopped a meter away from him, her tone as gentle as ever: "Did you need something?"
Tong Siliang stared intently at him: "Would you delete the photos if I told you?"
Ji Li: "Since you didn't need anything from me, I'll be leaving now."
"Wait!" Tong Siliang's chest heaved violently. "Do you know Ling Luo?"
Upon hearing the name, Ji Li finally connected the unfamiliar boy in front of him with the person on the basketball court last night: "So you really did throw that basketball at me on purpose?"
"So what if it is?" Tong Siliang suddenly raised his voice, "What's the point of saying this now? Didn't we already have someone throw the ball back? What are you pretending for?"
Ji Li listened without any expression, and wasn't angry. He simply asked, "Besides this, is there anything else?"
"What's the meaning?"
"If you have anything else to say, I'll keep listening. If not, I'll go back to the classroom."
After Ji Li finished speaking, he waited patiently for a few minutes, but the other person just clenched his fists and remained silent. He then nodded: "It seems you have no other questions."
Tong Siliang stared at his consistently calm expression, wishing he could pounce on him and tear off the mask of composure.
“I’m not familiar with Ling Luo, we have no relationship, and we hadn’t even spoken much before yesterday.”
Tong Siliang instinctively wanted to retort, but before he could speak, he was interrupted: "What did you originally intend to do by calling me here? Question me? Threaten me? Or even take action?"
He gritted his teeth and remained silent.
"You're at least sixteen or seventeen this year, aren't you?" Ji Li's tone wasn't deliberately sarcastic; on the contrary, it was as calm as if she were stating a perfectly natural fact. "Don't you think it's childish?"
Tong Siliang's expression instantly turned extremely ugly.
“I’ll keep the photos and delete them after graduation. Until then, my advice is not to come looking for me again.” Ji Li nodded slightly to him and the group of boys behind him, who were either angry or shocked, then turned and pushed open the auditorium door. “Remember to put out your cigarette. See you later.”
The wooden door closed automatically.
Ji Li looked up and saw the extra person in the corridor: "When did you get here?"
Ying Yunsheng pursed his lips: "I came here with you."
Ji Li found it somewhat amusing: "You just ran 5,000 meters, aren't you tired?"
Ying Yunsheng glanced at him but didn't say anything.
The two walked from the auditorium to the teaching building. As Ji Li turned around on the stairs, he found the other person still following behind him: "Isn't your classroom on the third floor?"
Ying Yunsheng lagged behind him by two or three meters, maintaining a distance that was easily visible yet not intimate: "Mm."
Why aren't you going back to the classroom?
"I send you."
"It's just a two-story building, what's there to give away?"
"Just consider this my exercise."
Upon reaching the first floor, Ji Li turned around and said, "This is enough. Let's go back."
Ying Yunsheng shook his head again: "We haven't arrived yet."
Ji Li always had the feeling that she was being sent to kindergarten by her parents who said they wanted her to be independent but were actually secretly following her around.
When they arrived at the classroom door, Ying Yunsheng left without waiting for him to speak, not lingering for even a second longer.
It was as if they really just wanted to see him go to the classroom.
.
The other boys in the meeting room pulled Tong Siliang back from chasing after him.
"Who does he think he is, acting all high and mighty!"
"Yes, yes, brother, brother, calm down!"
Tong Siliang didn't really want to cause trouble. He pretended to pull and tug, and together with his cronies, they unleashed a torrent of curses covering five thousand years of Chinese classical and modern literature. Finally, he calmed down, pushed past their obstruction, and went to pull the doorknob.
But then the door was pushed open from the outside.
Tong Siliang almost got his nose bumped, and instinctively stepped back, his anger flaring up again: "Damn it, who are you? Don't you have eyes?"
Ying Yunsheng walked in: "I need to talk to you about something."
Tong Siliang frowned and hadn't spoken yet when a boy behind him suddenly recognized the person's face and quickly came over to remind him.
His face darkened again. He grabbed the other man by the collar and said with a forced smile, "Fine, tell me, what do you want?"
Ying Yunsheng didn't say anything, but grabbed the other person's hand that was pulling his collar and twisted it sharply, then pushed the person to the ground.
Tong Siliang let out a "whoosh," and the thing in his hand fell out.
Ying Yunsheng picked it up casually, lifted the lighter cap with his fingertips, and pushed the metal roller.
The flames suddenly shot up.
Ying Yunsheng held the lighter, turned it around, and pressed the nozzle sharply into the other person's right eye.
"No, no, stop! Ah—"
The sudden rise in temperature almost melted one's eyes. Tong Siliang's eyes widened in horror, and the fear in his heart shattered his forced composure in an instant. The tinnitus that made his blood boil instantly drowned out all the surrounding noise.
The flame stopped an inch above his eyes.
Ying Yunsheng looked down at him from his high position, his gaze pinning him to the ground through the flickering firelight.
Tong Siliang trembled all over, his face covered in cold sweat, certain that he had seen Lucifer falling into hell the moment the other person lowered his eyes.
The fire went out.
In the silence, someone swallowed hard, and the onlookers, barely regaining their senses, were immediately captivated by the gaze of the boy who was half-squatting on the ground.
Ying Yunsheng stood up with a lighter in hand and picked up a wooden stick that someone had dropped on the ground: "Tell me about how to be a decent human being."
A note from the author:
Thank you so much for your support! I will continue to work hard!
Chapter 18
Chapter 18
Orange juice
"So who is Ling Luo?"
Instead of answering, Ji Li asked, "Have you finished your English essay?"
Jian Mingyuan's face instantly fell, and he lowered his head to struggle with the half-finished essay in his hand.
The school sports meet lasted for two days. Jian Mingyuan looked completely drained after the 5,000-meter race and lay down on his desk until the end of the sports meet and the awards ceremony.
It was only then that Ji Li learned that their class had actually won third place in this school sports meet.
Mao Xianzhi cheerfully instructed everyone to paste the certificates at the back of the classroom. When he left, he passed by Jian Mingyuan's seat and patted him on the shoulder: "Next time there is a long-distance running event like the 5,000-meter race, I will definitely save a spot for you."
Jian Mingyuan: "Thank you, but there's no need for that."
In fact, he didn't manage to place in the competition in the end.
However, in the approximately 5,000-meter race, after the first person crossed the finish line, countless people came up to him and asked if he wanted to give up, but he refused every time. In the end, he managed to run a time of one hour and twenty minutes. This result was both inspiring and tragic. After discussion, the school actually gave him an extra 0.5 points as encouragement. It was this small score that allowed his class to successfully overtake Class 12 of the science stream and take the third place.
When Ji Li returned to the classroom that day, he only saw the other person lying on the table like a corpse. After hearing this, he even bought the other person a bottle of orange soda as a way of comforting him.
Jian Mingyuan lay there like a corpse for the entire weekend before finally regaining some energy. The first piece of gossip he heard after coming back to life was the follow-up to the "two top students in arts and sciences vying for one girl," and he immediately came to ask with a question mark in his mind.
Then, the person in question pressed him back onto the table with a single sentence and told him to continue working on his English essay.
The essay topic was from a recent monthly exam. After the teacher explained it in class, everyone was asked to rewrite it. The essays were collected and corrected on the spot. Those who got a perfect score of 25 points were given full marks, while those who got less than 21 points were returned to be rewritten. This process was repeated several times.
Jian Mingyuan had already rewritten it for the third time, his pen flying across the page, the tip practically smoking: "How do you write economic development again?"
"economic development".
"You're a genius! If you become a live streamer, you'll definitely be a huge star."
"Why?"
“The way you read English,” Jian Mingyuan quickly concluded, “is particularly pleasant to listen to.”
Ye Ruhui glanced at him: "It definitely sounds better than someone like you who doesn't even know two English words."
"I'll return this to you as well."
"My English score is higher than yours."
"You only benefit from being good at one subject at a time." Jian Mingyuan rolled his eyes. "If we were still taking physics, chemistry, and biology now, you might not be able to beat me."
Ye Ruhui asked in surprise, "How do you know that my science grades are necessarily worse than yours?"
“If you just looked at your own math test paper, you wouldn’t say something like that.” Jian Mingyuan threw down his pen and stuffed his workbook into his textbook. “Besides, after every monthly exam, I would take my score sheet to the top of the grade list and compare it with everyone who ranked ahead of me. Half of them were worse than me in humanities, and half were worse than me in science.”
"What nonsense are you spouting?"
“The key is only half.” Jian Mingyuan expressed concern about his comprehension ability. “Because I don’t have any strengths, I don’t have any subjects that I can excel at and that can give me a competitive edge. It’s okay if I take all nine subjects at once, but if I take six subjects, my ranking will drop immediately.”
Ye Ruhui said sincerely, "How pitiful."
Jian Mingyuan also sighed: "You are one, and Ying Yunsheng is another."
Ye Ruhui recalled the name that the teacher had once praised: "The top student in the science stream? You know him?"
“He used to be in the same class as me.” Jian Mingyuan rested his chin on his hand. “Didn’t you see his monthly exam results this time? He got a perfect score in math, but only 115 in Chinese. He didn’t even reach our class average.”
Ye Ruhui cautioned, "Their science classes probably don't value Chinese as much as we do."
"Okay, let's put it this way. His Chinese might be okay in the grade, but it's a letdown compared to his title as the top science student in the grade. If you saw his previous history, geography and politics grades, you would understand better. Before the class was divided, the teachers who taught these subjects took turns talking about him in class several times. I even suspected that he just didn't have the skill to study Chinese."
Ye Ruhui exclaimed, "Your life is caught between celestial physics and the humanities!"
First, the top science student was my classmate; now, the top humanities student is my deskmate.
Jian Mingyuan shook his head: "But thankfully, Ji Li isn't unbalanced in any subject, otherwise I would really be resentful."
Doesn't he excel in some subjects but not others?