Although he was scolding Jiang Ran for being crazy, Beijiao’s body and soul unreservedly loved that snowboard.
Specifically, on their way home, he no longer sat in the front passenger seat. Instead, he climbed to the back to accompany his snowboard.
At a red light intersection, Jiang Ran looked at the teenager sitting in the back seat holding the snowboard for the umpteenth time through the rearview mirror.
He sat honestly and quietly like a chicken, legs clamping the lower part of the board, arms wrapped around the upper part, with a gentle gaze.
The snowboard was fixed in his arms in an extremely intimate manner.
The plastic-wrapped half-blade pressed against his face, as if he didn’t care at all that the sharp blade might ruin his good-looking face.
…According to this style, if no one stopped him from speaking out, it was just a matter of time before he started rubbing his face against the blade.
Jiang Ran was silent for a moment before finally giving in, “Do you think the board will cry if you let it sit alone back there… alone, just a piece of equipment?”
“You keep stepping on the gas and brake,” Beijiao said, “it will shake around and might get damaged.”
“How do you expect me to drive if I don’t step on the gas and brake?” Jiang Ran said with great restraint, “Snowboards are sturdier than you think.”
“How do you know?”
“…Because it’s something you step on with your feet. If you have the guts, why don’t you put it on your head and slide with it?”
Beijiao lifted his face from the blade and, with a tone that said “you’re being too fussy,” retorted, “Are you really bothered even though I’m just staying with it for a while?”
This sentence reminded one of the evil mother-in-law from TVB dramas, the kind that often forces the male and female leads to tears and separation.
“Who was it who clearly said in the store that he didn’t like it?”
If snowboards had ears, Beijiao might now be frantically covering its ears—this wasn’t just Jiang Ran’s imagination; his hand really did move around on the board before missing entirely, then hugging it tightly, shrinking himself and the board backward into the shadows of the back seat.
Jiang Ran could no longer see his face at all.
“Just now, it was because I thought I couldn’t reach it,” Beijiao said, “you know, men often say ‘don’t like’ about things they can’t reach.”
“…”
I don’t know.
Does your self-assured tone imply that all men in the world are giving up, and do other men even know this?
The green light came on, and Jiang Ran shifted gears and stepped on the gas, rushing past the stop line—she couldn’t help but glance at the person in the back seat again. The person in the back had hidden himself, and all she could see was a pair of eyes glowing brightly in the shadows, shining with happiness.
Jiang Ran couldn’t help but lift the corners of her mouth.
“If you like this board,” she said gently, “then don’t say things like wanting to go to the park to anger me again, because I won’t try to get you a park board.”
“Okay,” he replied calmly, “but are you really not interested in the park at all?”
“Not at all.”
“But since that park rider got injured, you haven’t seemed in a good mood, and you even talk in your sleep,” Beijiao said casually, “back when I first went to your place, even though you were half-drunk, you didn’t talk in your sleep.”
Jiang Ran was taken aback.
Seeing her not respond, he added somewhat indignantly, “This morning, I hadn’t planned to wake you up, but you were making so much noise, so I had no choice but to wake you up—”
Jiang Ran was somewhat skeptical.
Instinctively, she thought this little brat was trying to trick her, just holding a grudge over being scolded for waking her up that morning.
“What did I say in my sleep?”
“You called someone’s name.”
Upon hearing this, Jiang Ran completely disbelieved it, snorting with laughter, “Don’t tell me I called out Shan Chong’s name. After knowing each other for so many years, how could I not know that I secretly loved him deeply? Although he does look quite good…”
“What about compared to me?”
“But I’m not really into that quiet, reserved type who can’t even say a word unless you hit him with a stick. Talking to him feels like talking to a robot.” Jiang Ran calmly finished what she wanted to say before asking, “Are you out of your mind? Why do you always want to compare everything?”
He didn’t answer.
She asked curiously, “Do you even know you’re good-looking?”
“I’m not stupid.”
He spoke disdainfully.
“But that’s not the point.”
“Huh?”
“The name you called in your dream wasn’t ‘Shan Chong,'” Beijiao said, “it was ‘Lin Shuang.'”
Jiang Ran’s response was a sudden brake—
The SUV performed at its limit, the brakes screeching as the car suddenly stopped by the roadside from normal driving!
Beijiao was caught off guard and almost bit his tongue, his head “thudding” against the hard blade edge, leaving a red mark!
He frowned, letting out a “Hey” as he lifted his head to ask Jiang Ran what was wrong with her. But just as he was about to speak, a sudden realization flashed in his mind—he remembered those two annoying idiots in the bathroom who mentioned something about a friend of Jiang Ran who had died in a foreign snow mountain, and that person’s name included the character “shuang”…
Suddenly realizing that he might have accidentally said something wrong, he tightly pressed his lips together.
Letting go of the snowboard he had been hugging, he moved forward and sat closer, hugging the front seat like a gecko, stretching his head between the passenger and driver seats, turning to look at the driver.
Her face looked terrible.
Beijiao wanted to comfort her, but the words stuck in his throat. After all, it was he who had brought up this cursed topic…
After thinking for a while, he could only try to save face, “Forget it, don’t believe me. I was just making it up.”
Of course, no one would believe such a statement.
Jiang Ran took a deep breath, slowly exhaling, and restarted the car. It resumed driving steadily on the road.
Beijiao did not move his face from the gap between the front passenger and driver seats.
Jiang Ran didn’t speak again.
He dared not speak either—
Not that he was really afraid of her.
Just a bit hesitant.
On the way, Jiang Ran stopped at a convenience store to buy a bottle of water. When she returned, the person who had been sitting in the back was already in the front, sitting steadily in the passenger seat, fastening his seatbelt with great care.
Jiang Ran unscrewed the cap, expressionless, and asked, “Not going to keep your board company anymore?”
“It’s pretty strong,” Beijiao stared at her, as if he had really considered it before coming up with the answer, speaking very seriously, “I’d rather stay with you.”
…
Beijiao’s temper and patience were not very good. There were not many things in this world that could make him reflect on his mistakes—
One was when he wore a polar bear costume handing out flyers in nearly 40-degree heat in Guangzhou and thought he had chosen the wrong university major…
The other was the fresh mistake just now, blurting out what Jiang Ran had said in her dream.
Damn it.
He knew he shouldn’t have said it.
Ah ah ah ah.
…Actually, he omitted many details.
For example, this morning when he got up, he was yawning sleepily as he passed by her door, wanting to go to the living room to get a bottle of water from the fridge, when he heard a sob coming from the master bedroom.
At that time, the blackout curtains in the living room were well drawn, and sunlight could barely seep through the gaps. The living room was pitch black, and he was startled by the sound, half of his sleepiness gone.
He slammed on the brakes at her bedroom door and called out “Jiang Ran” tentatively, but the person inside didn’t respond.
Only then did he reach out and push open her bedroom door.
The woman who usually acted high and mighty, speaking in commanding tones, was lying in bed with her blanket messily thrown aside, only one corner draped over her stomach…
Her soft, long curls were entangled with the skin exposed outside her tank top, the contrast of black and white strikingly vivid.
There was a small bedside lamp on.
Under the warm yellow light, she briefly sobbed in her dream, biting her lower lip, tears and sweat on her forehead mingling with strands of black hair on her pale, flushed cheeks.
She was softly calling out “Lin Shuang” in a muffled, pleading voice.
Her voice was low and hoarse, sounding unusually…
humble.
Her limbs were soft in the bed, her hair and bedding entangled with her skin, making her look like a dying swan.
Beijiao stood by the bed, staring blankly. By the time he realized what he was doing, he had already bent down and touched her face—
The air conditioner was set to a comfortable 26 degrees, but her cheeks were burning hot. When his fingertips touched her face, the wetness felt scalding, causing him to recoil immediately.
She was sleeping deeply and didn’t wake up from the brief touch.
He was still panicking, his heart racing. Like a thief, his hand reached out again, clumsily wiping the liquid—whether sweat or tears—off her face.
Then he wiped his hands on his clothes and leaned by the bed, watching her for quite a while.
Until she stopped murmuring in her sleep, his mouth was dry. He turned to look at the clock and realized twenty minutes had passed—he had only wanted to go to the living room to get a bottle of water.
When he stood up, his legs were numb.
He limped to get the water, gulping down half the bottle in a few swallows. Leaning against the fridge, he struggled for a while before placing the water on the coffee table and going back into her room.
When he entered again, she was restlessly tossing and kicking off the blanket, but had already burrowed under it again, sleeping very restlessly…
This time he didn’t hesitate and reached out to wake her up.
…
After saying the wrong thing, Beijiao suddenly became a filial son.
Since getting to know him until now, it seemed he had never been this obedient. For the rest of the journey, he didn’t say a word, didn’t play with his phone in the front passenger seat, and stared forward seriously, as if saying he would accompany her really meant just that.
Jiang Ran didn’t doubt for a second that his eyes were wide open merely out of fear that if he closed them, the next time he opened them, he might find himself in heaven, where an angel would ask how he died, and he himself wouldn’t be able to answer.
But his worries were indeed excessive.
The car safely arrived at the Guangzhou Rongchuang Snow World. After parking in the garage, Beijiao had already jumped out of the car and obediently dragged her board bag from the back.
At this moment, he was holding her board bag in one hand and his own board in the other, standing at the front of the car, waiting for her eagerly.
Seeing her get out of the car, he approached and asked, “Jiang Ran, are you hungry?”
He probably hadn’t cared much about anyone before.
So he didn’t know what to say to express his guilt and concern… plus, she had already had water in front of him, so he could only ask if she was hungry.
Jiang Ran shook her head and heard him say, “Oh.”
She turned around again and took out a brand new set of bindings from the trunk of the car, FLUX GX, given by the sponsor before, but the wrong size had been sent. She hadn’t had time to return it yet, and now it came in handy.
Carrying the box with the bindings, she came out from the back of the car. Beijiao approached again. She dodged slightly and looked at him with a half-smile, “Do you have a hand left to take it?”
He indeed didn’t have a hand left.
So his eager shoulder drooped again. Tilting his head, he stared at the slight smirk on her lips. Her expression was once again that arrogant and capricious young miss he was familiar with—
It was hard to overlap with the face she had in the nightmare at dawn.
He was a little dazed.
“Beijiao?”
Jiang Ran held the box with the bindings in one hand, somewhat puzzled by the affectionate and caring look the boy in front of her was giving her, wondering what he wanted to do…
She stretched out her free hand and waved it in front of him, “What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell anywhere?”
The boy, called by his name, came back to his senses, opened his mouth, hesitated, and finally, after meeting her calm gaze, paused and said, nothing.
Then he asked what was in her hand.
“Bindings.”
“Oh, where did you get them?”
“Sponsorship,” she herself couldn’t remember how many years it had been since she last bought skiing hardware with her own money, “They sent me this year’s new product last month before it was officially released, but the wrong size was sent. I only need an S size, but they sent me the largest. I was originally planning to exchange it, but now there’s no need.”
She paused deliberately as she spoke.
But she found that the person beside her didn’t react.
She turned her head with curiosity, “Why aren’t you resisting anymore?”
“Resisting what?” He said with a compliant and apathetic attitude, “After all, the board came like this too. I’ll listen to you.”
“…”
Jiang Ran really wanted to ask if during the time she got out to buy mineral water at the convenience store just now, he had secretly eaten something bad in the car, otherwise how could he act like he had gone crazy?
…
They entered the snow park almost at noon.
Jiang Ran wasn’t hungry, but Beijiao, possibly due to the excessive shocks of the day, was so hungry his chest stuck to his back.
They went into Ah Huang’s store. As Ah Huang sighed, “Wow, RX,” Jiang Ran took the tool to install the new bindings on the new board.
The ritual of tearing off the plastic wrapping on the snowboard was left to Beijiao. The little brat carefully tore off the wrapping, lovingly patted his board, and then ran off to buy something to eat.
Jiang Ran quickly adjusted the bindings and put them aside. When Beijiao came back with a bowl of porridge, she was waxing his new board—
The base of the snowboard often contacts the snow surface during the friction-filled sport, so over time, the base becomes less smooth. At this point, applying some snow wax for maintenance will make the board smooth again, like new.
Many snowboards on the market come with a thin layer of factory wax, such as GRAY’s little tree wax, but most don’t. Therefore, when opening a new board, it’s normal to take it to get waxed.
This is basic knowledge for every skier.
Beijiao looked at it for a while at first, indeed watching his board being waxed—
As he watched, his gaze gradually shifted from the white wax shavings to Jiang Ran’s hands. She was holding a scraper, her fingertips slightly whitening from the pressure.
His gaze, like a serpent, slithered lingeringly up her arm, over her shoulders, and finally came to rest upon her face—
She had long hair, and now, while waxing, probably found her hair in the way, so she had tied it up with a disposable hairband. Only a few strands remained loose, softly hanging by her cheeks…
She had naturally almond-shaped eyes, a small and delicate nose bridge, very beautiful.
But her naturally cold and noble aura kept people from getting close. However, she wasn’t delicate, and her skiing skills were excellent—
The big guys at the snow park who did carving all liked to play with her… Many times, Beijiao had heard people mention “Jiang Ran” in various corners, always with the tone of admiration: “Oh wow, this woman.”
Thinking of this, Beijiao’s heart stirred.
He edged closer, standing beside her, speaking in a low voice, “Still not hungry? I brought you a bowl of porridge. Do you dislike ginger?”
He had noticed that that day when they had hotpot.
Jiang Ran was busy taking care of the snowboard and had no time to respond. She merely “mmmed” from deep in her nose.
It was unclear which question he was responding to.
…So five minutes later, when Song Die stepped into the ski equipment store with one foot.
He immediately saw Jiang Ran not far away, one foot on a chair, her knee pressing against a snowboard placed on a bench, waxing it.
Beside her was a boy in a white hoodie holding a bowl of porridge in one hand and a spoon in the other. He extended the spoon near Jiang Ran’s lips and said, “Have a bite?”
His voice was affectionate and gentle.
Song Die, who had just listened to Xie Yu complain that Jiang Ran had a wolf cub by her side that would bite people at the slightest provocation that morning, said: “?”
So.
Who could tell him who this sweet thing speaking in a cutesy tone was?
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