Cao Feng was sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed, holding a huge Oxford dictionary in his hands. He was startled as soon as Duan Yuche came in, and immediately put the dictionary across his lap for cover.
“My dad asked me to give you this.”
“What is that?”
“Uh…medicine.” Duan Yuche didn’t go to him either, and simply threw it over. “You said you wanted to make sweet wine and egg soup for me.”
Cao Feng caught the medicine. When he looked down at it, his expression stiffened, and he hurriedly tried to explain: “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not, I just…”
Duan Yuche waved a hand, indicating that Cao Feng didn’t need to explain, and said with a face full of sympathy, “I’m going out first.”
Cao Feng was completely defeated. He didn’t know how to deal with this sudden situation. He had read lots of books, but they never taught him what to do. He wanted to use his hands, but his heart had a lot of resistance, thinking that that method wouldn’t be good.
–
On Monday, early in the morning, the results of the monthly exam came out. Exam papers fluttered through the classroom like white flowers. Teacher Xiao Bo came in to put up two timetables, and students rushed to the front as one. For the students of the international class, good grades weren’t as important as they were to the students who would have to take the college entrance exam, but that didn’t mean that the international class students didn’t care.
Ma Xiaobo stood on the podium and said: “This time, our class won the overall first prize in the Autumn Sports Festival, as well as the long distance running event. Pan Xu, come over here and help me distribute the certificates.”
“The results and rankings have also been released, and your seating arrangements have been slightly modified. The new seating arrangement is going to be pasted next to the results sheet. Make sure you change your seats before this afternoon.”
Cao Feng was cleaning the corridor. Hearing that, he immediately rushed to the place where the seat chart was pasted, wanting to see if Ma Xiaobo had found out his little trick – maybe he noticed it, and had transferred Cao Feng back to his original position.
But at the moment the results sheet was surrounded by people. Cao Feng urgently wanted to see the seating chart, but he was big and couldn’t squeeze in between everyone else, so he craned his head hard to look.
The words were very small. He squinted his eyes and tried hard to read it, and finally saw his own name – it was right next to Duan Yuche’s! He was too happy, that when a dozen classmates shoved at him, he took a step back and accidentally stepped on someone else’s foot. The person pushed him hard: “What are you pushing for! You stepped on my shoe!”.
“I’m sorry!” Cao Feng hurriedly apologised, and turned around to see Pan Xu, the sports student representative. The other party was clutching a bunch of certificates in his hand, and had an extremely ugly expression on his face. Cao Feng looked down and saw a pair of brand-name shoes. Although there were no shoe prints, he was still very embarrassed and said, “I have wet wipes, you can clean your shoes if you want to.”
“Are you going to kneel down and wipe it for me?”
Cao Feng was stunned for a second. Just as he was about to say something, Pan Xu pushed him aside and left with a terrible expression, still cursing: “You village hick, you think you can touch this ancestor? I’ll kill you……”
This was a phrase from the local dialect, and Cao Feng couldn’t really understand it. He only understood “a village hick”.
Cao Feng frowned, but didn’t pay much mind to it. He immediately returned to his seat, and with the fastest possible speed, moved his desk and chair to Duan Yuche’s side.
Duan Yuche looked up at him: “Where are you moving to?”
Cao Feng tried his best to suppress the smile at the corners of his mouth: “Teacher Ma changed my seat, and I am now your deskmate.” He said to his younger brother’s former deskmate, “Airplane, let’s change seats.”
Airplane was a little confused: “I have to change? Where am I moving to?”
“I don’t know either.” Cao Feng paused for a moment, “We’re probably swapping seats.”
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.
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Duan Yuche was drinking water and choked.
Cao Feng didn’t have time to look at the report card at all, and he was stunned when he heard the words. Immediately, his eyes lit up, overjoyed: “Really?”
“You didn’t look? First in the grade, bro, your grades are so good! Why did you come to our international class…” Airplane had never been able to understand why a poor person had to come to their class to study, and then score full marks on the exams and rank first in the grade.
Duan Yuche next to him butted in: “His grades were always good. Back then he was over there, at Guizhou, he was number one in the middle school exams and got a ton of scholarship money from the government. He’s just good at studying, he’s really smart.”
Airplane was really shocked: “Wo-ow, amazing.”
It was rare for Cao Feng to hear such words from his younger brother once, and his face immediately went red. He said shyly, “Not amazing, not amazing…”
Taking advantage of the changing of seats in class, Duan Yuche asked Cao Feng in a low voice, “Why did Xiao Bo move you next to me?”
“I don’t know either.”
Duan Yuche rested his head on his chin and said, “Could my dad have called him and asked him to change the seats?”
Cao Feng’s lips curled slightly: “Could be.”
Duan Yuche didn’t reject this arrangement. If it was like this from the beginning, he would definitely have been unhappy. But now that he knows that Cao Feng’s actually not so bad, it doesn’t matter.
In the first period, Ma Xiaobo did not give any lectures, but specifically analyzed the grades. He especially praised Cao Feng: “Student Cao Feng just transferred to Linzhou to go to school. He is from a minority group, and the education he received is very different from ours. Under such circumstances, he is still so hardworking, did his best and made progress, and in the first monthly exam, he got the best score in the grade!”
Cao Feng was really happy in his heart, but he was a little bit shy, and his face flushed. Then, Ma Xiaobo said: “Now how about we let Cao Feng stand up and talk about his studying methods?”
Cao Feng didn’t expect this, and hesitated for a few seconds. It wasn’t until Duan Yuche patted him that Cao Feng stood up: “My studying method…”
No one in the class made a sound. They all looked at him quietly, and only a few of them were very disdainful towards him.
Cao Feng had never spoken in front of so many people before, and he was very nervous, especially because he knew that his Mandarin was bad, which made him even more uneasy. When he spoke, his voice was trembling: “My learning method is actually very stupid and very ordinary.”
“My English is actually really bad, so I just memorise it over and over again. To save every minute of time, if I can memorise one English word every minute, I can remember ten English words in ten minutes after class. At first I forced myself to memorise a hundred words a day, now I force myself to memorise two hundred. When I get up in the morning, I will use…recorder, to record my voice reading the words aloud, then at night I use it to do a spelling exam, and write out the Chinese meaning without checking…”
Most of the students listened very carefully. What he said was closely related to the IELTS and TOEFL exams they had to take. It might have been the international class, but only a third of them could pass the English test.
“Good! Well said!” Ma Xiaobo began clapping, and the class burst into applause. “Cao Feng won first place in three individual events in this sports festival. Everyone should be studying like him, and develop all-roundedly in virtues, intelligence, arts, sports! All right, Cao Feng, sit down first. Keep working hard, don’t get overconfident.”
To be praised in class, Cao Feng could hardly hide his excitement. With these kinds of results, he finally had something worthy to give back to Duan Shumin.
Duan Yuche saw Cao Feng sitting down with a rosy glow, and felt a little complicated. He wasn’t jealous, but was a little happy for Cao Feng. After all, Cao Feng deserved it for all of his hard work.
When class was over, He Tiantian passed by as she was getting some water. She saw that he was doing practice questions again, so she asked, “First place, why did you get moved here?”
“The teacher arranged it.” Cao Feng said.
“Oh…by the way, did you add my QQ? Why didn’t I receive your friend request?”
Sitting next to Cao Feng, Duan Yuche, who had been playing a game, raised his head and glanced at her.
“I…didn’t go online last week and was doing my homework.” Cao Feng had forgotten about this situation. When he made an account that day, the only person he added was Duan Yuche.
“Then when did you go online? Has the matter with your online friend been resolved?”
Cao Feng looked at Duan Yuche subconsciously, and stammered, “It’s resolved…I’ll add you when I use the computer this weekend.”
“Don’t forget!”
As soon as she left, Duan Yuche said, “What online friend?”
“No-nothing.” Cao Feng’s nerves became tensed up again.
Duan Yuche laughed, and gave him a side-eye: “A female online friend?”
“No!”
“Oh, I know, it’s online dating.”
“No…didi, it’s not what you think, it’s not online dating, it’s…” Cao Feng didn’t know how to explain it. From the beginning it was all a lie.
“No need to explain, who hasn’t dated online yet?”
Cao Feng’s lips twitched, struggling to voice his true troubles.
He quietly listened to class, took down notes, and was often distracted for a few seconds to see what didi next to him was doing. Duan Yuche occasionally lay down and slept, played the PSP for an entire class, and then took out some little soldiers from his schoolbag and organised a performance for them. Cao Feng didn’t remind him not to play, to listen in class and so on. He knew Duan Yuche wasn’t like him. Even if he said it, Duan Yuche wouldn’t listen, so he simply didn’t mention it at all, and fished out a plum candy to give to him.
Duan Yuche stretched out his hand to receive the food without even looking up. Then he peeled off the candy wrapper and ate it.
Cao Feng waited and waited until the afternoon, but he still didn’t get the five-in-a-row game he had been looking forward to for a long time. Duan Yuche played his own games, and didn’t really pay much attention to Cao Feng. Except for asking if he was going to the toilet, Duan Yuche practically didn’t talk to him at all.
Cao Feng was a little at a loss, and didn’t know what was wrong.
He endured the same situation for several days until they were doing practice questions in Biology. Cao Feng was almost finished, and so hesitantly took out a notebook, drew the grid, and nudged the notebook over to Duan Yuche.
Duan Yuche gave him a side glance and asked, “What?”
Cao Feng mouthed: “Shall we play five-in-a-row?”
“No.” Duan Yuche shook his head decisively.
Cao Feng was even more at a loss. Didn’t his didi like this game very much? Why wouldn’t he play it with Cao Feng?
He thought about many kinds of answers in his mind, wondering if it was because he did so well in the exam, went home with a certificate, and got praised by Uncle, so Duan Yuche felt unhappy. Or maybe Cao Feng accidentally did something to offend him.
Was it because the breakfast was not delicious?
What made Cao Feng even more depressed was that Duan Yuche refused to play chess with him. Then, one day in class, Airplane threw a notebook to Duan Yuche. Shockingly, it had a five-in-a-row grid drawn in it.
Airplane said, “Playing or not?”
Duan Yuche nodded.
Cao Feng who was listening to the class: “…”
He really couldn’t think of an answer, and was dejected and tormented for two days. Every day he stared at Airplane in fear. When asked what he was looking at, Cao Feng just shook his head.
Airplane was short and petite. Although he had a few pimples, his appearance was still delicate and pretty.
Did didi like him?
Cao Feng couldn’t hold it in. When school was over, the two left together, and Cao Feng couldn’t help but ask, “Xiao Che, I have a question for you.”
“Say it.”
They passed the bicycle sheds where people came and went. There was a susurrus of crisp wind in the autumn night.
“It’s just…why do you…you don’t talk to me, and don’t play chess with me. If…in your heart, to me…if I did something wrong, you can tell me.”
Duan Yuche looked up at him. The street lights on the campus were far away, and Cao Feng’s expression was very sincere. Duan Yuche could see that his hair had grown out a lot and hadn’t been cut, and his fluffy black hair sat at the top of his head, looking like it would be very comfortable to touch. He looked like the shepherd dog raised by his German neighbours.
That shepherd dog was smart and obedient. Duan Yuche liked to rub the dog’s head and throw frisbees for it.
“It’s nothing.” He knew that Cao Feng was eager to learn, and didn’t want to infect him with his bad habits, so he randomly found an excuse. “You’re so smart, if you play chess with me, I will definitely lose. Where’s the fun in that?”
“You won’t! I don’t know how to play chess, and I’m very bad at five-in-a-row. Just try it with me and you’ll know. I’m sure I can’t beat you!” He looked at his didi and explained urgently, his eyes sparkling in concentration.
“There’s nothing to be proud of if you don’t play well.” Duan Yuche was still thinking that Cao Feng’s hair must be very comfortable to pet, and his hands felt itchy. “Are you waiting for me to praise you?”
SHEEPDOG CAO FENG I’M CRYING
also i completely forgot about the five-in-a-row that duan yuche promised to play with cao feng ! i had to go back to check my tls to see where that was even mentioned (chapter 13, almost 10 chapters ago!). duan yuche said he only plays five-in-a-row with his deskmate, and cao feng immediately offered to sit next to him in class. i can’t believe cao feng had been thinking about that all this time, what a cutie !
only lightly edited so i could get this out quickly, please let me know if i’ve made any mistakes !
(eta: i scheduled this for two hours ago but it didn’t go up, thank goodness i checked ToT)
Poor Cao Feng! Hurry up and play five in a row with him qwq
Thanks for the chapter <3
right ?! the poor thing has been hopefully waiting for duan yuche to play with him 😭
thanks for reading + commenting !
Thanks for the translation ❤️