Chapter 2 “What Are You Two Doing Lying There? Studying How Cows Eat Grass?”

Little couples?

Even a super high school that produced top students had early dating?

Luo Yi stood holding half a sausage, completely at a loss, frozen like a wooden chicken.

The flashlight beam moved farther away. They had not been discovered.

The boy released his hand and whispered, “Come here.”

As if under a spell, Luo Yi followed the boy on tiptoe to the back of the little woods. There was a slope there. If they hid behind it, the flashlight could not reach them.

The boy jumped down and lay flat on the slope.

Luo Yi was a bit dazed. She had only come to feed the cat. Why were they hiding like this?

But then she thought, she had just arrived and did not understand the school rules. Following the other students should not be wrong…

So Luo Yi also jumped onto the slope and held her breath as she lay prone to the boy’s left.

The slope was covered with soft grass. The night air was humid, and it had just rained. The ground was damp, a natural breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Luo Yi felt an itch on her calf. It seemed to be a mosquito. Just as she was about to turn and swat it, she saw two pairs of eyes staring straight at her.

The light here was better than in the woods, so Luo Yi could make out that there was another boy and girl on her right.

Luo Yi: “……”

So there really were little couples.

Studying while dating at the same time. Their energy was truly abundant.

“Isn’t that Ye…”

“He brought a girlfriend too? Who is his girlfriend?”

“Never seen her before.”

The two began whispering to each other.

Luo Yi turned her head to the other side. The boy who had brought her here was still lying flat on the grass, observing the movement above.

In a faint ray of light, Luo Yi saw the sharp jawline beneath his upright profile. His Adam’s apple was slightly prominent, giving him an indescribable youthful handsomeness.

A hurried set of footsteps approached from afar. The flashlight beam pierced through the little woods.

“Shh, Fahai is coming.” The little couple fell silent.

The director of the Moral Education Office was named Fang Dahai. Whether it was because of an unhappy middle-aged marriage or because he had reached menopause, ever since he took the post, his greatest contribution had been breaking up countless pairs of lovers. He was practically the reincarnation of Fahai.

So the students privately called him Fahai.

Luo Yi shrank on the grass like a timid rabbit.

She heard a cursing male voice: “These little brats, where did they hide?”

After a long while with no new movement, Luo Yi wanted to secretly check the situation above.

Just as she was about to raise her head, a large hand pressed down on her restless skull.

The boy beside her gave her a slight shake of the head. Even though the light was dim, his eyes were very clear.

Luo Yi felt inexplicably at ease. Listening to him should be fine.

She pressed herself lower and turned to look at the little couple.

Perhaps because the alert had been lifted, they had relaxed a good deal.

Maybe because the usual study atmosphere was too oppressive, the two were now pouring out their hearts to each other.

Luo Yi: “……”

Please, could you pay a little attention.

There are still people here. Do you think everyone is invisible?

Running into this kind of thing on the first day of transferring schools was really damaging to the school’s reputation.

The night was dark, the wind strong, the tree shadows swaying. A cold dewdrop slid off a blade of grass.

Noticing the little couple, the expression on the face of the boy beside Luo Yi also became quite colorful. The two exchanged a glance and both awkwardly looked away.

The rustling sounds on the slope made Fang Dahai, who had already walked some distance away, grow alert. He quietly turned back.

A pair of men’s leather shoes stepped onto the grass right above Luo Yi’s head. Then the flashlight beam shone down. The four of them lay motionless on the slope like turtles at the bottom of a pond, with nowhere to hide.

Luo Yi heard the boy beside her say “fuck” again.

The word “fuck” was very expressive. Different tones could reflect the change in the user’s state of mind.

“Wo” in the third tone, “cao” in the fourth tone, indicated anger. That was his current mood.

Fang Dahai returned in triumph with his beer belly, leading four students who had been caught red-handed.

Back in the office, Fang Dahai began scolding the little couple.

“What are your names? Which class? Who is your homeroom teacher?” Fang Dahai asked the deadly three questions in a row. The little couple trembled in fear.

You were the ones who invited people over, and now you’re scared? The wiring in these two little lovers’ brains was truly strange.

These two were from Class 9. Fang Dahai contacted Class 9’s homeroom teacher, Li Hongxia.

The girl kept crying as if she had suffered a great injustice. The boy, on the other hand, put on an air of facing death without fear.

Li Hongxia arrived quickly and took the two away with a stern face.

Only then did Fang Dahai pick up his thermos cup filled with goji berries, take a sip, and say in a drawn-out voice, “Ye Xiaoyang, why aren’t you at evening self-study and instead out on the sports field?”

So his name was Ye Xiaoyang.

Fang Dahai did not interrogate him for his name the way he had with the little couple just now. Clearly he was very familiar with Ye Xiaoyang’s situation.

The fluorescent lights in the office hummed. Ye Xiaoyang’s silhouette was clearly reflected on the pitch-black window.

His sword-like eyebrows slanted upward, his eye sockets were deep, his thin lips lightly pressed together. His entire person carried a cold, proud, solitary aura, completely different from the impression he had given earlier in the little woods.

Perhaps out of defiance, he lifted his chin a little and dryly spat out two words: “Running.”

“Running?” Caught red-handed and still trying to talk nonsense with me?

Fang Dahai set the thermos cup on the desk with a thud and raised his voice a notch: “How did running take you behind the little woods?”

“Don’t think that just because your grades are good you can do whatever you want. I’ve seen plenty of students like you. Looking down on everyone, scorning school rules and discipline. People like you will eventually take a hard fall.”

Ye Xiaoyang fell silent.

Fang Dahai turned his gaze to Luo Yi: “And you? Which class?”

“Class… Class 6,” Luo Yi answered timidly.

Sigh. Not even half a day at the school and she had already been invited for tea by a teacher. She was really unlucky.

“Oh, so you two are in the same class.” Fang Dahai instantly understood. “Didn’t Old Ji emphasize the rules about interactions between boys and girls?”

She and Ye Xiaoyang were actually classmates? The two looked at each other, both seeming unable to believe this fact.

“Um…” Luo Yi weakly tried to defend herself. “I only went into the little woods to feed the cat.”

“Feed what cat?”

“The one that lives at the school. I bought a sausage…”

“Where’s the cat?”

“It ran away.”

“Where’s the sausage?”

“I threw it away.”

After Luo Yi finished these sentences, Fang Dahai looked at her as if looking at someone with intellectual disabilities.

Only then did she realize that everything she had said was nonsense, because she had no way to prove she had gone to feed the cat.

“You two, one went running, one went to feed a cat. Ah?” Fang Dahai rolled up his sleeves, planning to properly educate these two little bastards. “Then what were you doing lying there? Learning how cows eat grass?”

The analogy was a bit funny, but thinking of how serious the occasion was, Luo Yi could not laugh at all.

“The break between evening self-study periods is only ten minutes, yet you two live quite colorful lives.”

Fang Dahai glanced at his watch and added, “I won’t say much more. You know what you did. Go explain it to Old Ji yourselves.”

Fang Dahai called Ji Changming and said he had caught two students from Class 6 in the little woods and told him to come handle it immediately.

Luo Yi dragged the tip of her shoe along the cracks between the floor tiles, wondering whether she should explain clearly.

Then she thought, once Ji Changming arrived she would naturally be cleared of suspicion, so she simply kept her mouth shut.

In less than five minutes Ji Changming arrived. When he saw that the people in the office were Ye Xiaoyang and Luo Yi, the tension on his face eased a little.

“Director Fang, you must have made a mistake,” Ji Changming said. “This girl only transferred here this afternoon.”

The implication was that these two probably did not even know each other yet. How could it be early dating?

Fang Dahai looked at Luo Yi in disbelief. This mix-up was really damaging to his reputation.

He tried to recover some face and said, “I thought this girl looked a bit unfamiliar. Since it’s not the case, then I’m relieved.”

He said to Luo Yi, “You stammered for so long without getting to the point.”

Luo Yi thought to herself, even if I said it, you would still have to believe me.

“I’ll take them away first. I’m in a hurry to grade papers on my side.”

Once they left the Moral Education Office, Ji Changming asked what they had been doing there so late at night. Ye Xiaoyang insisted he had gone to the sports field to run. Luo Yi told the truth.

Ji Changming did not ask further. He only said not to run around during evening self-study in the future, then told them to go back to the classroom.

The walk from the Moral Education Office back to the classroom was quite long. Ye Xiaoyang was tall with long strides. Luo Yi had to jog to keep up beside him.

The earlier misunderstanding made the atmosphere a bit awkward. Luo Yi did not know what to say. Ye Xiaoyang took the initiative: “New transfer?”

“Mm.” A very short affirmation.

“Oh.” He responded lightly. The two successfully killed a conversation with two words.

They walked another stretch in silence.

“What’s your name?” Ye Xiaoyang asked again.

“Luo Yi. Luo as in romantic, Yi as in ripples.”

It was the first time Ye Xiaoyang had seen someone use that foreign word to form a phrase with “Luo.” He repeated it in English, “Romantic?”

His tongue slid from the roof of his mouth to his lower teeth. His American English pronunciation was quite standard and also very pleasant to hear.

Luo Yi thought of something and asked, “Aren’t you going to pick up your ball?”

“Tomorrow.” He added a concise explanation, “Kicking balls is forbidden during evening self-study.”

No wonder he had wanted to hide earlier. If he had been caught holding a ball, there would have been no way to argue.

Only, he probably had not expected that they would actually run into a real little couple and get dragged into the mess.

Thinking about it this way, Xishui No.1 High School actually had some warmth and color to it. It was no longer so cold and rigid.

There were people secretly meeting in the little woods, and there were also people who took advantage of the teachers grading papers to go kick a ball on the sports field during the evening self-study break.

Top students were also ordinary people. This realization comforted Luo Yi quite a bit.

When they reached the classroom door, Ye Xiaoyang pushed it open. Luo Yi followed behind him and then closed the door.

Ye Xiaoyang sat in the back row, separated from Luo Yi’s seat by two not-too-wide aisles.

As soon as he sat down, Ye Xiaoyang’s deskmate Zhou Jiahang poked him with the tip of his pen and asked in a low voice, “Where’s your ball?”

“Still in the little woods.” Ye Xiaoyang pulled out a physics competition guidance book.

“You didn’t get caught by Fahai, did you? Just now we saw him heading over and ran back.”

Ye Xiaoyang unhurriedly opened the book, then gave Zhou Jiahang a white-eyed look.

So-called brothers. When disaster struck, everyone fled for themselves. No one had even given him a warning.

Hadn’t he been caught red-handed by Fahai? Even if the charge was not kicking a ball.

Zhou Jiahang realized Ye Xiaoyang was in a mood and said, “You were too far away. There wasn’t time to call you.”

“Quiet.” Ye Xiaoyang raised his gel pen a little, signaling Zhou Jiahang to shut up. He was going to study.

Zhou Jiahang glanced in Luo Yi’s direction.

This newly arrived girl seemed to have come back together with Ye Xiaoyang?