◎Little Flower◎
Wednesday afternoon’s second period was PE class. After the whole class finished warm-ups and jogged two laps around the track, the teacher announced free activities.
The autumn tiger was rampant, the scorching sun still baking the rubber track until it was scalding hot. The girls were exhausted and panting, hands on their hips, gathering in groups of three or five to find shady spots to rest.
Chun Zao followed several classmates to sit by the flower bed, smoothing away the sweat-dampened hair strands at her temples.
Tong Yue sat beside her, gulping down half a bottle of mineral water, then using the rest to wash her face.
“You’re being way too wasteful,” Ding Ruowei dodged the water droplets that nearly splashed onto her shoes.
Tong Yue pulled out a tissue and waved it at her: “Did I spend your money?”
The two girls began bickering.
Chun Zao smiled faintly and pulled out the vocabulary book from her pants pocket to flip through it.
Tong Yue and Ding Ruowei both noticed simultaneously and cried “help” in unison.
Chun Zao looked at them both, puzzledly, and continued silently reciting vocabulary, maximizing her use of fragmented time.
After all, she was used to it. Tong Yue made no judgment, just cast her gaze far toward the basketball court by the playground. Inside the mesh fence, the boys were fearlessly sweating under the heat, tirelessly squandering their energy, with occasional cheers or ape-like, primitive roars.
Tong Yue swayed her empty bottle: “Boys aren’t afraid of getting tanned.”
Ding Ruowei looked over as well.
After gazing for a while, she suddenly pointed somewhere and asked: “Look, isn’t that Tan Xiao from our class?”
Tong Yue squinted and confirmed: “It is. Is he that close with the science class boys? Playing ball together.”
As fellow social warriors, Tong Yue inexplicably felt competitive and couldn’t help but snort: “I haven’t even gotten tight with the science class boys.”
Ding Ruowei laughed twice: “If you went in there, you’d only get used as the ball.”
Tong Yue looked down at her small frame: “Can’t I stand by the court as a cheerleader? Besides, that class isn’t quality material. If it were Class 1, I’d already have set up a water-selling stall by the basketball court—no money required, just WeChat QR codes.”
“How ambitious.”
Catching the key phrase “Class 1,” Chun Zao emerged from her sea of vocabulary and quietly began paying attention.
Ding Ruowei focused on the jumping figures inside the fence: “But Tan Xiao does seem much more pleasing to the eye than before.”
“I always used to think he was sloppy. When didn’t he get scolded by the homeroom teacher before going to get a haircut?”
“Now with that buzz cut, he looks so much more refreshing.”
“He’s been chasing the class beauty from Class 4 recently,” Tong Yue said casually, “so he’s started peacocking and paying attention to his image.”
“He likes Lin Xinrui?” Ding Ruowei had the expression of someone choking on big gossip.
“You just found out?”
“I don’t pay attention to this stuff.”
“The loser boys in our class aren’t worth paying attention to anyway. It’s just that my information network is too powerful—it’s hard not to know even if I wanted to.”
Ding Ruowei collapsed laughing.
“Ah, the power of love,” Tong Yue sighed while pulling out a small round mirror to fix her hair: “When will I meet someone I like?”
Ding Ruowei demolished her: “Don’t you meet them every day? Falling for everyone you see.”
“What do you know!”
Chun Zao listened as if sitting on pins and needles, completely projecting herself into the situation.
Peacocking… Did her current state count?—Recently, her frequency of looking in mirrors had indeed doubled compared to before. Every morning before leaving her room, she would first carefully comb her hair. The hair conditioner and face wash she occasionally skipped out of laziness were now never missed…
The scrunchie currently holding her ponytail, unprecedented in size, was the most naked evidence of her crime.
Chun Zao lowered her head, her cheeks slightly warming.
So this was what liking someone felt like?
She liked… Yuan Ye?
No way.
After PE class, using the bathroom as an excuse, Chun Zao skipped the fixed small group’s convenience store date and went to the restroom.
Standing in the stall, she carefully removed the scrunchie from her head, finally sighing with relief as if lifting a heavy burden.
Just as she was about to push the door open, Chun Zao stepped back again.
Wouldn’t this be too… trying to cover up?
She tied it back up. Going back and forth like this, the heat rising from her back rivaled just having finished running 800 meters in class, and so did her heartbeat.
She walked out of the bathroom with feigned composure.
Perhaps it proved some “Murphy’s Law”—the more you try to avoid someone or something, the more unavoidable they become. For the first time since school started, she encountered Yuan Ye alone in the hallway.
Rather than saying she encountered him, it was more accurate to say she saw him first.
She could always spot him at first glance.
The boy was walking out with a classmate, him in front, another male student behind. Perhaps they had just finished talking, as he turned his head back with a smile not yet completely faded. He was truly conspicuous, even dazzling—the school uniform fabric seemed three shades whiter on him than on others.