Sharing an Umbrella with My Archenemy on the Way to School on a Rainy Day
The early morning rain came down hard, pattering endlessly against the windowpane.
Lu Xiaoxiao was still in bed when Ms. Wen knocked and came in. "Xiaoxiao, it's raining today. Once you're up, come to school with us."
She rubbed her sleepy eyes, mumbled a reply, and rolled over.
She was already going over her schedule for the week in her head: a general chemistry titration exercise, calculus problems on series, a college English oral presentation, a modern and contemporary history paper, and an integrated microbiology experiment that would take all day Saturday.
She had slogged through the same things at this point in her previous life. Now that she was doing it all over again, she wasn't spared a bit of the suffering.
She sat up and glanced at the gray sky outside.
The rain fell in dense sheets, leaving the windowpane covered in streaks of water.
She usually kept a low profile on her way to school and rarely rode with her parents.
When she was in elementary school, the principal always invited her parents onstage to speak at schoolwide assemblies. Back then, all her classmates revolved around her, and because her parents were star professors at Jingzhou University, she somehow became the class favorite.
Later, in middle school, her parents were still invited to speak, until one day a classmate asked her to her face, "If you didn't rely on your parents, what do you think you'd be?"
She remembered those words for a long time.
After middle school, she began working hard at her grades so people would remember her by her own name, not because of her parents' halo.
High school was even harder. Some classmates knew her parents were professors at Peking University and asked her to pull strings to get them in. She refused several times, and they began saying behind her back, "We're classmates, and she won't even do us this little favor."
From then on, she became even more reluctant to let people know who her parents were.
Once she got to university, she treated herself as an ordinary student and avoided going with them whenever she could.
Putting her thoughts aside, Lu Xiaoxiao swung her legs out from under the covers, planted her bare feet on the floor, got dressed, and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
Just then, 037's voice popped up in her head: [Good morning, Xiaoxiao. Task 21 has refreshed. Please check it promptly.]
With the toothbrush in her mouth, she looked up at the mirror.
A line of small golden characters appeared on its surface:
[Share an umbrella with your archenemy on the way to school on a rainy day. Countdown: 19 minutes, 59 seconds.]
"?"
Her delicate brows knitted tightly. "What rich young master would be willing to share an umbrella and walk to school with me?"
037 replied: [Why, your own Young Master Shao, of course.]
Her hand paused around the toothbrush, then resumed brushing.
Images from two nights ago surfaced in her mind unbidden.
She had pinned him against the bathroom wall, looked at his abs, and left a hickey on his waist. Later, he had turned the tables and pinned her to the bed, kissing her with his tongue as the two of them tangled together...
Lu Xiaoxiao closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and continued brushing, pressing those images down and keeping them from resurfacing.
Without even stopping for breakfast, she grabbed her umbrella, rushed out the door, hailed a taxi, and climbed into the back seat.
Outside the window, the rain grew heavier, and the wipers swept back and forth across the windshield.
She took out her phone and sent Shao Enci a message: [Don't rush off to school. I've already taken a taxi to come find you.]
A few seconds later, he replied: [What are you coming to my house for?]
She stared at the screen, hesitated for a moment, then typed and sent: [I want to go to school with you.]
The other end went quiet for a few seconds before he replied: [It's raining outside. I can actually drive over and pick you up.]
Lu Xiaoxiao: [It's okay. I'm almost there.]
The driver glanced at her in the rearview mirror and struck up a conversation. "Miss, houses over at Huaqing Jiayuan aren't cheap. Even the least expensive one costs tens of millions. Are you going home or visiting a friend?"
"I'm here to... see a classmate." She paused. "A university classmate."
"That's nice." The driver smiled as the car rounded a bend. In the distance, a black Cullinan was parked outside the gates of Huaqing Jiayuan, with a row of cars worth several million each parked beside it.
Lu Xiaoxiao paid the fare and pushed open the car door.
The rain was heavy. She opened her umbrella and stepped out, and just as she got her footing, she heard a short honk. She turned to see Shao Enci push open the door of the Cullinan and get out. He strode toward her on his long legs and took the umbrella from her hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Shao Enci was 191 centimeters tall, so she had found it a little difficult to hold the umbrella over them. Once it was in his hand, the canopy naturally tilted toward her.
Rain slid down the umbrella's ribs. His left shoulder was exposed, and the fabric there quickly darkened with water.
"Why aren't you getting in the car?" Shao Enci's voice came through the sound of the rain, a little huskier than usual.
"Shao Enci." Lu Xiaoxiao tipped her head back to look at him. Rain streamed from the edge of the umbrella, and she blinked. "I want to share an umbrella with you on the way to school."
The young man raised an eyebrow and looked at her, suspicion in his eyes.
She reached out and touched the back of the hand he had wrapped around the umbrella handle. Her fingertips were a little cool. "Don't you think two people sharing an umbrella on the way to school is romantic?"
Romantic?
Shao Enci didn't quite understand why girls did things like this, but he agreed to go along with her wishes. With a calm expression, he tilted the umbrella a little farther toward her and lowered his voice. "All right, then. We'll go to school together like this."
The two walked side by side in the rain.
The wind was strong, tossing the two rows of green trees along the road wildly about.
The umbrella wasn't big enough, and the young man's left shoulder remained exposed to the rain. Lu Xiaoxiao pushed the handle toward him, but he pushed it back, leaving no room for discussion.
He could get wet, but she couldn't.
When they were halfway to school, Lu Xiaoxiao kept hunching her shoulders against the cold because she was lightly dressed.
Shao Enci glanced at her with his dark eyes and reached over with his free hand to hold her fingers. Finding her fingertips icy cold, he pressed the corners of his lips down and furrowed his brows into deep grooves. "Cold?"
"No..." Her voice trembled a little as she spoke.
Shao Enci stopped walking.
Rain poured down around them as he turned to face her. He lowered his head slightly, his eyes dark, and spoke in a displeased tone. "Lu Xiaoxiao, you wanted to walk to school in the rain, and you came out dressed this lightly. Do you think your health is too good?"
"I was just in a hurry to see you and forgot to bring one."
Lu Xiaoxiao spoke in a small voice.
After hearing that, Shao Enci's thin lips moved, but he couldn't argue.
He lowered his eyes, pushed the umbrella back into her hand, then turned around and crouched with his back to her. His voice grew firmer. "Get on."
"It's not like my legs are broken..."
"Heat conduction." Shao Enci turned his head to look at her, the outline of his profile slightly blurred by the rainy mist. He kept it brief. "You're cold, I'm warm. Touching me will transfer heat. Didn't you learn that in middle school physics?"
Lu Xiaoxiao's eyes fluttered. She pressed her lips into a straight line and obediently climbed onto his back.
The young man's back was indeed warm. The chill of the rain and the warmth of his body pressed against her through the fabric of their clothes. She reached around his shoulder and held the umbrella as far over him as she could.
Shao Enci carried her forward the whole way, his pace neither fast nor slow.
Wind swept the rainy mist toward them. Her face rested against the back of his neck, and she could feel the rain on his skin, but it wasn't cold.
Leaning close to his ear, Lu Xiaoxiao suddenly asked, "Shao Enci, when did you get so good at taking care of people?"
He fell silent for a moment. His voice came through the sound of the rain, as matter-of-fact as if he were stating something that needed no emphasis:
"From the moment I met you."
Lu Xiaoxiao was taken aback. Her bright eyes sparkled like stars, a smile hiding at their corners, and she buried her face a little deeper in the crook of his shoulder.
The rain was still falling. The wind turned the leaves of the parasol trees by the road, and raindrops splashed into tiny ripples on the ground.
Lying on his back, she felt his body heat pass over to her bit by bit, slowly warming her from her fingertips.
Lu Xiaoxiao lifted her head to watch the raindrops fall on the umbrella and suddenly felt that rainy days didn't seem quite so awful after all.
Whenever her heart was stirred, 037 always chose that exact moment to interrupt:
[Congratulations, Xiaoxiao, on completing task 21. Task 22: Ask your archenemy to kiss in the school's little grove during a break between classes. Countdown: 2 hours, 9 minutes, 59 seconds.]
Lu Xiaoxiao nearly lost her grip on the umbrella, her eyes widening in disbelief.