Finally, Ji Li asked first, "Just now," he used a more subtle word, "were you trying to steal a kiss?"
Ying Yunsheng's palms were sweaty, his head was down, and his tone carried a hint of despair: "Hmm."
Why the restraint?
"Uh-huh?"
The way this issue is developing seems a bit off.
Ji Li put down the medical kit he was carrying.
He has always been very strict about social distance between people. Although he doesn't think that holding hands is indecent like Ying Yunsheng, he has always insisted on maintaining a distance that is both offensive and defensive, where taking a step forward would lead to a deterioration of the relationship and taking a step back would result in a complete breakup.
He kept wanting to wait, to wait a little longer, to wait for time to prove that the two of them were worth continuing the relationship, and to wait until the other person had thought things through and didn't regret it.
But only now does he realize that he seems to have underestimated the other person's feelings.
The other party had already made up their mind; it was he who had been hesitant and indecisive.
Especially when he saw the other person's aggrieved and cautious expression, he realized that he was the one who had never given her an answer, and he was also the one who teased her from time to time, but he only talked about it without taking any real action. It seems that he has obviously embarked on the path of a scumbag who tries to hook up women.
Ying Yunsheng waited a long time for him to speak, and felt flustered and uneasy: "Ji Li."
Ji Li hummed in agreement: "Instead of going indirect, would you like to try going directly?"
Ying Yunsheng didn't immediately grasp the meaning behind his words: "What do you mean by 'direct'?"
Ji Li stopped in front of him and gently placed a kiss on the corner of his lips: "So direct."
Ying Yunsheng suddenly opened his eyes wide.
Ji Li turned around, picked up the first-aid kit, and led him out, placing the kit and the boy together in the dormitory room next door: "Go to sleep early, we'll go out for breakfast tomorrow."
He closed the door behind him when he left.
Ying Yunsheng stood there for a full ten seconds, his brain finally processing the entire reaction, and his face began to burn.
.
After Ji Li's leg injury was checked and healed, another semester was drawing to a close.
At that time, the school had already sent off a group of senior high school students, and these soon-to-be senior high school students became the focus of the school leaders' attention. This situation became even more serious after the summer vacation started.
Their summer vacation was even shorter than last year's winter vacation, and they spent every day taking extra classes according to the new schedule. There were no physical education classes, morning exercises, or eye exercises during the vacation, and not even half a morning on weekends. Six out of seven days a week, they were taking exams for six different subjects in rotation.
Students are like plush toys being stuffed with cotton, their shapes stretched beyond recognition. Under such high pressure, even the most diligent students inevitably feel exhausted, making any freedom to breathe all the more precious.
This manifests itself in the fact that when the school bell rings every day, the students sitting near the classroom door are already gone; after it rings three times, there are basically only a few people left in the entire school building.
In contrast, the food stalls that lined the street outside the school will see peak customer traffic during the day.
Ying Yunsheng would still come to Ji Li's classroom on the first floor as usual, but the frequency changed from once a week to once a day. He would either do a few pages of problems or simply chat, passing the time until most of the people outside the school had left. Then the two of them would go out for dinner together and then go back to the dormitory together.
On the day Mao Xianzhi announced the end of summer tutoring, Ji Li tidied up his desk, threw away the useless supplementary teaching materials, and kept only the textbooks and unfinished exercises, which he put into the storage box in the corner of the desk.
Just as I bent down to drag the box out of the classroom, a pair of white canvas shoes stopped in front of me.
Ying Yunsheng asked, "To the new classroom?"
"Um."
"I'll carry this, you go get the bag."
Jian Mingyuan happened to be carrying a stack of books taller than his chin. Peeking out from behind the books, he didn't even notice that the box Ying Yunsheng had just taken was exactly the same as the one his deskmate used. These days, which high school student doesn't have a box? They just use the same few styles over and over. He just assumed that Ying Yunsheng was moving classrooms and happened to be passing by: "Brother Ying."
Ying Yunsheng nodded at him, his attitude not particularly warm, and left with the box.
When Ji Li chased after the other person with her bag, the other person had already disappeared, and a storage box full of books had appeared outside the new classroom of the Arts Class 1.
Jian Mingyuan slammed his hand down on the desk, rested his chin on his textbook, and sighed, "I'll need to eat sweet and sour pork ribs for at least a month during the summer vacation to make up for it."
Ye Ruhui bluntly poured cold water on his enthusiasm: "Summer vacation only lasts one week."
Jian Mingyuan: "..."
Ji Li didn't return to the capital for a week. For the first two days, Lin Chengshuang dragged him to a newly opened arcade. Lin Chengshuang brought back a basket of game tokens from the machines, shouting that they should have a contest to see who could get more prize tickets. Afterwards, looking at the gift tickets in Ji Li's hand that could circle the arcade, she went to the escape room in a fit of grief and indignation.
Although Lin Chengshuang only had the courage to crawl under the covers when watching horror movies, she was particularly fond of these thrilling and terrifying games. She dared not go in alone and had to call on familiar classmates to go with her before she felt safe to beat up her teammates while she was scared out of her wits in the escape room.
Ji Li didn't go in; he stayed outside guarding the things the whole time. He finished two exam papers in the waiting area, and the people who escaped the secret room looked at him with admiration.
After a week of summer vacation, before the start of the new semester, the school called everyone back early mainly for extra classes and to "get them back into the swing of things."
It's worth mentioning, however, that the newly enrolled first-year high school students have also arrived and are being led by their class instructors to stand at attention under the scorching sun.
One of Jian Mingyuan's greatest pleasures during this period was buying an ice pop during each break between classes, carrying it around in his mouth as he walked back and forth among the military training group, earning envious yet resentful glances from the freshmen standing under the sun.
However, Ye Ruhui described this behavior as "wanting what you lack."
It took Jian Mingyuan a whole class period to realize that what he said was actually a sarcastic remark that he had never received anyone's envy and could only envy others. He was so angry that he pinned the man down in his seat and beat him up. From then on, he never tried to make his presence known to the freshmen and buried himself in a sea of problems every day after class.
However, whether it was because he turned his resentment into motivation, or as Ji Li had said before, "Your knowledge framework is very comprehensive, and you will be able to study more efficiently in the future," he originally squeezed into Class 1 with the worst grades. It was only thanks to Ji Li's predictions at the end of the second year of high school that he was able to glimpse the upper echelons of the class for the first time. But now that he has entered the third year of high school, his ranking has been steadily rising. By the end of the semester, he had even successfully entered the top ten in the class. At the end-of-semester ceremony, he even stood on the flag platform and received a certificate for outstanding progress.
Their school didn't actually have a special competition class, and they were studying humanities. Although Mao Xianzhi had been very proactive in supervising their participation in Chinese or English competitions in the past, when it came to the final decision, he remained very laid-back about whether they would be admitted to university through the guaranteed admission program or take the college entrance examination. He didn't have the same level of concern as other teachers.
In his words, "If one more person from you takes the college entrance exam, I'll have one more student who scores 600 points when I brag to others about it."
Ji Li later asked Ying Yunsheng about it.
At that time, Ying Yunsheng had already won medals in both mathematics and physics competitions at the national level, and the national training team had extended an offer to him.
I will probably still take the college entrance exam.
Ji Li asked, "Why?"
Ying Yunsheng said, "Because the majors I want to choose from for admission without examination are not among them."
Ji Li had asked him about his major before, but she had never received an answer: "What major do you actually like?"
Ying Yunsheng looked at him and said, "I haven't decided yet."
Ji Li: "You're so perfunctory."
"I really haven't decided yet," Ying Yunsheng said. "I don't think I have any subjects I particularly like."
For so many years, he studied hard, truly only for the sake of studying, for the college entrance examination, for that one chance to change his fate. But he rarely thought about what the future held, afraid that making assumptions would expose the truth that he had never had anything to begin with.
"What about your job? What kind of job do you think you can stick with in the future?"
I like you.
"Uh..." Ji Li was caught off guard and turned his head to look, only to find that the other person's ear tips were bright red.
It was their senior year winter break. The cram school had just ended, and Chongliu was experiencing its first snowfall in three years.
The two of them were not using umbrellas, and white snowflakes gradually covered their hair and piled up on their shoulders.
Ying Yunsheng walked quite a distance, and when the heat on his face subsided, he turned around and realized that Ji Li hadn't followed yet. He turned back and pulled him along, saying, "The car is here."
Ji Li was led forward by him.
Streetlights illuminated both sides of the street, and goose feathers fluttered down as the two walked side by side, leaving a trail of footprints in the snow.
A note from the author:
Thank you so much for your support! I will continue to work hard!
Chapter 46
Chapter 46
Boy friend
The sun happened to be out on the day of the 100-day countdown rally. Ji Li was required to speak as a student representative, and the applause was even more enthusiastic than before when he went on stage, clearly showing curiosity and excitement. If I had to describe it, it would be like seeing a raccoon in a cat's den.
He turned the microphone up a bit and glanced into the sea of people below the stage.
In an instant, it was as if time had reversed, the videotape kept going back, pulling back to the commendation ceremony after the first monthly exam of the first semester of high school.
Before Ying Yunsheng could recover from that strange sense of loss, he heard the person on the stage say, "Someone once said something."
Ji Li curved his lips slightly: "The reason why geniuses are so outstanding in people's eyes is not because they are born with superior talent, but because they have made continuous efforts. Ten thousand hours of practice is a necessary condition for anyone to go from ordinary to world-class master."
Ying Yunsheng: "..."
From the moment he heard the other person say "ten thousand hours," he subconsciously followed their gaze, and this time he easily made eye contact with them.
If he had any doubts before, he was now certain that Ji Li had done it on purpose.
The two had been interacting without any official status, so it was inevitable that they would sometimes unintentionally say things they shouldn't. And every time Ying Yunsheng made a direct approach, Ji Li would immediately respond with something even more blunt, making him blush and his heart race. He could never gain the upper hand in this situation, and over time, he developed a bit of an obsession, determined to do something that would leave Ji Li completely flustered.
Before winter break, when he blurted out "I like you," he actually harbored a bit of a vengeful intention. Who would have thought that the other person was genuinely at a loss at the time? Now, a winter break has passed, and Ji Li will directly use the excerpt from the novel that he memorized on the day he confessed as speech material, and flirt with him across the sea of people in front of hundreds of classmates.
The countdown on the right side of the blackboard officially changed from three digits to two digits; the class was long over.
After the first round of review, the teacher didn't really teach formally anymore. Class time was usually spent switching back and forth between explaining homework and exam papers. If there were no more questions to discuss, the teacher would let everyone study on their own while he sat at the podium with his laptop. Occasionally, a student would come up with a difficult problem and ask, and the teacher would take the time to explain it. Representative problems would be projected onto the big screen as potential additions to everyone's error notebooks.
Besides that, the teachers do most of their time having heart-to-heart talks.
The subject teachers were alright, but Mao Xianzhi, as the homeroom teacher, almost dragged everyone to his office for a chat.
Ji Li's grades had never worried his teachers, but he still couldn't escape being called in to talk about his life ideals. After returning to the classroom, Jian Mingyuan stared at him for a full ten seconds, then took a deep breath.
He looked puzzled: "What's wrong?"
“It’s nothing,” Jian Mingyuan said. “It’s just that seeing you being called in for a heart-to-heart talk suddenly made me feel like I’ve been elevated.”
In May, people gradually shed their winter school uniforms and cotton-padded coats.
Chongliu City practically has no spring season; it only alternates between summer and winter year after year. You have to wear a sweater to go out one day, and the next day you feel hot even if you put on a short-sleeved shirt.
But in the teachers' eyes, the temperature fluctuations during this period were secondary; what was more important was the high incidence of illness. Four or five people had fallen ill in the classroom in just two days. Mao Xianzhi, who patrolled the classroom with a brisk pace, reminded everyone eight hundred times a day, "Even in hot weather, you must keep warm."
The homeroom teacher didn't leave until the bell rang. Jian Mingyuan lay on his desk playing with his pen cap: "Assigning two fewer worksheets every day is definitely more effective at keeping us warm than this. If this keeps up, I'll have to go to the hospital before the college entrance exam because of overwork sooner or later."
Ye Ruhui turned his head: "No."
"Why?"
"Do you think you've been running 2,000 meters every day for nothing all year?"
"Uh..." Jian Mingyuan had been ridiculed by the other party for nearly two years and thought he had developed an indestructible heart, but he did not expect that he would break through his defenses with just one sentence. He only managed to prevent the other party from bleeding on the spot because of the high school seniors in the classroom.
Unfortunately, Jian Mingyuan got through the seasonal change without any problems, but Ji Li didn't make it through and developed a high fever that night.