Lemon Soda Candy - 8
A Match?
Seats were rearranged for the new semester.
Even after the Lantern Festival, the weather in Nancheng still hadn't warmed up.
There was no morning self-study on the first day back. Wanting to get to school early, Zhou Anran still dragged herself out of her warm blanket at dawn. But Yan Xingxi couldn't manage an early start, so by the time they finally reached the classroom, it was almost 7:30.
Before they went in, Yan Xingxi had her arm linked through Zhou Anran's, chatting about the seat changes. "Remember when my mom said she wanted you to help me with physics, chemistry, and math? She actually called Old Gao. Our seats probably won't change. Wonder where Xiaowen and He Mingyu will end up."
Zhou Anran smiled. "You're not curious about Dong Chen?"
Yan Xingxi snorted. "Why would I care about him? The farther he is from me, the better."
As Yan Xingxi's last word faded, Zhou Anran stepped through the back door. For a moment, she forgot that his seat might have changed, too. Her gaze drifted, as if by habit, toward the sixth seat in the second row.
The next second, she stopped in her tracks.
Chen Luobai was still in his old seat. Over the winter break, his hair had been cut shorter. He looked clean-cut and handsome.
But that wasn't what held Zhou Anran's attention.
Because next to Chen Luobai, in the seat that might or might not still belong to Zhu Ran, sat a girl Zhou Anran had never seen before.
Her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail. She was strikingly, radiantly beautiful.
She was turned sideways, facing Chen Luobai. Zhou Anran couldn't hear what she was saying, but her eyes were bright with smile.
Chen Luobai was also sitting sideways, his back to the door.
Zhou Anran couldn't see his expression. But somehow, even though his voice wasn't loud, it cut through the classroom noise and reached her ears with perfect clarity.
"Yeah?" His tone was lazy, laced with a hint of a smile.
A gust of cold wind blew in from outside. Zhou Anran felt a chill wash over her from head to toe.
Yan Xingxi, right behind her, saw it too and let out a soft, impressed, "Whoa."
She leaned in close and whispered, her voice dripping with gossip. "No girl has ever sat next to Chen Luobai. Did our school heartthrob pick up a girlfriend over winter break?"
The possibility Zhou Anran hadn't dared to consider was now laid bare.
Bitterness flooded her chest. She looked away, unable to watch anymore. "Let's find our seats first."
How exactly the seating change happened that day, Zhou Anran couldn't quite recall afterward.
She only remembered that every time she glanced over, whether by accident or because she couldn't help herself, she saw him smiling, chatting with that beautiful girl.
Only after the new seats were settled, did Zhou Anran realized she was now sitting behind Lou Yiqi and Zhang Shuxian.
Zhang Shuxian had come in after they'd all moved. Before that, Lou Yiqi had been sitting with her head down, writing something.
Zhou Anran didn't sit down right away.
The desks had sat empty for a month and was thick with dust. When Zhang Shuxian arrived, Zhou Anran was wiping hers down with a wet wipe.
At this close distance, even though Zhang Shuxian kept her voice low, Zhou Anran could overhear their conversation.
"What's the deal?" Zhang Shuxian's tone was just as gossipy as Yan Xingxi's had been. "Did Chen Luobai get a girlfriend?"
Zhou Anran's grip on the wipe slipped. It skidded across the desk edge, her hand knocked against the corner. A sharp sting shot through her.
"Don't talk nonsense." Lou Yiqi's voice sounded strained. "That's not his girlfriend."
Zhang Shuxian was curious. "How do you know? That girl's definitely not from our school. I'd have noticed someone that pretty before. So Chen Luobai must have brought her. If he brought her to school, what else would she be?"
Lou Yiqi didn't look up. "He didn't bring her."
Zhang Shuxian feigned annoyance. "What's going on? If you know, just spill it. Don't make me drag it out of you."
Lou Yiqi finally stopped writing. She seemed to glance back, her expression blank. "That girl is Zong Kai's childhood friend. A transfer student. Same class as Zong Kai. When I got here, Zong Kai and Zhu Ran were both sitting in the back. The four of them were all talking together. Then the girl started whining, saying she wanted ice cream. Zong Kai went down to get her some. Zhu Ran wanted to buy something, too, so he went with him."
Zhang Shuxian: "Oh. For a second there, I thought half the girls in our school were about to have their hearts broken."
Whether it was from the effort of wiping down the desk, or from what she'd just overheard, Zhou Anran felt the warmth slowly seeping back into her hands and feet.
As if to confirm Lou Yiqi's words, the moment Zhou Anran finished wiping her desk, Zhu Ran's voice rang out from the back.
"A-Luo! Catch!"
Using wiping her chair as cover, Zhou Anran turned around. Zhu Ran stood at the back door, tossing a can of Coke toward Chen Luobai.
The boy reached up and caught it easily, leaning back in his chair. He grinned at the door as he swore at him. "What's wrong with you? Would it kill you to just walk in here like a normal person?"
Zhu Ran sauntered in, carrying a plastic bag, all carefree and casual. "Doesn't this look cooler?"
Chen Luobai tossed the Coke onto his desk. "Paying someone's medical bills after you bean them in the head is even cooler."
"Why aren't you opening it? After paying you back, my allowance is basically gone. And I still remembered to buy an extra drink for you. This kind of loyalty should move heaven and earth." Zhu Ran reached for the can. "Here, I'll open it for you."
Chen Luobai laughed and kicked out at him. "You think I'm stupid?"
Zhu Ran hopped out of the way just in time.
Behind Zhu Ran, Zong Kai shook his head, refusing to get involved. He walked over to the seat next to Chen Luobai and handed the ice cream he'd bought to the girl.
She took it, smiling, and glanced sideways. "Only one?"
Zong Kai ruffled her hair gently. "Not everyone is like you, demanding ice cream in the middle of winter."
The girl made a face at him. "Ice cream tastes better in winter."
Zong Kai glanced at his watch. "Class is about to start. We should get back."
The girl said "Oh" and slowly peeled back the lid of her ice cream. She glanced sideways again. "Well... see you around, Chen Luobai."
Zhu Ran, standing right behind her, protested. "You only say goodbye to Chen Luobai? I'm standing right here. You can't see me?"
The girl took a bite of ice cream, then, finding it too cold to hold, shoved the container back into Zong Kai's hands. "You talk too much. I'd rather not see you again."
Zhu Ran: "Like I'm dying to see you again."
Zhou Anran wiped her chair. And wiped it again. Only when the girl had followed Zong Kai out did she finally turn, stuffed the dirty wipe into the small trash bag she kept by her desk, and got up to throw it away.
But her heart still wasn't quite settled.
For some reason, Chen Luobai and Zhu Ran's seats hadn't changed. They were still in the last desks of the second row.
She and Yan Xingxi had been moved to the second row, now sitting in the third desk. She was in the fourth column, closer to the window. He was in the third column, closer to the door.
The distance between them was actually smaller than before. But looking back at him now was harder than it had ever been.
---
The first day of the new semester was always chaotic.
But Class 2 was, after all, an experimental class. After a round of stern lectures from Old Gao and the other subject teachers, by the second day, they'd all settled down and thrown themselves back into their studies.
Everyone was working hard again just like last semester.
But Zhou Anran knew something was different.
When she turned around now, she couldn't see him as easily as before. And the group around him had changed. The fixed trio from last semester had become a quartet. There was a girl now.
Gossips traveled faster than anything in a school.
Within days, Zhou Anran learned Zong Kai's childhood friend's name: Yin Yizhen. Rumor had it her family was also wealthy. The little hair clip she casually wore cost tens of thousands. And she'd won some prestigious piano awards.
She quickly became the new dream girl for a lot of guys at No. 2 High.
But if Zhou Anran wasn't imagining it, she noticed that Yin Yizhen's attention was on Chen Luobai a little more than it was on Zong Kai, the boy she'd grown up with.
On their way to and from classes, when the four of them went out to eat together, Zhou Anran would often see Yin Yizhen standing next to Zong Kai, but her gaze always seemed to drift toward Chen Luobai.
And whenever Zong Kai came to their classroom to find Chen Luobai, Yin Yizhen was almost always with him.
She and Zhu Ran didn't get along, so she would often stand behind Chen Luobai, or sit in the seat of a boy shì sat in front of him. Her hands, made even paler and more delicate by the delicate bracelet on her wrist, would rest on the messy pile of his books.
Luckily, Chen Luobai never spent any time alone with her. He never went to Class 4 to find her on his own.
So, amid all the swirling rumors, none carried even a hint of romantic ambiguity involving Chen Luobai and Yin Yizhen.
---
The first week of the new semester vanished in a blink.
By the second week, the weather in Nancheng had finally, dramatically warmed up. The bone-chilling cold that had kept temperatures hovering just above freezing disappeared overnight, giving way without transition to a sweltering twenty-plus degrees.
Wednesday afternoon, Zhou Anran accompanied Yan Xingxi to a rice noodle shop outside the east gate.
On the way back, Yan Xingxi unzipped her uniform jacket and fanned herself with her hand. "Ranran, I think I'm getting heatstroke. Half the class has already switched to summer uniforms. But my mom keeps going on about that 'covering up in spring, freezing in autumn.' She only let me switch to the spring uniform, and insisted I wear my thermal leggings. I can't take it. I'm going to the bathroom to take it off. Will you come with me?"
Zhou Anran, sensitive to the cold, hadn't dared to switch to her summer uniform yet. She was still wearing her spring jacket, just like Yan Xingxi.
Luckily, Ms. He hadn't forced her to wear thermal leggings.
She wasn't that sensitive to the cold.
Zhou Anran helped fanned her, and tried to reason with her. "It still gets pretty cold at night. Just tough it out for today, okay? Going from hot to cold like that is a sure way to get sick. Tomorrow's supposed to be even warmer. Just don't wear them tomorrow."
Yan Xingxi pointed at herself. "No. Look at me."
Zhou Anran looked. Her friend's face was beaded with sweat. She felt a pang of sympathy. "I'll buy you a soda first. If you really can't take it after that, then change."
Yan Xingxi, despite claiming she was dying of heat, linked her arm through Zhou Anran's. "You said it! Let's go, let's go!"
They headed toward the school convenience store.
Passing the basketball courts, Yan Xingxi stopped short. "Hey, Ranran, wait. What's going on over there? Is that a fight?"
Before they'd even reached the courts, Zhou Anran had glanced over several times.
After confirming Chen Luobai wasn't on the court, she'd stopped paying attention.
Maybe it was the bad luck from the seating change carrying over.
Since the semester started, her chances of running into him outside of class had plummeted.
Just like their seats, it felt like they were two parallel lines, never meant to intersect.
Yan Xingxi, always eager for a bit of drama, forgot all about her thermal leggings and the soda. She grabbed Zhou Anran and ran toward the court.
From a distance, it had looked like a crowd of people fighting. Up close, she saw it was a group of boys surrounding one guy.
And the guy in the middle looked familiar. It was Tang Jianrui, their class's PE rep.
Yan Xingxi recognized him too. Her expression changed. "Is that Tang Jianrui?"
Zhou Anran nodded. She was about to suggest they go find a teacher when she saw Zhu Ran sprint past her, charging onto the court like a human cannonball.
"The hell do you think you're doing?!"
Zhou Anran's heart lurched. She spun around instinctively.
And there he was, Chen Luobai, standing not far behind her.
He'd switched to the summer uniform this week. Maybe from the heat, maybe from rushing over, a fine sheen of sweat glistened on his bare arms.
He was usually so quick to smile. This was the first time Zhou Anran had ever seen his face look so cold.
His gaze didn't linger on her for even a second. He stepped past her and strode onto the court, his voice low and sharp.
"Zhu Ran. Stop."
On the court, Zhu Ran had already grabbed some guy from the other class by the collar. He didn't seem to hear.
But among the group surrounding Tang Jianrui, boys from some other class, several of them took a cautious step back.
Chen Luobai called out again, his voice heavy.
"Zhu Ran."
Zhu Ran finally let go. He turned back, his expression defiant. "Why are you stopping me? You're just gonna let them bully someone from our class?"
Chen Luobai didn't answer directly. He bent down, picked up the basketball from the ground, and walked into the center of the crowd, positioning himself in front of both Zhu Ran and Tang Jianrui.
---
Later, back in the classroom, Zhou Anran would pieced together what had happened from the others.
Tang Jianrui had taken a ball to the third court in the first row that afternoon, waiting for Chen Luobai and the others to show up for a game. But with the weather warming, every court was packed. While Tang Jianrui was retrieving the ball, a group of guys from Class 10 just took his court without so much as a word.
Tang Jianrui went over to confront them, and things escalated.
Right now, Zong Kai was standing at the edge of the court, shielding Yin Yizhen, keeping her out of the confrontation.
Chen Luobai stood alone, facing down seven or eight guys from Class 10. His posture didn't waver. His presence didn't shrink.
Zhou Anran, standing not far away, saw him glance back at Tang Jianrui and Zhu Ran.
"Of course I'm not gonna let them bully someone from our class." Chen Luobai bounced the orange ball casually. Then he turned back, his voice cold. "But since this started on the court, we'll settle it on the court."
In the fading sunlight, the tall boy in the blue-and-white uniform stood with his handsome face set in cold determination. He lifted his chin slightly toward the leader of the Class 10 group.
"A match?"
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