Chapter 76

*Campus IF Line — “Coaxing You”*
Qin Sang’s cheeks warmed. In the end, she only squeezed out a muffled “A-Yun.”
So soft it was like a mosquito’s buzz—almost inaudible.
Compared to how uncomfortable she felt, the single “Sang-sang” that slipped lightly from the boy’s mouth was gentler than his usual tone—so gentle that, for no reason at all, it made you want to cry.
She didn’t know what was going on with herself. She only felt her eyes stinging, her nose sour, and that inexplicably surging emotion seemed to churn like waves overturning rivers and seas.
As if a call that had traveled across a long river of time, arriving after so long, carried an ending-less regret and a trace of indescribable melancholy.
“Sang-sang.”
Liu Chengcheng lifted her hand and waved it in front of Qin Sang’s eyes.
Qin Sang came back to herself. “What’s wrong?”
Liu Chengcheng was puzzled. “I asked if you’re going to the campus shop. What are you doing? I called you for ages and you didn’t answer. I thought your soul had flown away. Are you alright?”
Qin Sang lowered her eyes. “N-no… I’m fine. Going to the shop? We still have time.”
Between classes there were only ten minutes total. Their classroom was on the third floor; running up and down, they still had time to go to the shop once.
On the way to the shop, Liu Chengcheng even comforted her. “Don’t be upset. It’s normal to do badly once in a while. When I took the middle-school entrance exam, I was so careless I did the fill-in-the-blank questions like multiple choice and lost a ton of points. When my mom found out, she even beat me up. Look—am I not fine now?”
Liu Chengcheng was loud and straightforward, often messing things up because of carelessness, but she never took it to heart.
Qin Sang laughed too. “I didn’t take it to heart.”
At the shop, classmates were coming and going. Liu Chengcheng dragged her to buy a few bags of spicy strips, and then wanted to buy two bottles of strawberry milk. But the strawberry milk on the bottom shelf was sold out. The only remaining bottle was placed very high.
Qin Sang struggled to stand on tiptoe. Her whole body looked wobbly. Holding the shelf, she tried hard to reach for it. Her fingers could only rub against the edge of the metal rack; she couldn’t hook the strawberry milk box set farther inside.
She gave up. She tilted her head up at the strawberry milk and sighed. Why put it so high? Didn’t they consider classmates who weren’t tall enough?
Just as Qin Sang was troubled, within her field of view a hand suddenly reached out—long knuckles, a lean wrist bone.
She watched with her own eyes as that hand lightly took down the milk she couldn’t get no matter how hard she tried.
From above came a familiar soft laugh. “Shorty.”
“…”
Qin Sang was unhappy. She wasn’t short. Her height was average too—153 centimeters. Among girls, she might not be particularly tall, but she definitely wasn’t the “short” type.
“I’m not short.”
She argued softly, somewhat unconvinced.
But when she lifted her eyes, what met her gaze at eye level was only the boy’s lean, clean Adam’s apple—she couldn’t even see his face.
Qin Sang felt even more stifled. He was so tall—probably over 185. During the physical exam, they’d measured height. Their class monitor seemed to be exactly 180, but Xie Yuncheng looked a head taller than the class monitor.
Were adolescent boys really this easy to grow taller? Thinking back, the time she grew the fastest was probably in her second year of middle school. Because the entrance exam required running, to deal with the PE test she got up early every day and ran three laps with the boarders. When she had time, she even jumped rope at home. It seemed like that was the only year her height suddenly shot up—and then she never grew again.
Still sulky, Qin Sang held that bottle of strawberry milk.
At checkout, Liu Chengcheng caught sight of Xie Yuncheng leaving with them and widened her eyes, stunned. “Why are you with God Xie?”
Qin Sang was still hung up on being called short, her mood low as she answered, “We ran into each other.”
“Oh.” Liu Chengcheng didn’t think much of it. Seeing that Qin Sang only had one strawberry milk in her hand, she asked, “Hey, why did you only get one strawberry milk?”
“They sold out. This is the last one.”
“Alright then. Let’s pay.”
The total came to 43.86 yuan. Qin Sang used her campus stored-value card to pay. The money on their stored-value cards was universal: it could be used as a meal card, and it could also be used to buy things at the shop.
The owner scanned it. The machine went “beep beep.” “Sorry, classmate—your balance isn’t enough. You only have 36 yuan left.”
Liu Chengcheng reached for her wallet, ready to cover the difference, but after rummaging she felt awkward. “I think I didn’t bring my wallet.”
Qin Sang hesitated, then pushed the strawberry milk forward. “Then I won’t take this one.”
A box of strawberry milk was eight yuan. If she returned it, the money would be just enough.
“Use mine.”
A hand reached in from the side. Warm fingertips pressed the campus card and handed it to the owner.
“I don’t need—”
Qin Sang was about to speak, but the owner had already taken the card quickly and scanned it. Payment successful.
“…”
Qin Sang felt even more gloomy.
Xie Yuncheng raised his brows at her. “Angry?”
“Perfect, then.”
That box of strawberry milk was taken out separately and set in front of her.
The boy’s voice held a smile. “Consider it my apology to you. How about it?”
…
Qin Sang bit the straw. Strawberry milk was sweet. Because she didn’t like the heavy, gamey dairy smell of plain milk, she often ran to the shop to buy this kind of sweet milk.
But today was different. It seemed this box of strawberry milk tasted especially sweet and rich.
She narrowed her eyes and smiled. Liu Chengcheng whispered, “Something’s off with you. Talk! Did you secretly get together with God Xie? Confess and it’ll be lenient; resist and it’ll be strict!”
For no reason, Qin Sang’s ears turned red. She muttered, “No way…”
“Tch. Don’t think I didn’t hear it.” Liu Chengcheng thumped her chest confidently and laughed slyly. “I clearly heard God Xie tell you—he was coaxing you.”
Qin Sang was secretly shocked.
Actually, what Xie Yuncheng said later was very soft—almost just a line dropped as they brushed past.
He put the milk in her hand and said, “I’m apologizing to you—coaxing you a bit.”
Qin Sang suddenly felt guilty. She lied with a straight face. “You heard wrong.”
Liu Chengcheng didn’t buy it. She grinned. “Then why are you blushing? Ears can lie, but eyes can’t. Sang-sang, don’t tell me you like God Xie?”
Caught off guard and stabbed right through her secret, Qin Sang blushed completely.
Liu Chengcheng let out a meaningful “Oh.” “I was wondering. Why do you always insist on taking a detour past the basketball gym after eating in the cafeteria? So the drunkard’s intention isn’t the wine—it’s… God Xie!”
Qin Sang lunged in panic and covered her mouth. “Can you not say it so loudly?”
Liu Chengcheng laughed so hard she shook like a flower branch. “Fine, fine, I won’t say it. Stop covering me— I’m about to be smothered to death.”
“Then you’re not allowed to talk nonsense.”
Qin Sang was genuinely nervous. She tried to look fierce as she threatened Liu Chengcheng, but her eyes were watery and there was no intimidation at all.
With her mouth covered, Liu Chengcheng couldn’t speak. She could only nod and signal with her eyes for Qin Sang to let go.
“I almost died holding it in.”
Liu Chengcheng took a huge breath.
Qin Sang’s face was still red. As if ingratiatingly, she handed her a mint candy and said in a very soft voice, “Orange… can you not tell anyone?”
Liu Chengcheng said irritably, “Who do you think I am? Am I the type with a big mouth?”
“No. Our Orange is the best.”
Qin Sang smiled, brows and eyes curved.
Outside the window, sunlight poured down. In the classroom, the two girls huddled together, sharing their little secrets in soft voices.
“Ancestor, what are you doing? Didn’t we agree to go play the match together? How can you just change your mind and not go?”
In the corridor, Jiang Mingyi truly couldn’t understand. Xie Yuncheng had agreed just fine earlier, then changed his mind at the drop of a hat.
Xie Yuncheng’s gaze swept, without leaving a trace, over the girl’s bright, smiling brows and eyes. His voice carried a touch of lazy casualness. “Something came up.”
“What something? Could it be more important than your brother?”
Jiang Mingyi was indignant. “That idiot from Class Seven spreads rumors all day. I’ve long hated him. I was thinking I’d teach him a lesson on the court. If you don’t go, who’s going to coordinate with me? Are you even my brother?”
That Class Seven guy, Teng Wenbiao, had long since formed a grudge with him. Back in junior high, Jiang Mingyi and Xie Yuncheng had also been pulled into the school basketball team for two years. Xie Yuncheng’s shooting was accurate, and the head coach had really wanted to persuade him to stay on the team, but Xie Yuncheng’s ambitions weren’t there.
Because of that, Teng Wenbiao disliked them everywhere. He probably felt his limelight had been stolen and that he was always being suppressed by them, so he was unhappy and would, from time to time, do petty underhanded moves in private.
If Jiang Mingyi had any less moral restraint, knowing hitting people was wrong, he would have dragged Teng Wenbiao out and beaten him up long ago.
This time, butting heads with Teng Wenbiao was about territory. Class Seven thought the basketball court should belong to them, after all Class Seven had many sports specialty students. Several of them, led by Teng Wenbiao, were on the school basketball team, and they planned to go the professional basketball route in the future—needing more time to train.
And Class One was mostly top students who only cared about points and grades and didn’t care about physical training at all.
If we talked about physical ability, Class One absolutely couldn’t beat Class Seven. But Teng Wenbiao was just too infuriating.
He grabbed territory with righteous confidence, not even allowing others to relax occasionally—like a bandit and robber, acting like a king on seized land.
Jiang Mingyi couldn’t stand his arrogant attitude. Plus there was prior resentment. After just a few sentences, they clashed. He and Teng Wenbiao agreed: after school, settle it on the basketball court.
The loser wouldn’t just be forbidden from going to the court in the future. They’d have to kneel and call the other “grandpa,” and they’d have to bring the other breakfast for a whole month.
The stakes were big. Not very harmful, but one hundred percent humiliating.
Jiang Mingyi had originally thought: even if Class One didn’t have many who could carry, as long as Xie Yuncheng would coordinate, winning against Teng Wenbiao would be easy.
“No—seriously.” Jiang Mingyi didn’t understand. “What could possibly be more important than your brother’s face? You’re not really going to watch me be Teng Wenbiao’s grandson for a month, are you?”
Xie Yuncheng lifted the corner of his lips. “No time. I have to tutor a kid.”
“Are you speaking human language?”
Jiang Mingyi was stunned. “Where the hell did you get a kid?”
Xie Yuncheng didn’t say. Not until class meeting, when the homeroom teacher announced the one-on-one support program: paired groups, currently a small-scale trial, with the midterm exam in a month to see the final results.
Hearing the pairing arrangement, Jiang Mingyi’s temple twitched. A kid? He glanced at the girl who was concentrating on her test paper, then slowly withdrew his gaze.
He looked at Xie Yuncheng with contempt. “Bro, you’re going too far. Putting a girl before your brother! Haven’t you heard ‘brothers are like limbs, women are like clothes’?”
Xie Yuncheng scoffed. “I can lose arms and legs, but I can’t go around without clothes.”
“…”
Jiang Mingyi had nothing to say.
With the one-on-one support pairing drawn up, there were classmates in the class who were dissatisfied.
Tang Minmin raised her hand. “Teacher, what is this grouping based on? Random assignment or based on grades? With Classmate Qin’s grades, she shouldn’t be grouped with Classmate Xie, right?”
The homeroom teacher froze. To be honest, he also felt this arrangement was bizarre. With Xie Yuncheng’s temperament, he understood it somewhat—this kind of self-seeking trouble would be impossible to come from his mouth under normal circumstances.
“This…”
The homeroom teacher cleared his throat. “This is arranged according to personal willingness. If any of you other classmates are unwilling, you can tell the teacher now, and the teacher will rearrange.”
Tang Minmin frowned, pressing harder. “Teacher, I think your arrangement is unreasonable. If you’re doing one-on-one support, then it should be equal treatment—random assignment. How can you do this personal-willingness ‘preselected’ thing? Classmate Qin, you also can’t use the fact that you’re a poor student to get special care!”
“What?”
Xie Yuncheng gave a low scoff, his gaze coldly sweeping over her. “Who I want to take—do I need you to arrange it for me?”