CH 32

Their punishment ended at noon.

After lunch, Zhang Man and Chen Feier went for a walk in the schoolyard, which is a little farther away from the cafeteria, in order to eat.

The weather outside today is not bad, the snow has stopped and the temperature is much warmer than two days ago. The cinder track was cleared, but snow was still piled up in the lawn on the edge of the track.

Every winter, the thick snow is pure and beautiful only for a few days, and after a short time, it will be mixed with sludge or some dirty things and become muddy.

There is a basketball court in the middle of the cinder track, and many idle boys take advantage of the nap time to play ball. A few sharp-eyed ones saw school girls walking, whistling several times at their side.

***

Chen Feier took Zhang Man’s arm and was a little worried, “Man Man, I heard that Si Jin is chasing Li Wei these days, and with vigor. Do you think he’ll fall for her? She seems to be quite pretty.”

Zhang Man remembered Li Wei’s reaction and was in a good mood and bent her eyes: “No, he won’t.”

Chen Feier was a bit puzzled, “Man Man, when you first started school, you said you were going to chase him but now a semester has passed and you two should have a good relationship, right? So when are you going to confess your love?”

Zhang Man sighed in her heart.

Originally her intention was to go along with it until the time was right for both of them, and one day they would be naturally together.

After all, Li Wei’s situation is special. He has encountered so much and simply does not believe in feelings. She is worried that if she confesses too early, he will instead feel that she’s too hasty and not serious about it.

She is trying to use practical actions to let him feel that she likes him, and then integrate into his life little by little, so that he gets used to her presence in order not to think about those delusions of family and friends.

However, Si Jin’s appearance rang her alarm bells and sparked the desire for monopoly in her heart, and she knew it was time for her to speed up the process.

They made small talk as they walked back.

Outside the schoolyard are two rows of evergreen firs, which are the only lime green in a campus full of bleakness in winter. The fir is very tall, and its shape changes from wide to narrow from the bottom to the top. It is often used as a Christmas tree in the West, and at this time, with snow falling on it, it really does have the flavor of a Christmas tree.

The two walked out of the gravel path between two rows of tall firs and ran head-on into a tall, good-looking girl.

“Hey, your name is Zhang Man, right? It’s me, Si Jin.”

……

—Time goes back one class period.

It’s been a week since Si Jin transferred from Rong Huai. Naturally, her purpose in coming here is not to study.

Her initial thought was good, first send breakfast to get acquainted, and then reminisce together to catch up with the past and maybe it won’t take a week to take down his guard.

Who knew that things would go so badly – Xiao Li simply couldn’t be bothered and refused the breakfast she sent every day. She even suspected that after a week of going to brush her face, he might still not remember her.

For the first time in her life, Si Jin, the once-in-three-thousand-year beauty queen, began to have a headache for a man.

On the podium, the teacher was talking about mathematics that she would never be able to understand in her life.

Si Jin scratched her head and peeked out her phone, turning it on with boredom.

As a result, she scrolled down to the posting that had just gone viral like crazy. Inside there is a picture of her Xiao Li, reaching out with his left hand to rub a girl’s head, but the girl dodged it.

Si Jin zoomed in on the picture and then zoomed out, the photo of the person’s phone has a good resolution.

She was dazzled for a while at first. He truly is handsome and the expression on his face in the photo was so gentle.

Only in the next second did she react, gritting her teeth and thinking, “This girl is?”

So she asked a girl in her class who this girl was.

The girl quickly showed her the last “Bunny Ears Ice Beauty” posting, which included photos.

Si Jin narrowed her eyes, this one is a close-up and that girl does look…pretty good. Wait a minute—isn’t this girl the one who was standing next to Li Wei when she saw him at the mall last time? Besides, when she went to deliver breakfast to Li Wei these days, it seems that this girl is also sitting next to him at the same table.

Could it be that the two are already together? Does this mean that the handsome and gentle Xiao Li was snatched away from me?

No way! She had just arrived and was already a step late?

Proud as she is, interfering in the relationship of others and such are things that she will not do.

She had to go and ask first.

After lunch, she heard that a boy in her class noticed Zhang Man from the basketball court, so she immediately rushed over and blocked her at the exit.

***

“Hey, your name is Zhang Man, right? It’s me, Si Jin.”

The other girl did not wear a school uniform and her long curly hair was tied in a high ponytail, looking stylish and youthful.

Zhang Man felt Chen Feier next to her immediately raise her head and chest, as if she was about to roll up her sleeves and start tearing up the other side in the next second.

She pressed her hand and nodded her head indifferently: “Yes, I’m Zhang Man.”

Both are sizing each other up, Zhang Man has lived her life again and has a good temperament so she just looked at the other calmly.

But Si Jin is a lot more presumptuous, she practically moves in a slow-motion just like in movies, sizing her up from head to toe before giving her final verdict.

“……You’re good.”

Before Zhang Man had a chance to fire back, she came back with, “Let me ask you, are you Li Wei’s girlfriend?”

Zhang Man shook her head and nodded again, “No. But it will be soon.”

Si Jin’s heart rejoiced.

She raised an eyebrow: “Oh? So that means not now? Well, that’s good.” She added, “You won’t stand a chance, then.”

She said and waved her goodbye and walked away with a flourish.

Zhang Man pursed her lips. That girl is quite pretty and straightforward.

But when she thought of the cold and aloof youth, her heart did not worry at all.

He wouldn’t like someone else, right? Zhang Man silently blamed herself in her heart.

That youth, whether in his previous life or this life, had embraced her so tenderly as he looked into her eyes, hiding all his mistrust of the world and his inner darkness, giving her the most gentle side of him.

It’s been almost a semester since school started.

He really has changed a lot.

At the very beginning, he didn’t even bother to care when others hurt him and his world was nothing else but physics. It was as if nothing in this world could make him stay for a moment.

But such a person lost control because of her and beat the people who tried to bully her to death. Every night, he escorts her past a dim streetlight and a field of fallen leaves until she arrives downstairs of the building. Accompany her to the bar to solve her problems, accompany her to Uncle Xu’s house and act as a support.

He took the trouble to talk her through her problems, patted her back and comforted her when she was sad, and bought her Christmas presents.

In just one semester, there have been so many memories and interactions between her and him, a youth who, because of her, stepped into the mundane mortal world step by step.

Zhang Man is now incredibly sure that the youth she loves must also like her in his heart and, only like her.

How could she suspect that he would be easily snatched away?

……

Li Wei has little appetite after the punishment, so he sits in the classroom to review some of the contents of the “Theory of General Relativity”.

It is a derivation about the “Rindler Coordinates/Space” that came out long ago.

The tip of the pen pokes through the thin draft paper.

He closed the book in annoyance and looked out the window, filled with the girl’s white face, full of tears. Once again, his heart felt like it was being gripped tightly, and that dull pain was suffocating him.

He tried to think if he had done something wrong to make her so sad, so sad to the point that those tears seemed to bubble out as if they were worthless.

He pondered again why when she was sad, he was sadder. How can one person’s emotions be dictated by another person?

Such questions are more difficult to solve than extrapolating from a large area, and he could not find the only answer.

“Li Wei, no, Brother Li, can I ask you something?”

The youth heard a voice and turned his head.

The speaker is Liu Chang and he has some impression, the two are classmates in middle school.

Liu Chang rubbed his hands together and sat down on Zhang Man’s seat with a smile.

Perhaps because of guilt that time he hit Li Wei, resulting in his arm bone fracture, the hostility towards him has faded a lot.

He also heard a lot of rumors about him when he was in middle school, and looked at him as a maverick and a stranger who was very unpleasant, so he has never had a good look at him.

But after getting along for a long time, he found out that the dude really doesn’t care, or maybe a mentally ill person has a different mindset than an ordinary person.

Anyway, no matter what people’s attitude towards him is, whether they like him or isolate him, he has always kept to himself and concentrated on his own business.

Li Wei nodded expressionlessly, “Say.”

“That… Brother Li, I want to ask something about you… You act indifferent normally and have a bad reputation… er, h-how did you manage to capture our two school flowers…? Did you know that when Goddess Si Jin buys you breakfast every day, Sister Zhang always feels jealous about you receiving it just like that. There’s even a time when I just got out of class and saw her standing there with red eyes, and she must have been crying over it the whole time.”

The youth’s eyes stiffened slightly and it took a while before he asked, “Jealous?”

“Yeah, just during recess when Si Jin came over to bring you breakfast, I saw Sister Zhang’s eyes were about to spit fire, staring at that breakfast like she wanted to tear a hole. She’s definitely jealous.”

As soon as Liu Chang’s words fell, he saw that the youth, who had been expressionless before, seemed to have slightly hooked the corners of his mouth.

He rubbed his eyes and the youth’s smile had disappeared, so fast that he doubted if it was just his own illusion.

Well, it must be an illusion. He strongly suspected that this buddy had a problem with his “funny bone” or something since he hadn’t seen him smile for three years in middle school.

He was just going to continue to ask the root of the problem when his bitchy tablemate called him in a loud voice and said something very scary: “Hey, Liu Chang! You haven’t written your math homework yet, right? How can you chat there? It’s due at the end of lunch break!”

Liu Chang froze, remembering the math teacher Yang Min whose face is like the exterminator and shouted with a tremor: “I forgot, I f*cking forgot! Let me borrow yours!”

The other side rejected him coldly.

At that moment, the youth, whom he had hated for three years, suddenly shoved an exercise book into his hand.

“Mine.”

Liu Chang was flattered as he opened his mouth and picked up the extremely valuable notebook of assignments.

“Jealous?”

The youth looked sideways out the window, the corners of his lips gradually curled up.

The gentlest thing in the world is the March rain and the warm winter sun. At the moment the sunlight outside is just right, slanting into the windowsill and on it lays a shovelful of snow that melts silently in the sunlight.

It was so gentle—so gentle as if it could melt the ice inside him.