Volume 9: The Acidity of the Setting Sun
Chapter 7: Seeing the Little Tiger Again
The nickname “Silly Goose” was no longer fitting. At this moment, she was as graceful as a startled swan, as lithe as a swimming dragon. The wind lifted her coffee-colored plaid long skirt; she was already a pink-cheeked beauty capable of haunting the dreams of all the young men present for more than a decade. He should call her Jingyi. No, perhaps he didn’t even have the right to call her Jingyi. Lu Li silently added a “Chu” in his mind.
Only now did he suddenly realize that compared to the naive class president from a year ago, the current Chu Jingyi had blossomed into an absolute beauty.
“Excuse me, is this the Mulan University reception team?” she asked again, her tone calm, her demeanor composed, a completely different person from the girl who used to giggle foolishly in Lu Li’s arms. The more he recalled, the more something welled up in Lu Li’s heart.
Why did she come? The answer to this question was like a whirlpool, constantly pulling Lu Li in. It was just like in a Gu Long novel:
“Why did you come?”
“Because I was meant to come.”
“You didn’t have to come.”
“But I came.”
The senior students leading the group were stunned by Chu Jingyi’s temperament and beauty. After Chu Jingyi joined the group of new students, many of the boys and girls in the group were already getting restless. It wasn’t just a man’s privilege to like beautiful women; women also particularly liked to look at beautiful women. They eagerly crowded around Chu Jingyi, asking about her origins, her target major, and her social life. Lu Li stood on the periphery, watching the young woman in the crowd who was methodically dealing with everyone. He felt his pants pocket, only to remember he didn’t smoke, and shook his head with a self-deprecating laugh.
Chu Jingyi, in the middle of the crowd, looked up slightly, her gaze briefly meeting Lu Li’s. Then she turned her head away, pretending not to have seen him, and didn’t greet him. This was perfectly normal; this was how she had been behaving at school these days.
The few boys who had been talking to Lu Li earlier were squeezed out of the crowd. They walked over to Lu Li and casually put an arm around his shoulder. “Holy shit, man, that girl is also from your Chuanhai No. 1 High?”
Lu Li pushed away the hand on his shoulder; he didn’t like having overly close physical contact with men. “Yeah.”
“Do you know her?”
“I do. She’s famous at our school.” That’s right, who in all of Chuanhai No. 1 High didn’t know the young lady of the Chu family? From the students down to the school board members, everyone had a star next to her picture.
“Of course, I’ve only seen a girl that gorgeous in photoshoots,” another boy said, drooling.
Lu Li chuckled. Photoshoots were all heavily edited. How could they compare to Chu Jingyi, who almost never wore makeup? His Yibao—no, Chu Jingyi—any picture of her could be used as a wallpaper. Thinking of this, Lu Li suddenly felt a little down. Why had he never thought of using Jingyi’s photo as his phone or computer wallpaper before? She was clearly so photogenic. Chu Jingyi was right; love that is easily won is never cherished.
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
Lu Li didn’t answer right away, because he was also thinking about the answer to that question. Were he and Jingyi still considered a couple? Although they hadn’t officially broken up yet, looking at her determination, it was no different from an official breakup. Did she? Probably not.
“I don’t know,” Lu Li finally answered. “Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. You should go ask her.” He wanted to send these little soldiers to scout the way for him.
These guys shook their heads like rattle drums. “No, no, we rarely take the initiative to talk to girls, let alone a girl as beautiful as her. If you ask me to, I’m afraid I wouldn’t even be able to let out a fart.”
Lu Li smiled. He hadn’t expected these guys to be so exceptionally honest.
After Chu Jingyi joined the group, all the new students for this Winter Camp had arrived. The lead teacher waved his hand, and the team was divided into male and female groups and boarded a yellow-shelled bus. Lu Li sat in a window seat at the back, resting his chin on his hand and looking at the scenery outside. It had rained recently in Mulan City, and there were still dark, undried puddles on the ground. The water-filled barriers used for epidemic prevention were piled haphazardly in a corner, not yet dealt with.
The bus left the airport and entered the city. This city, full of humanistic charm, unfolded before Lu Li like a scroll painting. There were no towering skyscrapers like in Chuanhai; instead, there were continuous snack streets and mobile vendors riding small red electric carts. Compared to the air in Chuanhai, which was filled with the scent of money and commercialism, the air in Mulan was more suitable for him.
The guy sitting next to him was trembling with nervousness. Lu Li guessed he was nervous about the upcoming Winter Camp. Apart from him and Chu Jingyi, all the new students here were ordinary people who couldn’t get a Character Evaluation Book. For them, their performance in this Winter Camp would determine the results of their College Entrance Examination. It was a moment that would change their destiny, so they couldn’t help but be nervous.
A third-year senior held a document and read out the schedule for this Winter Camp. The new students would be staying in the student dormitories. From 8 AM to 11 AM and from 2 PM to 5 PM every day would be activity time. The first day’s activity was a tour of the Mulan University campus. The second day’s activity was a focused discussion, where the campers’ logical thinking, language expression, etiquette, and other aspects would be graded. The third and fourth days were public lectures, and the last day was a leaderless group discussion, where professors would grade the campers’ overall performance.
Every evening for these five days, a dinner party would also be organized, which was a disguised test of the students’ ability to handle themselves at the dinner table.
After the senior finished reading a stack of documents, the people on the bus began to discuss among themselves, mostly expressing their anxiety about the upcoming Winter Camp activities.
“Bro, you’re not nervous?” The boy sitting next to Lu Li couldn’t help but ask when he saw Lu Li looking leisurely out the window. “Have you ever been to a summer or winter camp before?”
Before Lu Li could answer, he started muttering again. “This is my first time out of the province, and my first time on a plane. I’m so damn nervous. I heard from the admissions office teacher that there’s only a 10% chance of getting an ‘excellent’ rating in this Winter Camp. If I don’t get ‘excellent,’ it’s like I wasted more than two thousand on a plane ticket. My mom will nag me to death…”
He didn’t really want to talk to Lu Li; he just wanted to find someone to vent his nervous energy to.
Lu Li listened to this person’s muttering and gained a more realistic sense of the high school life of ordinary people. This was what high school was like: being anxious about academics, outsmarting one’s family, and having enthusiasm and confusion about the future. A high school life like his, where he was depressed over a woman, was probably the anomaly.
The bus drove onto the Mulan University campus. Lu Li saw a row of university student volunteers wearing red armbands standing outside the parking lot. They were holding a banner: “Warmly Welcome the New Students of the 2018 Mulan University Social Sciences Department Winter Camp!”
Among the group of volunteers, a short, stubby figure craning its neck instantly caught his attention: Chen Jianing was wearing a large red hat, chattering away with a girl next to her. After the bus stopped, this little tiger followed behind the crowd, craning her neck on tiptoe to look toward the bus door. After standing on tiptoe for a while, she turned around, brought over a chair, and stood on it to overlook the front.
Lu Li could guess with his knees that Senior Chen was specifically waiting for him.
