There was PE class in the afternoon.
Today was exceptionally rare: the PE teacher was full of life and hadn't suddenly fallen ill and changed the class.
The whole class was delighted. In groups of three or five, they formed their own little circles and headed toward the main field with light steps and laughing chatter.
At a time like this, there were practically no bookworms still thinking about studying.
Top students were top students because they studied when it was time to study, played when it was time to play, and knew how to make the fullest, most sensible use of their time.
A few people had gathered around Chen Guiliang as well: his dormmates Xie Yang, Yang Hao, and Xu Haibo, along with Guan Zhiqiang, one of the Three Phantom Gods.
"Who was that girl who came looking for you at noon?" Xie Yang asked curiously.
Chen Guiliang said, "A first-year junior."
"Not bad." Xie Yang said enviously. "She passed by my desk when she left, and I got a good look at her. She was actually really pretty. Oh, right, what's her name? Which first-year class is she in?"
"I don't know," Chen Guiliang said.
"Thump, thump, thump, thump..."
Li Jun wore headphones and listened to music on his MP3 as he dribbled a basketball, gradually catching up from behind.
The guy was annoying, but he was still on the school basketball team. He was good at basketball, and whenever PE class came around, a few students who loved playing ball would gather around Li Jun and play with him.
"Damn it, Zheng Feng, you ditching your friends for a pretty face!"
One of the students playing ball shouted at Zheng Feng, "Stop being her damn lackey and come play basketball!"
Zheng Feng's face flushed scarlet from embarrassment. He hurriedly abandoned Bian Guanyue and ran over.
Without her little lapdog, Bian Guanyue instantly felt much freer.
She put in her earbuds and strolled leisurely while listening to music.
Wang Siyu came over arm-in-arm with several close female friends. "Bian, what kind of music do you usually listen to? Do you listen to Jay Chou?"
"Yeah." Bian Guanyue took out one earbud.
Although she acted extremely aloof, she wasn't truly someone who did whatever she pleased without regard for anyone else.
Take this moment, for instance. If someone spoke to her, she would remove one earbud. First, it was basic respect for the other person. Second, she was afraid of missing something they said.
Wang Siyu said, "My favorite is 'Dong Feng Po.' Which Jay Chou song do you like?"
"'Yi Fu Zhi Ming,'" Bian Guanyue answered.
"My favorite is 'Qing Tian.'"
"Obviously, 'Shuang Jie Gun' is the coolest."
"Ai Zai Xi Yuan Qian, Ai Zai Xi Yuan Qian!"
"..."
Several girls joined the discussion one after another. With Jay Chou as their topic, they chatted nonstop.
Before they knew it, they had reached the main field.
Class had not started yet, and all the basketball courts were occupied. They would have to wait a while for an opening.
Li Jun set his basketball on the ground and pointed at a leaf. "Believe me if I say I can jump up and touch that?"
Naturally, no one believed him.
Li Jun immediately took off his jacket. As he slowly rolled up his sleeves, he looked toward Bian Guanyue. To draw the girls' attention, he raised his voice and shouted, "Watch closely! I'm gonna touch it!"
Sure enough, several girls looked over.
Li Jun took a few running steps and leaped hard. Not only did he touch the leaf, he plucked it off as well. Smugly, he said, "Easy. It's only a tiny bit higher than the basket. I can dunk easily any day!"
"Wow!"
Whether boys or girls, plenty of students exclaimed in amazement.
Li Jun put his hands on his hips, craned his neck, and looked down on everyone around him, feeling like he was the greatest thing alive.
Xie Yang muttered, "Idiot."
Xu Haibo added, "Strong limbs, simple mind."
Chen Guiliang smiled.
Soon, the class bell rang, and the PE teacher blew his whistle beside the field.
After everyone assembled and attendance was taken, the PE teacher said, "Nothing much is planned today. After a thousand-meter jog, you'll have free time. We'll assemble again for attendance before class ends. Warm up first. Follow me through a set of exercises."
During the warm-up, everyone's movements were loose and sloppy, as though doing things too seriously would get them laughed at.
Only Chen Guiliang did every movement properly. He felt that he really did need to exercise.
"Alright, warm-up complete. A thousand-meter jog. Don't slack off. I'm watching."
The whistle blew, and the run began.
Before they had even reached five hundred meters, the class had clearly split apart into several groups.
Chen Guiliang was in the middle group, neither fast nor slow. Still, he felt a little weak. He needed to keep eating extra meals and more meat to build himself up; this scrawny body had yet to recover from long-term malnutrition.
Starting tomorrow, he would get up early to work out and keep running.
Once the thousand meters were over, students were sprawled all over the field.
Some had even cut corners, but the PE teacher pretended not to see. He only told the students who had collapsed from exhaustion, "Don't lie down or sit immediately after exercise. Get up and walk around!"
Li Jun stood with one hand on his hip and pointed at everyone with the other. "Ha ha, you're all too weak. You can't even handle a thousand meters."
A whole bunch of students gave him disgusted looks.
Chen Guiliang clutched his stomach as he panted and walked slowly. He was fine within five hundred meters, and his explosive power in short sprints was especially strong. But he was terrible at long-distance running. By halfway through, his stamina couldn't keep up. He still needed more nutrition and exercise.
Bian Guanyue had finished by then too, her expression unchanged and her breathing steady. The thousand meters had been effortless for her.
"Old Bian, you've got some stamina," Chen Guiliang said after catching his breath.
The form of address caught her off guard. Bian Guanyue asked doubtfully, "Were you calling me?"
"Yeah," Chen Guiliang said. "If you don't like it, I can call you Little Bian from now on."
Bian Guanyue ignored him, put in her earbuds, and started listening to music.
Sigh, she was really hard to deal with.
Chen Guiliang didn't even know what hobbies she had. Whenever he asked, she wouldn't say anything, and subtle probing was useless too.
Anyway, she was just incredibly mysterious.
It was quite a challenge, and Chen Guiliang's interest grew.
"Chen the Hero, let's play table tennis!" Xu Haibo shouted from the distance.
"Coming, coming!"
Chen Guiliang answered twice, then asked Bian Guanyue, "Want to play table tennis?"
Bian Guanyue shook her head. "No."
Chen Guiliang said no more and jogged toward the ping-pong tables.
"Disciplinary Office announcement, Disciplinary Office announcement, Jay Chou from Class Two, Year Three, report to the Disciplinary Office immediately..."
His dormmate Li Yulin sang while holding a paddle. The battered guitar in their dorm belonged to him, and he had been the one scared away from his date at Artificial Lake that night.
When Chen Guiliang was in his second year, he had even learned guitar from Li Yulin.
But his results had been limited. He had only learned to play "Two Tigers" and "Little Star."
After Chen Guiliang left the field, Bian Guanyue turned down invitations from several more girls.
She walked alone in circles around the field. At some point, she had put on her MP3 headphones, and Stefanie Sun's "Sky" played through her earbuds.
"My sky, why is it filled with wet tears?"
"My sky, why is its face always gray?"
"Drifting on the other side of the world, letting loneliness invade me again and again..."
On the east side of the field, students played table tennis.
On the west side, students played basketball.
The center of the field was a soccer pitch, where some students were playing soccer.
Quite a few girls had gathered to chat as well, in groups of three or five, smiling as they talked about some unknown amusing matter.
None of that seemed to have anything to do with Bian Guanyue.
It was as though she had been pulled out of this world. Above, below, left, and right, there was only emptiness.
There was only one song, and one person.
In the blink of an eye, Chen Guiliang had been reborn for a week.
Other than gradually getting closer to Bian Guanyue, he spent the rest of his time familiarizing himself with his high school textbooks.
English and math gave him the biggest headaches!
He had to go home and retrieve his first- and second-year textbooks, then slowly catch up chapter by chapter.
Sprout Magazine should have received his submission by now. But whether anyone had read it was hard to say. After all, there were over four hundred thousand submissions, enough to keep the organizers reviewing them for more than a month.
Friday, after morning classes.
Bian Guanyue took the initiative to speak. "Did you finish yesterday's geography worksheet?"
"I did," Chen Guiliang said.
Bian Guanyue said, "There's one big question I can't do. Can I borrow yours to look at?"
"Here." Chen Guiliang took the worksheet from his desk drawer.
Bian Guanyue accepted it, folded it in half, and put it in her backpack.
Zheng Feng eagerly offered, "I finished mine too."
Bian Guanyue acted as though she hadn't heard him. She picked up her backpack and headed outside.
Zheng Feng hurried after her.
One in front and one behind, they walked to the bus stop and waited.
Many day students were waiting for the bus as well.
A moment later, before the bus had even come to a full stop, Zheng Feng squeezed inside like his life depended on it.
He fought with all his strength to get ahead. Soon, he spotted two empty seats together, rushed over in two or three strides, and plopped down in one. Then he used his backpack to occupy the seat beside him.
"Bian Guanyue, there's an empty seat here!" Zheng Feng shouted proudly.
Bian Guanyue frowned. She disliked it when people did that. She would rather stand the entire way than owe someone a favor.
But if she refused, it would seem as though she didn't consider Zheng Feng a friend.
Yes, although she treated Zheng Feng coldly, she already regarded him as a friend.
Chen Guiliang and Wang Siyu were her friends too.
Bian Guanyue walked over and sat down. Because they were sitting so close, Zheng Feng became nervous and awkward instead. Afraid of offending the goddess, he shifted his butt farther aside and didn't even dare let his clothes touch Bian Guanyue's.
Zheng Feng felt time pass so quickly. In the blink of an eye, they had reached Bian Guanyue's stop.
He got off too, planning to walk one stop back home.
Zheng Feng stood stupidly by the roadside, watching Bian Guanyue walk into the alley.
This was part of the old district.
The back streets in the strict sense still completely preserved buildings from the late Qing dynasty and Republic of China era. The government planned to turn them into a tourist attraction.
Bian Guanyue's home was in the broader back-street area, filled with those old employee apartment buildings.
All the neighbors knew each other well. There were no secrets to speak of.
Zheng Feng had subtly asked elders for information. He knew that Bian Guanyue's maternal grandparents were both retired workers from a cotton textile mill.
Bian Guanyue had an uncle who was currently a civil servant in the city. He had moved into the urban district with his wife and child.
As for Bian Guanyue's mother, she had remarried in Pengcheng after the divorce.
As for Bian Guanyue's father, Zheng Feng had yet to learn anything definite.
When he saw Bian Guanyue disappear around the corner, Zheng Feng hurriedly followed again. Only after watching the goddess enter her building did he turn back toward home.
Bian Guanyue lived on the sixth floor.
When she realized there was no one else in the stairwell, the normally aloof and frosty Bian Guanyue seemed to become lively in an instant.
Her steps were light as she climbed the stairs, and she hummed a tune under her breath. Sometimes, she could take two or three steps at once.
She put away her keys and pushed open the door.
Her grandfather was stir-frying in the kitchen.
Her grandmother was tending the flowers on the balcony. Hearing the door open, she said, "Guanguan's back!"
"I'm back."
A brilliant smile bloomed across Bian Guanyue's face. She was like a completely different person from how she was outside.
She tossed her backpack onto the sofa and walked to the wall beside the television.
Old newspapers covered the wall, marked with many footprints.
Bian Guanyue suddenly lifted her left leg and planted a foot against the newspaper-covered wall, then pressed half her body forward.
As she stretched her leg, she adjusted her breathing.
After preparing for a moment, Bian Guanyue began singing the Sichuan Opera piece "Hong Mei Ji":
"Spring stirs upon the red plum branches, yet I happen upon a gentleman standing on a painted bridge."
"I break off a fragrant branch to offer the young man; may he not betray the secret devotion of my heart today."
"Where the wind passes, sleeves flutter. How can I keep my heart from racing, my soul from swaying..."
When she sang opera, Bian Guanyue's temperament completely changed.
Especially her eyes—they were enough to steal one's soul away.
Traditional opera performers had to practice the five methods: hands, eyes, body, technique, and steps.
Anger or delight, sorrow or joy—she could clearly convey everything with nothing but her gaze.
If she used that look at school, she could leave every boy in class completely lovestruck.
Her grandmother came in from the balcony and sat on the sofa to watch her granddaughter sing. The wrinkles across her face relaxed, and she smiled silently from ear to ear.
Before long, Bian Guanyue switched to stretching her other leg.
Suddenly, the sound of a key turning came from outside, followed by the door being pushed open.
Bian Guanyue thought her uncle had returned from the city. When she turned to look, her expression instantly turned icy. "What are you doing here?"
The visitor was her mother, Guan Xiaolin, who had long since remarried in Pengcheng.
Guan Xiaolin carried large and small gift boxes in her hands. The moment she saw her daughter, she smiled warmly. "I heard from your aunt that you transferred schools, so I came back specially to see you. Why didn't you keep studying in Hibiscus City? The conditions there were so good. What can you possibly learn by returning to the county town?"
Without saying a word, Bian Guanyue returned to her bedroom and slammed the door shut with a bang.
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