“What’s wrong with the car in front of me? It’s so slow, even an old lady can walk faster… so it’s you.” Shang Muxiao lowered his eyelids, looking tired, “Next time, put a sign on the back, to avoid misunderstandings.”
I was stunned for a moment. At first I didn’t understand what sign he wanted me to put up. After a few seconds, I quickly realized that he should have wanted me to put up a sign like, ‘The owner is disabled’ or ‘The owner is sick’.
He probably didn’t mean to act in such a discriminating manner towards me, but his words did make me uncomfortable. I was just paying attention to safety. It had nothing to do with whether I was disabled or not. Even if I wasn’t disabled, I would have driven carefully.
“Excuse me……”
Enduring my displeasure, I explained to Shang Muxiao that I slammed on the brakes to avoid the wild cat that suddenly came out. After listening, Shang Muxiao nodded, as if he wasn’t very interested in the cause of the accident, and readily stated that since he rear-ended me, then he was fully responsible.
“Was it damaged badly?” I asked.
“Mine is fine, it’s just scratched off a bit of paint, yours is more serious.” Shang Muxiao put his helmet under his arm, took out his mobile phone, and glanced at it. It was unknown to whom he was sending a message.
Just a few seconds later, his phone rang suddenly, and he answered it almost immediately. His originally impatient expression suddenly became incredibly soft.
“Sister… It’s just a small accident, it’s okay… I know, I will pay attention… The snacks you want have already been bought, you wait a while…”
Upon closer inspection, I found that he had a piercing in his right ear and was wearing a small black spar earring. He had a small black mole just above his earlobe. If you didn’t pay attention, you would think that he had two ear piercings.
I remembered that Shang Lu also had a mole in the same place. I used to like his mole very much and thought it had a “taste”.
Genes were amazing, even this aspect was so similar.
A long queue gradually formed behind the car, and there was a series of honking sounds coming from the vehicles behind. Our accident had already caused congestion, and if we delayed it any longer, the police would come.
“Let’s do this…” I was just about to say let’s go to the open area to discuss when Shang Muxiao hung up the phone and stretched out his hand directly to me.
I stared in confusion at the phone that was handed in front of me, not understanding what he meant.
“Give me your phone number,” he said. “I’ll have my insurance broker contact you.”
That was what it meant.
I took the phone, entered my number, and handed it back to him.
He didn’t look at it, tucked the phone into his trouser pocket, put on his helmet again and said to me, “Let’s leave it here for now. I have something urgent to do. If there is any problem, we will talk about it at school next week.”
I nodded, said nothing, started the car, and headed towards the intersection again. Just after turning the corner, a blue-and-white figure quickly overtook the car from behind, and the smooth body disappeared from sight before I could take a closer look.
That night, a man who claimed to be an insurance broker of Shang Muxiao called me and asked me to go to the designated location to fix the damage when I had time, saying that the repair costs would be fully paid by their insurance company.
As Shang Muxiao said, the back of my car was really badly damaged. The entire rear bumper was dented, and it was a little shaky. With a crash like this, it only managed to scratch some paint off of his car. I didn’t know whether it was because his car’s quality was too good, or my car is of poor quality.
I ultimately decided to get the damage assessed on the weekend. After driving the car to the damage assessment point, the staff looked at my car and told me that the entire rear bumper might have to be replaced, and the rear cover had to be repainted. I asked them how long it would take to fix it and they said at least two weeks.
The thought of not having a car for two weeks gave me an unstoppable headache.
And this invisible, lingering pain also indirectly affected every aspect of my life, such as my mood in classes. Even Yu Xixi noticed that I was in a bad mood recently, and became more and more pinch-tailed, and didn’t dare to share gossip with me.
Shen Luoyu came to see me on Wednesday and brought a lot of daily necessities. Knowing that it would be inconvenient for me to travel without a car, she even went to the vegetable market to help me fill up the refrigerator.
Because she contributed both her money and efforts, my bad mood for a few days had also calmed down a lot. We talked about some unimportant things and I was not so impatient anymore. “Xiao-Jie, the mutual aid group I told you about last time, do you have time to join one on Saturday?” Shen Luoyu simply made two plates of spaghetti and shared one with me.
“What kind of mutual aid group?” I scrunched up my face and didn’t quite remember what she said about the mutual aid group. I probably thought she was too long-winded. I’ve heard it, and it went in one ear and out the other.
“It’s that… optimistic psychological support group.”
I seem to have an impression of this name.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
I looked up at her, “I have no psychological problems.”
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If she used herself to play this family card, I could totally bear it. But my aunt was an elder I have respected since I was a child. As long as she goes out, I can’t just refuse it.
I was silent and didn’t directly refuse, “How is Auntie doing recently?”
“It’s still the same old problem. It’s easy to get a cough when the weather is cold.” Shen Luoyu poked her plate of pasta and said earnestly, “She’s very worried about you.”
My aunt suffered from a lung disease when she was young. Although she was cured later, the root cause of the disease was still there, and it was easy to fall ill when there was any stimulation. When I had an accident, she shed a lot of tears for me, and I didn’t want her to worry about my affairs anymore.
She was one of the few people who were willing to worry about me.
After pursing my lips, I put down my fork, and finally gave in.
“Okay, I’ll go.”
After Shen Luoyu left, I packed up the tableware, poured myself a cup of Trockenbeerenauslese wine suitable for bedtime drinking, and went to the CD rack in the living room.
I pulled out the DVD of ‘The Retrograde Wind’ from the corner, opened the box, and skillfully inserted it into the DVD player.
Sitting in the dim living room, looking at the screen that had already been replayed for who knew how many times on the projection screen, I chose to fast-forward directly to the place I wanted to watch.
In a hot and humid barn, a topless man smoked cigarettes. The woman flirted with him. He hugged her into his arms as he slowly exhaled the smoke in his mouth, forming a wonderful fluid phenomenon, which vaguely enveloped the heads and faces of the two.
The nails sank slightly into the glowing muscles, and the thick blood vessels bulged and throbbed under the wheat-colored skin.
A burst of lust, a surge of hormones.
This movie deserved a more laudable image, but I loved this part alone.
The director should be very fond of Shang Lu. Loved his excellent expressiveness, and also loved his acting skills that seemed to reach even the tips of his hair. In the close-up of his profile, every bead of sweat and every undulating breath of his were just right. Even the mole on his earlobe seemed to be speaking of the infinite charm of the male protagonist.
Staring at the tiny black mole, another younger face flashed in my mind. I frowned, quickly clearing the inappropriate image from my mind.
After watching the movie, I put the empty wine glass in the sink as the sleepiness gradually emerged due to the effect of the alcohol. I turned off the projection and controlled the wheelchair into the bedroom to rest. That night, maybe it was because of drinking, or because I revisited ‘Retrograde Wind’, I had a lot of messy dreams. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember the content of the dream clearly, but I felt exhausted physically and mentally as if I had been fighting with people all night.
“Teacher, I really have a reason. I didn’t miss so many classes on purpose. Please give me another chance and let me take the exam… I can’t fail any more classes, or it will affect my graduation.”
Knowing that they were going to fail the course, there were many students who came to me for intercession.
But today was different.
I typed on the computer keyboard without looking up. Seeing that I ignored her, the girl simply walked around the desk and came to me.
“Teacher, please give me another chance.” She lowered her body and half-kneeled beside my wheelchair, begging.
My head hurt even more.
Minimizing the window, I leaned back in the chair and looked down at her, “You will be disqualified from the exam after five absenteeisms, but you have more than five absenteeisms, Classmate Yan Ying. Since the beginning of the semester, you have not attended my class even once. You’re not a freshman anymore, you should know what I can’t tolerate the most.”
The girl flinched, her eyes shifting, “I have troubles, teacher. During summer vacation, I got……depressed, and then I couldn’t control my emotions. Taking medicine didn’t help. It didn’t improve until the start of school, so I skipped classes……It’s all because I’m sick. I really didn’t skip class on purpose.”
I nodded. “Then give me the medical records. If you do have depression, I’ll make an exemption.”
“I, I can’t find it, I don’t remember where I put it…” Yan Ying raised her head, her eyes with delicate eye makeup were full of tears, and she began to mess around, “Teacher, I wouldn’t lie to you. I really,.. I was really sick. It was really miserable, teacher…have some pity…”
There was a slight touch on my leg. I looked down and saw that her hand had climbed up to my knee.
I frowned, not quite sure of her intentions.
“Please help me, I’m willing to do anything…” The girl bit her lip, looking pitiful, her long black hair was loose, making her skin paler.
It was clearly an innocent appearance, but her words and deeds revealed lewdness and sophistication. The extreme contrast could sometimes feel exciting, and sometimes it could be nauseating. I thought the latter.
The arrogant always felt that they could rule the world through beauty.
The five fingers gradually moved upwards. As they were about to reach an indescribable part, I intercepted her hand. I was about to laugh in anger.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
She looked at me at a loss and wanted to withdraw her hand, “I, I just…”
“Sexually bribing a disabled person? I’m amazed you can think of that.” I threw her hand back to her and said coldly, “I don’t want to waste any more time. Please leave my office before I call the security.”
Yan Ying was like a pale statue, maintaining that posture and freezing there for a long time without moving.
When I was thinking about whether I really wanted to call the security guard, there was a knock on the door. Then, the office door, which was not closed, was slowly pushed open with force.
Yan Ying and I both looked over at the same time. The person outside the door maintained their knocking posture and looked inside the door in astonishment. “Sorry, I didn’t know there were people inside.” He said sorry, but had no intention of going away. Shang Muxiao leaned against the door frame, looking at Yan Ying and I with interest, as if watching an ethics drama.
With a third person present, no matter how bold Yan Ying was, it was impossible for her to continue bribing without burden, so she stood up and hurried out the door. When passing by Shang Muxiao, she didn’t even dare to look at him.
“You’re so popular huh.” After Yan Ying left, Shang Muxiao entered the office and closed the door with his backhand, “I received a call from the teaching assistant who said you needed me for something. What, is there something wrong with your car?”
Finally getting rid of Yan Ying’s mess, I secretly breathed a sigh of relief, squeezed the hand sanitizer on the second base table, rubbed my hands and said, “Don’t go out and talk about what happened just now. I’m looking for you and my car has nothing to do with it. Your credits.”
It was unknown where Shang Muxiao came from. Never mind that his clothes were all wrinkled and messed up, they were even stained with what seemed like red wine. His face was full of tiredness, as if he hadn’t slept all night.
“My credits?” He slumped down on the sofa intended for receiving guests without needing me to invite him, looking overly familiar, “What’s wrong with my credits?”
I controlled the wheelchair and came to him slowly, and said, “Because you didn’t hand in your homework last week and you missed class twice, I calculated that you would need to score more than 90 percent in the final exam to avoid failure. This is basically impossible.”
He rubbed his forehead, closed his eyes and asked, “How do you know that I will fail the test?”
The faint smell of alcohol coming from him further confirmed my guess. He must have just had an all-night binge, and he was still hungover.
I turned to the water dispenser, poured a cup of warm water into a disposable water cup, gently placed it on the coffee table, and pushed it towards Shang Muxiao.
“Because no one has ever been able to get more than 90 points from me.” In other words, this subject was bound to be suspended according to the current trend.
When Shang Muxiao heard the words, he moved and slowly opened his eyes.
That feeling of being torn to shreds reappeared.
He stared at me for a while and asked, “So, what exactly did you call me here for?”
Putting my fingers together in front of me, I looked at him quietly and said, “If I really want to fail your class, I wouldn’t let you come. Do you want to hear about another possibility?”
Shang Muxiao put down his hand, frowned at me, and said nothing.
I clenched my fingers. I still couldn’t believe I would make such a decision. It was so unlike me. The “Great Demon King” in everyone’s mouth was me, sitting here, as if it was a consciousness from another universe.
“I don’t do this kind of thing very much, but if it’s you, I think I can give you another chance.” After speaking in one breath, I eliminated any chance of turning back.
Shang Muxiao looked indifferent, “Give me a chance? Why? They said you would never show mercy.”
“You are different.”
Shang Muxiao was stunned when he heard these words, but did not respond immediately. He swept his gaze across my lower body in a meaningful way. The gaze clearly held no weight, but it strangely made my skin feel as if it was “stinging”.
I frowned and just as I was about to ask him what he was looking at, he retracted his frivolous gaze and said with a smile, “Do you always use this trick? I don’t see how you can still think about these things. Although I never set limits on the other half , but… no, I don’t like my bedmate acting like a corpse in bed.”
His words left me at a loss for a moment. This trick? These things? bed… mate?
Wait, he wasn’t thinking of…
I quickly realized that he might have misunderstood. He misunderstood that I was implying that he would have to give something in exchange for this extra “one chance” with me. He might have even misunderstood what happened between me and Yan Ying.
I was dumbfounded for a while. I wasn’t even sure which would be more irritating, to be misunderstood by Shang Muxiao as a misbehaving professor or as a “dead corpse in bed” humiliatingly described by him.
I just… wanted him to hand in two essay assignments for me.
“Okay, I still have something to do. You can go and play with someone else. You can either fail me or expel me. I don’t care.” He finished the water in the cup with one gulp, squeezed the paper cup into a ball and threw it into the bin beneath the table. Then he got up and left.
“I’m not……”
I wanted to explain and tried to grab him by the sleeve as he passed me.
This was a bad decision.
He had no intention of showing mercy at all. The moment my fingertips touched his body, he grabbed my wrist bone so forcefully that I had the illusion that my bones were about to be crushed by him.
“Don’t mistake good for bad.” The corners of his lips were still slightly curved, but they would never be mistaken for a smile.
Mistake good for bad.
I would have never imagined that he would come to tell me this. I endured the pain and spoke word by word through gritted teeth, “Let go. You really misunderstood. I didn’t mean that.”
“Misunderstood?” Shang Muxiao leaned down and looked straight at me with beast-like eyes, “But the way you look at me doesn’t look like I misunderstood.”
The smell of wine, perfume, and sweat mixed into a strange fragrance. It rushed into the nose and flooded the brain, making people feel suffocated and dizzy.
Not feeling well, I reached out and pushed him.
He released his hand, stepped back, put his hands in his trouser pockets, and looked at me like he was looking at a poor disgusting bastard.
With a sneer on his lips, he stepped back to the door, opened it and said, “Okay, leave your ‘opportunity’ to someone else, I don’t need it. I hope we never meet again in the future, Professor Bei.”
After speaking, he left the office and slammed the door behind him. With the loud slam of the door closing, the surroundings returned to silence.
I stared at the door. If it wasn’t for the pain in my wrist, I would have wondered if I had just had an absurd dream.
Although life was propelled by a series of insatiable desires, full of cravings and the pains of endless pursuit, I really held innocent feelings about Shang Muxiao. I had no wrong thoughts. If one was to insist that there was anything beyond a teacher-student friendship, it was only a bit of affection extended from my love of Shang Lu.
This was too absurd… was it true that there were too many wicked people, and no one believed in good people?
“Son of a bitch that bites.” Rubbing my sore wrist, I was about to laugh in anger.
In honor of him, I also hoped that I would never have the opportunity to meet him again.
However, fate seemed to be taking special care of me recently, always trying every means to give me unexpected “surprises”. The former had not been digested yet, and the latter would come.
Two nights later, I went to join the psychological support group that Shen Luoyu helped me to sign up for. Before my seat had a chance to warm up, a tall figure walked in from the door. I didn’t know how the other person felt when they saw me, but I certainly didn’t feel very good.
There were so many mutual psychological support groups in this city. Shen Luoyu selected carefully and chose the only one with Shang Muxiao.
Thank You for the new chapter ( ˘ ³˘)❤
Sorry just seeking clarification: “holding a helmet” means he (Shang Muxiao) is riding a bike right? Anything Thank you for the update.
thanks for the chapter <3
Thanks for the chapter ☺️
thanks for the chapter!