Chapter 93
JIANG CHENG SPENT the whole morning battling the urge to doze off while the teachers’ droning buzzed in his ears. The teachers at Fourth High all spoke like old monks chanting the scriptures—with the exception of Lao-Lu, who liked to intersperse his lectures with an insulting rebuke or two to stimulate the students’ minds. The other teachers, Lao-Xu included, all plodded steadily on in monotone voices with no peaks or valleys, losing students to sleep along the way.
In this season of comfortable weather—the temperature was just cool enough that you could feel it—the only ones who could manage to stay awake in class without the help of conversation were probably Jiang Cheng and Yi Jing.
But wait. Jiang Cheng glanced beside him at Gu Fei, whose head was bowed as he copied notes from the board—there was also Gu Fei. And, yes, there was Wang Xu, who could probably pick out Yi Jing’s silhouette in a sea of ten thousand other students.
When morning classes were over, Jiang Cheng instantly collapsed on the desk and closed his eyes. “Wake me up in twenty minutes.”
“Mm,” Gu Fei answered as he closed the notebook.
Zhou Jing collected his things and turned around. “Hey, Da-Fei. Da-Fei. Da…”
Gu Fei looked at him.
“That’s Jiang Cheng’s shirt you’re wearing, isn’t it?” Zhou Jing asked.
Jiang Cheng lifted his head, suddenly struck by the thought that he needed to shut Zhou Jing up immediately and permanently.
“No,” said Gu Fei.
“Isn’t it?” Zhou Jing was a little skeptical. “I thought I saw him wearing it last week.”
“It’s just the same style,” Gu Fei insisted.
“…Oh.” Zhou Jing hesitated. “But it doesn’t look new, and I’ve never seen you wear—”
Gu Fei cut him off curtly. “Go away.”
Zhou Jing sighed and stood up. “Can’t even have a normal conversation, geez.”
During class, Jiang Cheng had felt so sleepy, it was as if the whole world had disappeared. The teacher’s voice had seemed to be drifting to him from outside the realm of reality. Now that class was over and he had the chance to catch forty winks in peace, though, Jiang Cheng couldn’t make himself fall asleep.
Still, he stubbornly kept his eyes closed and didn’t open them again until Gu Fei told him that twenty minutes was up. He wiped away the tears that were practically rolling down his cheeks from being so painfully sleepy yet unable to fall asleep.
“You didn’t sleep, did you?” said Gu Fei.
“Nah.” Jiang Cheng sighed. “I’m going blind from sleepiness.”
“Why’d you stay down the whole time, then? You’re blinking so much that your eyelids are about to fly away.” Gu Fei smiled and pushed the notebook to him. “Can you check to see if this is okay? If it isn’t, you should hurry up and clarify with the teacher.”
Jiang Cheng opened the notebook and basked in the beautiful rays of its contents. Many years had passed since he started taking his own notes in middle school, but it was the first time he’d ever seen such clean and neat handwriting in his notebook.
As a bottom-of-the-barrel slacker, Gu Fei couldn’t tell the important information from the rest. If it was on the blackboard and it was repeated by the teacher, he’d copy it down. Jiang Cheng would have to pick out the important points himself when he read over it.
There was, however, one thing that impressed him very much: Not only did Gu Fei’s handwriting look good, he also wrote very quickly. The way he copied everything down without sparing any details was no small feat.
“Pretty impressive,” Jiang Cheng said. “I have to use abbreviations and symbols when I take notes, otherwise I can’t keep up.”
“Of course,” said Gu Fei. “I was only in charge of copying, not analyzing.”
Jiang Cheng stood up to stretch. “You probably never paid so much attention to a lecture in your whole life, huh, super-slacker?”
“Mm.” Gu Fei stood up as well, and the two of them walked out together. “Indeed, many fantastical experiences await me dating an overachiever.”
“Then…” Jiang Cheng glanced at him. “Are you tired? Is it annoying taking notes?”
“It’s all right,” said Gu Fei.
Jiang Cheng didn’t continue on the subject of class and studying, but he could feel that Gu Fei was unlike other academic slackers in this regard. The typical slacker would certainly find it tiring to take notes for a whole morning, even if they were just copying things down without paying attention to the content.
Take Pan Zhi, for example—the most classic type of slacker. Pan Zhi would fall asleep with his head propped on the pencil if he had to take notes for even one period, let alone for a whole morning like Gu Fei just did.
At the thought of this, Jiang Cheng felt a surge of heartache and frustration on Gu Fei’s behalf. It was upsetting to watch helplessly as Gu Fei buried his own hope and walked along the path of the steelworks masses. Every time Jiang Cheng felt Gu Fei’s powerlessness, his mood slid all the way to rock bottom.
“What do you want to eat for lunch?” Gu Fei asked.
Jiang Cheng reined back his wandering thoughts and pondered for a few minutes before answering, “Dunno.”
Gu Fei sighed. “What a conundrum.”
“I’m hungry, just not really craving anything specific.” Jiang Cheng rubbed his stomach. “How about we go eat something a little more refined?”
“The pizza across the street?” Gu Fei laughed.
“Definitely not,” Jiang Cheng tutted. “Wang Er’s Meat Pies are way better.”
After a long discussion, they ended up at the place across from Gu Miao’s old elementary school for a bowl of lamb vermicelli. Even though it was just lamb vermicelli, it matched Jiang Cheng’s request of “refinement,” at least in appearance and price.
Jiang Cheng had passed this restaurant many times before, but he’d always assumed it was a bar. He’d thought it was kind of crazy of this shitty little city to allow a bar to operate right outside an elementary school. Not to mention its unconventional name: Big Bad Wolf.
“It’s probably the first and only time we’re gonna come here,” Jiang Cheng exclaimed as they walked out after the meal. “It’s way too expensive. Twenty yuan! Did you not feel me pulling on you to leave just now?”
“Nope. I thought you were just straightening my hem.” Gu Fei chuckled. “I thought the price was all right—they gave us lots of meat. I was gonna ask for an extra portion for you to supplement your brainpower after all that mental exertion, but since the bowl was big enough, I couldn’t bring myself to ask for more.”
“Exactly. It was so expensive that you didn’t even want to add more meat. You call that all right?” Jiang Cheng laughed for a while, then let out a drawn-out sigh. “When I get a job, I’ll take you to eat vermicelli worth eight hundred yuan a bowl and add on two hundred yuan’s worth of meat.”
“Okay.” Gu Fei nodded seriously. “If you don’t, I’ll revoke your citizenship.”
They both devolved into another fit of laughter.