Chapter 152
On the day of university registration.
Ruan Xi put her luggage in the dorm, made her bed. She was the first to arrive. She also cleaned the dorm. While washing the rag, many people asked, “Hey, are you the Tamamo teacher who drew Dream Walk?” She would often smile, neither denying nor confirming.
Although she had the title of a beautiful girl manga artist and her fame was decent, people’s recognition of beauties was not high. Unless it was someone who dominated the TV screen, otherwise, you probably wouldn’t recognize her on the street.
After cleaning up, she went downstairs, planning to get the rest of her checked luggage.
“Classmate, classmate,” someone suddenly called her at the dormitory entrance. It was an auntie of her mother’s age, panting. “Excuse me, is this Qingya Garden, Qingzhu Building?”
The girls’ dormitories had four buildings: Plum, Orchid, Bamboo, and Chrysanthemum. She, a freshman, lived in Qingzhu Building.
Ruan Xi nodded and glanced at the huge suitcase and bags beside the auntie, thinking to herself, who is so not independent, letting their mother carry such heavy things?
Her first impression was immediately ruined.
But then, she saw a girl with a cast on her hand coming up behind, and an uncle carrying even more luggage.
“Mom, slow down,” the girl said hastily. “Let me carry that bag.”
“How can I do that? Your hand is not healed yet.”
“This hand of mine is fine…”
So she was injured.
Ruan Xi looked at the time on her phone. Anyway, she had nothing to do, so she said, “Auntie, let me help you carry one.”
The woman actually couldn’t carry it anymore, but she was just being strong for her daughter. Someone was willing to help, and she was extremely grateful.
“Then… thank you, little classmate.”
“You’re welcome.”
She took the initiative to carry a heavier one.
“The quality of the students who can get into A University is really high,” the uncle behind them lamented. “Nannan, you have to learn from her.”
To his surprise, his daughter was not dissatisfied this time for being compared to others.
In the stairwell, like most parents, that mother was afraid that her daughter would not be able to make friends and helped her daughter with her diplomacy.
“Classmate, what’s your major? My Nannan is in finance.”
“I’m also in finance,” Ruan Xi rested for a while. This box was really heavy. “Finance Class 1.”
“What a coincidence? Nannan is also in Class 1. Classmate, you’re from the south, right?”
“Mhm.”
“We’re locals,” the woman said with a smile to her daughter behind her. “Maybe you’re even roommates.”
The girl’s arm was broken, and she was not walking fast. She hadn’t had a chance to look downstairs just now. Now she could secretly see the classmate’s side profile.
What a beautiful person.
“I live in 1603,” Ruan Xi said.
“Let me see Nannan’s dorm…” The woman stopped, looked at the information on her phone, and exclaimed, “You’re really roommates.”
Ruan Xi also didn’t expect such a coincidence. She turned her head and smiled at the girl.
“Hello, my name is Ruan Xi.”
The girl was taken aback for a moment.
“I… my name is Qiu Nan.”
When they entered the dorm, the room was clean and tidy. It was obvious who had cleaned it. A person’s temperament is a very strange thing. Qiu Nan stared at Ruan Xi, who was helping on the side, and felt in her heart… this was a very special girl, very independent, very reliable, as if she could handle anything. Being with her gave her a sense of security.
The dorm was for four people. After everyone had arrived, Ruan Xi and the other two agreed to take turns taking care of the inconvenient Qiu Nan for a day. Qiu Nan also had to go to military training. Although she didn’t have to do the drill, she had to go to the base. In the base dorm, her upper bunk and Ruan Xi’s lower bunk were switched. Although even the others would have definitely switched with her, she still felt a sense of being specially taken care of.
Today, it was Ruan Xi’s turn to take care of her.
The meal was brought by Ruan Xi. During the lunch break, everyone was chatting about stars and TV dramas in the dorm. She, on the other hand, was secretly watching Ruan Xi, who was sitting on a stool and reading. This person, even during military training, had not given up on her studies and her manga. And she… would always unconsciously pay attention to her.
She felt that Ruan Xi had a charm, a charm that made people believe and rely on her. She wanted to understand Ruan Xi, to understand her heart, to understand her past.
An indescribable feeling had quietly sprouted from the day of registration.
After eating, Qiu Nan stood up with her empty rice bowl. Ruan Xi keenly noticed her movement and looked up from her book.
“Finished?”
“Mhm,” even though she was talking to someone of the same sex, Qiu Nan’s heart suddenly sped up. “I’m going to wash the dishes.”
“Your one hand is inconvenient. Leave it there. I’ll help you wash it later.”
“Uh, sorry to trouble you…”
“It’s okay. Didn’t they also help you wash before?”
Even though they were of the same age, she inexplicably felt that she was more mature than herself.
On the first night of school, Ruan Xi had been open and honest with them.
“I like girls. If you mind, I can move out. You don’t have to consider my financial problems.”
The other sisters had smiled and said, “Then you have to be careful not to be taken advantage of by us,” and “I can, I can.” Qiu Nan had always thought she was straight, until she looked into Ruan Xi’s eyes and found that she would even blush when she was teasing with her roommates. She found that others were joking, but she seemed to be really okay with it.
If it were Ruan Xi, she…
As a top university, A University’s school atmosphere was open and enlightened. When they talked about a lesbian couple kissing in the dorm building, everyone would only gossip and not despise them.
“Ruan Xi, someone confessed to you on the confession wall again,” a roommate said with a grin. “Let me read it to you.”
The confession wall was not a real wall, but an A University WeChat public account. Every day, it would choose a few confessions to announce, of course, anonymously. It was precisely because of the anonymity that there were so many submissions.
“Don’t,” Ruan Xi said helplessly.
It had only been a few days since school started, and this was already the third one.
“‘Confessing to Ruan Xi of the first-year finance class. I like your manga, just as I like you. You appeared in my surprise, and I wish I could meet you in a dream. I like your heroic and beautiful appearance in military uniform, and I like even more…’ never mind, never mind, it’s a bit sour, I can’t read on,” the roommate complained. “From a second-year business administration senior—wow, you’ve even captured the heart of a senior.”
An anonymous confession letter, the person who dared to write it had long since lost their real-life reserve.
“Wait, how can a second-year senior see your military uniform?” someone found a blind spot. “It must be a senior who came to interview and take pictures. The scope is too small!”
It was almost possible to lock down the exact person.
“Don’t, I don’t want to know,” Ruan Xi sighed. “I have a wife.”
A “wife” had aroused everyone’s gossip soul.
But Qiu Nan’s face turned slightly pale.
“Who is it, who is it? Is she at our school? I thought you were joking when you said you had a wife.”
“She’s from out of town, the one who sent the things. You still don’t believe me,” Ruan Xi smiled. “Why are you so concerned? You don’t ask those who have boyfriends.”
“I’m curious! Yuri is just… so exciting!”
“It feels like she spoils you so much, sending so many things over.”
“Is it that Teacher Tong?”
Ruan Xi was stunned. The girl thought she had offended her and said with embarrassment, “Uh, I was just saying… I got carried away with shipping the CP.”
But, a few of the girls’ eyes were sparkling. “I know that Teacher Tong. She’s super pretty. I even watched her special class on the final questions during the epidemic!”
“I was asked by my teacher to have the whole class watch… but her math is really good.”
They were all from the same time, and they had a lot of common topics.
Ruan Xi was as if she had eaten honey. The sweet taste gradually spread to her heart, and she wished she could say, “Continue, praise her more.”
Whoever praises Teacher Tong is her friend.
But, it was not yet time to make it public. She didn’t want to cause trouble for Teacher Tong.
No one noticed that Qiu Nan’s gaze had dimmed a lot. She was looking down at her phone, trying her best not to think about someone else’s girlfriend.
—If only I had met her earlier.
**
Branch campus.
In front of the school building, there was a blackboard that recorded the moral education points of each class.
In the morning, Tong Yao passed by and saw that her Class 9 had the lowest score.
The deductions were basically from the dorms.
“Boys’ dorm 418, mosquito net on the lower left, one point deducted.
“Girls’ dorm 311…”
After several consecutive days of the lowest moral education points, during the evening self-study session, the director of the Dean’s Office found her and asked why her students were so incorrigible.
At this time, the students were in the classroom, voting for the class slogan.
“Because… there are mosquitoes,” Tong Yao said with a wry smile.
Is there any other reason to hang a mosquito net?
In the classroom, Song Zhifei gave a loud “shh,” and the whole class became quiet, listening to the conversation outside.
“Don’t the students in the other classes get bitten by mosquitoes?” the director frowned.
“Of course they do.”
“But they didn’t hang mosquito nets!” the director said. “Can’t they use mosquito repellent or mosquito coils? Are your Class 9 students so delicate?”
“Director, I can understand that the school doesn’t allow mosquito coils, but they don’t have fans or air conditioning at night. It’s over thirty degrees, and there are mosquitoes biting… If hanging a mosquito net can make it a little better, I’m willing to take the deduction.”
There were low cheers in the classroom.
“Is this a problem of deductions? Mosquito nets can also cause fires!” The director looked as if he were disappointed that iron could not be turned into steel. “A desk lamp could ignite a mosquito net, right?”
Tong Yao said softly, “But there are also many schools that allow mosquito nets.”
“Others are others. Our school has our school’s rules. What would it be like if the rules were broken?”
The students who were eavesdropping all secretly cursed the dean of studies.
“You could even choke to death while eating,” Song Zhifei spat. “A fire, how low is the probability?”
They hated the school’s “choking on a fly and giving up food” for the sake of safety.
“It’s okay to be a little hot without a mosquito net. Who will be responsible if something happens after hanging it? Teacher Tong, you don’t want anything to happen to your students, right?” the director pressed on. “Besides, hanging such a large curtain also affects the aesthetics. Tell them to take down the mosquito nets tonight.”
The students heard that there was no sound outside and knew that the conversation was over, and were a little disappointed. The status quo, in the end, had not changed.
Tong Yao pushed open the door and came in. Seeing that everyone was staring at her, she pulled herself together and put on a smile.
“What’s wrong? Have you finished discussing the slogan?”
A group of people said no.
Song Zhifei raised her hand. Tong Yao signaled for her to stand up and speak. The girl stood up and said, “Teacher, let us pay for the air conditioning ourselves. We’ll also pay for the electricity. When the temperature is low, there will be no mosquitoes, or we can sleep with the blankets on.”
Then the mosquito nets could be taken down.
Tong Yao smiled, not mocking Song Zhifei’s simple idea, and said warmly, “Installing air conditioning is very troublesome. You have to solve the circuit problem, the wiring has to be modified, the cost is very high, and it takes a long time. It’s not just a matter of money.”
After so much effort, to finally install air conditioning and provide power all night, it might even let the students secretly bring computers to play, and bring induction cookers and electric blankets into the school. That would be an even bigger safety problem, and the school was not willing. It was still the same sentence: it’s okay to be a little hot, but if something happens, they can’t bear it.
No one had heard of a student dying of heat.
“Alright,” Tong Yao clapped her hands. “Let’s continue to choose the slogan.”
To their surprise, Teacher Tong, until the end of school, did not mention taking down the mosquito nets.
The students looked at each other. When they returned to their dorms, the boys were surprised to find that their big brother, Li Minghe, was taking down his own mosquito net on the upper bunk.
“Didn’t they not let us take them down?”
“Mhm.”
“Then why are you still taking it down?”
“Damn, how should I put it,” Li Minghe paused, crumpled the taken-down mosquito net into a ball, and threw it into the cabinet. “Seeing her being scolded by the leaders for us, it’s quite unpleasant.”
