Chapter 21 — Want to Keep Sitting With the Person I Secretly Like
The spring sports meet ran for two days, then a weekend rolled in right after. When everyone came back on Monday, the easy mood still hadn’t worn off.
Yu Fan had barely stepped into the classroom before he was drafted for grunt work.
Their class had placed third overall and collected a fat stack of certificates. Zhuang Fangqin showed up early with tape and a plan to plaster the back wall.
“A little left… too far left… now it’s crooked… do you have zero sense of balance? Look how straight Chen Jingshen’s are,” she directed, chin tipped up.
Yu Fan stood on a chair, pinching the corners of a certificate, feeling like an idiot. “Then why not have him do all of them.”
“Because you stick up the awards you won,” Zhuang said. “For all we know this is the only certificate you will get in three years, so do it properly. No creases.”
“…”
Yu Fan finished sticking up his long jump second place, and Zhuang stuffed the relay first place into his hands too. He nudged it this way and that a few dozen times until Zhuang finally nodded.
He was about to step down when he noticed the 3000-meter certificate next to the relay one. Chen Jingshen’s. Also on the top row.
“Why is a second place up top with a first,” Yu Fan muttered, asking for trouble.
Zhuang didn’t look back. “He never complained about sharing a report card with you.”
“…”
“Done. Get down.”
When Yu Fan slouched back to his seat, Chen Jingshen was explaining a problem to a boy. Yu Fan didn’t know him, only remembered he was part of the transfer duo with Chen. They’d never spoken.
Yu Fan had not even opened his mouth when Jingshen was already standing to give him the seat.
The boy, Wu Si, risked a peek and watched the resident school bad boy do his routine: phone tossed into the desk, jacket spread on the desktop, head down for a nap. He had been in elite classes all through middle school and high school, so this kind of classmate was new to him. Always asleep in class. Quips back at teachers. Sometimes he even ran into him smoking in the restroom.
It scared him a little. It was also weirdly fascinating.
“Got it?” Chen Jingshen asked in a low voice. He lifted his eyes and caught Wu Si staring.
“Ah. Got it, got it. Thanks, top student!”
“I actually have one more, but morning reading is about to start…” Wu Si gave a sheepish smile, then looked up with serious sincerity. “If only we were still desk-mates.”
Jingshen clicked his pen shut and met his eyes with a perfectly blank face.
For a split second, Wu Si swore the words written there were: Are you done? Then go.
He took the hint, hugged his workbook, and got up. “Thanks. I’ll head back.”
During math, Zhuang Fangqin announced the midterms in two weeks.
The class howled.
“So fast?”
“Another test already?”
“What? Didn’t we just start the term yesterday? Midterms?”
Wang Lu’an was the loudest. Zhuang Fangqin calmly snapped a stick of chalk in two, flicked one at Wang Lu’an and the other at the head napping in the back.
Yu Fan cracked one eye and sat up, face dark.
“Quit screeching,” Zhuang said. “Wait till you are seniors. Twice a month will be normal. But don’t be discouraged. Think about it. You went from last place to third at the sports meet. Why can’t you do the same on the midterms?”
A beat of silence.
Wang Lu’an said, “Not to be rude, Teacher Zuang, but Yu Fan can take first and second at a sports meet. What exactly can you expect from him on an exam?”
Zhuang: “…”
Yu Fan kept his eyes closed and did not object.
Zhang Xianjing propped her chin on her hand. “Teacher, we weren’t third from last on the last grade exam.”
“How far from the bottom then?” Wu Si blurted.
“Third from the bottom.”
Wu Si saw black.
“Anyway, that’s the situation. Heads up: right after the exams we have parent–teacher conferences. Choose your own adventure,” Zhuang said. “Also, about seating.”
“Some of you are unhappy with your current seats. Some parents have complained as well. So after midterms, I’ll make small adjustments based on changes in your scores.”
“And last point. Certain students... Yu Fan, open your eyes,” before she continued, “Certain students who keep giving up and refuse to even fill in multiple choice, I will have to move them to a seat by the platform.”
She named no names. She didn’t have to.
The bell rang and Wang Lu’an beelined over.
“F***, I’m sure of it,” he hissed, cutting a glare at the class discipline rep. “Whoever begged Fangqin to switch seats absolutely included my desk-mate.”
Zhang Xianjing said, “It isn’t on anyone else. You sleep through class.”
“So what? I don’t bother him. Yu Fan sleeps all class too. Does the top student complain?” Wang Lu’an lifted his chin. “Right, Jingshen?”
No reply. Chen Jingshen was head down over his exercise book, knuckles wrapped cleanly around his pen. The set of his mouth was cool. His sharp brows and eyes made him look icy whenever he went quiet.
Zhang Xianjing added, “Not the same thing. Yu Fan doesn’t snore.”
She flicked her hair. “Besides, do you really want to sit with the discipline rep?”
“Think my a**. My name shows up in his notebook more often than Yu Fan’s. I want him far away,” Wang muttered. “But he cannot be the one to ask the teacher to move. That kills my face.”
Zhang Xianjing rolled her eyes, then nudged her own desk-mate. “Ke Ting, when the teacher said a parent asked for a move, was that your mom? She didn’t like me sitting with you last term, boohoo.”
Ke Ting froze, then returned to her usual blankness. “No. I told Mom we aren’t seated together this term.”
“Good.”
Wang Lu’an: “Good where?”
Satisfied, Zhang Xianjing looked to the other side. “Yu Fan, what are you going to do?”
Yu Fan tipped his head back. “What?”
“You didn’t hear Fangqin? If you bomb again, she’ll park you by the podium.”
A soft tap. Yu Fan heard his desk-mate set a pen down.
He had been about to say Fangqin was bluffing. She had been threatening to move him to the front for two years and he was still planted among the students. Zhuang Fangqin disliked singling anyone out in a way that made them a spectacle.
But the words stopped in his throat. He lifted his chin and glanced at the platform.
“What are you looking at?” Wang Lu’an asked.
“Which side has the better view.”
“…”
The boy next to him stood up. The desk and chair scraped loudly. Yu Fan looked up on instinct and caught only the cold line of Chen Jingshen’s profile as he walked out without a word.
It was strange. His face looked the same as always, but Yu Fan could tell Chen Jingshen was in a bad mood.
“But the front row is so inconvenient for playing on your phone,” Wang Lu’an was still muttering. “Yu Fan?”
Yu Fan pulled his gaze back. “Nothing.”
Chen Jingshen did not return until the bell rang. His face was colder, and he took out his physics book in the middle of Chinese, right in front of the Chinese teacher.
Yu Fan’s eyebrow lifted. Who are you putting that face on for.
The Chinese teacher began the classical prose lesson. Her voice was gentle and slow, perfect for sleep. The tension Zhuang Fangqing had wound into Yu Fan during math unwound by degrees. He slid his chair back a little and dropped onto his arms again. Within minutes, drowsiness washed over him.
He was almost asleep when his shoulder got bumped.
Yu Fan was a light sleeper; he lifted his head on reflex, hair sticking up, eyes narrowed toward the source.
Chen Jingshen sat perfectly upright. His forearm was bent, just crossing the invisible border between their desks. He did not seem to notice Yu Fan’s look, pen down, taking notes.
Accidental?
The guy’s limbs were long. Brushing him now and then was not impossible.
Yu Fan swallowed it and went back down.
Two minutes later, a bottle clattered to the floor. Yu Fan opened one eye and watched Chen Jingshen reach down, pick it up, set it back on the desk.
“…”
A little while after that, a heavy thump vibrated the desktops. Yu Fan lifted his head and stared, grinding his molars.
Chen Jingshen had flipped open a tome thicker than a brick, the Complete Annotations of Classical Prose, and calmly underlined a point.
Yu Fan’s sleepiness got kicked clear to Spain. I didn’t beat your a**, purely out of respect for the Chinese teacher.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, sat up with a stormy expression, and opened Snake. Every enemy snake was Chen Jingshen’s face. He had just eaten an insanely long Chen Jingshen when he noticed Chen Jingshen lifting the brick to slide it into the drawer.
On the way, the brick “accidentally” clipped Yu Fan’s upright Chinese textbook. the camouflage for his phone. The book fell and smacked the phone. Yu Fan fumbled, and his phone hit the floor with a loud crack.
“…”
Half the class turned to stare. The Chinese teacher slowly turned from the board. Her willow brows drew together, angered and wounded.
“My good temper is not a reason for you to escalate,” she said. “Back group, second row from the end. Yu Fan. Chen Jingshen. Take your books and stand in front of the bulletin board.”
“…”
Wang Lu’an had been ready to crack a joke as his buddy passed, but one look at Yu Fan’s coffin face shut him right up.
Only when both boys were in place did the teacher go back to writing.
Yu Fan gripped his book, shut his eyes and told himself: killing is a crime.
“Wrong page,” a low voice floated over. “She is on page forty-seven.”
“Chen Jingshen,” Yu Fan ground out, “come to the restroom with me after class.”
“Open to forty-seven and I will go,” Chen Jingshen said.
“…”
“Math without basics is hard,” he added. “Chinese is a new text today. You might understand it.”
Yu Fan frowned. “Chen Jingshen, what the hell do you actually want?”
“I want to keep sitting with the person I have a crush on,” Chen said.
Silence.
He turned his head and met Yu Fan’s stare, murderous and bright red at the tips of his ears.
“What is it,” Chen asked. “I did not say ‘like’ this time.”
Yu Fan stared at the classical text in front of him. The book crackled in his hands.
F***. He could not last a day at this rate.
Could the midterms please be tomorrow.
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