Everyone was taken aback, and for a moment, no one dared to speak.
Beijiao blinked, struggling to regain his composure. He raised his hand and gently rubbed his face with the back of it. The stinging pain made him wince and hiss, “Damn,” his eyes darkening.
He clenched his back teeth against the inside of his cheek, his tongue pressing against the spot that throbbed painfully. He guessed his cheek must at least be swollen and bruised, otherwise it wouldn’t hurt so much from just a touch.
Putting his hand down, he thought he should get something cold to apply to it. He placed both hands on his knees, preparing to stand up—
Before he could fully rise, barely lifting his butt off the ground, his vision darkened as the culprit, that woman, came rushing toward him like a gust of wind, grabbing his chin and lifting his face to inspect it from side to side.
Her fingertips were soft.
The movement was too fast for him to react before he was already caught.
At this very moment, seeing the red marks on his face already speckled with tiny red dots from subcutaneous bleeding caused by the basketball’s texture, she sucked in a sharp breath.
“Does it hurt?”
She leaned in close, her breath tickling the tip of his nose… her wrist swayed just under his breath, the sweet scent from this unfamiliar female making him instinctively furrow his brow.
“Are you okay? Besides your face, does anything else hurt? Does your head hurt? Did the ball hit your face or your head?”
A string of questions came tumbling down.
The familiar scent of her shampoo prevented him from instinctively pushing her away—
In the darkness last night, he had personally rinsed the foam from her hair, and this morning, she had used the same shampoo.
A brief silence followed.
The boy, whose chin was still in her grip, suddenly snorted. “Shouldn’t that question be for you to ask me?”
His chin was still held by her, making it hard for him to speak clearly.
“Are you the one who’s fine?”
He slowly stopped smiling, his warm yet somewhat rough large hand grasping her wrist—
“With a normal mind, you’d throw a ball at me?”
Her skin felt like a snake’s—smooth, pale, and slightly cool even in this summer heat…
Yet his hands were rough, with calluses on his palms from frequently taking on odd jobs, and now slightly sticky from wiping sweat.
When Jiang Ran’s hand was grabbed, she wasn’t used to someone being so close, and her heart skipped a beat as she instinctively tried to pull her hand back—
However, when she tried hard, he gripped tighter. She tugged again, but couldn’t pull her hand free—instead, a faint red mark was left on her arm… it didn’t hurt, and he hadn’t used enough force to hurt her.
He just wouldn’t let her escape.
She looked at him somewhat nervously.
He curved his lips into a smile, though it held no warmth.
“Still upset that Song Die didn’t apologize?”
That was hitting below the belt.
At this moment, Jiang Ran felt her image in this kid’s eyes must be worse than that of pigs or dogs—
He had been isolated, bullied, and had nowhere to live, yet she still helped those people bully him, favoring Song Die so much that she even threw a ball at him.
Who in their right mind would do such a thing?
“I didn’t mean to,” Jiang Ran lowered her voice, looking at him now with genuine concern in her eyes, “Let me take you to the infirmary, okay?”
Her voice was soft, almost coaxing.
But Beijiao wasn’t buying it.
He resumed his usual cold and distant expression, his black eyes, like obsidian dipped in ice, flickering slightly. He let go of her wrist and turned his head away, refusing to look at her any longer.
“Never mind.”
He said.
His completely uncooperative and standoffish attitude immediately reverted to the way he had been the first day they met—
Perhaps he even disliked her more than he had then.
It was like going back to the Stone Age, where humans were just beginning to try to make fire by drilling wood…
It might even be more difficult than that.
Jiang Ran pressed her lips together, not knowing quite what to do.
Turning her head, she found that at some point, everyone had gathered around. Xie Yu and Song Die stood closest together, and it was unclear whether they had heard their earlier conversation.
But they probably had.
Because at this moment, Song Die, arms crossed, looked at the boy’s swollen and reddened side of the face, then at the somewhat flustered Jiang Ran, frowning.
“Beijiao, that’s enough,” he said in a low voice. “You know she didn’t do it on purpose.”
Upon hearing this, Beijiao stood up, patting nonexistent dust off himself, his face marked but his expression lazy, his eyes icy.
He didn’t rush to respond to Song Die but instead glanced toward the door.
At this moment, the manager of A University’s basketball team sensed something was off and, with a stiff spine, couldn’t help but call his name. Then he stammered, “So, about the second half of the friendly match later—”
“I’m not playing anymore.” The boy, who had been called out, raised his hand again and rubbed his face with the back of it. This time he tasted a faint metallic tang, possibly from biting his lip. He slowly exhaled and looked up. “Anyway, your captain said you have plenty of substitutes.”
Everyone turned their eyes to Song Die again, the manager of the basketball team hesitating to speak.
In the ensuing silence, Beijiao finally turned around, giving Song Die a full once-over—the guy who had stood up for Jiang Ran despite his own tarnished reputation—and refrained from further sarcasm.
He merely said slowly, “You were the one who provoked me first, so why are you playing the good guy now? We all know you and Jiang Ran are on the same side; you don’t need to keep emphasizing it.”
With that, he reached out and pushed aside the person blocking his way—
The innocent bystander didn’t even have time to react before he felt a great force easily shove him aside. By the time he steadied himself, he could only see the boy’s retreating back.
Hands in his pockets.
He was alone.
The tragic atmosphere was instantly overwhelming.
…
Beijiao went to the infirmary by himself.
…After all, even if the sky falls, he still needs his face.
The university infirmary was unlike a middle school’s. The teacher on duty, who was an adult dealing with various legal adults, had seen many things. When Beijiao pushed the door open, the teacher was playing on his phone. Upon lifting his head and seeing his face, the teacher exclaimed, “Wow! Did you get into a fight?”
Beijiao replied concisely: “Hit by a ball.”
The teacher put on gloves, touched and pressed around his face, and checked a series of visual nerves, concluding that it was just a superficial injury.
Beijiao took the mirror and medicine to one side to apply the ointment, one leg curled up on the bed, the other naturally hanging off the edge. Just as he raised the mirror, the door was pushed open from outside. He turned his head for a glance, then immediately withdrew his gaze.
“Why are you here?”
“Who else did you expect?”
Zhang Liang had heard that the second half of the friendly match was temporarily canceled and went to investigate the situation before following him here. As he entered, he saw his roommate’s handsome face covered in bruises, spitting blood-stained saliva into the nearby trash can while lowering his head.
“How serious is it?”
“Do you want to try getting hit by a basketball?”
In response to his roommate’s concern, he gave a nonchalant reply while picking up the mirror to examine his face from different angles—
Looking at the reddish-blue bruises on his face, he then looked down at the brown iodine in his hand, genuinely hesitating to apply it.
As he was contemplating how to deal with his face, his gaze passed over the mirror and noticed Zhang Liang was repeatedly sneaking glances toward the outside of the infirmary door like a thief…
He followed his gaze for a moment and saw the door, which hadn’t been fully closed, move unnaturally, then “snap,” it quietly shut.
“…” Beijiao’s leg, which had been hanging naturally off the edge of the bed, lifted and kicked Zhang Liang lightly, “Who’s outside?”
Zhang Liang exclaimed, “No one!”
Beijiao stared at him without saying a word.
Zhang Liang, with poor psychological resilience, instantly broke down on the spot, forgetting his previous boast about protecting his younger roommate. “Don’t ask, don’t ask—ah! She told me not to say!”
“Which one?” he asked, “The ‘she’ with the female radical?”
Zhang Liang turned pale and tightly sealed his lips.
Beijiao tossed the mirror aside, stood up, and walked to the door that had been suspiciously closed moments ago. Instead of pulling it open directly, he took out his phone, turned the volume to maximum, opened the speakerphone, and clicked on a WeChat voice message.
Then the bar owner’s loud voice filled the entire infirmary:
“What! You didn’t get the substitute spot and dorm room? And you’re not staying at Sister Ran’s house either? How stubborn can you be? Fine, I’ll take out the spring bed to clean it up, and tomorrow I’ll bring the air circulator from home for you to use temporarily—”
The voice message hadn’t finished playing yet.
The door was pushed open forcefully from the outside.
The woman standing outside stormed in, grabbed Beijiao’s phone, and directly clicked on the voice function, saying to the other end: “No need, he’s staying at my place, nowhere else.”
After speaking, she locked the phone screen, placed it in her palm, and extended it to the boy.
The latter didn’t move, looking down at her with a blank expression.
She bent down directly and put his phone back into his pants pocket.
The weight of the phone sinking into his pocket, Beijiao finally spoke, slowly asking her, “Why were you hiding outside instead of coming in when you arrived?”
…
He was very smart.
He knew she would definitely follow him here.
Jiang Ran had been like a headless fly in the corridor at first, panicking, and then at one point, she calmed down and had an epiphany. She realized that this person had been doing it on purpose all along.
Just now, he had set the atmosphere so well. He was the one who got hurt, the one who was bullied, and he was the one who walked away alone…
He had everyone following his lead.
As soon as Beijiao left, the atmosphere was pushed to a climax. Song Die, who had to find a substitute and had defended Jiang Ran by scolding him, ended up in a lose-lose situation.
If popularity could be vividly illustrated with a parabolic curve, just now might have been Song Die’s lowest point in life.
Jiang Ran glared at the person in front of her: “Just now.”
Beijiao: “Hmm?”
Jiang Ran: “Just now, you definitely knew that I just accidentally let the basketball hit you. You were deliberately throwing a tantrum, provoking Song Die, and then targeting him, right?”
“It’s not like I told you to throw the ball at my face.”
Facing Jiang Ran’s accusatory tone, Beijiao casually threw out this sentence, turned around, and returned to his previous seat on the bed, but did not pick up the mirror again, instead silently watching her.
Jiang Ran didn’t keep him waiting for long. She approached, and since he was sitting on the bed, his height was finally lower than hers. She leaned down and noticed that his lip had also been hit by the ball, causing a cut, which explained why he had spat out blood earlier…
It wasn’t a big deal.
She sighed in relief, muttering, “You scared me,” and went to get a cotton swab, grabbing the iodine and opening it.
When she extended the cotton swab soaked in medicine toward him, the little brat refused to cooperate again, turning his face away to dodge. He asked, “How do you know Song Die?”
“He learned skiing from me.” She omitted the complicated beginning about originally wanting to help her friend retaliate against him. She said, “Song Die is my student.”
Beijiao said, “Oh.”
Jiang Ran: “Yes.”
Beijiao: “You said yesterday that teaching me doesn’t require payment.”
Jiang Ran: “So what’s going on now? Is it like a primary school competition to see who gets more red flowers from the teacher?”
Beijiao: “No, I just think he should know about it.”
Then make him mad.
“…” Jiang Ran paused her actions, looking down at him for a long time before finally saying, “You don’t even learn skiing from me.”
As soon as those words were spoken, she saw the boy fall silent for a moment. Then his gaze became evasive, refusing to look at her. Finally, his eyes settled on a patch of peeling paint in the corner of the infirmary wall. Slowly, he said, “Isn’t skiing something rich people play? If I had the spare time to learn that, I could work another part-time job… besides, I have no interest in learning something useless like that.”
His voice was very soft, so much so that Zhang Liang, standing a bit further away, couldn’t hear it.
One might not think he was really uninterested.
But Jiang Ran was close enough to see clearly. When he mentioned this, those eyes, usually dark and deep, flickered slightly, like a stray dog passing by a stall selling meat bones…
Knowing it wasn’t something he could desire, he displayed a posture of refusal and restraint.
But he couldn’t help glancing back, sniffing like a dog.
Jiang Ran pressed harder, making him hiss and turn his head away again. He grabbed her wrist tightly, staring at her intently.
Jiang Ran, expressionless: “Let go.”
He obediently released her hand.
She moved her now-free hand, continuing to apply the medicine to his face: “No interest, yet you had to bring it up? Did Song Die dig up your ancestors’ graves? Why do you have to compare everything with others, even verbal advantages? Are you a dog? Guarding your food?”
“Guarding who? You? Or the dog food?” He laughed, “But dogs eat shit.”
She threw the cotton swab away.
Then she directly reached out and pressed on the broken skin at the corner of his lips.
He immediately winced, his smile vanishing as he sucked in a sharp breath and tried to pull back.
“Trouble you a bit more…” He didn’t bother denying her accusation, “I never said I didn’t hate him.”
“You still have to stay at my place for the whole summer vacation.” She retracted her hand from his lips, then gently dabbed the wound with another cotton swab coated in eye ointment. She waved the cotton swab in front of his swollen face, casually adding, “It might just kill him.”
The medicine was almost done being applied.
He leaned back, half of his face bruised and swollen, the other half still quite handsome, wearing his usual lazy expression: “Considering your history of letting the ball hit me instead of even a single hair on your favorite student’s body… when I stay at your place, will I be drugged and have my heart blood taken at night to cure Song Die’s terminal illness?”
Jiang Ran: “?”
Beijiao: “Then I’ll gradually wither away.”
Jiang Ran: “?”
Beijiao: “Starting with hair loss, and finally dying.”
Jiang Ran: “…”
Jiang Ran thought of the domineering male protagonists in those angsty romance novels she read in her youth. In those stories, the male lead, for various absurd reasons under various coincidences, would meet the female lead, but always leave the female lead to help the female antagonist, causing the female lead to suffer alone.
Back then, when she was young and naive, she would read those stories and curse the male lead as a big idiot.
Now, she seemed to have become that big idiot.
The worst part was he also thought of this reference—
And he used it to mock her.
Damn it!
“From now on, I’m your landlord,” Jiang Ran glared at him. “You’re living under my roof, understand? Show me some respect and listen to me.”
As if he had heard an international joke, he snorted.
But he didn’t argue with her, just nodded and said, “Okay.”
…Using a tone that clearly said, “Yeah, right.”
Author’s Note:
Beijiao: Why can’t I go all out? I’m even disfigured. (Righteously indignant)
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