Chasing Game – 6

Edited and Proofread by: acro

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[Everything was ready, just had to wait for Lu Zhaoshen to come]

The school bathroom used the most common kind of yellow lemon-scented solid freshener which was placed on top of the water tank, only half an arm’s length away from Xu Xingzhe’s nose, giving him a headache as he breathed in the smell. 

He subconsciously buried his face into the crook of Lu Zhaoshen’s neck, but Lu Zhaoshen tilted his head away in time before he could do so. 

The class bell rang for ten seconds, and the whole building stilled and quieted. Xu Xingzhe could even clearly hear Lu Zhaoshen’s breathing, not to mention Lu Zhaoshen gritting his teeth and saying something fierce.

“Stay away from me.”

“I didn’t mean to…” Xu Xingzhe put his legs down and stepped back. The back of his clothes touched the door of the cubicle and he took a small step forward, disgusted.

Lu Zhaoshen shouldn’t have anything to say to him. With a stiff face, he reached out and turned the knob. Xu Xingzhe didn’t dare move nor block him.

“Do you hate me even more?”

“What do you think?”

“It’s just the wrong timing. Everytime I meet you, I’m always put in a tight spot. I’m actually not as bad as you think.”

Lu Zhaoshen ran out of patience and didn’t say anything. Leaving Xu Xingzhe behind, he pushed open the door and left.

Xu Xingzhe ran to the campus supermarket again and bought a bag of wet tissue and a bag of dry tissue paper for Lu Zhaoshen. He delivered them to Lu Zhaoshen’s class and asked someone to pass them to him. He didn’t know if Lu Zhaoshen had accepted them, slipping away as soon as he handed them off. 

In retrospect, Xu Xingzhe always thought that maybe his story with Lu Zhaoshen didn’t start off on theright foot, which was why the road later on was so difficult.

When school was over, Qian Sijia came to find Xu Xingzhe and apologized for He Kai’s incident. Xu Xingzhe waved his hand and said forget it, but he thought to himself: if it weren’t for this accident, I wouldn’t have met him.

Lu Guoyuan hasn’t come back from Jiangcheng, so Xu Xingzhe couldn’t find the opportunity to get close to Lu Zhaoshen. Since Lu Zhaoshen hadn’t accepted his friend request yet, Xu Xingzhe was certain he was 100% blocked by Lu Zhaoshen.

He had three opportunities to get along closely with Lu Zhaoshen; the first time he stole his dad, the second time he stole his volleyball, and the third time he sat on his thighs. In short, his performance had always been poor. 

After returning home, Xu Xingzhe threw off his schoolbag, took off his wet school uniform, and sat in the bathtub where the water had just been filled. It was only then  that Xu Xingzhe feel how sore his ankle had become. The excessive force he exerted while climbing the stairs today was mixed with his injury from kicking last time, so his bones and tendons hurt. It hurt so much that the pain made him grit his teeth and cried for his mom. When Qin Jiazhen heard a sound in the next room, she quickly took off her facial mask and knocked on the bathroom door to ask him about his situation.

Xu Xingzhe briefly wiped his body before he wrapped a bath towel around him and jumped out with one foot. Qin Jiazhen then gave him another dose of medicine.

“How did it become so serious? It’s all swollen up into a bun.” Qin Jiazhen furrowed her eyebrows,a pitying expression on her face.

“I fell at school today.”

Qin Jiazhen’s frown immediately turned into a cold scowl. “I told you not to be cheeky. Don’t be cheeky. You’re still disobedient even after getting hurt. What should we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you still go to school tomorrow?”

“I can’t.”

Qin Jiazhen slapped Xu Xingzhe on the buttocks and said, “You brat, did you deliberately fall to skip class?”

Xu Xingzhe was both physically and mentally exhausted, and had no energy to talk back to Qin Jiazhen. He lay sickly on the bed and looked at the ceiling helplessly, saying, “Is this necessary?”

Qin Jiazhen looked at Xu Xingzhe’s ankle again. It was only swollen and there were no other symptoms. She relaxed a little and turned to the bathroom to wash off the ointment on her fingers. When she came out, she suddenly asked, “Xing Xing, is your Uncle Lu’s son in the same grade as you?”

Xu Xingzhe immediately regained his composure, his eyes wide open and his tone even calmed down. “Mhm, what’s the matter?”

“I remember that the kid’s grades are excellent. He’s always ranked first in the school. Why don’t I ask Lao Lu to bring his child to our house every night and do his homework with you? If you don’t know how to do it, you can ask him to teach you–”

Xu Xingzhe kicked up his heels and jumped up from bed. Forgetting about the pain in his ankle, he shouted excitedly, “That’s great!”

Qin Jiazhen leaned against the wardrobe and said suspiciously, “When did you love learning so much?”

“From now on, I’ll love it incomparably.” 

　　*

“You also have to pick up and drop off Lao Xu every night for social gatherings, and sometimes he doesn’t come home until eleven or twelve o’clock.How could you not worry when you leave your child alone at home? Lao Lu, here’s  what I’m thinking. When you pick up Xing Xing from school every day, you should also pick up Zhaoshen. He can eat dinner and do his homework at my house, and then when you send Lao Xu home in the evening, you can go back home with him.”

Lu Guoyuan must have said something evasive as Qin Jiazhen smiled again and said, “It’s not a trouble, not a trouble. I want your Zhaoshen to set a good example for Xing Xing as well. Xing Xing, this brat, is always struggling when doing his homework every day, fiddling about with everything, not being able to focus. I’ve been angered to death by him.He’s also currently in a rebellious period and doesn’t listen to me or his dad. I just thought that children of the same age might have more in common, so Zhoashen can come over to persuade him; who knows it might work.” 

The Xu family’s wife had always treated others with kindness. Lu Guoyuan had great respect for her in his heart, and due to their employment relationship, he also could not refuse.

Xu Xingzhe only heard Qin Jiazhen smile and say, “We’ll be troubling Zhoashen then.”

When this happened, Xu Xingzhe rushed up to give his mother a fierce hug and smiled like a successful little fox. “Mom, I love you so much!”

This was exactly how ‘you can wear out iron shoes in fruitless searching, and then by lucky chance find it without even looking.’ 

Qin Jiazhen was disgusted that he had rubbed the essence off his face.She grabbed the back of his collar in disgust and said suspiciously, “You know Lao Lu’s son?”

“I know him! Who doesn’t know the super straight-A student Lu Zhaoshen? His last monthly math exam was 148, and the teacher even said it was a tough devil’s exam paper. He’s only two points short of a perfect score, isn’t this frightening?” 

Truthfully, Xu Xingzhe didn’t pay attention to how many points Lu Zhaoshen scored at the time. He only remembered that Chen Xiaoming scored 74, so doubling that was Lu Zhaoshen’s score. As for why he remembered that Chen Xiaoming scored 74? Because he scored 47, which was even worse than Chen Xiaoming.

Qin Jiazhen gave him a cold look. “Do you really want to take your studies seriously?” 

“That’s a must!” Xu Xingzhe slapped the table with a serious face, his eyes full of detest for the act of not studying hard. 

“Then write me a letter of guarantee.” Qin Jiazhen didn’t believe it. She walked straight to the desk and took out a piece of white paper and a pen, then waved to Xu Xingzhe to come over. “Come here, write it yourself.”

“What do I write?”

“Write ‘I, Xu Xingzhe, promise to correct my learning attitude and improve my academic performance within one month. I will be in the top thirty of the class during the mid-term exam. If I fail to fulfill the contents of my guarantee, my pocket money will be cancelled for the second half of the year.’”

“What?! Why didn’t you say it just now?”

“You didn’t ask either?” 

Xu Xingzhe gritted his teeth in anger. “No wonder you were so eager to take the initiative to help me contact Uncle Lu. It turns out you’re digging a pit and waiting for me to jump down!”

Qin Jiazhen shrugged and said, “It seems that this guarantee is too difficult for you. That’s okay. I’ll call Uncle Lu and tell him that you don’t want to study anymore–”

Before Qin Jiazhen could raise her phone, Xu Xingzhe jumped up and stopped her. Xu Xingzhe thought about Lu Zhaoshen’s face, the mountain of textbooks, the closeness of the bodies pressed together in the bathroom, and his grades dangling at the end of the crane. 

Guarantees can be broken, but there was only one chance to get close with Lu Zhaoshen, and to miss it was to miss it, Xu Xingzhe said to himself.

“Okay! I’ll sign it then! I’m not afraid!” 

Qin Jiazhen took the letter of guarantee with a satisfied look, but when she saw Xu Xingzhe’s words, she couldn’t help but frown again. “I’m starting to seriously suspect you’re not my blood-related son. Such ugly characters. If I were the teacher grading it, I wouldn’t give you a single point!” 

Xu Xingzhe rolled his eyes hard, tossed the pen, and jumped back onto the bed with one foot. He sighed comfortably and watched Qin Jiazhen walk out of his room. 

Lu Zhaoshen, Lu Zhaoshen, you still can’t get rid of me after all. 

Xu Xingzhe still went to school the next day, not to pretend in front of Qin Jiazhen, but he just heard that it was Lu Guoyuan who came to take him to school today. As soon as he got into the car, he began to inquire about Lu Zhaoshen.

“Uncle, what does Lu Zhaoshen like to eat?”

“He eats everything, he’s not picky.”

Xu Xingzhe still pestered endlessly. “There must be a few things he likes and doesn’t like, right?”

“…he likes to eat prawns the most, and doesn’t like spinach and chrysanthemum.” 

Xu Xingzhe wished he could take a small notebook and write it down, but Lu Guoyuan dared not say much, afraid that Xu Xingzhe would find it annoying. He only said that Lu Zhaoshen was not very picky about food, and even ate what he didn’t like.

Lu Guoyuan looked at Xu Xingzhe, but at this moment, he didn’t realize that his son, a wolf, was about to enter the tiger’s den, and even actively said, “Xing Xing, if you have any questions you don’t know, you can ask Zhaoshen. He doesn’t like to talk and won’t make a sound if you don’t say something first, but he actually has a kind heart.” 

Xu Xingzhe nodded repeatedly, his mind full of Lu Zhaoshen’s face.

He managed to get through a full day of eight classes and then called Qin Jiazhen again to ask if the auntie at home had prepared dinner, if she had cooked cassoulet shrimp, and if his bedroom was tidied once more. Qin Jiazhen was nagged by him so much that her head swelled up. 

Everything was ready. He just had to wait for Lu Zhaoshen to come.