Chapter 75
Chapter 75
One afternoon, the two of them were sitting in KFC eating dessert.
A little curious, He Qian asked He Yuchuan, “Did you call my second uncle Dad right from the start, or did you call him Uncle for a while before switching?”
He Yuchuan said, “I called him Dad the first time we met.”
He Qian said, “That fast? I thought it would take some time to get used to.”
He Yuchuan said, “Oh, come on. My aunt said the same thing. She even scolded me for having no backbone and no ambition. But it seriously doesn’t matter, okay? Whoever’s house I live in, whoever gives me food to eat-doesn’t that make him my dad? Getting used to it or not, who cares? I sure don’t!”
He Qian asked, “Then what about your biological dad? Did he remarry too?”
He Yuchuan said, “No idea. Haven’t heard anything. Maybe he’s dead.”
He Qian said, “Ah…?”
He Yuchuan said, “He wasn’t a good person. Like father, like son. I’m not a good person either.”
Feeling sorry for him, He Qian patted his head. “Don’t say that. I’ve always thought you were wonderful.”
He Yuchuan laughed for a while, completely carefree. “All right, don’t pity me. Let’s talk about something happy.”
From that moment on, He Qian gradually realized that He Yuchuan only looked cheerful on the outside. In truth, there were many scars inside him that she couldn’t see.
He Qian never pried. She only quietly ached for He Yuchuan in her heart.
After He Qian entered her senior year, the pressure from schoolwork became intense. She had already been thin to begin with, and day by day, she visibly withered even more.
Every day, He Yuchuan washed all kinds of fruit at home, packed them into a food container, and brought them to school. During the break in evening self-study, he would deliver them to the door of He Qian’s classroom.
He Yuchuan had a lively personality and a ton of friends. After delivering fruit a few times, he had become buddies with quite a few boys in He Qian’s class. He Qian was always baffled as to how he had managed to turn into a social butterfly in such a short time.
Gradually, almost every student in the school had either seen or heard about it-a handsome sophomore boy brought fruit every day to an ordinary-looking senior girl.
In reality, the fruit He Yuchuan brought was all perfectly ordinary, things like strawberries, mulberries, oranges, and grapes.
And as a teenage boy, he wasn’t exactly good at washing fruit either. More than once, He Qian tasted dirt in the fruit.
But the students at school embellished the story until it became a romantic legend. They said He Yuchuan brought He Qian cherries with all the stems removed, lychees that had been peeled one by one…
Some people knew they were siblings and merely sighed over how much this younger brother doted on his older sister, saying he had a sister complex.
Others didn’t know they were siblings, so they spun an even more dramatic, tear-jerking romance between an older girl and a younger boy.
Listening to these rumors, He Qian could only smile helplessly.
One evening during the break in self-study, He Qian’s deskmate Xiao Fei and a boy were laughing as they tossed a ping-pong ball back and forth. As they fooled around, the bell for class rang.
Seeing that evening self-study had begun, Xiao Fei put a little force into her throw, intending to return the ping-pong ball to the boy.
Unfortunately, she used too much strength. The ping-pong ball sailed right over the boy’s waiting hands, traced a graceful arc through the air, and landed with perfect accuracy on a girl’s head.
He Qian sucked in a sharp breath-because the person Xiao Fei had hit was none other than the most untouchable girl in their class, Wang Lan.
The bad blood between Xiao Fei and Wang Lan hadn’t started yesterday.
Back in middle school, Xiao Fei and Wang Lan had been in the same class, and the two of them had already had plenty of conflicts then. Unexpectedly, once they got to high school, they ended up assigned to the same class again.
Xiao Fei was merely a bit mischievous by nature, but Wang Lan was genuinely ruthless. Anyone who had ever provoked Wang Lan ended up sighing that she was a complete lunatic.
After becoming classmates in high school, Xiao Fei and Wang Lan had maintained an unspoken agreement not to greet or speak to each other.
The two of them were like the hook and the dynamite barrel in Gold Miner. As long as they avoided each other, everything was fine. But once they touched, the blast was guaranteed to leave nothing around them intact.
During the break, with so many people around and all the noise, maybe not that many would have noticed such an awkward scene.
But now that the bell had rung, the whole class had gone quiet. The thing hit Wang Lan on the head with a crisp bang that sounded especially clear.
A few boys couldn’t hold back their laughter, then quickly lowered their heads and covered their mouths.
Wang Lan had just been straight-up “headshotted” by Xiao Fei in front of everyone. Whether Xiao Fei had done it on purpose or not, at this point, even just for the sake of saving face, Wang Lan was never going to let it slide.
Xiao Fei really was horribly unlucky.
Knowing she was in the wrong, she pressed her palms together and waved them toward Wang Lan. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to!”
Wang Lan sat by the window, her face livid. She patted her deskmate on the shoulder, signaling for him to let her out.
Her deskmate blocked her with his arm and whispered, “Sister Lan, don’t, don’t make a big deal out of it…”
Wang Lan said, “Stand up.”
Wang Lan’s deskmate obediently stood up and made room for her to pass.
The classroom was dead silent. Everyone put down their pens and watched Wang Lan.
Holding the ping-pong ball in her hand, she walked from the back row to the podium, then circled around it to Xiao Fei and He Qian’s side. She placed the ping-pong ball on Xiao Fei’s desk.
He Qian was already so nervous she couldn’t speak. She looked up at Wang Lan in a daze.
Wang Lan suddenly reached out, grabbed Xiao Fei by the collar, and yanked her up.
The students in the class let out a burst of startled cries. Xiao Fei screamed as she was dragged, and He Qian instinctively stood up to shield her.
But Wang Lan was too strong. With her left hand gripping Xiao Fei’s collar, she swung her right hand and slapped Xiao Fei across the face with a sharp smack.
As if annoyed that He Qian was in the way, she followed through and slapped He Qian across the face too.
After doing all that, she slowly circled back around the podium and returned to her seat.
He Qian’s face burned. Humiliation and embarrassment left her mind a little blank. Vaguely, she heard a few boys muttering, “Holy shit.”
Xiao Fei lay motionless on the desk. He Qian knew she was crying.
He Qian didn’t know what she was supposed to do either. It wasn’t quite enough to make her cry, but there was no way she could calm down and keep doing homework.
A few of He Yuchuan’s “buddies” in the class all sent him texts: Your sister got hit.
Less than ten minutes later, He Yuchuan appeared at the door of He Qian’s classroom.
He walked straight to the podium and asked, “Which one is Wang Lan?”
The students all looked up at him in surprise.
Wang Lan slammed her hand hard on the desk. “Your daddy’s right here.”
He Yuchuan strode straight toward her. This time, Wang Lan’s deskmate didn’t need any prompting; he obediently stood up and slipped away in a flash. The students around Wang Lan started frantically gathering up their test papers and stationery.
He Qian cried out, “Xiaoyu…”
Before she could finish, He Yuchuan and Wang Lan had already started grappling. The desks and chairs around them were knocked crooked and askew. Several students scrambled to their feet and pressed themselves against the wall in panic. Not a single person dared step forward to break it up.
He Yuchuan was tall and powerfully built. In just a few moves, he threw Wang Lan to the floor, then grabbed her by the collar of her school uniform with one hand and dragged her along the ground toward the door.
Wang Lan lay on the floor, her face flushed bright red, cursing and shrieking as she was quickly dragged out of the classroom.
He Qian chased after them. A few of He Yuchuan’s “buddies” also snapped back to their senses and rushed out after them.
Xiao Fei wiped away her tears. “Holy shit, that was so fucking satisfying!” With that, she rushed out too. She wanted to watch the show.
He Yuchuan dragged Wang Lan all the way from the classroom door to the stairwell. Wang Lan cursed the entire way. The students in every class stopped studying and poked their heads out of their classroom doors to look.