Chapter 8 What Kind of Ridiculous Move Is That? Aren’t You Afraid You’ll Break Your Legs from Being Too Shameless?

The two of them arrived at the school clinic. The female school doctor on duty examined Luo Yi’s face.

“Oh my, how did a ball smash you up like this?” The doctor dipped a cotton swab in some medicinal alcohol and wiped the wound for her.

It was an unexpected disaster. What could she do about it?

The moment the cool cotton swab touched her skin, Luo Yi let out a soft “hiss—” and instinctively tried to pull back.

“Does it hurt?” Ye Xiaoyang asked.

Luo Yi didn’t speak. Her soft, tender little face was swollen half a finger high, and her eyes were red like a rabbit’s.

“Even if it hurts, you have to bear with it a little.” The school doctor firmly held down her shoulder and applied the medicine to the injured area—though her movements lightened slightly.

Luo Yi stopped dodging, but tears kept swirling in her eyes.

When the medicine was wiped on, that patch of her cheek burned fiercely. Luo Yi bit her lip, her fingers digging into her flesh as she endured the pain.

“Look at how fair and delicate your skin is. Why weren’t you more careful?” After applying the medicine, the doctor tossed the cotton swab into the trash and added, “If you bump or scrape somewhere and leave a scar, what a pity that would be.”

In the quiet school clinic came the faintest “plop.”

Ye Xiaoyang lowered his eyes. A single tear had fallen onto the back of his hand, the crystalline droplet scattering like shattered crystal.

The small wet spot on the back of his hand first felt warm, then cooled.

Girls still cared about their appearance, after all.

When Luo Yi heard the doctor mention the possibility of scarring, her heart ached. She couldn’t hold back any longer and started sobbing, tears falling in streams.

“I was only reminding you.” The school doctor picked up an ice pack and comforted her. “You just broke the skin a little, with some bloodshot marks. Don’t touch the wound recently, and don’t get it wet. It’ll be fine in a few days.”

Luo Yi finally felt a bit better. She held the ice pack against her cheek. The ice pack could help the swelling go down faster.

The burning pain gradually receded—not because the cold of the ice suppressed the pain, but because the nerves in her face had gone numb under the dual assault of ice and fire.

Luo Yi cradled the ice pack and sat quietly on the chair against the wall in the clinic.

She glanced at the wall clock. Class was about to start. The next period was chemistry.

She said to Ye Xiaoyang, “You should go back to class. I’m fine now.”

Ye Xiaoyang glanced at Luo Yi. For some reason, his feet felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds and simply refused to move.

“Don’t feel guilty either. Go back quickly,” the school doctor said. “The school is so big and there are so many students. Every year quite a few get hit by balls. No one is that delicate.”

The implication was that this girl had no major problems, so he didn’t need to waste time lingering in the clinic.

Even if he stayed here to keep her company, she wouldn’t recover any faster.

Ye Xiaoyang thought for a moment and could only say, “Then I’ll head back first.”

“Mm.” Luo Yi held the ice pack and nodded at him.

In school, any news about the campus celebrities spread as if it had grown wings.

Many classmates had been present during PE today. Everyone was a witness—Ye Xiaoyang had been playing football in PE class, smashed the new transfer student, and was now accompanying her to the school clinic for treatment.

After finishing badminton, Qian Jiayun returned from the gymnasium panting for breath and only then learned that she had missed a major piece of news.

She stepped into the classroom and saw that both Luo Yi’s seat and Ye Xiaoyang’s seat were empty.

Qian Jiayun paced anxiously at the doorway, wondering whether she should go to the clinic to check on Luo Yi, when she ran into Ye Xiaoyang returning alone.

“Ye Xiaoyang.” Qian Jiayun called his name loudly. “Where’s Luo Yi? Is she still in the clinic?”

“Mm.” Seeing it was Luo Yi’s deskmate, Ye Xiaoyang added, “She’s fine.”

Qian Jiayun saw that Ye Xiaoyang spoke lightly, his handsome face calm and unbothered, as if he hadn’t taken the matter to heart at all. She immediately flew into a rage.

Qian Jiayun stretched one arm across in front of him, blocking his path into the classroom.

Ye Xiaoyang’s expression turned stern. He raised an eyebrow and asked, “Is there something you need?”

Qian Jiayun was like a fighting rooster ready to jump. She cursed, “Damn it, are you even a man?”

The words were full of gunpowder. The classmates sitting near the door all turned to look at the two confronting each other.

Ye Xiaoyang stared at Qian Jiayun for three seconds, his gaze unreadable.

Qian Jiayun felt a bit unsettled under his stare, but she still gathered her courage and questioned him: “You injured her, and now you’re just leaving her alone in the clinic. Do you have any shame?”

When a girl started making unreasonable trouble, it really was a headache…

Qian Jiayun was occupying the door and refusing to let him in. He couldn’t be bothered to respond. Ye Xiaoyang was a good man who didn’t fight with women. Just because she wouldn’t let him use the door, did she think he couldn’t get into the classroom?

So Qian Jiayun watched with her own eyes as Ye Xiaoyang went into the corridor, pushed open the classroom window, and said to the two girls sitting by the window inside, “Sorry, excuse me.”

The two girls were doing homework and hadn’t figured out the situation. When they saw it was Ye Xiaoyang, they dazedly moved aside from their seats.

Ye Xiaoyang braced one hand on the window and flipped in with a clean, practiced movement.

After landing handsomely and successfully, he patted nonexistent dust from his hands, then shot Qian Jiayun a contemptuous glance and strode back to his seat with long steps.

He left behind two girls frozen like wooden chickens and a furious Qian Jiayun.

“What kind of person is this?!” Qian Jiayun stamped her feet in anger.

What kind of flashy move was that? Wasn’t he afraid of breaking his legs with all that flirting?

Qian Jiayun wished she could stick pins into a voodoo doll and curse him.

The most unreliable thing in this world was men.

Even Ye Xiaoyang was a failure in this regard. It seemed she would still have to go to the clinic herself after class to keep the poor little Luo Yi company.

Chemistry teacher Peng Chenggang stepped into the classroom right on time with the ringing of the class bell.

Today’s class involved an experiment—preparing ammonia gas.

“We put the ammonium salt and calcium hydroxide into the test tube and heat it with an alcohol lamp.” Peng Chenggang explained while demonstrating for everyone on the podium.

Peng Chenggang usually liked joking with the students. He sealed the test tube full of ammonia gas with a stopper and said, “Next, we invite a brave classmate to smell the odor of ammonia gas.”

Quite a few students were curious and raised their hands one after another.

Zhou Jiahang found these people ridiculous.

If you wanted to know the smell of ammonia gas, there was a very simple method.

Find a rural dry toilet, preferably one that hadn’t been flushed for years, then close your eyes and take a deep breath—why close your eyes? Because the smell stung your eyes!

Zhou Jiahang watched with schadenfreude as Peng Chenggang pointed to a boy in the front row.

The boy carefully took the test tube, pulled out the stopper, and before he even had time to gently fan the air with his hand, his face wrinkled up like a rag.

He hurriedly covered his nose and fled the scene. The class below burst into laughter.

There was a saying for this—knowing full well it was shit, you still had to taste it to confirm.

Fortunately he sat in the very last row, otherwise his nose would have suffered too.

Zhou Jiahang was delighted by this and winked at Ye Xiaoyang, wanting to share his thoughts with him.

Unexpectedly, Ye Xiaoyang wasn’t watching the experiment at all. Instead, he had propped up his chemistry book and was secretly playing on his phone underneath.

Zhou Jiahang: “…”

Ye Xiaoyang’s study efficiency was very high. Aside from the intelligence factor, good study habits were also important.

Zhou Jiahang had been Ye Xiaoyang’s deskmate for so long that he understood his temperament thoroughly—he never did anything unrelated to studying in class.

Zhou Jiahang thought maybe Ye Xiaoyang was just looking up information. He squinted and peeked at the phone screen—there was a row of colorful food pictures.

Ye Xiaoyang was actually ordering takeout?!

Zhou Jiahang felt as if struck by lightning. A strange thought floated into his mind.

Could the smell of ammonia gas stimulate appetite? The answer was clearly no.

Ordering takeout at a time like this was roughly equivalent to eating in a toilet. He had no idea which nerve of Ye Xiaoyang’s had short-circuited.

“What are you doing?” Zhou Jiahang tried to stop his deskmate’s bad taste.

Ye Xiaoyang looked up and simply placed the phone toward him.

“What kind of milk tea do you think tastes good?” Academic God Ye was not ashamed to ask for advice, though unfortunately this question had nothing to do with studying.

Milk tea?

Wasn’t that the thing girls liked drinking most?

“You’re going to drink it?” Zhou Jiahang asked uncertainly.

Ye Xiaoyang turned his head and said, “Buying it for someone else.”

Oh no. Ye Xiaoyang was buying milk tea for a girl!

Zhou Jiahang felt the nature of this matter had become even more serious.

He couldn’t help associating it with the rumors he had heard in the corridor earlier—the bits and pieces about Ye Xiaoyang and his girlfriend.

Zhou Jiahang had always sneered at these rumors. Who understood Ye Xiaoyang better than he did?

If Ye Xiaoyang had a girlfriend, he would definitely be the first to know.

And according to his observations, not only did Ye Xiaoyang not have a girlfriend, he also kept girls as a species at a respectful distance—for example, Qin Zixi.

“How would I know what milk tea tastes good? First, I don’t drink milk tea. Second, I don’t have a girlfriend,” Zhou Jiahang said.

“True.” Ye Xiaoyang thought it over and took the phone back.

Then he’d just get one of every flavor. Anyway, the price wasn’t expensive. Compared to that, time was more precious.

Ye Xiaoyang ordered five cups of milk tea in one go and paid.

The address was filled as the school’s small west gate, and the recipient as “Mr. Wall”—the wall at the small west gate had been designed with a few medium-sized holes for aesthetic reasons. All the takeout students ordered was smuggled in through here.

The delivery guys knew this perfectly well. When they received orders from No.1 High students, they defaulted to leaving them in the wall holes.

No.1 High didn’t allow students to go out to eat, nor did it allow takeout.

Because the school cafeteria contractor was the principal’s brother-in-law, and the brother-in-law needed to make a living. If all the students ate outside, who would patronize the brother-in-law’s business?

After finishing all this, Ye Xiaoyang put down his phone and only then began listening to the lecture.

The moment the class bell rang, Qian Jiayun dashed straight to the school clinic.

Luo Yi was sitting on the chair, one hand holding the ice pack against her face, the other flipping through a book titled Biography of the Poems of Tsangyang Gyatso . The school doctor had been afraid she would be bored and had casually picked out a book left behind by a previous student from the drawer for her.

When Qian Jiayun saw that her face had actually been smashed into this state, she couldn’t help burning with anger.

After fussing over Luo Yi with concern, she loudly denounced someone’s crimes again: “Ye Xiaoyang is too hateful. He actually just left you here and ignored you. He’s completely lost—”

The words “his conscience” hadn’t even left her mouth when Qian Jiayun’s expression instantly changed from indignation to terror.

Ye Xiaoyang was holding a bag of milk tea, leaning against the doorframe and watching her with leisurely ease.

He raised a sarcastic cold smile, parted his thin lips, and slowly said, “Lost what?”

Ye Xiaoyang’s eyes carried a playful provocation, as if warning, “If you have the guts, try saying the last two words.”

It was the end of April outside, with bright spring sunshine, yet Qian Jiayun felt the wind at the doorway was chilly and sinister.

She swallowed and forced those two words back down her throat.

Just then, Luo Yi’s voice rang out: “—Lost the present opportunity, and argue who is master in the dust.”

Her voice was soft and sticky, like that of an innocent child, reciting a Buddhist verse carved into a mountain wall.

Ye Xiaoyang looked toward the sound. Sunlight was finely sifted through the thin gauze curtains and projected onto the floor. Tiny floating dust particles stirred in the air.

The string of agate Buddhist prayer beads on Luo Yi’s left wrist glowed with a lustrous, translucent color, making her wrist look as if carved from frost and snow.

She raised the book in her hand a little and said, “We were discussing this.”