MTLY | Chapter 9

◎What a domineering girl.◎

Song Tinghuan was hopeless at sports. Back when she was at Lingcheng No. 1 High School, no matter what athletic event it was, she was always part of the support crew or the cheer squad, and she had done her fair share of carrying and delivering water.

She had never known that a single bottle of water could land her on the hot posts again.

#jy was at the basketball court today and actually, proactively, asked a girl for water#

The original poster even attached a photo. In it, only Jiang Yu’s back was visible, but Song Tinghuan had been captured very clearly. She was slightly tilting her head up, the soft bangs on her forehead a little messy, the tips of her hair curled up. Her obedient twin braids hung in front of her from behind her ears, and her almond-shaped eyes were dark and bright.

1L: [Am I blind? Today at the basketball court, jy actually took the initiative to ask a girl for water! You have to know, in the past few years, there have been at least eight hundred bottles of water he’s rejected, if not a thousand.]

2L: [Didn’t expect Jiang Yu to like this type.]

3L: [So, is our Chinde lifelong bachelor finally taken?]

…

8L: [Hey, don’t you all usually use the forum? This girl’s a first-year student, and Jiang Yu is her uncle.]

9L: [Finally, someone who knows what’s going on.]

10L: [Oh, a transfer student. Not gonna lie, this junior student is actually pretty cute.]

11L: [Right! Pure to the extreme!]

…

15L: [So it’s uncle and niece?]

15L: [Jiang Yu is really nice to his niece.]

…

Song Tinghuan: “…”

Beside her, Guan Linlin was also bent over her desk, laughing. On the way back to the classroom just now, Song Tinghuan had already explained the misunderstanding about the “niece,” and Guan Linlin had only said one thing at the time: Jiang Yu is such a dog.

“Are you not going to explain it?” Guan Linlin asked.

Song Tinghuan hesitated for a long time, then turned off her phone. This wasn’t something she could explain in one or two sentences anyway, and the more she tried, the messier it would get. Besides, she might not even stay in Jiangbei for very long. What was there to explain?

“Huh, the post got deleted.” Guan Linlin sounded surprised.

Song Tinghuan logged back into the forum, and sure enough, that trending post from just now was gone.

Guan Linlin blinked. “Hey, I think yesterday’s post got deleted too.”

Song Tinghuan puffed out her cheeks and put her phone into the desk compartment. For no reason she felt much lighter.

She didn’t like being watched, especially on an anonymous forum. It made her feel like she wasn’t wearing any clothes at all, like all her privacy had been cut open and put on display.

*

In the guidance office, Jiang Yu curved his lips and thanked Director Li. “Thanks, Teacher Li.”

Director Li kept a stern face, love and hate tangled together whenever she dealt with this student.

His grades were beyond reproach. More than half the contest awards Chinde had been able to show off these past two years were from competitions Jiang Yu had represented the school in. He was also well-rounded in moral, intellectual, and physical development, and he had led Chinde to win last year’s municipal high school basketball league championship.

But he was also truly a troublemaker. He didn’t listen, was hard to manage, and was always acting all carefree and insolent. The school rules and discipline she repeated every day were practically wind in his ears.

“Jiang Yu.” Director Li’s face was tight. “If you play basketball again next time, go to the A Zone gym.”

Jiang Yu said, “It’s fine if you say I can’t fight, but now you’re even taking away my right to decide where I play ball?”

“That’s basketball to you? Do you know how many students were crowding around to watch? It could easily cause a stampede.”

“Oh.” The boy nodded seriously. “All right, then next time I’ll find someone to collect tickets beside the court, limited admission for spectators.”

“Jiang Yu!”

“Got it.”

The boy nodded. His smile was all careless irreverence, but Director Li just felt that he really had understood.

After he left, another teacher in the same office shook their head with a smile. “That kid is really a headache.”

Director Li sighed. “He’s a good seed, just not easy to handle.”

“He asked you to delete the post?”

“Mm, a forum post about a first-year girl.”

“Girl?”

“He said she’s a relative from his family.” Director Li pushed up her black-rimmed glasses and thought of the boy’s lazy demeanor just now.

“He asked me to delete it. He said people can dig into me all day if they want, it’s fine, anyway I don’t have much privacy at our school. But she’s just a little girl, and she just transferred over. She doesn’t know anyone here. Why should her private life be dug up and laid bare like that?”

What a clear-headed kid.

He looked unreliable, but he understood everything and had a real sense of boundaries.

Except for the fighting.

*

At dismissal in the evening, Song Tinghuan had spotted Jiang Yu waiting outside the teaching building early on, but she still dawdled until everyone else had left.

First, she didn’t want to be watched. Second… Song Tinghuan looked at the bag full of love letters. All of these were for Jiang Yu. There were so many snacks in there, and it was too heavy for her to carry. She planned to ask Meng Shutang tonight whether she could borrow something like a cart or dolly.

Jiang Yu was still waiting at the same spot. His school uniform jacket was draped over the railing, and the red headphone cord looped out from the collar of his hoodie to hang from one side.

From far away, he saw Song Tinghuan slowly shuffling over.

The girl was small, swallowed up by the oversized purple-and-white school uniform, with a big bag in her hand.

When Song Tinghuan got closer, she held out the big bag in front of Jiang Yu. “These are all for you.”

Jiang Yu glanced at the colorful envelopes inside, frowned a little, and didn’t take it.

“Jiang Yu, I can’t carry it anymore, take it.”

“No.”

“Huh?” Song Tinghuan was a little stunned, but then she saw the obvious impatience in Jiang Yu’s eyes. “You… don’t want them?”

“Should I want them?”

Song Tinghuan: Eh?

Jiang Yu let out a low laugh. “I remember that yesterday there was someone who, with complete righteousness, reminded me that rejecting other girls’ confessions was the right thing to do, and that getting involved with several girls at once was what scumbags do.”

“…?” Song Tinghuan’s breath rose to her throat. “You… heard that?”

“Were you not saying it for me to hear?”

“…” Song Tinghuan hesitated. “Then what do I do with these?”

“Whoever received them handles them.”

“But these are all for you.” Song Tinghuan was also very annoyed. Today she had been called out of her seat no fewer than thirty times. If she had a choice, she didn’t want to be the errand runner at all.

“Song Tingting, I’m finding that you’re actually pretty domineering.”

“?”

“You’re the one calling me a scumbag, and then you’re the one delivering me this many love letters.” The boy leaned down slightly. His dark eyes were dimmed with a thin layer of light as he stared fixedly at the girl in front of him. “Why does everything have to be according to you?”

Song Tinghuan was a little dazed by that. Before she could even think of an explanation, she heard the laziness in Jiang Yu’s voice, laced with amusement. “Or is it that you’ve gotten addicted to being an accomplice and are planning to…”

Jiang Yu glanced at the bag in her hand, the corner of his mouth lifting faintly. “Aid a tyrant in evil, and help the wicked do their work?”[[1]]

Song Tinghuan only felt as if a huge pot had fallen from the sky.

The little girl stood there, dumbstruck. After a long while, she finally squeezed out three words from her soft red lips. “I didn’t…”

She just thought things should be returned to their rightful owner. She hadn’t thought that much about it.

But before Song Tinghuan could finish speaking, Jiang Yu had already taken the bag of love letters from her hand. At the same time, he stuffed his school jacket into her arms.

Girls had been watching them from the side of the playground the whole time. When they saw Jiang Yu accept Song Tinghuan’s bag, several of them couldn’t hide their excitement.

But the next second, Jiang Yu casually hung the bag on the end of the last section of the railing.

Song Tinghuan said, “You’re not taking it back?”

Jiang Yu had already put on the other earbud. He tossed one word at Song Tinghuan: “Heavy.”

As perfunctory as it could get.

Twilight descended, and the evening sun stretched the boy’s figure long. Song Tinghuan looked at his straight shoulders, the red headphone cord pressed against his pale neck, and tightened her grip on the school jacket in her arms. Then she hurried after him.

“Wait for me, Jiang Yu.”

The girl’s voice was soft and drawn out as it drifted into the wind.

*

Song Tinghuan discovered something very miraculous.

Guan Linlin had said that girls at school who liked Jiang Yu, once they found out about her relationship with him, would definitely keep sending her things and passing her love letters.

But Guan Linlin’s prediction seemed to have been wrong.

One day, two days, a week passed, and no one came looking for Song Tinghuan to ask her to hand Jiang Yu gifts or love letters anymore.

Because of that, Guan Linlin was quite puzzled. “That shouldn’t be. Isn’t your place the best breakthrough point?”

After all, everyone knew Jiang Yu never accepted gifts or love letters. Having someone around him pass them on was the best method.

Song Tinghuan stayed silent, thinking of the love letters Jiang Yu had so conspicuously hung by the railing that day. Was he using that method to show rejection?

But the result was good no matter what. As long as she didn’t have to keep passing those things along, that was enough.

Song Tinghuan had no time to think about these trivial matters, because her first monthly exam since coming to Chinde was about to arrive, next week.

During this time, all of Song Tinghuan’s attention shifted to studying.

Chinde was indeed a century-old prestigious school, and the academic pressure was much greater than at Lingcheng No. 1 High School. Because of the differences in textbooks, Song Tinghuan also found things somewhat difficult to follow.

She had bought the textbooks for Chinde’s first-year students and studied them on her own once already, but even so, when the results of the first monthly exam came out, Song Tinghuan was still extremely discouraged.

Especially in math. Out of 150 points, Song Tinghuan looked awkwardly at the glaring red 75 on her paper.

Her grades had never been top-tier, but failing was a first.

Guan Linlin did a little better than her. She had just barely scraped by in math and physics too.

“It’s over, it’s over. How am I supposed to take this home for my mom to sign? She’ll break my legs for sure.”

Guan Linlin wailed face-down on the desk, and Song Tinghuan was equally at a loss.

A moment later, Qin Shuxia walked into the classroom. The thin patch of hair covering his bald spot looked dangerously precarious, and as soon as he lowered his head, sure enough, a strand slipped down.

Laughter rippled through the classroom, and Qin Shuxia calmly brushed the hair back up, scanning the room. “Still laughing? Look at your scores. Did you spend the whole winter vacation just playing?”

The classroom fell silent.

Old Qin didn’t usually put on airs, but once he got serious, the students still feared him.

Qin Shuxia kept nagging, “You’re about to be split into liberal arts and sciences, and I see that none of you are nervous at all. What is it, do you all think you can get into Jiang University already? Let me see, how many people went to watch when Jiang Yu played basketball that day?”

A completely unrelated question.

The classroom remained dead silent. Old Qin snorted in frustration. “If only you could put even half as much energy into studying as you do into looking at handsome boys, you wouldn’t have gotten results this bad.”

A mischievous boy said, “Teacher Qin, we boys didn’t go watch Jiang Yu.”

Old Qin rolled his eyes at him. “Get lost! Last time Jiang Yu passed by, you were the one shouting the loudest.”

The boy was one of Jiang Yu’s little fans, and being teased like that by Qin Shuxia made him blush awkwardly. Qin Shuxia took a sip of the chrysanthemum tea in his insulated cup and sighed. “If any of you had even half Jiang Yu’s ability, would my hair be thinning like this?”

As soon as he finished speaking, Qin Shuxia looked up and met Song Tinghuan’s surprised, confused gaze.

This week the seating had been adjusted, and Song Tinghuan had moved to the first row, right under Old Qin’s nose.

Old Qin coughed once and put away the casualness on him. “Take out your papers, first question…”

The entire class period was spent going over the math paper. Qin Shuxia was both the homeroom teacher and the math teacher. Would he call her to the office later and lecture her alone?

As if sensing that somehow, the bell rang right after class, and Qin Shuxia, while packing up the things on the podium, said, “Song Tinghuan, come to my office.”

Song Tinghuan: “…”

*

There were no other teachers in Qin Shuxia’s office at the moment. He twisted open his thermos to moisten his throat and asked cheerfully, “So, how have you been doing lately? Adjusting all right?”

Song Tinghuan looked at the goji berries floating in the cup and nodded. “Pretty much.”

Qin Shuxia sat down on one side of the desk and pointed at the seat opposite him. “Sit. Standing around is tiring.”

He flipped through this month’s exam results. “Your overall humanities subjects are still okay, especially Chinese. The science subjects are a little weak, but there are differences between the textbooks here in Lingcheng and Jiangbei, so some of the knowledge points may be things you haven’t learned yet.”

Song Tinghuan could hear the tact in Qin Shuxia’s words. He didn’t directly ask her why she hadn’t done well.

“You just transferred here, so you need some time to adapt to both study and life. Don’t get too anxious about your scores for now. I’ll talk to the other subject teachers later, and we can think of a way together to make up the knowledge you’ve missed.”

For some reason, in that moment, Song Tinghuan felt that Meng Shutang’s decision to place her in Class One-Three was incredibly right.

Song Tinghuan nodded. “Thank you, Teacher Qin.”

Qin Shuxia waved it off. Then, as if remembering something, he asked, “Are you still living at Jiang Yu’s place?”

Song Tinghuan didn’t know why Qin Shuxia brought that up so suddenly, but she nodded. “Mm.”

“Then that’s great. If you have time, you can ask Jiang Yu for more guidance.”

Song Tinghuan: “?”

Ask him for guidance about what?

Ask him how to break the legs of some other school’s big brother?

Author’s Note:

Note: The college entrance exam background in this story still has students split into liberal arts and sciences.