Chapter 42.3: I will be responsible.

The basketball game was held once every year in autumn. It took place around mid-November almost every year and was scheduled for the week after the midterm exam. The school would declare that a time of intense and stimulating student lifestyle had ended, and it was time for everyone to relax. 

The midterm exam was to be this Friday, and there was still only one day for testing. With two subjects in the morning and two in the afternoon, the schedule would be very tight.

The attention of the students in Class 10 was no longer on the midterm exam, however; for them, the basketball game after the exam had become more important.

Song Zhiming and the other two boys who were good at basketball quickly formed a team with only three people. Li Lin gave it the name ”Class Ten All Team,” and then Wang Yiyang was recruited as the fourth member of the team.

In the end, they were still short a PG (Point Guard), and once they had one the lineup would be considered complete.

Lin Yujing felt clearly that Class 10 was really incapable, so much so that they couldn’t even find two decent substitutes.

On Wednesday afternoon, Liu Fujiang printed out the seating chart and hung it at the front of the room.

This time there were three students from Class Ten in the first exam room: Shen Juan and Lin Yujing, who were first and second in the grade respectively, and the study committee member, who barely made it into the room and sat in the second to last seat.

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Shen Juan usually looked lazy and careless [1], but when it came to serious matters he wouldn’t be even a little careless.

He was still a jerk with near-perfect scores in science.

Lin Yujing had never felt like waiting for grades was such an anxious thing.

In the past, after exams Cheng Yi was always racked with anxiety and couldn’t sleep for several days in a row. He drove himself crazy, his everyday catchphrase becoming, “F*ck me, f*ck me, f*ck me, it’s over, it’s over, it’s over…”

——He wasn’t good at studying, and his parents actually didn’t care much about it, but his grandfather did care and was very strict. An old man in his seventies, after every midterm and final exam he still insisted on having a parent-teacher conference for Cheng Yi.

Afterwards he would come back looking very pissed off, and then scolded Cheng Yi severely.

Lin Yujing’s parents never held parent-teacher conferences. Her mother would go there once in a while, but Lin Yujing hadn’t understood Cheng Yi’s feelings.

Now she felt like she could understand them.

Shen Juan looked as calm as Lin Yujing had back then; he still came late, still slept, and during reading and lectures he still didn’t seem to be listening. Sometimes during class, he would lie on his desk with his eyes closed. When Lin Yujing thought he was sleeping soundly, he would suddenly open his eyes, squint for a few seconds, and then close them again.

“…”

Lin Yujing leaned over and whispered to him, “There’s this joke on the internet, have you heard it?”

Shen Juan opened his eyes, straightened up, and shook his head. He said with a heavy, nasal voice, “Eh?”

“It’s just a story on this site, ‘What is the highest-level study god you’ve seen?’” Lin Yujing said, “The person who posted said that when he was in high school, there was a big study god who never spoke in class. He would just sat there with his eyes closed, and as soon as he opened them, the teacher would know that they’d made a mistake.”

“…”

Shen Juan tilted his head. “Aren’t you a bit nervous?”

Lin Yujing suppressed her voice: “…Why am I nervous? What would I be nervous about? Do I seem like someone who gets nervous?”

Shen Juan lazily propped his chin with one hand and looked sideways at her. “I don’t know, maybe it’s because grades are getting posted this afternoon?”

Lin Yujing stared at him blankly. “I got to be this old without even knowing how to write the word nervous.”

Shen Juan nodded and looked at her for a few seconds, then suddenly leaned against the edge of the table with one hand. He raised his other hand, his index finger reaching for the fine hair by her ear.

Lin Yujing leaned over the table, taken aback.

Shen Juan pinched her soft hair and wrapped it around his fingertips, then hooked the strand behind her ear, exposing it.

His fingers were a little cold, and when they touched Lin Yujing’s ear, her whole body froze.

She had three piercings around the outside of her ear. Shen Juan’s pupils were quiet and deep, and he couldn’t help rubbing the small piercings with his fingertips.

No one saw anything. The English teacher had his back turned to them and was lecturing from the text with a very hypnotic voice.

Except for those sitting in the front row or the middle, most of the people in the classroom were sleeping, and the rest were playing on their phones with their heads down.

Lin Yujing inexplicably felt like she was having some kind of secret affair. The feeling made her tremble unconsciously.

Shen Juan withdrew his hand and whispered, “Do you know that when you’re nervous or shy, your ears are very red?”

—

[1] “吊儿郎当” – means careless, casual, and avoidant of work.