CH 56.1

Jiang Xu quietly laid back on the bed, put a pillow behind his back, and leaned back in a half-sitting position.

From his angle, he could see the wall of awards plastered all over the wall directly in front of him, and the desk next to him was filled with trophies of various colors with various awards written on them.

Jiang Xu picked up his phone and tried to send a message to Shen Fangyu, but after typing several sentences in a row, he deleted them.

He stared at his phone for a while, his mind full of his mother’s words. He tried to cover his ears, but the voice was very clear in his head.

He didn’t know how long It had been, but there was a sudden rustling at the door. He looked over, but the person didn’t come in, only half-pushing the door open and asking in a whisper, “Can I come in?”

It was Shen Fangyu.

Jiang Xu’s eyes fluttered, and after a brief moment of silence, he replied, “Yes.”

Shen Fangyu entered and closed the door. His gaze followed Jiang Xu’s line of sight, landing on the trophies he had placed all over the place.

“I took part in this competition back then too,” he said, looking at Jiang Xu’s trophy for the physics competition with a little surprise, “and I remember that after reaching the finals, the coach even arranged for the No. 4 and No. 6 school teams to train together.”

He finished with a bit of regret in his eyes, “But then I got a little sick and couldn’t go; otherwise, I would have met you sooner.”

Jiang Xu’s eyes flickered, and he tilted his head, saying, “Thank God, at least it helped me have an easier high school life.

Shen Fangyu couldn’t help but smile and say, “That’s true.”

“Does it hurt?” Jiang Xu suddenly asked.

Shen Fangyu didn’t expect him to ask this, and fearing that Jiang Xu might be worried, he first denied it quickly, “No,” and then teased in a light-hearted manner, “But Jiang Xu, this is the first time someone other than you has hit me.”

Jiang Xu lowered his eyes, and after a moment, he asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m not comfortable not guarding you at night, I’m afraid you won’t feel well.”

“Aren’t you going to sleep?”

Shen Fangyu pulled out the seat in front of the desk and said to Jiang Xu, “You sleep, I’m not pregnant, so it’s okay to stay up late. I have to go back before your parents get up in the morning. I’ll make up for it in the car tomorrow.”

Jiang Xu’s eyes skimmed over Shen Fangyu’s feet in socks. Shen Fangyu caught his gaze and explained with a smile, “I was worried that your parents would hear me, so I didn’t dare to wear shoes.”

Jiang Xu nudged the slippers on the side of the bed with his eyes and said, “The floor is cold, wear mine.”

Shen Fangyu walked over and stepped into his shoes, his eyes curving with his smile, “Why are you so considerate today, I’m not used to it.”

Jiang Xu looked at him and, after a moment, averted his gaze and said, “You can…”

Lie on the bed.

“Mmm?”

In the midst of the hesitation, before he could finish the second half of his sentence, Shen Fangyu had already taken a few steps back to the wooden chair in front of the desk and asked, “Can what?”

Jiang Xu: “……”

“Nothing.” Jiang Xu turned off the light and lay down. He tucked the covers up to his chest and buried his entire body under the covers, leaving only his head exposed.

“If you’re bored, just look at your phone.”

“The light on the phone will affect your sleep,” Shen Fangyu said. “It’s okay, I’m not bored.”

Jiang Xu said, “Oh,” and closed his eyes.

Before Shen Fangyu’s arrival, his mind had been filled with his parents’ shocked and disappointed expressions, but for some reason, when he closed his eyes this time, he felt as if all his attention had been drawn away by Shen Fangyu.

Probably because the night was so quiet, Jiang Xu even felt as if he could hear Shen Fangyu’s breathing.

This knowledge made him a little curious as to what Shen Fangyu was doing. Were his eyes closed or open? Was he taking a nap or was he thinking about a problem? And if he was thinking about a problem, was he thinking about an academic problem or …… a difficult problem in his life?

“Can’t sleep?” Shen Fangyu suddenly rang out.

Jiang Xu felt as if he was caught by the teacher and suddenly felt a little embarrassed. After a brief silence, he gave a very soft “mmm.”

“Is it because your pink bunny isn’t here?” Shen Fangyu analyzed, “I noticed that you like to hold it every time you sleep, a sudden change in sleeping habits makes it easy to lose sleep.”

“How do you know I’m not sleeping?”

“I’ve watched you sleep a few times, so I can tell.” Shen Fangyu said, “You wouldn’t be so motionless if you were really asleep. You’ve been frozen in one position for a while now.”

Jiang Xu pursed his lips, realizing that there might be an answer to the question he had just been thinking about.

—Shen Fangyu had his eyes open, was not napping, and was looking at him.

Perhaps it was because this realization touched something in Jiang Xu, or if the night was already prone to more flooded emotions and a desire to talk, Jiang Xu suddenly followed up on Shen Fangyu’s comment about the pink rabbit.

“The surgery on the stuffed toys and all that was something I made up off the top of my head. I didn’t think it would scare you.” He confessed.

“Okay, Jiang Xu, when did you learn to be bad too?” Shen Fangyu’s lips curved into a smile

Jiang Xu folded the corner of his pillow and continued, “When I …… was little, my aunt gave me a stuffed toy, also a pink rabbit.”

“Hmm?” Shen Fangyu changed to a listening look.

“My parents’ hometowns have different customs. My mum’s side is a bit feudal and superstitious; she feels that giving stuffed toys to boys will make them grow up too weak and not masculine, so she has always been against these.”

“In fact, my aunt didn’t mean any harm, but my mother still cut up that toy and threw it in the trash after she left. She even stopped the family from using the nickname “Rong”, saying it was too delicate.”

“That nickname was also given by my aunt,” Jiang Xu explained, “and it’s been so long since anyone mentioned it that I had actually forgotten about it, and it was only when I heard that auntie call it that the other day that I remembered.”

“I didn’t like stuffed toys at first, but ever since I saw that scene, I often had nightmares about that broken rabbit, and I always wanted to sew it up, but I couldn’t.”

Jiang Xu took a deep breath and said, “From that time on… “I wanted to be a doctor; I wanted to fix all the broken bodies.”

“It wasn’t until I went to college and bought that pink rabbit that I gradually stopped having those nightmares,” he said. “Then I slowly started to think that stuffed animals were pretty cute, and I bought more as decorations.”

Shen Fangyu looked at him in the night, his voice sounding serene, “If you had told me this earlier, I wouldn’t have had nightmares.”

The expression on Jiang Xu’s face showed he was not convinced.

Shen Fangyu added, “Jiang Xu, your parents were quite strict with you growing up, weren’t they?”

Having adjusted to the darkness, he could also make out some things, such as the awards on the entire wall, signaling the importance the Jiang couple placed on their son’s honor.

Jiang Xu replied to Shen Fangyu in a more reasonable way, “The expectations were quite high; I could only hope to follow the direction they planned.”

That was why it was hard to accept that their son, whom they had been proud of for half their lives, was going to have a child.

“It felt like you were under a lot of pressure when you confessed to your parents,” Shen Fangyu said, “and I wondered if it was also this hard when you told me about it, if it was also this hard on your heart. I always feel like it’s unpleasant and a bit heartbreaking.”

Jiang Xu turned over and sat up, looking at Shen Fangyu: “You didn’t show any distress at that time.”

On the contrary, he acted awkwardly.

“Rongrong.” Shen Fangyu suddenly called out.

Jiang Xu was startled, and he heard Shen Fangyu continue to say, “We’ll be living together from now on, you can do whatever you want, ask for whatever you want, say whatever you want; don’t feel any pressure at all.”

Ren Miao had said something like this to Ren Han not long ago.

Jiang Xu’s heart fluttered and heated up a little, and he subconsciously used harsh words to cover up the slight fluctuations, “Aren’t you ashamed to copy what a little girl said?”

“She said it so well,” Shen Fangyu said shamelessly. “A quote has to be spread to become a quote, and I’m helping her carry it forward.”

Jiang Xu turned his face away from him, and the room fell silent.

After a while, just when Shen Fangyu thought Jiang Xu was going to rest, a sudden voice came from the bed: “What about you?”

Jiang Xu said, “You seem like you never had pressure at home.”

He had never heard Shen Fangyu talk about his parents before either.

“I really didn’t have much pressure.” Shen Fangyu smiled: “I’m quite free, no one is pushing for marriage.”

“They didn’t care about you?”

Shen Fangyu shook his head, “I’ve been messing around since I was a kid so they couldn’t nolonger control me, plus they were too busy to control me.”

“Back then, you were also planning to celebrate at Chengjia, right?” Jiang Xu suddenly mentioned.

Chengjia is a very famous restaurant in City B. Jiang Xu remembered that when he got first place in the college entrance examination, his parents took him to Cheng Jiading to celebrate. They heard the manager say that another top scholar from B City was also planning to hold a party there, but the date was ahead of Jiang Xu’s.

At that time, Mother Jiang said that she wanted to see the conditions of the other family, as they were both top students, so she couldn’t lose face. But when she arrived at the original date, she didn’t see Shen Fangyu’s family celebrating. After asking around, she found out they had canceled for some reason.

“Well, there was a problem with my parents’ business, and they were in a hurry to go out of town to solve it, so they canceled it.”

Jiang Xu was a bit surprised. Shen Fangyu was the top student in B City back then, what kind of parents would be too busy to even celebrate a bit?

Shen Fangyu explained, “My parents don’t care much about the results, let alone whether I became top scholar or not, so I signed all the report cards myself. My parents always believed in that story about the top student working for a college dropout and were determined to start their own business.”

“And ……” he said, “my older brother was a top scholar back then too,” he said with a slightly joking tone, “moreover, he was the sole top scholar, so me, who tied with someone else, was not good in comparison.”

Jiang Xu, who was learning these things for the first time, paused and commented, “Your family has good learning genes.”

“The learning gene is good, but my parents only want to do business. Unfortunately, the more you want something most of the time, the less you get it, and what you don’t want comes instead,” he commented, “My parents’ talent for business is really not visible at all.”

“After all these years of losing money and making money, there have been good times and bad times, and they haven’t saved a penny after half a lifetime of tossing and turning. They are probably tired of all the hard work and have given up on the idea of earning us a throne. All they wish is for me to fend for myself and settle down in A city if I can, but if I can’t afford to buy a house, then it’s also fine to go back, they don’t have any money for me anyway.”

He laughed lightly, saying, “Perhaps I realized that my family has no business genes, so I decided to become a doctor.

Shen Fangyu’s tone was calm and light, as if he didn’t care, but it made Jiang Xu’s heart tighten.

“Are they in B City now?”

“Yes,” Shen Fangyu replied, “they have a dry cleaning shop in front of their home. They are not rich and famous, but at least they don’t worry about food and clothing.”

“…… You’re not going to see them this time before going back?”

“I’m not going back,” Shen Fangyu said, “time isn’t enough. If I go back now, my parents will definitely have to go to the market to buy a lot of chicken, ducks, and fish. They’re so old, so it’s just tiring them for nothing. It’s also almost New Year’s Eve anyway, so I’ll go back then.”

Jiang Xu suddenly remembered when Shen Fangyu tried to cook in the kitchen at his house at the beginning. He tried to find a topic to adjust the somewhat low atmosphere, “Are your parents good cooks?”

Unexplained, Shen Fangyu’s expression was a little subtle at this question, and it was only after a while that he said, “They’re not bad; I’ve tasted their cooking a few times in the past year or two.”

After he finished, he seemed to realize that his words were a bit emotional, so he didn’t give Jiang Xu a chance to respond and deliberately changed his tone to a lighter one, changing the subject: “Jiang Xu, doesn’t this feel like a night in the dormitory?”

He continued with a little smile: “At this time, our dormitory would get lively, and everyone would talk more than the other, especially after the final exams. It would reach two or three o’clock and people were still chatting in a frenzy.”

Jiang Xu hid the emotion in his eyes and asked, “What would you guys talk about?”

“Do you have to ask?” Shen Fangyu said, “Didn’t you guys talk in your dorm?”

Of course they did… But Jiang Xu wanted to know what Shen Fangyu and the rest talked about.

“We talked about our aspirations, our future, the price of housing in A City, why we study medicine, the girls we like, and ……” Shen Fangyu paused for a moment and deliberately said, “Jiang Xu in the dorm next door.”

Jiang Xu gave a low chuckle, but Shen Fangyu continued, “But I’ve never talked about my family; you’re the first.”

Jiang Xu rubbed his hand on the sheet for a moment before suddenly asking, “Then can I listen to the whole thing?”

Shen Fangyu froze at his words and didn’t say anything for a while.

It had started raining outside the window at some point, and the room was silent for a while. The silent sound of the rain was particularly hypnotic, but neither of them seemed to have any intention of going to sleep.