Chapter 22. Early Morning Companion Reading

Ah, the HKCEE [1]. Chen Jiashu put down the phone, supporting her forehead with the back of her hand. Her black eyes were a little empty and her gaze drifted to a very faraway place.

After the HKCEE is the grade exam. After the grade exam, it was not only the draft test, but art students were much more troublesome than cultural students. At the end of next year, in the cold of winter in December, they would have to go to auditions, running around the north of the country in the cold.

When Chen Jinan asked her if she had a school of her choice before, she said no. In fact, she had long thought about it, and she was all in for the north, thousands of miles from home. She thought the further away from home, the better.

But it wasn’t just about that; it was about the general environment. The top ten dance schools in the country were basically in the north. After all, the cultural heritage and educational resources were there, so the country’s art students were running to the north.

Wen Yun couldn’t wait for her to finish her exam early and send her away sooner. She kept her mouth shut as well and was preparing to leave early.

The draft exams were like a ruthless dividing line, where one paper in the examination hall was a sentence of life and death. When she left the exam hall, she would have one foot in the adult world. Since the year her mother died, every summer of hers was destined to be a bad one.

After spending the New Year here and surviving the last draft 2 summer vacation, when the draft 3 exams were finished, she would naturally leave without Wen Yun rushing her.

Chen Jinan may or may not give her money. Anyway, with the graduation certificate from the draft exams and the letter of acceptance out in society, part-time work would be much easier than it was now.

Chen Du opened his eyes, and his arms were still empty. No matter how crazy he was the night before, how late she was, how many kisses she had, how tired Chen Jiashu was, or how she passed out in his arms, she would still get up in the middle of the night and quietly go back to her room.

He felt that Chen Jiashu was like a mermaid in a fairy tale. She appeared at midnight, naked and seductive. Like an apple that fell to earth from the Garden of Eden, and he only had time to take a sweet bite before it turned into foam at dawn and disappeared into the sea.

And unlike in the fairy tale, he was the one who couldn’t ask for it.

He got up and got out of bed. He crossed to the window and tumbled over the terrace to Chen Jiashu’s room. Over the past few days, this routine became more and more familiar as they went along. Sometimes, Chen Jiashu came over, and sometimes he went over, walking steadily, looking into each other’s eyes, jumping off the terrace, and starting to kiss. Each time it reminded him of the second act of the second scene of the play Romeo and Juliet. The night when the climbing vines were covered, the quiet stretching of petals, the fire of the stolen love in a small paradise, and human decency all burned to ashes.

Chen Jiashu, of course, would not wait for him on the balcony. Her balcony was small and narrow. Compared with the general location of his room, it was robbed of a lot of light by the large terrace outside his window. It looked a bit gloomy and low. It was unable to raise flowers, and it was dusty, with some miscellaneous things piled up in the corner.

He propped himself up on the countertop and lifted his leg. He easily crossed over and jumped off the balcony, raising his eyes to see Chen Jiashu in front of the windowsill. It was early in the morning, and she was holding a book in her hand, reading a book with a pair of bang bangs [1] in her mouth.

She was looking at physics. Chen Du walked in, and the air was sweet with the scent of sugar. She frowned bitterly and stared at the page in front of her, the title of which was electromagnetism, written in black letters for textbooks.

Chen Jiashu was working out an example on her draft paper. Her head was down and she was not looking at him. “What are you doing? You got up so early.”

Chen Du leaned against her desk and stood with his body folded. His face was turned against the light from the window, and his two double-lidded eyelids were softly drooping. His long eyelashes fell along with them, and his glassy, ball-like eyes were hidden in the lashes, clean and clear.

He said, “I’m just looking at you.”

“Yeah.” Her tone was even and her hands maintained a writing position. Her head turned upwards to nudge the sugar paper bang bang in her mouth, signalling him to come over.

He bent down and leaned over, and the two of them were so close that when her watery red mouth opened and closed gently, the watery and naive scented candy canes poked him in the face, “I always feel like you’re here to f*ck me.”

Chen Du saw the fresh love marks on the front of her blouse, and his eyes darkened for a few moments before he shook his head and said no.

He pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. “Can you do it?”

“No.” She exhaled heavily.

She clutched her pen and swiped out the results of the calculations she had just done. She was a little annoyed that she had sat here for so long, but the results were so far from the answers that she had gotten the ideas wrong.

After writing for a long time, she scribbled out the calculation process in a mess. The messy and disordered writing looked like a scum of learning. When she glanced over and saw Chen Du looking over, she couldn’t face it, so she turned the paper over and covered the bottom, uncomfortably turning her face away, “This is a difficult problem.”

Chen Du liked her squirming look and smiled, “Well, this part of the content is difficult. I can teach you.”

“Really? You’re so good!” The fact that he, a freshman in Draft 1, had come to teach a Draft 2 veteran to do physics was amusing enough to hear. Chen Jiashu was depressed inside her heart, and she very much didn’t want Chen Du to see her rookie look.

“Actually, I don’t really understand it either. Can we discuss it together?” He immediately changed his tune, following her inside and out with a generous smile out of the corner of his eyes, making her look extra petty.

Chen Du made up for her words, so he pulled his chair a little closer, “Is this the question?” He took her paper and pen and spontaneously helped her explain the arithmetic.

He spoke very well. It was clearly organised, and the logic of the solution was simple and circumspect. The pen was held in his well-defined hand with long, slender, fair fingers, and the pen was held in a proper posture, which made the plastic pen, which costs a dollar apiece to write with twice before it loses its oil, a lot better. The pen cap shook its head, the nib rustled, and the neat, strong handwriting could be picked off and posted on the board. He finished in less than two minutes, and she understood it.

He had won the National Olympic Award in junior high school, so he couldn’t be bothered with the fancy examples problems in the compulsory textbook. It was a bit condescending of him to give her a lecture on the subject with his reach.

“How about this solution?” He asked her how she felt after he had taught her.

“I understand it. I can do it.”

“This example is rather old and not a common point in exams, but in recent years it has been more popular,” Chen Du flipped through the pages of the book, turning to the last ten or so pages, “Hmm? Did your teacher underline the key points?”

“Ah yes, it’s been underlined.” Chen Jia Shu was stunned when she saw those unfamiliar circles and lines, so she froze, responding vaguely.

The crossed-out was a bit off. Chen Du then roughly flipped through it again. Apparently, it was drawing the key points according to the path of the draft exam, which was not the same style as the HKCEE. Although it was easy to take the exam, you couldn’t make up for it blindly even if you wanted to make up for it in a short time.

This teacher’s level was not good. Chen Du muttered in his heart, but kept a few points of poise on his face and didn’t say anything.

[1] HKCEE- Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. It is the secondary school leaving certification or diploma.

[2] Bang bang is a type of candy that is pretty well-known in China.