Shen Xingruo had no idea what was going on. She dreamed of Lu Xingyan last night. In her dream, he kept insisting on defending his virginity, speaking passionately and indignantly, almost as if he were going to march in the streets with a “Virginity Triumphs” banner on his forehead.
Shen Xingruo was so brainwashed that when she woke up and saw him, the words “virgin” naturally slipped out of her mouth. The two looked at each other quietly. The air was silent too. The weather was nice today, with sunlight filtering through the trees outside and casting beams of light through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The beams fell on his face, creating a play of light and shadow, making the fine hair transparent. On top of his head, it was a warm golden glow.
Suddenly, Shen Xingruo reached out and ruffled his hair. Her strap had fallen, and with this movement, it was lifted back up, revealing a snowy white half-arm.
Lu Xingyan was dazzled and his heart couldn’t help but beat faster. When Shen Xingruo finished touching his head and pulled back her hand, he stood up straight as if waking from a dream, coughed twice with his hand over his mouth, and looked around, saying incoherently, “It’s already noon, I’ve been calling you for half a day, get up and eat.”
“I know.” Shen Xingruo pretended to get up, still not fully awake, her voice a bit sleepy. Lu Xingyan didn’t dare to look at her, but he didn’t leave either. He found something to say, “Why don’t you ever close the door when you sleep? Don’t you have some basic awareness as a girl? And why do you sleep in so little clothing? It’s dangerous outside like this.”
Shen Xingruo sat up in bed, leaning against the headboard, and yawned. Suddenly, she seemed to have discovered something interesting, tilting her head and asking, “Lu Xingyan, are you shy?”
“You’re talking nonsense.” Lu Xingyan glanced at her and quickly turned away.
“You are shy.”
“What are you talking about? Haven’t you seen girls wear camisoles before?”
“Virgins are innocent.” Shen Xingruo answered her question, then lifted the blanket, preparing to get out of bed.
“Shen Xingruo, I warn you not to talk nonsense. Your brain is not clear when you just wake up, so I won’t argue with you. You’re not even a newbie pretending to be a veteran.” Lu Xingyan was a bit excited when it came to sensitive topics.
Shen Xingruo felt that he was behaving like a stubborn little chicken. If things didn’t go his way, he might peck at her. Then she remembered the scene in her dream where Lu Xingyan held up the virgin flag to brainwash her.
She compromised, putting on her shoes and saying casually, “Well, since we all lack experience, let’s not mock or hurt each other.”
Shen Xingruo suppressed her smile and educated him, “This is what we call a monetary transaction.”
“…”
“This is called fraud.”
The two walked towards the school from Xinghe Bay, chatting idly along the way. Shen Xingruo even treated him to a glass of strawberry milk. The strawberry milk cost eight yuan, and her red tea latte was twelve, adding up to exactly twenty.
As Lu Xingyan walked back to the dormitory alone, sipping on his milk tea, he thought to himself that while Shen Xingruo might be a bit short on money and sharp-tongued, she was still quite generous. She often treated him to milk tea, even though he always ended up with the basic eight-yuan variety.
When he returned to the dormitory, Li Chengfan and the others were there.
Seeing him with a pink cup of milk tea, Li Chengfan glanced up from his game and teased, “Brother Yan, you’ve become quite girly lately, drinking milk tea every few days, and such a girly flavor too.”
Lu Xingyan pretended to be indifferent. “Just ran into Shen Xingruo. She insisted I drink it.”
“You’re still pretending. Insisted? I can’t believe Shen Xingruo would force you to drink milk tea, even if you killed me!” Hebei pushed his glasses up and weakly added, “I think so too.”
Zhao Langming saw through his façade. “Stop bullshitting, can’t you hear he’s showing off?”
He stood up and snatched Lu Xingyan’s milk tea. “Let me try it too, see if I can get some of Shen Xingruo’s aura… Damn it!”
Before he could finish his sentence, he got kicked by Lu Xingyan. “Stop being ridiculous, eight yuan a cup, go buy your own.”
The atmosphere in Lu Xingyan’s dormitory was cheerful, but Shen Xingruo’s dormitory seemed unusually quiet.
Shi Qin hadn’t come over from home yet. When Shen Xingruo returned to her dormitory, only Zhai Jiajing and Li Ting were there.
She greeted Zhai Jiajing but ignored Li Ting.
Li Ting also ignored her, but he didn’t do anything strange either.
Shen Xingruo checked her belongings in the dormitory, everything was normal.
In the evening, Shen Xingruo wanted to hang out her towels, but there was no space left on the clothesline. Feeling Li Ting’s clothes, she found they were already dry. She turned around and asked, “Li Ting, your clothes are dry, can you take them down?”
Shen Xingruo had initially expected Li Ting to put on a sour face or pretend not to hear and refuse to take down his clothes. However, to her surprise, he simply put down his phone and silently collected his clothes.
The following week was much the same. They both ignored each other, but neither of them made things difficult for the other. Shen Xingruo found this situation agreeable and hoped it would continue.
Shi Qin was more easygoing. Since Shen Xingruo and Li Ting’s relationship had always been average, she thought their current behavior was normal.
Zhai Jiajing was more observant. In just a couple of days, she noticed that something was off.
On Wednesday afternoon, Lu Xingyan and his classmates had a basketball game with students from another class. Lu Xingyan managed to coax Shen Xingruo into watching the game with a week’s worth of milk tea, saying it would be more prestigious for them to cheer for the top-ranked grade. Shen Xingruo also took Shi Qin and Ruan Wen along.
Zhai Jiajing needed to do laundry, so she didn’t join them.
With both Shen Xingruo and Shi Qin out of the dormitory, Zhai Jiajing was fetching water to do laundry when she noticed Li Ting getting ready for bed. She casually asked, “Li Ting, what’s going on between you and Xingruo lately? It seems like you haven’t been talking much.”
Li Ting was fine not mentioning Shen Xingruo, but as soon as she was brought up, he became annoyed. He covered himself with the blanket and sneered, “Who wants to talk to her anyway!”
Zhai Jiajing paused in her actions of putting detergent into the bucket upon hearing this. “Did you guys fight?”
“No.” Li Ting didn’t want to elaborate, feeling embarrassed even just thinking about it.
But after stewing over it for nearly a week, she felt the urge to spill it out. Tossing and turning in bed, she suddenly sat up and recounted the incident at the parents’ meeting to Zhai Jiajing.
Of course, she downplayed the situation, only mentioning casually discussing things with Meng Feng and Shen Xingruo making a big deal out of it, even getting Lu Xingyan involved.
Zhai Jiajing listened thoughtfully. “Hmm… that’s a bit… ” She paused, then comforted Li Ting, “We’re all in the same dormitory, don’t dwell on it. Xingruo probably just misunderstood.”
“I wouldn’t dare to pick a fight with her. Plus, Lu Xingyan is backing her up! Besides, didn’t you see how her mom acted at the parents’ meeting? She’s not from an ordinary family. I, as a commoner, can’t afford to mess with her!”
“Don’t say that. Xingruo wouldn’t just do something to you without reason or evidence.”
Zhai Jiajing remembered something else. “Speaking of which, that Yang Fang from Class 2… The east gate is a blind spot, there’s not even any surveillance footage. If she had stubbornly denied it, Xingruo wouldn’t have had any evidence to make her drop out.”
“But fortunately, she didn’t have much courage and admitted it right away. Otherwise, Xingruo would have suffered, and the school might have even punished her instead.”
Wrapped in her blanket, Li Ting listened to Zhai Jiajing’s words and found some truth in them. She thought if it were her, she would have just denied ever meeting anyone, and then Shen Xingruo wouldn’t have had anything on her. If it were her…
Li Ting’s heart skipped a beat, and she pulled the blanket up a little higher, not saying anything more.
The week after the parents’ meeting was relatively relaxed, nothing major happened. The only noteworthy event was when the math teacher, Liang Dong, missed two steps while climbing stairs and sprained his foot. He had to take a week off, and his math class was taken over by Zeng Guiyu, the homeroom teacher of Class 2.
Shen Xingruo had clashed with Zeng Guiyu in the office before, and with her taking over their class after Shen Xingruo ranked first in the grade twice, Zeng Guiyu naturally didn’t have much fondness for her. However, Shen Xingruo was always attentive in class and never spoke out of turn. She could answer questions fluently when called upon and her assignments were always neat and well-done—there wasn’t a single fault to be found.
On Wednesday afternoon, there were two consecutive math classes. After class, Zeng Guiyu assigned a set of test papers as homework, emphasizing that they would be checked the next day and discussed in class.
The workload of the test paper was so heavy that the students in the class complained incessantly.
Shen Xingruo finished writing hers quickly during the first study session and even took the time during the break to help a few classmates with two of the harder questions.
During the second study session, she worked on other homework while urging Lu Xingyan to finish the math test paper. Lu Xingyan was always slow with his work, and Shen Xingruo occasionally poked him with her pen to hurry him along. He barely managed to finish before the end of the study session.
When the bell rang, he rubbed Shen Xingruo’s hair. “Miss Shen, I’m done. Can you take a look?”
Shen Xingruo pushed away his hand, took the test paper, and slipped it into her English book. “I’ll look at it later.”
“Okay, by the way, what do you want to eat tomorrow?”
Shen Xingruo glanced at him.
Lu Xingyan added, “I meant breakfast. You help me with the test paper, and I’ll bring you breakfast as a thank you for tutoring me.”
“Oh, then yogurt and sticky rice chicken.”
“Miss, why ‘chicken’? Let’s keep it civil, okay? Do you know what I mean? Why are you so vulgar?”
Shen Xingruo gave him a side glance, stood up to collect her books, and casually dropped the word “nerve” before leaving the classroom with her roommate.
Her voice was calm.
Lu Xingyan didn’t retort. He leaned against the wall, twirling his pen in hand, his gaze following her as she and her roommate walked out of the classroom.
Since hearing Zhao Langming’s bold speculation during the last evening study session, Li Chengfan has been paying more attention to Lu Xingyan and Shen Xingruo.
A few days ago, Lu Xingyan had praised a cup of strawberry milk as if it were the nectar of the gods, and now he was grinning at Shen Xingruo’s back.
Li Chengfan felt it was a confirmation of his suspicion.
He tapped Lu Xingyan’s shoulder with his backpack strap. “Brother Yan, stop grinning. Your goddess has left.”
Lu Xingyan glanced up, immediately wiping the smile off his face.
Li Chengfan couldn’t help but ask, “Hey, Brother Yan, do you have… any inclinations or something? How come you like Shen Xingruo?”
“What nonsense are you spouting? Who said I like her? Get lost.”
“Still denying it? Shen Xingruo scolds you, and you still smile. I’m just saying, you always curse my mom and talk nonsense…”
Lu Xingyan gave him a cold stare. “If you keep blabbering, I can curse your ancestors for eighteen generations.”
Back in the dorm, after Shen Xingruo finished washing up, she showed Lu Xingyan the test paper.
She searched for hers but realized she had forgotten to bring it.
Fortunately, she had just gone through it, so she remembered it well enough to correct her mistakes, jotting down the solving steps with a pencil beside each.
Ms. Zeng’s teaching style was like a sizzling chili pepper frying in oil, crackling away without the finesse of Mr. Liang. Ruan Wen had mentioned to her several times in the past couple of days that Ms. Zeng’s teaching method was too difficult to adapt to. Many students in the class couldn’t keep up, and with Lu Xingyan’s understanding, he probably wouldn’t even be on the second question when Ms. Zeng reached the tenth.
After finishing grading Lu Xingyan’s test paper, the lights were just about to be turned off. Shen Xingruo packed her bag, stretched her neck, and went straight to bed.
Perhaps it was because summer was approaching, the weather had been clear all week, and Thursday was especially sunny. Shen Xingruo arrived at school just in time, feeling the warmth of the sun, so she spent the early self-study session with her books propped up, squinting for half an hour.
By the time math class started, Shen Xingruo was feeling a bit more alert. Ms. Zeng asked everyone to take out their test papers and place them on their desks for inspection.
Shen Xingruo handed her test paper to Lu Xingyan and then searched for his. She had only brought back her English book to the dorm last night. She remembered very clearly that after Lu Xingyan finished writing his test, she had placed it back inside her English book and then into her backpack, as she had turned on the flashlight on her phone specifically for this purpose. But now, Lu Xingyan’s test paper was nowhere to be found.
They had recently moved to the third row of the first group, and Ms. Zeng quickly reached their desk during her inspection.
She glanced at Lu Xingyan’s test paper, then scrutinized Shen Xingruo, asking, “Shen Xingruo, where is your test paper?”
—It was missing.
Shen Xingruo already had a faint guess in her heart. When her gaze swept over to where Li Ting was sitting, she saw Li Ting with an expression of anticipation.
Caught off guard by her cold gaze, Li Ting momentarily lost composure.
At that moment, Lu Xingyan pushed the test paper onto Shen Xingruo’s desk. “Teacher, this is Shen Xingruo’s. I didn’t write mine.”