Chapter 33: CH 30

It was the names of the two of them.

Bai Zhi was completely restless for the entirety of class afterwards. Ji Guichen’s words kept echoing in head, buzzing like bees, and making his heart tremble.

What on earth did he mean?

The little demon was confused.

Bai Zhi thought for a while, discreetly took out a piece of paper, lowered his head, and memorized that sentence:

“You ahr maiye star.” [1]

Done. After writing this sentence, Bai Zhi happily folded up the paper and stuffed it in his bag.

The class bell rang. Ji Guichen went to get water, and the system’s voice sounded within Bai Zhi’s head.

“Nephew, I just detected that Ji Guichen hasn’t eaten anything last night or this morning.”

Bai Zhi’s hand, which had been organizing his books, paused: “What! Then isn’t he very hungry!”

System: “Don’t know, but in actuality he frequently doesn’t eat.”

Hearing this, Bai Zhi couldn’t sit still and hurriedly ran out of the classroom. The system followed him, reminding him the whole way: “The self-study period is about to start, what are you doing?”

“I feel bad.” Bai Zhi said thickly. His feet moved faster, and he sped across the hallway, making a beeline for the snack counter.

Ji Guichen, who had returned to the classroom with a kettle in hand, unexpectedly did not see Bai Zhi, who had been particularly sticky recently. He was a little surprised, but he pulled out his seat and sat down.

After a while the class bell rang, but the seat beside him still remained empty.

Ji Guichen opened his book, thinking it really hadn’t been necessary for him to care about that idiot, but he realized that he himself couldn’t read a single word on the page. His heart was inexplicably chaotic.

Where on earth did that fool go? Not properly attending class during class time, could he have gone back to making trouble again? Ji Guichen’s eyes narrowed, and he suddenly remembered the rumors he had heard previously.

That schoolyard bully Xie Siliu was ignorant, bullied his classmates, and had high-profile puppy love.

Puppy love.

The tip of Ji Guichen’s pen trembled, tracing a long line on the page in its wake. An unhappy mood gradually stained his heart, and he simply threw his pen away and closed his book.

Too outrageous!

To think he believed that this person had genuinely reformed and would study well, when it only took him a few days to show his horse feet because he couldn’t bear it anymore? As a student, he didn’t study well, yet jumped straight to relationships. What relationship!

The more Ji Guichen thought, the angrier he became. Suddenly, the sound of the door opening and closing softly came from the back row.

He turned his head immediately. Bai Zhi’s actions were cat-like, with both hands held in front of his stomach as he quietly slipped into the classroom and sat down lightly.

Ji Guichen turned his head back, pretending not to have seen him. After a long while he couldn’t bear it anymore, so he put on an uncaring expression and asked:

“Hey, where did you go? What did you do? Who did you meet? For how long?”

Bai Zhi who was bewildered by the series of questions: “…”

“I…”

“Xie Siliu, let me tell you, if you are going to study you must study properly.” Ji Guichen’s tone was unreadable: “Puppy love affects learning, don’t you understand?”

“But–”

“No buts.” Ji Guichen interrupted: “No love allowed, do you hear me?”

After a long while, Bai Zhi’s voice spoke:

“…En.”

Once he heard the response, Ji Guichen finally became less angry. He reopened his book and was about to start previewing the classwork when his arm was suddenly poked.

He turned his head. Bai Zhi pulled out two packs of bread and stuffed them into his lap quietly.

“Just bought these for you, eat them.”

Ji Guichen was stunned.

He was stunned still for two or three seconds before he reacted, saying:

“You…didn’t come to class…because you were buying this just now?”

Bai Zhi nodded: “Yep.”

Ji Guichen couldn’t speak all of a sudden.

He lowered his head to look at the two bags of bread placed on his lap, then turned to look at Bai Zhi whose head was still bowed. His heart suddenly hurt with a sense of guilt.

His temper during the series of questions asked just now was very bad. Bai Zhi helped him and yet received this kind of scolding, wouldn’t he be sad? Ji Guichen thought this silently.

But Bai Zhi didn’t have any thoughts like this. He was thinking about another problem very seriously.

‘The target is a good student this time. What should I do if he doesn’t fall in love with me?’

“This is not easy to handle. You’re trying to date him using learning as a cover.” The system said.

“What do you mean?”

“Easy.” The system said: “Take your dog-crawl handwriting [2] for example. You can take this opportunity and let Ji Guichen teach you how to practice your handwriting. Just develop some feelings from physical contact, right?”

“Okay!”

Hearing this, Bai Zhi cheered up and hurriedly shot over to Ji Guichen’s side: “Ji Guichen, my handwriting is too ugly. Can you teach me how to practice my handwriting?”

A certain someone who was feeling guilty about what just happened instantly agreed: “Okay.”

Bai Zhi was surprised by his sudden change in attitude:

“Uncle, how come he didn’t refuse me this time and became so easy to talk to?”

The system said: “Worrying about minutiae like this, you should be seizing the opportunity, nephew!”

“Okay, okay.” Bai Zhi immediately put on a serious expression, took out a piece of paper, and put it in front of him.

Ji Guichen glanced at him, saying: “Write a ‘一’ and let me see.” [3]

Bai Zhi wrote it in a proper manner.

Looking at the straight line on the white paper, Ji Guichen’s brows furrowed:

“Pull the pen up when you start, and pull it back down when you finish. Make the pen strokes more visible.”[4]

Bai Zhi thought for a while and drew a tilde “~”.

Ji Guichen: …

“Your issue with handwriting…we’ll talk about that later. The way you hold the pen is also incorrect, let’s learn this first.” Ji Guichen sighed, taking out a pen for a demonstration.

“Your thumb should be touching your index finger, and the pen should rest on your middle finger. Look at my grip.”

Ji Guichen repeated his explanation, but Bai Zhi still scratched his head, staring at him stupidly with big eyes.

“Forget it. Hold out your hand.”

So Bai Zhi held out his right hand.

Ji Guichen moved closer to him and held his hand. Bai Zhi’s shoulders trembled and his breathing quickened all of a sudden.

However, Ji Guichen seemed not to have noticed Bai Zhi’s change in behavior. He put the ballpoint pen in Bai Zhi’s fingers and then directly pulled Bai Zhi’s hand to lead him:

“When writing vertical strokes, you have to do it all at once without pausing. When you lift your pen at the proper position, the characters will look much better. Do you understand?”

Bai Zhi’s mind had become a ball of paste, and he could only follow the movements in a daze. The sounds of Ji Guichen’s explanation sounded in his ears. That person seemed to have been affected by something because his voice had become particularly tender. Bai Zhi couldn’t stand it; every time he became like this, Bai Zhi would be sent into a trance.

When the little demon finally recovered with great difficulty, Ji Guichen had already stopped writing with his hand. Bai Zhi looked over strangely and saw that on the huge expanse of white paper, there were six large characters with strong and soft strokes lined up neatly.

It was the names of the two of them.

Xie Siliu, Ji Guichen.

[1] In the raws, this was in Chinese characters meant to phonetically sound like “you are my star” in English… the actual Chinese characters don’t mean anything

[2] 狗爬字体 (lit. dog-crawl script) – term for handwriting that’s so bad it looks no better than if a dog stepped on the paper

[3]  一 means “one” (as in the number), pretty much the easiest thing to write in Chinese

[4] Bai Zhi wrote the “一” super straight, but Ji Guichen wants it to look more like calligraphy (pic below). You can see how most of these go down very slightly on the left and up on the right (stroke is from left to right)