Chapter 9

It was Luo Zhuowei's voice.
That beautiful girl who shouldn't have appeared in my out-of-control fantasies was now right in front of me.
"The morning dictation has been graded. Here." She smiled at me, slightly bent over, placing my carelessly filled answer sheet neatly on my desk. Those eyes that countless boys privately praised as beautiful as amber stones stared at me unblinkingly. Her soft brown pupils made her gaze seem even softer and gentler.
She then said softly: "Your answers were filled in the wrong positions, so you failed."
I felt my nerves tense up instantly.
Not because of this unimportant failure, but because of the distance between her and me.
Her hands were slightly propped on the edge of my desk, so when she leaned slightly to talk to me, the boundary had already exceeded the safe, polite distance. Her unconscious closeness made me feel an instinctive danger, but this danger didn't come from her—it came from myself.
Was Luo Zhuowei the type who couldn't gauge distance properly?
I thought confusedly. She shouldn't be this close to boys.
"...I understand. Thank you." I struggled to recall how I usually interacted with Luo Zhuowei, trying hard to hide my unnaturalness in front of her.
"You're welcome." She didn't notice my discomfort, just dutifully added: "So remember to stay after school for the retake."
Good thing I refused Lin Haoyuan's invitation to play basketball just now.
"I understand." I picked up my answer sheet. Looking carefully, I had filled in the wrong positions starting from question three. "Will the teacher handle the retake?"
Luo Zhuowei shook her head: "No, the class representative will handle it."
My action of spinning the answer sheet between my fingers paused: Luo Zhuowei was the English class representative.
"Um, Luo Zhuowei... who else needs to retake today?"
What shattered my careful question was Luo Zhuowei's somewhat troubled and apologetic smile: "Um... today, you're the only one who failed, Chen Hang."
The view from the window seat was very good. Since Class 3 of second year was on the second floor, from Luo Zhuowei's seat, you could clearly see the playground and the four basketball courts beside it when looking down out the window.
Luo Zhuowei was the typical good student trusted by all teachers. After school, she was often called by teachers to stay and help with various tasks.
Sometimes it was her and the class monitor left in the classroom, sometimes just her alone.
Once the classroom became quiet, the sounds from the courts below the window became clearly audible. The heavy thud of basketballs hitting the plastic ground, the short squeaking sounds of sneakers scraping, and the half-clear sounds of boys chatting and laughing.
Boys in puberty, with energy overflowing and nowhere to vent it, had a love for basketball that reached an almost unbelievable and outrageous level. Those four courts, except for rainy days and holidays, were always occupied by groups of boys.
"The boys are so noisy."
Luo Zhuowei remembered the class monitor, also a girl, muttering this complaint, though her hands didn't slow down as she stapled holiday homework papers: "You think so too, right?"
She could understand what the class monitor meant: Compared to girls, boys of this age were like machines with fully wound motors, or wild animals that never knew exhaustion.
Growing bodies and increasing strength all seemed like symbols of roughness and wildness. Whether they intended it or not, boys in the transformation period were synonymous with danger.
Because they were already different from when they were children. The differences between boys and girls were clearly marked at this stage.
"Yeah." For Luo Zhuowei at that time, these lively sounds outside the window were just background noise that could be ignored.
When did these sounds stop being ignorable noise to her?
And when did she start caring whether she was the only one staying today, or if there were others?
Luo Zhuowei was troubled to discover the secret expectation in her heart: She gradually longed for this after-school time to belong to her alone.
If there were no others, she could sit in her seat, slowly organizing those boring test papers into categories with a stapler, occasionally looking up to see the basketball courts through the window.
Chen Hang would sometimes play basketball there with his friends.
In this purely male environment, Chen Hang's appearance was slightly different from when he was in the classroom or in front of her.
If the Chen Hang Luo Zhuowei knew was gentle and cautious, then the Chen Hang she glimpsed through this window had torn away that layer of restraint, revealing a corner of the recklessness that boys of this age possessed.
She had witnessed Chen Hang's long pass. Although she didn't understand basketball well, from that distance and his teammate's slightly pained expression when catching the ball, Chen Hang's playing was undoubtedly good and accurate... even a bit too strong.
She watched like this day after day. Luo Zhuowei felt she was like a silent observer, using this accidentally discovered window to piece together a complete Chen Hang.
Like the simple action of drinking water—his Adam's apple bobbing when he tilted his head back to drink urgently, water overflowing from the tilted bottle mouth running down his chin, along his neck, almost stickily crawling into his t-shirt with the slightly low collar, mixing with sweat to form a slightly darker patch.
Aggressiveness.
It was aggressiveness.
The moment this word popped into her mind, Luo Zhuowei understood that she wasn't really an observer.
She was just, she was just... feeling an almost paralyzing surge of emotion at glimpsing this side of him.
Puberty was so shameful. She clearly liked his restrained gentleness, but privately, uncontrollably fantasized about his other side.
Perhaps this was the principle of "too rigid, easily broken." The more Luo Zhuowei usually suppressed not showing excess emotion, the more intense the tide that surged back when she relaxed at night.
More passionate than all the dreams before, preferably making her legs weak, making her unable to stand on her own strength, then using those hands she had measured countless times in her mind to grip her wrists, while the other hand held her a hundred times more gently, deepening this deep kiss that made one unable to extricate themselves, willing to sink.
She might struggle, or she might not, but she definitely... wouldn't refuse.
Imagining, dreaming of such things—how shameful, how shameful.
#15
"Sorry, I feel like it's because of me that you have to stay after school."