As Shen Xingruo turned to enter the bathroom, Lu Xingyan remained lost in thought for a long while.
—Shen Xingruo kissed him voluntarily.
Although it was just a kiss on the cheek, it was different from the last time when she forcefully collided with his face. As they say in language and literature, actions have emotions and colors. So, this could also be considered an action with emotional color.
For some reason, although it was just a gentle touch, Lu Xingyan felt the soft sensation on his left cheek lingering.
Just as Lu Xingyan was lost in his thoughts, Hanhan suddenly stopped crying silently.
—He was just too tired.
A two-and-a-half-year-old child’s mind was just incomprehensible. When he was at home, whenever he pouted, his parents and grandparents would get nervous and give him whatever he wanted.
But when he came out to play, the adults ignored him.
Feeling tired and aggrieved at this moment, with tears in his eyes, he made a face at Lu Xingyan, then climbed down from the bed and went to get his toys.
The child’s legs were short, and he wobbled as he walked.
When he tried to walk back carrying a bunch of toys, he lost his balance and fell backward with a thud, landing on his bottom.
Just as Shen Xingruo emerged from the bathroom, she happened to witness this scene.
The sound of Hanhan’s fall also snapped Lu Xingyan out of his reverie.
But before Shen Xingruo and Lu Xingyan could go over to help, Hanhan, showing great resilience, got up on his own. Then, with red eyes, he said in a childish voice, “Uncle, sister, I’m hurt, take me to the hospital!”
“…”
“…”
Lu Xingyan glanced at Shen Xingruo and then stepped forward to help Hanhan pick up his toys. He chuckled lightly and teased, “You’re something.”
He tossed the toys onto the bed and rubbed the little bump on Hanhan’s head before extending his hand. “Come here, call me brother. Big brother will play with you.”
With someone to play with, the tears in Hanhan’s eyes immediately disappeared. He nodded his little watermelon-like head and changed his address without any principle, “Brother!”
After calling out, he smiled, revealing a row of cute little teeth.
This little Hanhan was usually quite pampered at home, especially when playing games, he paid special attention to the sense of ritual and collective participation. The whole family had to be together.
So, after Lu Xingyan agreed to play with him, he was still not entirely satisfied and stubbornly dragged Shen Xingruo over.
Now that everyone was present, Hanhan thought for a moment and then pointed at Lu Xingyan with a somewhat authoritative demeanor, “You’re the monster!”
Lu Xingyan raised an eyebrow, shifted his gaze slightly, and then asked, “Then what about her?”
“She’s Ultraman!”
Without hesitation, little Hanhan looked at Shen Xingruo and answered.
Lu Xingyan: “Why am I the monster and she’s Ultraman? I don’t want to be a monster. Let her be the monster, and let’s defeat her together, okay?”
Hanhan’s vocabulary was still limited, and he had some difficulty understanding longer sentences. After Lu Xingyan’s explanation, he nodded in confusion, but after a few seconds of thinking, he shook his head vigorously, stubbornly insisting, “No, no, no! You’re the monster! Sister is pretty! She’s Ultraman!”
Lu Xingyan raised an eyebrow, pretending to reluctantly agree. Then, without warning, he pulled Shen Xingruo closer and hugged her.
He then turned to Hanhan and said, “Look, I’ve already caught Ultraman.”
Hanhan blinked his grape-like eyes.
He felt something was a little off, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was.
Although Lu Xingyan had some ulterior motives in taking advantage of the situation, he also feared that Shen Xingruo might slap him, so he hugged her lightly, almost as if it was just a formality, and only gently held onto her waist, not being too intimate.
He quickly let go, not waiting for Shen Xingruo’s reaction. Instead, he picked up Hanhan and used him as a shield, joining him in playing with toy helicopters.
For most of the sunny afternoon, the two of them inexplicably found themselves relegated to being playmates, following Hanhan’s orders.
The child was energetic, and his thinking was quite imaginative.
After finishing a round of playing doctors, Hanhan then instructed them to play prisoners.
He solemnly pointed his toy gun at them, ordering them to lie down on the bed and put their hands up in a surrendering posture.
Lying side by side on the bed, the two of them were very close to each other, with their hands almost touching.
When Shen Xingruo tried to get up, Hanhan pointed his toy gun at her again, sternly ordering, “Don’t move!”
Shen Xingruo: “…”
Lu Xingyan glanced at Shen Xingruo, who was lying down again, and casually remarked, “What’s wrong with lying down? This is the easiest game.”
Seeing Lu Xingyan shamelessly devoid of any dignity and still feeling comfortable, Shen Xingruo pushed his face away. “Shut up.”
After spending the entire afternoon playing, in the evening, Hanhan, the little emperor, was finally picked up by his grandmother, along with their pet peacock.
Before leaving, Lu Xingyan instructed Hanhan to take good care of the peacock, saying it was his precious son.
Although Hanhan didn’t quite understand how a person could give birth to a peacock, he nodded solemnly.
The peacock seemed to understand human language and chirped along.
Lu Xingyan patted its feathers. “Alright, stop chirping. Your voice is worse than a chicken’s. Be quiet in the future.”
With everything arranged properly, Shen Xingruo and Lu Xingyan packed their bags and moved into Star River Bay two days before the start of the new school year.
They lived next door to each other.
Both rooms had windows with outward-extending ledges, facing the same direction, and they were very close to each other. All they needed to do was pull back the curtains to chat.
If it weren’t for the invisible burglar-proof windows, Lu Xingyan could easily climb over.
On regular days, after Shen Xingruo finished bathing, she liked to go out onto the balcony to enjoy the breeze.
After moving to Star River Bay, she continued this habit. However, she didn’t expect to run into Lu Xingyan playing games on the balcony as soon as she walked out.
Lu Xingyan knew about Shen Xingruo’s habit and deliberately sat there waiting.
Seeing Shen Xingruo in a floral spaghetti strap nightgown that she hadn’t worn in a long time, he played with his phone lazily and teased, “You’re wearing so little again.”
His gaze lingered on her chest and her smooth, white legs the longest.
Shen Xingruo gave him a cold glance and went back inside without saying a word.
After waiting for nearly half an hour and not seeing Shen Xingruo come out again, Lu Xingyan thought she wouldn’t come out anymore. So he went to the living room to play online games.
When he returned to his room to sleep at night, he glanced at the balcony and noticed that Shen Xingruo had covered the window facing his balcony with a bunch of English words.
Starting from “abandon” and going all the way to “nest,” they were all small cards with high-frequency vocabulary.
In between, there was even a section of “The Song of the Pipa,” which he couldn’t memorize for the life of him.
Damn…
“Hey, Shen Xingruo.” He vaguely saw a figure behind the words and “The Song of the Pipa,” probably sitting down, “Shen Xingruo?”
She ignored him.
Lu Xingyan was at a loss for words. He originally wanted to knock on Shen Xingruo’s door, but since he had already turned around, he suddenly thought of something. He paused for a moment, then stood by the window and lazily said, “Hey, Teacher Shen, do you want me to recite ‘The Song of the Pipa’ for you every day? Sure, I can do that.”
He didn’t start from the beginning but directly from the middle, “Gently plucking and slowly strumming, starting with ‘The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Robe,’ and then ‘The Six Beauties.'”
Lu Xingyan’s tone was not very serious.
Reciting a serious classical text, but only reciting a small part of it and picking and choosing, gave off an unserious vibe.
It’s a bit strange. “The silver vase cracks open, water and paste burst forth; the iron rider bursts out, swords and spears clang…” Suddenly, the poster of “The Pipa Song” was torn down, and Shen Xingru, through a gap about the size of an A5 paper, stared at him expressionlessly and said, “Full of yellow waste in your mind.”
While Lu Xingyan was reciting, she had already searched on Baidu.
After delivering her cold rebuke, she quickly disappeared. When she returned, she pasted another poster, “The Peach Blossom Spring,” over the original “The Pipa Song.” Lu Xingyan burst out laughing, “Are you sure, Teacher Shen, you want me to read this?”
“Meeting suddenly the peach blossom grove, on both banks for several hundred steps, in between no tangled trees, fragrant grass lush…”
With a sharp sound, “The Peach Blossom Spring” was torn down again, replaced by another one, “The Hut in the Autumn Wind.” Lu Xingyan finally fell silent.
On the second day of moving into Xinghe Bay, the day before school started, Shen Xingruo was summoned back to school by Wang Youfu with a royal decree, ahead of time.
— This was a common treatment for good students and those favored by teachers.
Lu Xingyan wanted to go together, but Shen Xingruo arranged for him to complete a set of math practice papers, with a time limit of 120 minutes, and even put an hourglass on his desk. They were promoted to the third teaching building this semester.
The Third Teaching Building was located in a relatively quiet corner of the Mingli campus. The building was brick-red, much older than the First and Second Teaching Buildings, but also much quieter.
Teachers also collectively moved their offices.
It was precisely because of the relocation that Wang Youfu asked the class monitors, the class representatives, and a few good students to come over and help.
Shen Xingru’s assigned task was quite easy, just sitting in the office, enjoying the air conditioning, and pasting the grades and comments on the student handbook for Wang Youfu.
The final exam scores had already been released.
Shen Xingruo once again easily secured first place in the grade, but the difficulty of the final exam was not great. She was only five points behind He Siyue, who ranked second in the grade.
After checking her grades, Shen Xingruo scrolled down to the very end of the class rankings.
Then she scrolled slowly upwards.
379
384
415
427
To 450, she didn’t see Lu Xingyan. She was still wondering if Lu Xingyan’s grades hadn’t been recorded yet. Then she scrolled up again —
Lu Xingyan, total score 488, class ranking 49, grade ranking 1191.
Although he remained within the bottom dozen in the class, his score of 488 was a significant leap compared to his previous performance. If this score were in an ordinary class, it would probably be considered average to slightly below average.
At this moment, after organizing a stack of documents, Wang Youfu picked up his insulated cup and took a sip of tea, then leaned over to look at the grade sheet. He pointed to Lu Xingyan’s score with satisfaction and said, “Lu Xingyan has made great progress this time. He used to fail almost every time in political studies, but this time he scored seventy!”
“I even took out his exam paper to have a look, you know. Although many parts are still nonsensical, you can still see that he put effort into answering seriously. He even wrote several points for each essay question! This kid might not be serious about studying the right stuff, but he understands a lot of crooked ways. He adds a line about adhering to truth, practicality, and the leadership of the Communist Party of China to every major question…”
“…,” Shen Xingruo nodded without interrupting.
Wang Youfu continued, “Oh, I rearranged the seating plan for this semester. Shen Xingru, do you still want to sit with Lu Xingyan?”
“I was thinking of moving him, but seeing him sitting with you, it’s a good example for him. He improved a lot in the final exams, so I haven’t moved him yet. I want to know what you think. I think it’s good for you two cousins to sit together. If it were someone else, they wouldn’t be able to keep him in check!”
Ever since the last parent-teacher meeting, Wang Youfu had mistakenly believed that Shen Xingruo and Lu Xingyan were cousins. Previously, Shen Guangyao had come to talk to him and mentioned that Shen Xingruo was now living at the Lu’s, but without further explanation. Wang Youfu didn’t inquire further and simply turned his guess into a fact.
“…,” Shen Xingruo responded calmly.
“Wang Laoshi, Lu Xingyan and I are not cousins.”
“?”
Just then, He Siyue and Zhai Jiajing entered the office one after the other. Shen Xingruo didn’t elaborate further, simply saying, “Wang Laoshi, there’s no need to change, it’s fine.”