CH 46

The final exam came in a blink of an eye.

After ranking first in the English unit test, Jiang Li took first in Physics as well. A student who usually scored lower than average in class suddenly took the first twice in a row, making him a key person of attention for the proctor in the final exam.

After the end of the first year of high school, as summer vacation came, Jiang Li quit the part-time job in the lumber mill and found a barista job in a commercial street cafe.

When he was filming previously, one of the characters was a barista. In order to not use a substitute, Jiang Li had learned it specially. No matter if it was single origin coffee or blend coffee, it was easy for him. He simply showed a few skills during the interview and got hired by the head of the cafe. The head also didn’t mind that he didn’t have any qualifications, since he was good-looking, he could be the image of the cafe by just standing at the bar.

The first two lives of Jiang Li were spent in the entertainment industry, so he was very good at observing people and socializing with them. After only a few days of work, he became acquainted with everyone else in the cafe. Although there were many customers during the summer holiday, and he was tired after working, the salary was not bad and was much better than working odd jobs in the lumber mill which was hot and stuffy.

On this day, Jiang Li made a latte and put it on a tray for his colleague to serve to the customer. Just then the door sensor next to him rang “Welcome” and he turned his head and saw a familiar person.

Theoretically, it should be someone who was both familiar and strange – Xu Haowen.

Xu Haowen walked in and saw Jiang Li wearing a white uniform by the bar, his footsteps slightly paused, he saw Jiang Li smiling at him and said welcome.

Jiang Li’s attitude was very kind and polite, fully compatible with his current staff status. Xu Haowen hesitated between walking over to say hello or just finding a seat directly.

Although he was not as contemptuous as others about the fact that Jiang Li liked men, and felt that everyone had their own choices, the thought that the person Jiang Li liked was him was still somewhat embarrassing.

But when he saw Jiang Li being natural and poised this time, comparing it to his own act of avoiding him made him seem like a petty person.

After thinking about it, Xu Haowen walked magnanimously to the bar and said, “Do you work here?”

“Yes.” Jiang Li handed him the menu, “What do you want to drink?”

“Mocha, with ice.” Xu Haowen said, “Are you going to make it?”

Jiang Li nodded, “Do you want anything else?”

“Not for now, thanks.”

Jiang Li keyed in the order. He then took down the jar with the mocha coffee beans from the shelf, skillfully scooped a cup of beans into the grinder with a spoon, pressed the switch, and started to boil water; preparing to make coffee.

Jiang Li saw him still standing in front of the bar and reminded him, “You find yourself a seat first.” There were not many customers in the morning, so only Jiang Li and another colleague were working. The other colleague was greeting customers on the other side, so he could not greet Xu Haowen.

“En.” Xu Hao Wen nodded, went to the window, and found a seat. He then took out some books and blank notebooks from his backpack and continued to solve the problems he hadn’t finished the previous night.

Jiang Li made coffee and sent it over to Xu Haowen, putting it on the table, “Your coffee.”

“Thanks.” Xu Haowen stopped his pen and smelled the aroma of coffee.

Jiang Li’s gaze fell on the book beside his hand and found that it was math for the second semester of his second year. He looked at the book where the calculations were done and found that the steps Xu Haowen had taken to solve the problem were stuck in one place.

Xu Haowen saw his gaze land on his book and smiled. “My thought process is a bit stuck.”

After saying that, he thought of Jiang Li’s academic performance that had changed greatly, and tentatively asked, “Do you want to try?”

Jiang Li didn’t respond, stared at the book for a while, and stretched out his hand. “Pen.”

Xu Haowen handed him the pen.

Jiang Li bent down, pressed the book with one hand, held the pen in the other, and quickly performed the calculations.

As he was bending over, Xu Haowen’s line of sight fell right on Jiang Li’s side profile, and his beautiful rounded ears and elegantly curved jaw were displayed for his eyes.

Accidentally, he was blinded by the fairness of his side profile.

…

Feng Yu invited Chi Fang to help him choose a laptop computer the same day. As he had an appointment with others at noon to play in a raid, the two went out early in the morning.

The digital studio was on the second floor of the building in the center of the commercial street, while the cafe where Jiang Li worked was on the first floor. When the two of them passed the floor-to-ceiling window of the cafe, Feng Yu inadvertently glanced inside and saw the scene of Jiang Li bending over to help Xu Haowen solve the problem.

As they were at the same table, from Feng Yu’s point of view, the two were very close to each other. He couldn’t help but pull Chi Fang, pointing at the two people. “Chi ge, look who are those two?”

Chi Fang followed where he was pointing and also saw Jiang Li and Xu Haowen.

“Jiang Li and Xu Haowen? How come the two of them are together?” Feng Yu saw the books laid out on the table through the window and guessed, “Could it be that Jiang Li has succeeded? The two came together to study at the cafe?”

Chi Fang: “… Are you blind?”

“What?”

“Jiang Li is wearing the cafe’s staff uniform.”

“Huh, that’s true.” Feng Yu took a closer look and found that Jiang Li was wearing the cafe’s staff shirt with a black bow tie on the collar and a dark coffee-colored apron around his waist.

Feng Yu: “Not to mention, Jiang Li looks pretty good in a white shirt.”

Chi Fang’s gaze also landed on Jiang Li, before he could see his so-called “pretty good” clearly, he heard him say, “So, Xu Haowen is here to accompany Jiang Li at work? Are high schoolers so romantic?”

Chi Fang: “…” Your brain is loaded with shit, right?

Chi Fang was too lazy to listen to his nonsense. He took the initiative to enter the elevator next to them, Feng Yu hurried to follow.

In the cafe, the two people didn’t know that they were commented on by Feng Yu who was outside.

Xu Haowen was surprised to see that Jiang Li had spent less than two minutes smoothly solving the problem that had puzzled him for a long time.

Jiang Li returned the pen to him and pointed at one of the steps he had just performed. “You made a miscalculation here, it should be 5.”

Xu Haowen just watched him calculate it once and already understood it. The confusion in his mind had cleared up, and his thoughts were much clearer, so he nodded towards him: “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Jiang Li took the tray and went back to the bar.

Xu Haowen turned his head to see him back at the bar and began working again, washing the pots he had just used and then taking a clean cotton cloth to help his colleague wipe the washed glasses.

Although Jiang Li wasn’t tall, his height was still an advantage among girls, he was half a head taller than the female colleague who was working together with him.

Xu Haowen saw him thoughtfully inclining a little to listen to what his female colleague was saying, with a gentle smile at the corners of his lips. When she tiptoed to put up the goblet, he reached out to take it and hang it on the glass rack.

Xu Haowen himself didn’t even notice that his eyes were unconsciously observing for a while, during which two customers came in one after another. Jiang Li took their order and made coffee, and didn’t look in his direction at all; which made him wonder, does this person in front of him really like him? Or was it just a joke that the others made up to mock him?

Realizing what he was thinking, Xu Haowen shook his head and withdrew his gaze.

On the other hand, after Chi Fang and Feng Yu chose their computers, they went to the Internet cafe next to the computer store to play games. By the time they came out of the Internet cafe, it was almost nine o’clock at night.

As they were going downstairs, Feng Yu touched his stomach and asked Chi Fang, “I’m so hungry, what are we going to eat, Chi ge?”

He didn’t feel hungry when he was playing games earlier, but once he was out of the Internet cafe he found out that his stomach was rumbling. It was indeed true that games could make people forget to eat and sleep, as if cultivating immortality to open up the valley. But once they got out of the game, it seemed to be back to the mortal world.

Chi Fang played a single-player game on his phone and said without raising his head, “Whatever, you decide.”

“Let me think.”

While Feng Yu was thinking, his phone received a new WeChat message. He opened it to see that it was from Nan Yin, looked up, and asked Chi Fang, “Chi ge, Nan jie asked if we want to go to the movies. And also said that she had sent you a message, but you didn’t reply, so she asked me if I was with you.”

“Not going, not with you either.” Chi Fang rejected decisively, there was indeed a message that popped up just now, but he was playing games, so he was too lazy to reply.

“Then let’s just find a place to eat… Huh, why is Jiang Li still here?”

The two of them had already gone down to the first floor, and coincidentally some customers were leaving the cafe. Feng Yu looked through the door as it was opened and saw that Jiang Li was still standing at the bar. “I saw him here in the morning, it’s nine o’clock now and he’s not getting off yet?”

Hearing the two words “Jiang Li”, Chi Fang’s finger paused for a moment. The snake on the screen which was supposed to turn accidentally hit someone else’s house, and then the screen blacked out, the game ended.

“Why don’t we just eat in this cafe, their pizza and pasta are especially good!” Feng Yu proposed, “I heard that some cafes calculate commission based on the sales of the day. We may also be able to help Jiang Li increase his commission if we eat one more meal.”

Chi Fang: “…”

Before Chi Fang could express his opinion; Feng Yu pulled him into the cafe, the two went in, and the door sensor went off.

The bar and the door were close together, so Jiang Li looked back when the sound rang and saw the two of them.

Jiang Li was a bit surprised to see Chi Fang entering the cafe. He initially planned to use this summer vacation to earn money for his second-year school fee and living expenses, and only work on the capture of Chi Fang once school started. He didn’t expect that his capture target would come to him without him taking initiative.

But although he was not in a hurry to capture Chi Fang, Jiang Li knew some information about Chi Fang. He learned that he was transferred from City B during the first half-semester of his first high school year.

It was said that the day after the transfer, Chi Fang was blocked by a few delinquent students of the same grade in the school’s small orchard, and they said they wanted to teach the new transfer student how to behave.

In a one-on-four situation, Chi Fang was unharmed; but several of the opponents were held down by him, crying and begging for mercy. The most serious one had a broken arm. Chi Fang then became famous because of this fight.

Chi Fang was quite unruly in this school. He was often late to class and left early, his academic performance was also very normal. Other than his Math and Physics, which was about average in the class, almost no other subjects passed. He belonged to the type of students that most teachers wouldn’t like.

But Jiang Li heard that his family was very powerful in City B, there were people in his family working in the provincial Department of Education as leaders.. He was previously studying in City B’s No.1 Middle School but committed a crime before transferring to the small county of Jiang City to take refuge. As for his behavior of being late and leaving early, the school teachers and leaders were turning a blind eye.

But this news was just hearsay, Jiang Li wouldn’t believe it unless he saw it with his own eyes, so he also didn’t take it all to heart. Not to mention that Chi Fang once saved him.

As soon as Feng Yu arrived at the bar, he greeted Jiang Li like a natural socializer, “You’re Jiang Li from class 5, right? I’m from your next class, my name is Feng Yu.”

“Hi, I’m Jiang Li.” Jiang Li knew he was a good buddy of Chi Fang’s; nodded politely towards him, and then smiled at Chi Fang who was standing at the side with slight surprise in his eyes after a coincidental encounter, “Good evening, Chi Fang tongxue.”

Chi Fang: “…”

Wait, we are all classmates, but you only smile at me, what does it mean?