The loud thud from the collision of bodies was even louder than the first sound. Xiong Yi was kicked backward, his shoulder hitting the rotating stair railing. His foot slipped, and his whole body rolled down the stairs until he reached the platform between the second and third floors, where he stopped and howled in agony.
Xiong Er and Xiong San were dumbfounded.
Just then, the dormitory supervisor's shout rang out from downstairs: "Who's still awake in the middle of the night?!"
Ying Yunsheng spoke up: "You want to join in too?"
No matter how much they bullied the weak and feared the strong, they were still a group of underage students. How bold could they be? Xiong Er and Xiong San trembled all over and ran away on the spot.
Just as the dormitory supervisor was about to arrive, Ying Yunsheng abandoned the howling Xiong Yi and started going upstairs. He had only gone up half a flight of stairs when he heard someone next to him ask, "Is he really not going to hurt himself?"
He paused for a moment.
"You won't be seriously injured if you fall down this kind of staircase; at most, your bones will ache for a couple of days."
Ji Li was momentarily unsure whether to be surprised by the other party's amazing answer or by the fact that the other party had actually explained it to him.
The dormitory supervisor's footsteps grew closer.
Ji Li also turned and went upstairs. The two of them arrived at the fourth floor one after the other. He stopped first and pushed open the door to the balcony next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the person who was originally walking on the stairs had stopped and was staring at him.
He reminded them, "The dormitory manager will be up soon."
Ying Yunsheng glanced at the metal sign beside him that read "Fourth Floor," then looked back at him: "Isn't your dorm on the sixth floor?"
Ji Li paused for a moment, then waved the vocabulary book in his hand: "Yes, that's why I came down here specifically to study late into the night."
The wind blowing in from the balcony billowed their clothes, and Ji Li could see the other's eyebrows and eyes clearly, his eyes as black as lacquer.
Very beautiful eyes.
It felt strangely familiar.
After a few seconds of silence, the other person seemed to accept his reason and turned to leave.
“However,” Ji Li paused at the right moment, giving the other person enough time to turn around, before asking the second half of the question, “how did you know which dormitory room I had?”
A note from the author:
Ji Li attacked, and Ying Yunsheng received the attack;
Childhood sweethearts, reunited after a long separation, no amnesia trope.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Geda Lane
The eye contact between the two ended five seconds later with the dormitory supervisor's suddenly raised voice.
"What are you doing lying here?!"
The screams of pain from Xiong Yi below had disappeared at some point. When asked, he suddenly jumped up as if he had been injected with adrenaline: "Ying Yunsheng, I'll fuck your mother!!"
Ji Li ducked behind the door to the terrace, but the figure in his field of vision suddenly ran towards him.
With a slight exertion of force, the hinge rotated an arc, and the wooden door closed silently.
The corridor echoed with muffled thuds, the sound of Xiong Yi's footsteps and the dormitory supervisor's shouts of pursuit, interspersed with occasional curses, as he swiftly passed through the fourth floor, ignoring even a glance from anyone, and raced upwards.
The door was only half closed, and the terrace area it covered was not large. There were no security bars, and the railing only reached chest height for two people. Looking down from above, it was easy to get the illusion that one was about to fall.
"Aren't you going up?"
Ying Yunsheng turned his gaze back from the corridor behind the door: "He knows my dormitory number and will come up to find me."
So you hid here?
Ji Li stood by the railing: "And now?"
“If I’m not around, he can’t find me and can’t do anything. The dorm manager will think he’s staying up all night and put him on the blacklist.”
Using someone else to do your dirty work.
The plan was good, but Ji Li still had to remind him: "But there's no one in your bed right now."
"Well……"
"Should we add you to the blacklist of people who deliberately stay up late in the middle of the night?"
"Uh..." The other person stared at him expressionlessly for a few seconds, then turned to face the outside of the terrace.
Ji Li didn't look at him again, but reopened the folded book and began to write and draw by the light coming from behind the other half of the open door.
The watch ticked, and the hands showed 11:30.
Ji Li closed the book and stepped onto the terrace.
The dormitory building was completely quiet at this time.
He had only taken two steps when he turned back and saw that the other person was still standing there, but had somehow sat down and showed no intention of going back.
.
The next day was Saturday. At six o'clock sharp, the athletes' march started playing on the loudspeaker.
Lin Chengshuang groaned in bed, "Why do I have to go to class on the weekend?" as she struggled to get out of bed. She glanced down and saw someone already standing in front of the desk packing things up.
He slammed the object back down with a "thump," then held up Er Kang's hand with three fingers pointing to the sky: "Bring me breakfast, anything is fine."
Ji Li hummed in agreement, picked up his things, and left the dormitory. When he got to the fourth floor, he glanced at the terrace.
The person is gone.
After the morning self-study session ended, four huge propaganda display boards appeared on the flat ground directly opposite the teaching building. The front was bright red, and the waterproof printing material reflected the light.
During the break, students who lived close to each other in the classroom all ran out to check their grades. They crowded around the bulletin board, then stood still one after another, staring wide-eyed.
After a long silence, someone finally spoke up: "Holy crap..."
"The academic genius has fallen out of first place!!"
His shout made half the teaching building pop its head out.
That morning, a post suddenly appeared on the campus forum of Changqiao Middle School, which had been dormant for almost two months. The title was in bold: "Discussion Group No. 1 on the impact of the division of arts and sciences on students' subjective, objective, physical, psychological, academic and life aspects."
The main building is a long image composed of the class assignment results from the bulletin board, with the top two lines highlighted in bold.
Ying Yunsheng scored 120 in Chinese, 150 in Mathematics, 145 in English, and 298 in Science, for a total score of 713. He ranked first in science and first in his grade.
Ji Li scored 141 in Chinese, 150 in Mathematics, 148 in English, and 272 in Humanities, for a total score of 711. He ranked first in the humanities stream and second in the grade.
As for who comes next, nobody cares anymore.
In just one morning, the post was upvoted hundreds of times, and regardless of how many students were exposed for bringing prohibited products, it was clear that the campus forum was successfully resurrected from its grave.
As for the messages inside, they can be roughly divided into three categories based on their content.
The first category is shock, mainly revolving around Ji Li, whose reaction was similar to Lin Chengshuang's when she received her report card the day before. The number of times she exclaimed "Ah!" made people suspect that she had disturbed a groundhog's nest.
The second category is curiosity, mainly revolving around Ying Yunsheng, and delving into the three philosophical questions of who this once unknown nobody was, where he came from, and where he was going.
As for the third type, it originated from a reply after the building was completed.
[Anonymous No. 498: By the way, does anyone else think that the picture in the main post, with its bright red background, names on either side, and headshots of students who ranked first in each subject, looks a lot like some kind of little red notebook?]
[Anonymous No. 499: Hmm?]
.
"After today, we'll go our separate ways." Lin Chengshuang, having already known her grades, didn't join the commotion. Now, she stood by the window, gazing at the students who had inexplicably become overcrowded in front of the bright red bulletin board. "After this parting, I fear we may never see each other again."
Ji Li didn't even look at it. Instead, he held a pen and drew a coordinate axis on the draft paper: "Wake up, the classrooms for arts and sciences are only two floors apart."
"Uh..." The class bell rang, and the students who had run out to check their grades all ran back to their classrooms. A large group of people surged into the classroom of Class 5 in a short time, but their eyes were all glancing in this direction.
The boys were fine, but the girls' gazes were unusually intense, and they didn't even try to hide them.
Lin Chengshuang muttered to herself, "Look at everyone else's expressions. They're all shocked that you only got second place this time."
Ji Li carefully put away the math test paper and took out the textbook for the subject he was about to attend class.
“Really,” Lin Chengshuang patted his shoulder, “the way they looked at you was so shocked and appreciative, as if you were about to jump off a building in shame and anger.”
Ji Li lifted the other person's hand that was on his shoulder: "Maybe they misunderstood your possible reaction because they saw that you came in last place again."
"Uh..." The last period in the morning was Chinese class, which was the teacher's subject.
Surprisingly, instead of immediately asking everyone to turn to page X in their books, the teacher first turned on the projector and displayed a report card.
"As you all probably already know, your class will be reorganized starting this week," the teacher said, enlarging the report card so that its width was just right against both sides of the projection screen. "From now on, the rankings will be divided into two grades, with each class consisting of fifty-five students."
The class immediately erupted in discussion.
"But that's not the point I want to make right now." After adjusting the settings so that all the students' scores were displayed on the screen, the homeroom teacher looked up. "After this class reshuffle, I will continue to teach Class 5—the science class of the second year of high school. So the students who chose the humanities stream will not stay in my class."
The discussion fell silent instantly.
Lin Chengshuang suddenly shouted from below: "That's not right! Even if the ranking is in this range, those who didn't choose science are still not in your hands. You can't just look down on liberal arts students!"
The tense atmosphere eased.
The teacher chuckled, "That's true."
"What I want to say is that no matter which class you go to next, it's your own choice, so you have to keep going. As for the past year I've taught you..." The teacher walked out from behind the lectern, stood on the cement platform, and suddenly bowed deeply in front of the whole class.
The silence lasted for four or five seconds before the old teacher straightened up: "I will always be honored by this."
.
Ji Li was looking at the scope on the screen when a hand suddenly slapped him on the shoulder.
The angle at which he was about to fire suddenly veered off course, missing the enemy and instead revealing his position. A loud "bang" came through the earphone, and then the screen went black.
Lin Chengshuang immediately clasped her hands together and said, "It's my fault, it's my fault, I was blind and I was too impulsive."
Ji Li turned off her phone: "It's nothing."
He didn't seem angry at all, which put Lin Chengshuang at ease: "Want to start another game?"
"My phone is about to run out of battery."
“That’s perfect. Erpang just messaged me asking if we wanted to go to the barbecue place. He rarely treats us, so why don’t we go for a meal first? We can go back later.” Lin Chengshuang added, “I remember there are electrical outlets there.”
Across the street from where Changqiao Middle School is located is a slope, and the entire street ahead is lined with various shops and street vendors.