Guangzhou.
At the indoor ski resort of Sunac in Guangzhou, in front of the lockers, a group of men are gossiping.
“It’s great that Jiang Ran is gone. With her away, I feel more motivated to practice… Usually, I’m scared of running into her on the slopes. If someone on the lift points us out and asks, ‘Mom, why can’t that uncle ski as well as the lady,’ I wouldn’t know what to do!”
A big man sighs while putting on his boots.
The others laugh. A young man, slowly tying his ski boots next to the big man, joins the conversation: “You guys are making Jiang Ran into some kind of legend. Even though she can do a 720°, she’s not the first in the country to do so. Why treat her like a celebrity? Every little thing she does gets a flood of comments.”
“The Olympics don’t even have men and women compete together. Besides, can’t the ceiling only hold one person?”
With a loud bang, Zhao Keshan opens his locker, expressionless: “Jiang Ran is just good at skiing. Other than that half-finished 720°, how is she different from others? What about you? Can you match her?”
“That’s not fair—how long has she been skiing compared to me?”
“So what? You can’t go back in time. No matter how many more years she skis than you until the end of the world, she’ll always have more experience than you.”
Zhao Keshan says, reaching into his locker to grab his board and helmet. Just as he is about to close the locker door, a foot in ski boots suddenly blocks it.
He pauses, turns around to scold the person, only to meet a pair of calm, narrow eyes.
Zhao Keshan isn’t used to being stared at like this unless it’s by Jiang Ran, who can make him feel like he’s suffocating: “Beige, what’s up?”
“Let me borrow your hard boots,” the black-haired young man says lazily, as if he’s always half-asleep, “I want to try.”
Zhao Keshan is silent for a moment, thinking how this guy really follows in his master’s footsteps. Tomorrow, if she decides to rob a bank, he probably wouldn’t hesitate to ride ahead on a bike to clear the way… He opens the locker and takes out his hard boots and racing board. They happen to have the same shoe size, and they’ve even swapped boots before.
Beijiao is experiencing hard boots up close for the first time and is studying them with curiosity.
The young man who was just rebuked by Zhao Keshan sees the hard boots in Beijiao’s hands and gets a new idea: “Exactly, take these hard boots for example—without the experience and years of skiing, do you think Jiang Ran can ski well with them? She posts a video and ends up falling, and people still blindly praise her! If she wasn’t embarrassed herself, would she have deleted that post with so many likes?”
Zhao Keshan let out a hiss and frowned, about to say, “You’re a grown man, why are you always picking on a girl?” But before he could speak, he noticed Beijiao, who had been lowering his head to fiddle with his hard boots, suddenly stop and glance up with impatience and warning in his eyes.
It’s unclear whether it’s out of annoyance or something else.
So the young man, who was talking nonstop a second ago, abruptly stops. Under Beijiao’s dark, silent gaze, he surprisingly backs down, slams his locker shut, mutters, “I’m just telling the truth,” and grabs his board to leave.
Beijiao chuckles softly.
Zhao Keshan thinks, “Oh no, he’s going to kill someone.”
But he sees the former just tilt his head slightly, his thin lips parting slightly to ask, “Do you know she can’t ski well with hard boots? Did you see it yourself?”
His voice isn’t loud, but it seems to drown out all the surrounding noise. The scene falls into a brief silence.
Sitting on the bench, Beijiao is reminded of the first time Jiang Ran explained to him the difference between competitive parallel giant slalom and regular technical skiing—
It was during the summer vacation when they first met.
He had just learned to push up the slope and was starting to get interested in snowboarding… He accidentally turned on the TV, which was introducing Winter Olympic events, talking about parallel giant slalom, racing boards, and hard boots.
“Would skiing with hard boots in regular carving be a kind of dimensional degradation?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I am one.”
Her nonchalant, calm voice seems to echo in his ears.
At that time, he thought the park terrain was more interesting, which earned him a genuine kick from her. They leaned on the same sofa, fooling around, with the sounds of cicadas in the summer outside the window.
Now, they have already welcomed their third summer.
Beijiao feels a bit nostalgic.
Unaware that he was just lost in some pleasant memories, the person being questioned tightly closes his mouth, looking nervously back at the expressionless young man with black hair. This tense atmosphere somewhat disrupts the latter’s immersion in sweet memories…
So he lifts his eyes again to glare at the nuisance.
For a moment, the atmosphere between the lockers becomes tense.
“Hey, what’s going on? It’s just a normal discussion. Why are you talking so much?”
Someone who knows the young man well steps in to mediate, putting an arm around his shoulders and half-dragging him away.
Even as they walked away, the young man could be heard muttering, relieved yet indignant: “What’s his problem, acting all tough? He’s gonna get beaten up by a girl.”
“If a girl hits you, you can’t fight back. Want to guess if she’ll blink? Ask the former king of fraud, Yang, how he was eliminated from Guangrong… Shut up and go.”
Their voices gradually fade away.
Zhao Keshan withdrew his gaze and looked down at Bei Jiao with a faint smile. “I thought you’d take him on too,” he said.
The dark-haired young man remained silent, raising his hand to rub the back of it against his cheek—the same cheek that had only recently recovered from being slapped. Just recalling the incident made his face grow slightly warm and itchy…
He lowered his eyes.
After a long silence, he whispered, “No, she doesn’t let me fight.”
“……”
As the saying goes, there’s always one thing to conquer another.
Zhao Keyan looked up and let out a long sigh.
……
Harbin.
Jiang Ran sat by the lockers at Harbin Sunac and received some gossip about the locker area at Guangzhou Sunac.
Zhao Keyan: “Three hundred million people have taken up winter sports. In the past two years, who knows how many random nobodies have flooded into the snowboarding scene. Today, someone claimed you only got by because you’ve been riding for so long, and that you’d be useless if you switched to stiff boots. Video proof or it didn’t happen—otherwise, you wouldn’t have deleted that clip.”
Actually, those who entered the circle early, like Zhao Keyan, had already played around with hard shoes alongside Jiang Ran, Lin Shuang, and Li Xingnan quite a while back.
How could she not know how to do it? That’s impossible!
But Jiang Ran didn’t care what others said.
Staring at the text message, her heart was calm: It’s fine. Let them think I can’t skate in hard boots—it’s still more dignified than them finding out I was purely banned by my ex-boyfriend.
Speaking of the matter of martial law—
I’m really curious about where Bei Jiao’s mentality of being overly suspicious and seeing danger everywhere comes from…
After all, she had lived a simple and detached life for the past twenty-odd years. For her, there were too many things to enjoy, and she was far too busy—it wasn’t as if the world would explode without a man.
In other words, men’s priority is too low.
Sitting on the chair with racing hard boots on her feet, Jiang Ran swung her legs back and forth, trying to discuss the matter with Qiu Nian… yet afraid she might seem overly curious. However, her worries proved unnecessary—Qiu Nian appeared quite composed in response to her questions, clearly having already discussed the issue with Bei Jiao.
In almost just ten seconds, he threw the screenshot of the chat record right in her face—
Nian Nian: Did you know there are 3.5 billion men on Earth—3.5 billion! As long as Jiang Ran is alive, countless men will cross paths with her every single day, and of course some of them will be top-notch catches!
【Beijiao: What do you want to say?】
Niannian: Don’t just randomly lose your temper. If she could easily connect with any male creature, do you think you’d even have a chance?
【Beijiao: You don’t understand.】
【Beijiao: It might have been tough at first, but once a woman has been in love, it’s like unlocking a hidden potential—everything becomes effortless.】
Niannian: “…You sound like a resentful woman in the inner chambers worrying about planting flowers for future generations—it’s absolutely hilarious.”
【Beijiao: That’s because you haven’t seen my face.】
[Niannian: ?]
【Beijiao: You’ll find that I look like one too.】
[Niannian: …]
If you asked Jiang Ran for her opinion, she would probably think Bei Jiao had lost his mind. During the more than a year they hadn’t been in contact, aside from his appearance maturing enough to be quite intimidating… deep down, he was likely still that same childish brat.
She sighed, and at that moment, she heard someone call out, “Sister Xiaoran.” She looked up to see Xie Yu walking over with her board in his arms. He handed it to her and said, “I adjusted the angle to (56, 51) for you. Give it another try this time.”
Jiang Ran nodded.
In fact, the speculations of those people from Guangrong weren’t entirely wrong—
Having been away from the racing board and hard boots for too long, Jiang Ran’s rehabilitation didn’t go very smoothly. She even found herself somewhat unaccustomed to the angle of the racing board she used to ride.
Over the years, her skating posture has undergone changes. In terms of public technical skating, this transformation is referred to as “technical refinement”…
For someone like me who was used to firm mattresses before, this change of hers could be described as “going further and further away.”
For soft boots and regular carving boards, her angles are set at (33, 21). Depending on the board and bindings, the adjustment range should not exceed 3° in either direction.
However, just like the binding angle Xie Yu adjusted for her earlier, the angle for a competition board is almost double that of a regular carving board. With the sudden change in angle and the increased stiffness of the boots, she hasn’t yet found the new optimal angle that suits her for the competition board amidst all these adjustments.
Every day is an experiment, so she doesn’t perform as well in competitive snowboarding with hard boots through gates as she does when wearing soft boots and riding a regular carving board…
For the gates on the Sunac ski run, the fastest time for the men’s team is around 25 seconds per run, while the slowest is about 31 seconds.
The fastest time in the women’s team was 28 seconds, while the slowest reached 33 seconds.
Jiang Ran’s fastest time with soft boots was 24.51 seconds, but after switching to racing boards, her time dropped to 39 seconds… That’s a world of difference, and this was without hitting any poles or getting thrown off course.
According to Nie Xin’s standards, for female skaters to be recruited into the provincial team, they generally need to complete this gate in about 33 seconds to be considered qualified.
She was stuck in a very awkward position, neither up nor down.
This made Jiang Ran extremely sad, even to the point of considering quitting—
But she had a flaw—she was extremely concerned about saving face. The joy she felt when she agreed to Nie Xin’s invitation to join the professional team was still vivid in her memory, and she couldn’t allow herself to become a temporary deserter under her own initiative.
Many times she wanted to see disappointment or something like “I misunderstood, you’re not that great” in Nie Xin’s eyes, so she could take the opportunity to back out and offer to give up… But such emotions never appeared in his gaze. Instead, he just calmly said, “Recovery always takes time. There’s no rush.”
Jiang Ran had no choice but to brace herself and step forward.
The training schedule for the provincial team alternates between men’s team on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and women’s team on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, with Sunday as the rest day.
Since it seemed like she couldn’t leave for the time being, Jiang Ran was quite hard on herself. She trained alongside both the men’s and women’s teams, not caring if she ended up tumbling and scrambling all over the place.
And Xie Yu seemed quite pleased with her doing so—Jiang Ran’s presence was like a ray of sunshine in his otherwise monotonous training life… He simply adored sticking close to her, joining her during the men’s team training sessions and accompanying her on the sidelines during the women’s team practices.
For example, today, it was actually the young girls from the women’s team practicing together.
Jiang Ran stood up holding the adjusted board, just as three young girls who could be considered teammates approached. They were chatting and laughing, each with a single braid and holding coffee…
From a distance, they spotted Jiang Ran and the famously autocratic head coach of the men’s team, Xie Yu, standing expressionlessly behind her. They froze for a few seconds, exchanged a glance, and quickly scattered.
Jiang Ran: “…”
That’s why, even after skating with these girls for half a month, she barely exchanged a few words with them. She always felt like they were whispering about her behind her back.
This is understandable as well. They are all in their early twenties, having been selected through rigorous screening processes in sports departments or institutions…
At this lively age, they usually stay together whether at the provincial team or during training at the ice rink, which naturally brings them even closer.
——It’s just like how day students and boarding students have always seemed to have some invisible barrier between them and rarely mix well, for the same reason.
She was an outsider who had inexplicably switched careers midway, a good deal older than them, didn’t even live together with them, and could hardly hold a conversation…
Instead, she spent every day hanging out with Xie Yu from the men’s team. When she thought about it, she realized she probably wasn’t very likable.
Although she didn’t care much about it, she still felt a little sad.
“Don’t mind them, Sister Xiaoran,” Xie Yu said gruffly. “They’re just bored, still forming cliques at their age.”
“I know,” Jiang Ran said with a smile, “I’m fine.”
At least I could talk to Xie Yu.
How embarrassing. She could still chat casually with Qiu Nian on her phone, and Qiu Nian was very sympathetic to her plight, having already bought a plane ticket to Harbin for this weekend.
There’s no way we can just leave her alone on the ski run, watching others isolate her while their little princess of the public technical skiing circle is being coddled and pampered in their palms—
Qiu Nian said it like this.
Jiang Ran felt both disgusted and moved.
……
Today’s training still didn’t go very smoothly. Jiang Ran’s first run was close to 39 seconds. Although it’s normal to have such results during the first warm-up run—no one can hit under 30 seconds right off the bat—she still felt disheartened.
After just two runs, Xie Yu was called away by his teammates, leaving Jiang Ran without anyone to talk to.
On the fourth run, she was in a bad mood and anxious. By the third gate, she thought she had nothing to lose and decided to either break through or crash. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself close to the pole to make the smallest controlled turn possible. However, because her boots and board had a low margin for error and were faster than usual, her usual soft boot sliding habits were clearly insufficient for control.
Her arm slammed heavily into the pole! With a loud “crack,” the pole flew, and she rolled off the slope, landing a couple of meters into the middle of the course. The blue poles used for practice were actually quite flexible at room temperature, but the cold indoor refrigerator temperature made the plastic hard and stiff, causing real pain when they struck the skin. Sometimes after training, Jiang Ran would roll up her sleeves and pull down her pants to reveal bruises from hitting or being hit by the poles… It was clear that this training was damn hard work.
The agony was relentless, like a curse. This time, she lay in the snow for quite a while before regaining her strength, her face contorted in pain. Yet, she still thought, “Oh, I need to pick up the pole that knocked me down, or the next teammate will resent me even more. They probably already dislike me as it is.”
As people grow older, they should gain not just height but also awareness. So, gritting her teeth against the pain, she pushed herself up from the snow with one trembling arm. In an awkward stance, she picked up the blue pole that had tumbled with her and crawled toward the fallen gate. When she reached it, she began digging through the messy snow pile with her hands, searching for the hole where the pole had been planted.
She was digging through the snow aimlessly and anxiously when a pair of hands suddenly appeared beside her to help. Ran froze for a moment before looking up—it was Chun, a girl from the team. Slightly taller than Ran, Chun was the team captain and also the best female skier. Though her expression wasn’t fierce, she had barely spoken to Ran before. Sensing Ran’s gaze, Chun sniffed, swung her gloved hand, and effortlessly pushed aside a large pile of snow, revealing the hole where the gate had once been inserted. Ran couldn’t help but feel like cheering out loud.
“Stick,” she extended her hand toward Ran.
Handing over the pole obediently, Ran remained motionless as Chun proceeded to bury it properly. Even removing her snowboard and setting it aside, Chun pressed down on the fresh snow used to fill and secure the pole.
“All set,” she said in a low voice to Ran. “Next time, be careful not to rush to stick close to the pole. You can do that in soft boots because you can control to the millimeter… hard boots aren’t that precise. If you can’t control the error, you’ll hit the pole at speed. Controlling the turn shape needs to be gradual.”
She seldom spoke so much at once, and although Ran understood the reasoning, she was still profoundly touched. It would have been even better if Chun had simply turned around to put her board back without giving Ran a chance to explain.
…
Ran felt tears welling up inside as she slid down, reaching the bottom and looking at the tool bench of Rongchuang. One of Rongchuang’s tool benches was extremely inconveniently located inside the refrigerator room, requiring glove removal to adjust the bindings at sub-zero temperatures.
She wasn’t very willing to endure the cold, but she always felt today’s angle wasn’t quite suitable, making her feel uncomfortable all over. As she stared at the tool bench lost in thought, suddenly she felt her board being tapped. She turned around and saw Chun and another cute girl from the team looking up at her.
Their eyes met, and Ran felt awkward. Just then, Chun said, “Going from soft to hard boots, doubling the binding angle isn’t comfortable at first. Adjust back a bit gradually?”
Ran found her words reasonable and nodded, then hugged her board and headed to the tool bench. After her earlier hard fall, snow had seeped into her gloves, leaving her fingers icy cold and numb. She grabbed a screwdriver from the bench and clumsily attempted to remove the bindings from her board.
After much effort, she only managed to loosen one screw and was completely exhausted. She took out her phone, intending to call someone to see if anyone was skiing at Sunac to help. Before she could even unlock her screen, someone came up from behind and took the screwdriver from her hand.
Ran froze, looked up, and saw it was Chun. She gave her an awkward smile, but the latter seemed to have no intention of acknowledging her. In a few quick motions, Chun adjusted the bindings to the angle Ran wanted, then firmly pushed on them to ensure all screws were properly fixed before throwing Ran’s snowboard to the ground.
“Try it,” she said, “no need to adjust the stance width?”
Ran remembered that from the very first day she started skiing at the age of seven, no one had ever spoken to her in such a caring tone, asking, “No need to adjust the stance width?”
“No, thank you,” Ran replied sincerely, “I’ll buy you drinks next time.”
“No need.”
Ran thought, “Okay, rejected again. They really hate me.” But then she added, “If you don’t mind, maybe add my WeChat. I’ll invite you to our girls’ team group. It’s just our own group without the coach.”
“…”
Ran was confused: Huh?
【Image: Feeling flattered.JPEG】
…
Ran joined the group and realized that although the training session seemed calm on the surface, everyone was furiously typing in the cable cars, with group messages scrolling by at lightning speed. Her introductory message was quickly drowned out, and hardly anyone noticed her arrival as the group was engrossed in lively chatter.
【Galaxy Beauty: Aaaaaaah I can’t get into the 30s! I can’t get in!】
【Magical Girl RUBY: Not to mention, I also hit the pole, it’s so damn painful!】
【Yuanyuan: @Magical Girl RUBY I saw it, you hit three rows of poles flying, and Nie Xin cursed three times from above saying he would let Angry Birds come for material hahahahahahahahaha!】
【Magical Girl RUBY: …………………………Seriously, how did Nie Xin even get married? What kind of life must his wife be living?!】
【Galaxy Beauty: Speaking of hitting poles, I wonder if my Pea Sister is hurting from that hit QAQ】
【Magical Girl RUBY: @Galaxy Beauty why don’t you ask if I’m hurting!】
Ran thought to herself, quite a few people had bumped into the poles today, so she wasn’t the most embarrassed one. Come to think of it, who is this Pea Sister?
She soon got her answer.
【Magical Girl RUBY: @Chun Old captain, did you catch up with Pea Sister?】
【Red: Caught up, I just saw her adjusting her angle?】
【Galaxy Beauty: Then it’s okay, promise me this time you’ll definitely talk to her, alright? Earlier you were puffing and panting helping her set up the pole without even letting out a fart, how disappointed the people are with you! If I had known, I should have gone instead!】
【Yuanyuan: Stop making me laugh to death, even if you went it would be the same, you looked like you saw a ghost when you saw her at the equipment hall earlier?】
【Yuanyuan: Pea Sister falling is also beautiful, I recorded it for a bit, I’ll send it to you guys to see!】
【Red: I want to go out to buy water, does anyone else want some?】
【Galaxy Beauty: Bring me one, make it expensive, in case the old captain @Chun fails to get the WeChat, I’ll go instead, ten yuan per bottle of water for a WeChat is not unreasonable, right?】
Ran vaguely felt she understood something, but also felt she didn’t quite get it.
Until, on the elevator behind her, the female team captain finally took out her phone under Ran’s repeated puzzled glances.
【Chun: …………………………I’ve added the person to the group already, are you all blind? If you keep chattering, I’ll be so embarrassed I jump off the lift @Whose Ranran Duck】
【Magical Girl RUBY: …】
【Yuanyuan: …】
【Red: …】
【Galaxy Beauty: …………………………】
【Whose Ranran Duck: So why is she called Pea Sister anyway?】
The group fell into about thirty seconds of dead silence.
【Galaxy Beauty: Looking up a bit, it seems like I was the one talking the most and looking the most embarrassing, can I be the first to leave the group now?】
Ran: “…”
Later, Ran learned that on the first day she joined the team training, the group erupted in heated discussions. To summarize, there were roughly several recurring questions:
1. Why would such a pretty girl who looks good, skis well, and dresses well want to join a professional team? She’s like a princess who needs ten mattresses to sleep on.
2. Why does she always hang out with Xie Yu, that dark-skinned, grumpy-faced guy? It would be better if she talked to us.
3. Want to talk to Pea Sister.
4. Found Pea Sister’s Douyin account; she skis well in soft boots too.
5. How to get Pea Sister’s WeChat?
6. Who dares to go ask for it?!!!!!
…
#About the thing where I thought they hated me, but it turned out they were just too in love with me to dare approach me.
When everything became clear, it indeed felt different. At noon, as Ran carried her board to the dining hall for lunch, the moment she stepped inside with it, she noticed at least three girls glancing her way with sparkling eyes and shifting gazes.
When Ran was looking for a seat after buying her food, one of them finally seemed to gather her courage and approached: “Do you want to come sit with us?”
She looked as if she would drop dead on the spot if Ran refused.
So why fall in love with someone when girls are so much cuter than dogs?
Ran no longer had to eat lunch alone. Fortunately, she could barely keep up with the topics the young people were chatting about—mostly trending TV shows or celebrity gossip… though the conversation would frequently shift to discussions about the guys from the neighboring team.
“I heard their ski socks are washed once a month, they just hang them out to dry every day and wear them again the next day.”
“Really? Wow, you can’t tell they’re like that—”
“Come on, have you ever seen a man who’s clean?”
“I thought at least Xie Yu was pretty clean.”
“Please, guess why he’s so dark.”
“It can’t be because he doesn’t shower… although I do really dislike him. But spreading rumors like that seems a bit too much.”
“He’s really annoying, why does he always stick to Pea like a leg accessory all day—”
Chun glanced at Ran and said, “Hanging onto Sister Ran’s leg.”
At that moment, the Pea Princess was lowering her head to eat when she heard her name called. She looked up and waved her hand, saying, “I just knew him a long time ago. When I first came here, I didn’t know anyone else. It just so happened that I needed someone to help me adjust my stiff boots at the beginning—”
Chun tilted her body slightly: “It’s okay, you can be with us from now on. These days we’ve been watching ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and got so anxious we couldn’t sleep…”
Just as they were happily chatting, the door of the adjacent smoking room was pushed open, and a tall upper body appeared. The voice was deep, and his face clearly showed annoyance: “Enough already?”
At the sudden appearance of the male lead from ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ the group of girls instantly fell silent.
Ran couldn’t help but burst into laughter with a “pfft.”
“Why are you being like Nie Xin, controlling everything and even meddling with my dating life?” The young man with bear-like features had sharp eyebrows and eyes. “What’s it got to do with you?”
“Who’s dating you? How dare you insult me like that!” The girl who had invited Ran to sit with them raised her eyebrows sharply. “Dating you? Don’t humiliate me! Tell me, what have you actually contributed to Sister Ran? These days, you couldn’t even adjust her binding angle correctly. If you’re just changing it incrementally from 3° to 3°, you should’ve finished by now, shouldn’t you?”
Although his face was already dark, Xie Yu’s face turned even darker, possibly with a hint of red… From the crack of the smoking room door he had opened, laughter from other male team members could be heard.
Ran suspected that if this continued, Xie Yu might be so embarrassed he would die. She quickly waved her hand: “It’s my problem, my problem. I just couldn’t adapt to my old binding angle anymore, and now I always want to make small adjustments around my old angle—”
Unfortunately, no one was listening to her.
It seemed like the discussion had nothing to do with her at all.
Soon, it escalated into a non-warlike daily mutual teasing between the male and female teams.
In the afternoon, surrounded by the girls from the women’s team, Ran attempted the newly adjusted angle again, but it still didn’t feel very smooth. However, she couldn’t determine whether it was simply unfamiliar or if it didn’t suit her, so she decided to try it for a few more days.
In the evening, before the training team headed back, Xie Yu crouched beside Ran, watching her change shoes. Despite his tall stature, even in a squatting position next to her, he was still strikingly conspicuous.
A big presence, in dog terms, might be at the Bernese Mountain Dog level.
Watching Ran kick off her hard shoes in exhaustion, he stretched out his long arm, picked up the kicked shoes, and placed them upright where she could easily reach.
Ran smiled: “At least you’re definitely not the one who doesn’t wash socks.”
Xie Yu uttered a “Hmm,” lifted his hand to scratch his head, a bit shy she had brought up the topic from noon, and with a flickering gaze, called her: “Xiao Ran Jie?”
Ran: “Hmm?”
At this moment, Chun passed by with her shoes, emotionlessly sticking her head out and said: “Don’t talk to him.”
As if she were blind and deaf, having heard nothing passing by, Xie Yu didn’t even lift his eyelids, crossed his arms on his knees, and looked serious: “So, do you have a boyfriend now?”
Chun, who was about to sit down next to Ran, frowned and stepped back: “Xie Yu, you’re getting too arrogant.”
Xie Yu raised his eyes, looking at her with a rather provocative smile: “Not until you guys were chatting at noon did I remember to ask this. Thanks, by the way.”
Chun angrily stomped away, her footsteps pounding on Sunac’s stone pavement as if Godzilla had just rampaged through.
Jiang Ran stuffed her face guard into her bag, roughly tidied her messy hair with her hands, and while struggling with the knots at the ends of her hair without lifting her head, she said, “I used to, but not anymore.”
Unfortunately, her ex-boyfriend had rabies and was very controlling.
She swallowed that last sentence back.
“Who is it?” Xie Yu’s voice was a bit dry from nervousness. “Is it Song Die or that little kid with the weird personality?”
Before Jiang Ran could answer, he muttered to himself, “It must be that little kid. He looks better, knows how to act sweet, and has some green tea vibes. Song Die probably couldn’t compete with him.”
Jiang Ran: “…”
Why did she suddenly feel a bit sorry for Song Die?
Before she could speak, she suddenly felt everything go dark—the young man originally crouched beside her had “whooshed” stood up, casting a large shadow that completely covered her sitting on the chair holding her sock.
Jiang Ran: “…”
Jiang Ran suspected that right now, holding a sock freshly taken off her foot and looking up at the giant young man in front of her, she probably looked really silly and stupid.
But the latter didn’t seem to care. He pursed his lips: “Xiaoran Jie, then would you consider trying someone like me, an honest guy?”
…
Before they knew it, National Day had arrived, marking the beginning of another snow season, and Xinjiang had already enthusiastically opened its ski resorts.
From Keketuohai came a series of ridiculous insider news about the new ski resort having extremely poor facilities, including dry toilets and bindings smeared with excrement…
Jiang Ran scrolled through the news, feeling relieved she had narrowly escaped. Every year she would join the fun at Xinjiang’s opening, but this year was different—she was still stuck in the giant freezer battling with gates.
These three months of calm had given her a feeling of both anxiety and comfort.
The comfort came from the fact that the biggest disturbance during this time was probably when Xie Yu announced himself as an “honest guy” and then ran off without waiting for her reply…
The next day, he appeared as if possessed by a soul from yesterday, acting like nothing happened and never mentioning any of the words from “honest guy” again, carrying on as usual.
The anxiety came from her hardboot progress, which had only barely improved from 39 seconds to 34 seconds.
Nie Xin was actually already quite satisfied with this result. Improving five seconds in three months was already very fast, indicating she was gradually adapting and recovering. Not to mention, her performance had already met his basic recruitment standard.
But Jiang Ran didn’t think so. Had she joined the professional team just to hang at the back and scrape by?
She admitted that she seemed to have “success obsession,” enough to plunge her into a pathological anxiety and irritability, as if she had returned to two or three years ago, hesitating at the competition track in Keketuohai…
She always felt that as soon as she turned around, many people were waiting to mock her—
Although the young girls in the team were very friendly;
The coach had never spoken a harsh word to her;
Private messages on the short video app trying to book lessons with her never stopped, and from time to time, friends from the carving circle would comment, asking how she was doing in Harbin.
Everything in Harbin was great.
Except for herself.
Every day immersed in self-doubt like “Do I actually lack skiing talent?”—a doubt so severe that others would ask if she was crazy. She pathologically increased her training frequency.
Previously, she would sleep until noon, but for some unknown reason, she had suddenly gotten used to entering and leaving the training facility before and after others. Qiu Nian sighed deeply about this—
“Just look at your dark circles!”
This morning when Jiang Ran left, she grumbled, “It’s National Day, why don’t you take a break?”
Of course, Jiang Ran wouldn’t take a break—the person trailing at the back of the team had no right to rest.
Entering the giant freezer along with people coming to play during National Day, she passed through the bustling scene of people renting equipment and clothes at Rongchuang, her expressionless face bearing a competitive snowboard, creating a besieged city atmosphere—
People outside the walls (newbies): Wow, professional team, racing board, big female boss!
People inside the walls (Jiang Ran): So envious, still having fresh excitement and longing for skiing… unlike me, seeing snow and chairlifts only makes me want to find a wall to lean on and throw up.
It was quite complicated.
With many people around during National Day, the training team was also on holiday, so Jiang Ran could only blend into the crowd to keep her snow sense—
For this, Qiu Nian had already scolded her that morning. Previously, she could go ten days to half a month without skiing and still be very happy being lazy…
Now, worrying about snow sense after just one day off was pure nonsense.
“I suggest you go see a doctor,” Qiu Nian said. “Last night I heard you get up in the middle of the night rummaging through the fridge. You don’t sleep, you don’t eat, are you cultivating immortality?”
Jiang Ran just smiled, not knowing how long she could keep this up.
Her social media hadn’t been updated for a while. Every day, relatives would tentatively bring up random topics to chat with her, creating a strong atmosphere of “just checking if you’re still alive.”
On the first day of National Day, maintaining an emo mood, she squeezed through the tourists with a stern face and skied the entire morning.
At noon, the restaurant was packed. Since the outbreak of mask issues, people seemed to have instinctively cultivated the good habit of avoiding gatherings in enclosed spaces. She didn’t want to push into the crowd and simply prepared an instant noodle meal she barely touched anymore, then found a bench to sit down.
Holding a fork and picking at two noodles, she still wasn’t used to the heavy oil and salt. The steamed noodle lid brushed against her forehead as she hid behind the paper sheet, secretly shedding two overly sentimental tears.
She didn’t know why, but she just felt pitiful, middle-aged and achieving nothing—
In fact, she was very tired every day, but her anxiety symptoms allowed her to sleep continuously for at most two hours. The rest of the time, she would wake up suddenly without any warning, spending the remaining time in a daze between sleep and wakefulness.
Thus, her training wasn’t going well, her love life was a mess, and even her sleep was elusive.
During the lunch rush, people were still numerous. Silently wiping her tears, Jiang Ran placed the instant noodles aside and grabbed her ski bag, hugging it as she prepared to close her eyes for a bit, waiting until the afternoon when the crowd thinned before going in to ski.
The bustling noise around her gave her an inexplicable sense of security. She curled up, gradually slipping into a half-dreaming, half-awake state.
Fatigue made her eyelids droop.
She couldn’t keep her eyes open, even experiencing hallucinations.
In her fantasy, she felt herself back in the snow-covered little wooden cabin at Keketuohai. In the pitch-black cabin, a boy pulled her into his arms, gently embracing her, telling her in a smiling voice—
It’s okay. Not so many people are always watching you.
…
Even though it was a holiday, as the women’s team captain, Chun was still dragged by Nie Xin to supervise, with the reason being that Jiang Ran’s training volume was too high recently, her mental state wasn’t great, and she was pushing herself too hard. He was afraid she would get injured from overtraining.
“Am I supposed to wipe her mouth if she throws up from training?” Chun, carrying her ski bag on her back, sarcastically mocked the coach over the phone. “It’s a sin. She was the top female softboot carver, the pinnacle of the pyramid, and you had to trick her into racing! If it weren’t for that little blackboard you hung in the dormitory tracking everyone’s scores and rankings every day, she wouldn’t be so anxious. Even elementary schools have banned score rankings these days!”
She grumbled on but dutifully swiped into the Rongchuang freezer.
She still had a small cake and a packed congee meal in her bag. After months of getting to know each other, she already understood that Jiang Ran’s competitiveness in nature was practically zero.
In other words, when there were crowds, she probably couldn’t even squeeze into the cafeteria for a meal.
Chun headed toward the rest area, looking for the team’s “pea princess”—
After passing three rows of benches, she found her.
She was wearing a yellow loose snowsuit, pitifully curled up on a bench, her long wavy hair draped over half her pretty and delicate face, her long lashes drooping, looking incredibly pitiable…
But unlike usual, her eyebrows were relaxed in sleep, looking particularly peaceful compared to her usual naps at noon, which were often plagued by nightmares.
Chun blinked.
Only then did she realize that she wasn’t actually lying on her own ski bag, but on someone else’s lap, in someone else’s arms.
Her hand holding the ski bag stiffened. Her gaze hesitated as it moved upward from Jiang Ran’s head resting on the thigh—
She saw a handsome young man with black hair, completely different from Xie Yu’s dark-skinned, rough guy.
Sharp eyebrows and starry eyes, a tall nose and pale thin lips, an incredibly handsome face. He was wearing the same style but a different color snowsuit as Jiang Ran. Right now, he was looking down with a lazy gaze, staring affectionately at the woman in his arms.
His long fingers gently and occasionally stroked and combed through her long hair.
Intimate and doting.
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