A Game?
It was time to change seats for the new semester.
After the Lantern Festival, the weather in Nancheng hadn’t warmed up yet.
On the first day of school, there was no early morning self-study. Zhou Anran, wanting to arrive at school early, crawled out of her warm bed early in the morning. However, because Yan Xingqian failed to wake up early, they ultimately reached the classroom just before 7:30.
Before entering, Yan Xingqian, arm-in-arm with Zhou Anran, was chatting about the seat change: “Remember how my mom said she wanted you to help me with math and science? She called Teacher Gao. Our seats probably won’t change, but I wonder where Xiaowen and He Mingyu will move to.”
Zhou Anran smiled and replied, “You’re not concerned about Dong Chen?”
Yan Xingqian scoffed lightly, “Why should I care about him? The further away he is, the better.”
As her last word fell, Zhou Anran stepped through the back door. Momentarily forgetting that he might have changed seats too, her gaze habitually went to the second row, sixth seat.
The next second, her steps abruptly halted.
Chen Luobai was still in his original seat. After a winter break, the boy’s hair was cut much shorter, looking fresh and handsome.
But Zhou Anran’s attention wasn’t on this at all.
Next to Chen Luobai, in the seat that may or may not still belong to Zhu Ran, sat an unfamiliar girl.
The girl’s hair was tied high in a ponytail, her features striking and eye-catching.
She sat sideways facing Chen Luobai, speaking to him about something inaudible, but her eyes were full of bright laughter.
The boy was also sitting sideways, his back to the rear door.
Zhou Anran couldn’t see his expression, but for some reason, even though his voice wasn’t particularly loud, mixed in the noisy classroom, it was easily caught by her ears.
“Is that so?” A lazy tone, tinged with a hint of laughter.
A cold wind blew in from outside, and Zhou Anran suddenly felt a chill from head to toe.
Yan Xingqian, following behind her, also saw this scene as soon as she entered, and softly let out a “Wow.”
She leaned close to Zhou Anran’s ear and whispered gossip: “No girl has ever sat next to Chen Luobai before. Could it be that our school’s most handsome boy got himself a girlfriend over the winter break?”
The possibility Zhou Anran dared not imagine was bluntly pointed out by her.
A surge of bitterness welled up in her heart. She withdrew her gaze, not daring to look anymore: “Let’s go check our seats first.”
Zhou Anran could barely remember how the seats were changed that day.
She only recalled occasionally glancing over there inadvertently or involuntarily, and each time she saw him smiling and chatting with that pretty girl.
It wasn’t until the seating arrangement was finalized that Zhou Anran realized Lou Yiqi and Zhang Shuxian were sitting in front of her.
Zhang Shuxian came in after they had settled into their new seats. Before that, Lou Yiqi had been sitting with her head down, writing something.
Zhou Anran didn’t sit down immediately.
The desks and chairs had been vacant in the classroom for a month and were covered in dust. When Zhang Shuxian arrived, she was wiping her desk with a wet wipe.
Being close, even though Zhang Shuxian lowered her voice slightly, the conversation from the front inevitably drifted over.
“What’s going on?” Zhang Shuxian had the same gossipy tone as Yan Xingqian earlier. “Did Chen Luobai get a girlfriend?”
Zhou Anran’s desk-wiping motion suddenly lost control, the wet wipe sliding across the edge of the desk, her hand bumping against the corner, sending a sharp pain.
“Don’t make things up,” Lou Yiqi’s tone sounded a bit harsh. “That’s not his girlfriend.”
Zhang Shuxian was curious: “How do you know she’s not his girlfriend? This girl isn’t from our school. I would have noticed someone so pretty before. She must have been brought by Chen Luobai. If he brought her to school, what else could she be but his girlfriend?”
Lou Yiqi didn’t even look up: “He didn’t bring her.”
Zhang Shuxian pretended to be dissatisfied: “What’s going on? If you know, just say it. Don’t make me drag every word out of you.”
Lou Yiqi finally put down her pen, as if looking back for a moment, her expression very calm: “That girl is Zong Kai’s childhood friend. She’s a transfer student, in the same class as Zong Kai. When I arrived, Zong Kai and Zhu Ran were sitting in the back row, all four of them chatting together. Later, the girl whined in a coquettish voice that she wanted ice cream, so Zong Kai went down to buy it for her. Zhu Ran also wanted to buy something, so he went along.”
Zhang Shuxian: “Oh, I see. I thought most of the girls in our school were about to have their hearts broken.”
Whether it was from the effort of wiping the desk or from overhearing the conversation in front, Zhou Anran felt her hands and feet slowly warming up again.
As if to confirm Lou Yiqi’s words, just as Zhou Anran finished wiping her desk, she heard Zhu Ran’s voice from behind.
“Luo, catch!”
Zhou Anran, under the pretense of wiping her chair, turned her head to see Zhu Ran standing at the back door, throwing a bottle of cola toward Chen Luobai.
The boy caught it steadily with his hand. Leaning back in his chair, facing the person at the door, he smiled and cursed: “What’s wrong with you? Would it kill you to bring it in properly?”
Zhu Ran sauntered in, swinging the bag carelessly: “Don’t you think this looks cooler?”
Chen Luobai casually placed the cola on the desk: “It’d be cooler if you injured someone and had to pay their medical bills.”
“Why aren’t you opening it? After paying you back, I barely have any pocket money left. I even remembered to buy you an extra bottle. This friendship is moving heaven and earth,” Zhu Ran said as he reached for the bottle. “Let me open it for you.”
Chen Luobai laughed and stretched out his foot to kick him: “You think I’m an idiot?”
Zhu Ran quickly jumped away to dodge.
Zong Kai shook his head behind them, not getting involved between these two. He just walked to the seat next to Chen Luobai and handed the ice cream to the girl.
The girl took it with a smile, seeming to glance to the side again: “Why did you only buy one?”
Zong Kai gently ruffled her hair: “You think everyone’s like you, demanding ice cream in the dead of winter?”
The girl wrinkled her nose at him: “Winter is exactly when ice cream tastes best.”
Zong Kai looked at his watch: “Class is about to start. We should head back.”
The girl made an “Oh” sound, slowly opening the ice cream lid, and glanced to the side again: “Well… see you, Chen Luobai.”
Zhu Ran, standing behind her, complained: “You only say goodbye to Chen Luobai? Can’t you see me standing right here?”
The girl took a bite of ice cream, then seemingly finding it too cold to hold, shoved the container into Zong Kai’s hands: “You’re too noisy. Maybe it’s better not to say goodbye to you.”
Zhu Ran: “As if I care that much.”
Zhou Anran wiped her chair over and over, waiting until the girl left following Zong Kai before turning to stuff the dirty wet wipes into a small garbage bag nearby to throw away.
But her heart still couldn’t quite cheer up.
For some unknown reason, Chen Luobai and Zhu Ran’s seats hadn’t changed this time, still in the last row of the second group.
She and Yan Xingqian had also moved to the second group, sitting in the third row. She was in the fourth column from the inside, while he was in the third column closer to the door.
The distance between Zhou Anran’s position and his was considerably closer than before, but turning back to look at him was less convenient than before.
The first day of school was always noisy.
But Class 2 was, after all, an advanced class. After rounds of admonitions from Teacher Gao and various subject teachers, they quickly settled down and fully entered study mode on the second day.
All the students began to bury themselves in their studies, just like last semester.
But Zhou Anran knew something was different.
When she turned back, she could no longer easily see him like last semester, and the group around him had changed from the relatively fixed trio of last semester to four people, now including a girl.
School is always the place where all kinds of news spread the fastest.
Within a few days, Zhou Anran learned that Zong Kai’s childhood friend was called Yin Yizhen. Reportedly, her family was also very wealthy. Even the small hairpin she casually wore was worth tens of thousands, and she had won some impressive piano awards.
She quickly became the new goddess in the hearts of many boys at No. 2 High School.
But Zhou Anran couldn’t help feeling that Yin Yizhen’s attention towards Chen Luobai seemed somewhat greater than towards Zong Kai, with whom she had grown up.
On the way to lunch during breaks, when the four of them went out to eat together, Zhou Anran always saw that although Yin Yizhen stood next to Zong Kai, her gaze tended to lean more towards Chen Luobai’s side.
Whenever Zong Kai came to their class to find Chen Luobai, Yin Yizhen often followed along.
She didn’t get along well with Zhu Ran, so she often stood behind Chen Luobai or sat in the seat of the boy in front of Chen Luobai, her snow-white hand, adorned with a delicate bracelet, resting on the boy’s messily piled books.
Fortunately, Chen Luobai had never been alone with her, nor had he ever actively gone to Class 3 to find her.
Therefore, among these chaotic rumors, none related to her and Chen Luobai had any hint of ambiguity yet.
The first week of school flew by in the blink of an eye.
By the second week of this semester, Nancheng’s weather finally warmed up significantly. The temperature jumped from a few degrees which left people shivering with cold to highs in the twenties, with no transition.
On Wednesday afternoon, Zhou Anran accompanied Yan Xingqian to the rice noodle shop outside the east gate for a meal.
On the way back to the classroom after eating, Yan Xingqian unzipped her school uniform jacket and fanned herself with her hand: “Anran, I think I’m about to get heatstroke. Many people in our class have already changed into summer uniforms. My mom talks about ‘staying warm in spring and cool in autumn,’ and only allows me to change into the spring uniform. She even insists I wear thermal underwear. I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to the bathroom to change. Will you come with me?”
Zhou Anran, being sensitive to cold, hadn’t dared to change directly into the summer uniform and was wearing the spring uniform jacket like Yan Xingqian.
Fortunately, Mrs. He hadn’t forced her to wear thermal underwear.
She wasn’t that afraid of the cold yet.
Zhou Anran also helped fan her a couple of times, then tried to persuade her: “The temperature at night is still quite low. Try to bear with it today and don’t change. The sudden change from hot to cold can easily cause a cold. The temperature will rise again tomorrow, so you can stop wearing it then.”
Yan Xingqian pointed at herself: “No way, look at me.”
Zhou Anran turned her head to see that Yan Xingqian was covered in sweat, and couldn’t help but feel sympathetic: “Let me treat you to a soda first. If you really can’t stand it after that, then you can change.”
Despite complaining about the heat, Yan Xingqian still clung to Zhou Anran’s arm affectionately: “You promised, okay? Let’s hurry to the supermarket then.”
The two walked towards the school’s small supermarket.
As they passed the basketball court, Yan Xingqian stopped: “Hey, Anran, wait. Look over there, what’s going on? Is someone fighting?”
Even before they reached the basketball court, Zhou Anran had glanced that way several times.
After confirming that Chen Luobai wasn’t on the court, she didn’t pay any more attention.
She didn’t know if it was bad luck from the seat arrangement at the beginning of the semester.
Since the start of this semester, her chances of encountering him outside the classroom have greatly decreased.
Just like their seats, they were like two parallel lines with no possibility of intersection.
Yan Xingqian always liked to join in on the excitement. At this moment, she forgot about both her thermal underwear and the soda, pulling Zhou Anran to run to the edge of the basketball court.
From a distance, Zhou Anran had thought it looked like a group of people fighting, but up close, she realized it was a group surrounding one boy.
The boy in the middle looked familiar – it was their class’s sports representative, Tang Jianrui.
Yan Xingqian recognized him too, her expression changing slightly as she asked, “Isn’t that Tang Jianrui in the middle?”
Zhou Anran nodded, just about to suggest they go find a teacher, when she saw Zhu Ran run past her like a small cannonball, charging into the basketball court.
“F*ck! What the hell are you guys doing?!”
Zhou Anran’s heart skipped a beat, and she instinctively turned her head.
Sure enough, she saw Chen Luobai standing not far behind her.
The boy had also changed into his summer uniform this week. Whether due to the heat or rushing over, there were fine beads of sweat on his exposed arms.
He usually smiled quite often, but this was the first time Zhou Anran had seen his expression so cold and stern.
Chen Luobai’s gaze still hadn’t fallen on her at all. He strode past her, taking large steps into the court, his voice also slightly cold.
“Zhu Ran, stop.”
On the court, Zhu Ran had already grabbed the collar of one of the opposing boys’ uniforms, as if he hadn’t heard Chen Luobai’s words.
However, several of the boys surrounding Tang Jianrui, who seemed to be from another class, stepped back a bit.
Chen Luobai called out again, his voice deep.
“Zhu Ran.”
Zhu Ran finally let go and turned to look at him: “Why are you stopping me? Are we just going to let them bully our classmates?”
Chen Luobai didn’t respond directly. He bent down to pick up the basketball on the ground, walked to the center of the crowd, and half-shielded both Zhu Ran and Tang Jianrui behind him.
After returning to the classroom that day, Zhou Anran learned the cause of the incident from other classmates.
That afternoon, Tang Jianrui had taken a basketball and was waiting for Chen Luobai and the others to come play on the third court of the first row. But with the weather turning warm and sunny, the other courts were all occupied. While Tang Jianrui was picking up the ball, several boys from Class 10 had taken over that court without even a word.
Tang Jianrui went to confront them, and a conflict arose.
At this moment, Zong Kai was standing at the edge of the court with Yin Yizhen, not approaching.
Chen Luobai stood alone in front of Zhu Ran and Tang Jianrui, facing off against seven or eight boys from Class 10 by himself, yet his aura didn’t seem to lose out at all.
Standing not far away, Zhou Anran saw him glance back at Tang Jianrui and Zhu Ran.
“Of course, we can’t let our classmates be bullied for nothing,” Chen Luobai casually bounced the orange-red basketball in his hand, slowly turning back, his tone cold, “But since this is a conflict on the basketball court, let’s settle it with basketball.”
In the setting sun, the tall boy in the blue and white school uniform, his handsome face slightly cold, raised his chin slightly at the leader from Class 6: “How about a game?”