Chapter 47
Act VI: The Little Prince (9)
-----------
There was also a very ambiguous name in puberty, it was called spring love.
Accompanied by secondary physical development, the spring feelings of boys and girls were blossoming. Spring was a season most suitable for dating.
Huawu Academy of Dance was a six-year professional art school. Xiang Cai was in the fifth year, which was equivalent to the second year of a regular senior high school. In another six months, they would face a rigorous art exam. Many students would take time off to participate in training. After receiving the art exam admission notice, they would transfer to the pre-testing cram class to make up for their cultural class. With classmates coming and going, it was difficult to see everyone together again.
As a result, in everyone’s hearts, the last few months of the fifth year passed like a graduation season. Life was in a hurry. Maybe the next time they met would be a class reunion 10 or 20 years later.
In view of this situation, the minds of the entire class had fluctuated, and now, young love was starting to spread throughout the classmates in their year. The buds of blossom love that had just sprouted were secretly blooming.
Chen Ziran had many eyes and ears, and he was quack quacking beside Xiang Cai.
For a while, it was "the Folk Dance Department flower and the class leader of National Standard Dance are together", and the other time it was "the director of the grade caught the young ballet couple in the grove" ... The restless hormones circulated in the air. Accompanied by the blooming of the campus’ peach blossoms, those secret pink loves were like prairie fires, spreading quickly.
Xiang Cai, the school's most watched boy, had a "hard time" in the last half month.
Outside the dormitory building, in the grove, beside the playground, in the library ... wherever he went, those butterflies chased.
Some girls were more embarrassed than others, only looking at him with a pair of watery eyes, shy and timid. Some, while holding a pink letter of love in their hands, encouraged by their friends, they dared to approach to put it into his hands before turning to run away; one girl was daring and actually stopped him directly in the dance classroom, dancing a passionate dance to express her heart ...
Xiang Cai, the one confessed to, was more nervous than them.
He stuttered and refused, on honest grounds.
He said that he already had someone he liked and so could not accept their love.
In fact, these girls chose to make desperate confessions, not because they expected positive results—they just wanted to draw a beautiful end to their grand secret love, and to say goodbye to this boy who once illuminated their entire adolescence.
Xiang Cai admired their courage, because he knew that he himself didn’t dare to take this step anyway.
He knew all too well, the nervous feelings one has when one has a secret crush on someone. And so, when facing each confessing girl, he would listen carefully to every word they've said, staring at their eyes solemnly before guiltily refusing their kindness.
Girls were born with gossipy genes.
Someone asked directly: "Who is the person you like? Is it Jin Qi Ji? Last time you ran downstairs to the girl's dormitory and hugged her, we all saw it."
Xiang Cai didn’t dare to drag his good friend into the muddy water, and immediately denied: "No, no. Qi Ji and I are just good friends, good friends with a good relationship."
He was afraid that the confessor would not believe it, and swore with a three-finger pledge: "She and I were good friends, are good friends, and will be good friends in the future!"
He finally coaxed the tearful suitor away, turned around, and found that Qi Ji was behind him, since who-knows-when.
Xiang Cai was surprised, happy, and a little embarrassed. He asked when she came.
Qi Ji smiled and said, "When you said that you and I are good friends for a lifetime."
Today, her lips had a faint layer of pink. Xiang Cai thought she was very bold; obviously, her lipstick was just confiscated last semester, and yet today she was “committing crimes” again.
Qi Ji’s skin was white and clean, and in fact, matched the color of her lipstick. A spring breeze blew the skirt of her school uniform, while her hands were holding onto something, hidden behind her back. He wondered what she was hiding.
She looked fixedly at Xiang Cai, and suddenly said, "Xiang Cai, I have something to tell you."
Xiang Cai was startled by her solemn attitude and hurriedly said, "You ... Why are you so serious? You can just say it directly."
But Qi Ji did not immediately speak.
She stood under the warm sun, her face blushing because of its heat. The wind blew through the branches on both sides of the road, causing peach blossoms to flutter down.
When the girl opened her mouth to speak, there was no smile on her round face, and there seemed to be a flash in her eyes: "Xiang Cai, I..."
But before she could finish her words, the two suddenly heard a loud male voice interrupting her from behind.
"—Jin Qi Ji!" They saw Chen Ziran run out of the teaching building and stop between the two, breathlessly.
The girl's slender eyebrows furrowed immediately, and the words she was about to say naturally couldn’t be said.
She exclaimed, "Chen Ziran, what are you calling for?"
Chen Ziran said unhappily: "Do you think I would be willing to come out to find you on such a hot day? Teacher Chu called you, she asked you to find her in the office."
Teacher Chu Ping was the head teacher, so she must have something to discuss with Qi Ji.
Qi Ji nodded, thanked the messenger Chen Ziran awkwardly, and turned to run towards the teacher's building.
Something was stuffed into her school uniform pocket, the pink corners flashing by. Before Xiang Cai could guess what it was, she had disappeared.
Chen Ziran looked at Qi Ji’s figure as she ran further and further away, and snorted, "She is fat, but she can run quite flexibly."
He turned to ask Xiang Cai: "What did Jin Qi Ji say to you just now?"
Xiang Cai shook his head blankly: "She was interrupted before she could say it."
Chen Ziran was suspicious. He retracted his gaze and murmured, "I don't know why Teacher Chu is looking for her ..." He pondered it in a low voice. “Forget it, let’s go and watch the excitement.”
Not only did he want to watch the excitement himself, he dragged Xiang Cai to go watch the excitement together.
Xiang Cai was dragged by him to run together. The two boys were tall and long-legged, and it didn't take long for them to catch up with Qi Ji who ran closer to the ground.
In the end, the three walked into the teacher's office together.
"Report!" They shouted in unison.
Teacher Chu Ping, who was sorting out the lesson plans, looked up and saw that the three of them had come together. She felt an oncoming headache.
She was looking for Qi Ji to discuss a serious matter. However, she didn’t think the three of them were like sweet potatoes in the ground.
Chu Ping asked: "I'm looking for Jin Qi Ji. Why did you two come to join the fun?"
Xiang Cai was aggrieved; even he didn't know why he had come to join the fun.
Chen Ziran's brain moved quickly: "Report! We are here to give our reflections on the musical performance of The Little Prince!"
Xiang Cai: "..." No, big brother, you hadn’t discussed this with me!
Chen Ziran actually brought out a stack of bound papers. He said it himself, of the five thousand word reflection, about four thousand words was his own filling, and the remaining one thousand was pieced together from the Internet.
Teacher Chu Ping took his homework, and after just turning the first two pages, her face turned black.
"Chen Ziran!" Teacher Chu Ping said, "Take it back to rewrite it!"
Chen Ziran protested: "Teacher, I have worked so hard to write so many words, it was not easy! Why should I rewrite it?"
Chu Ping sneered: "Because you copied the first two pages from the Internet!" She pointed to the small print, "—See, there it is, ‘Baidu Library’, the anti-theft watermark is still there.”
Chen Ziran: ... Dead.
Qi Ji and Xiang Cai hurriedly bowed their heads, for fear of confronting Teacher Chu and being caught by her.
However, the two of them were such big people standing right there. It was impossible for Teacher Chu to treat them as invisible.
Teacher Chu turned to Xiang Cai, and asked him, "Xiang Cai, have you finished writing the reflection?"
Xiang Cai could only bite the bullet and raise his head, replying, "...Not yet, but ... but I have written more than half."
He hadn’t lied.
He understood the pride of the rose, the gentleness of the fox, the loneliness of the snake, and the pursuit of the pilot ... he wrote all of them into the reflection, but because he still did not understand the little prince, he couldn’t finish it.
He was number one in the class and had a good personality. He had a good reputation with his teachers. Since he said that he was almost finished writing, the teacher would naturally not doubt him.
Teacher Chu Ping nodded and said, "Okay, you can finish it as soon as possible. It was said that May Day was a good day to hand it in, and now there are only a few days left."
Xiang Cai slowly nooded.
He and Chen Ziran were then sent away by the teacher. Chen Ziran took the homework that was beaten back, his face red and blue, and he quickly ran away.
Xiang Cai originally wanted to leave, but he slowed his pace for a few seconds. A word floated out of the crack of the office door, stopping his footsteps.
—— “Jin Qi Ji, this teacher has received the transfer application from your mother.” Teacher Chu Ping's voice was gentle and regretful when she said, “What do you think about this matter?”
Xiang Cai stood still on the spot.
It suddenly became very quiet inside and outside the office.
It was so quiet that Xiang Cai could hear the sound of a basketball being thrown into the hoop in the playground, in the distance. It was so quiet that Xiang Cai could hear Qi Ji burst into sobs in an instant.
"...What does it matter what I think?" The girl's voice was nasally and thick, and with every few words she spoke, she stopped to take a heavy breath. "My family has already made the decision. They have a hundred reasons to transfer me, but I have only one reason to stay."
The girl sobbed and said, "They tried to persuade me, ‘Qi Ji, how great is it for you to go to Korea to be gilded? We have no language barrier. Several relatives can take care of you in Seoul. Moreover, there is a well-developed entertainment industry and musical theatre market there. It is very big. If you go to study abroad, you can stay in Korea until you graduate from university. If you can’t keep it, you will be gilded when you return home.’”
She also said, "I know my parents want the best for me. If I move to the Seoul Academy of Art now, and will take a one-and-a-half year cram school of cultural classes, I can just take the Korean college entrance examination next November."
Her tears continued to fall and the drops fell into her collar: "I know, I know ... this is the road they have planned for me, and it is the best choice they can make for me."
Her parents loved her and thought she should be content. She knew a boy whose parents had no affection nor concern for him and even took away his dancing feet.
"So it's okay." From Xiang Cai’s direction, he could only see the girl's straight back. She raised her hand to wipe away the tears from the corner of her eyes, and answered with a smile, "Teacher, I thought about it, and I will transfer schools when I finish this semester."
Chu Ping's eyes were red.
Qi Ji has always been a pistachio in the class. She was greedy, playful, and somewhat clever. She was the type of student who the teachers most liked and yet caused them the most headaches.
[T/N: Pistachio = the kind of person that makes other people happy.]
And now, she was leaving.
Obviously it was not yet graduation season, but this group of children with dreams had to go their own separate ways.
Chu Ping still wanted to say something more, but looking at the tearful student in front of her, finally nodded silently.
She opened the drawer of her desk, took out a colorful lipstick with a transparent pink casing, and put it in Qi Ji's palm.
"This is the lipstick that this teacher confiscated from you last semester, and now I will return it to you." Chu Ping touched her head. The girl's hair was soft and delicate, just like the girl was inside. "I hope you don't leave any regrets in your last two months."
Qi Ji sobbed silently, took the lipstick and bowed deeply.
"Thank you ... Thank you, Teacher Chu." She added, "I will."
She turned around and ran out, trying to find a place to be by herself and sort out her mood. Unexpectedly, just outside the office door, an unexpected figure was waiting for her.
They were both caught off-guard when their eyes met.
The boy's eyes were foggy. He looked at her and whispered, "Qi Ji ... is this what you had just wanted to tell me?"
Qi Ji’s lips moved. At that moment, countless thoughts flashed through her mind.
She wanted to say, ‘No, no. What I wanted to tell you was another thing—if I could pick, I would want to stay here for you.’
But in the end, the girl chose to bury this secret in her heart.
It may be cowardice, it may be inferiority, it may be the weight of reality, or it may be for this hard-won "friendship".
She rushed over with tears in her eyes and hugged him tightly.
"Yes." Her tears were hot. "I'm going to transfer ... this is what I had just wanted to tell you."
The casing of the lipstick in the palm of her hand was very hard, and it imprinted deeply into her palm.
Xiang Cai never knew that, when he was just seventeen years old, when he was desperately chasing after the sun, an inconspicuous star had also been chasing him.
...
Qi Ji’s upcoming transfer caused a stir in their class.
Overnight, Qi Ji out-shined Xiang Cai and became the most popular person in their class.
Her desk pocket was filled with endless classmates’ gifts, and even Chen Ziran went to the school shop to pick up a beautiful hard-skinned classmate record, which he hurriedly put on Qi Ji’s table.
Xiang Cai was shy and couldn’t afford a beautiful classmate record worth dozens of dollars. He could only find a blank, hardcover book. He marked the grids with colored pens and wrote things like "name", "hobby", "birthday", "horoscope", "things you like", "graduation messages", etc.
But it was in such a humble classmate record, that Qi Ji wrote a whole three pages just giving messages.
Her words were the same as herself, fat, naive, and squeezed into the grids one by one.
In her message, she wrote a lot of things that Xiang Cai didn't know of. It turned out that she had heard Xiang Cai’s legendary name a long time ago. She never thought that she would be at the same table as the prince of ballet, nor did she expect to be friends with him ... After meeting Xiang Cai, she learned a lot about ballet. In the ballet musical, she was even more sad than he was when Xiang Cai wasn’t chosen for Out of My World.
"Xiang Cai," she wrote, "I am very fortunate to have met you in my last year at Huawu Academy and to leave an imprint in your life."
She closed the book and returned it to Xiang Cai.
Xiang Cai suddenly said, "Write a few Korean words for me. I have known you for so long, but I have never seen you write in Korean."
Qi Ji asked, "What do you want me to write?"
Xiang Cai thought for a while. "Write ‘forever friends’.
"..." The girl laughed and said, "Okay."
So she took the book again, and put down a string of complex words that twisted in Xiang Cai’s brain:
[Friends forever. We must be friends forever.]
...
The matter of Qi Ji’s school transfer made Xiang Cai depressed.
He was in a great loss, shocked and confused, and did not understand how the parting came so suddenly.
But who in this world could be "together forever"?
At this time, Xiang Cai had no way of knowing that, just a few days later, there would be a more devastating parting waiting for him.
He didn't go online for several days, didn't touch his mobile phone, and didn't brush Weibo. He got so emotionally drained that he closed his eyes and fell asleep immediately every day as soon as he returned to the dormitory.
He didn't know how many days had passed in this muddled manner before he remembered that he still owed a theme song to a radio drama and needed to repay the debt.
He used his phone to connect to the school's wireless network. Within a few seconds, thousands of messages swarmed in and almost killed his old machine with poor performance.
It took a few minutes for his hot phone to calm down.
...What was going on?
Xiang Cai was at a loss.
Several Weibo fan group chats he joined were stuffed with 999+ news, and there was a news explosion in the QQ group.
Everyone in the group was asking:
"Is this real?"
"So suddenly?"
"I cried all night and couldn't believe it after seeing the poster."
"It's so sad, I really can't accept it."
"What on earth happened?"
There was too much news in the groups, Xiang Cai could not reach the top. His eyes fell on the first contact.
Only one person topped his QQ contacts from beginning to end.
His male god, his idol, the man he secretly loved—Wang Qingyun.
There was an inexplicable heavy atmosphere in the air, sending a vigilant signal to Xiang Cai’s sixth sense.
The boy’s teeth clenched, but his fingers eventually fell on Wang Qingyun’s icon, and he opened the dialog box.
The most recent message was sent last night.
Yiming Qingyun: Cai Cai, are you there?
Yiming Qingyun: I have thought about this for a long time and don't know how to tell it to you.
Yiming Qingyun: Because of limited energy, I decided to leave the online dubbing circle.
Yiming Qingyun: Next Friday is my farewell song festival. Will you come as my guest?
----------
The author has something to say: I had arranged three romances for the first part of this novel.
One was Yao Yin’s.
One was Qi Ji’s.
One is Cai Cai’s.
-----------
There was also a very ambiguous name in puberty, it was called spring love.
Accompanied by secondary physical development, the spring feelings of boys and girls were blossoming. Spring was a season most suitable for dating.
Huawu Academy of Dance was a six-year professional art school. Xiang Cai was in the fifth year, which was equivalent to the second year of a regular senior high school. In another six months, they would face a rigorous art exam. Many students would take time off to participate in training. After receiving the art exam admission notice, they would transfer to the pre-testing cram class to make up for their cultural class. With classmates coming and going, it was difficult to see everyone together again.
As a result, in everyone’s hearts, the last few months of the fifth year passed like a graduation season. Life was in a hurry. Maybe the next time they met would be a class reunion 10 or 20 years later.
In view of this situation, the minds of the entire class had fluctuated, and now, young love was starting to spread throughout the classmates in their year. The buds of blossom love that had just sprouted were secretly blooming.
Chen Ziran had many eyes and ears, and he was quack quacking beside Xiang Cai.
For a while, it was "the Folk Dance Department flower and the class leader of National Standard Dance are together", and the other time it was "the director of the grade caught the young ballet couple in the grove" ... The restless hormones circulated in the air. Accompanied by the blooming of the campus’ peach blossoms, those secret pink loves were like prairie fires, spreading quickly.
Xiang Cai, the school's most watched boy, had a "hard time" in the last half month.
Outside the dormitory building, in the grove, beside the playground, in the library ... wherever he went, those butterflies chased.
Some girls were more embarrassed than others, only looking at him with a pair of watery eyes, shy and timid. Some, while holding a pink letter of love in their hands, encouraged by their friends, they dared to approach to put it into his hands before turning to run away; one girl was daring and actually stopped him directly in the dance classroom, dancing a passionate dance to express her heart ...
Xiang Cai, the one confessed to, was more nervous than them.
He stuttered and refused, on honest grounds.
He said that he already had someone he liked and so could not accept their love.
In fact, these girls chose to make desperate confessions, not because they expected positive results—they just wanted to draw a beautiful end to their grand secret love, and to say goodbye to this boy who once illuminated their entire adolescence.
Xiang Cai admired their courage, because he knew that he himself didn’t dare to take this step anyway.
He knew all too well, the nervous feelings one has when one has a secret crush on someone. And so, when facing each confessing girl, he would listen carefully to every word they've said, staring at their eyes solemnly before guiltily refusing their kindness.
Girls were born with gossipy genes.
Someone asked directly: "Who is the person you like? Is it Jin Qi Ji? Last time you ran downstairs to the girl's dormitory and hugged her, we all saw it."
Xiang Cai didn’t dare to drag his good friend into the muddy water, and immediately denied: "No, no. Qi Ji and I are just good friends, good friends with a good relationship."
He was afraid that the confessor would not believe it, and swore with a three-finger pledge: "She and I were good friends, are good friends, and will be good friends in the future!"
He finally coaxed the tearful suitor away, turned around, and found that Qi Ji was behind him, since who-knows-when.
Xiang Cai was surprised, happy, and a little embarrassed. He asked when she came.
Qi Ji smiled and said, "When you said that you and I are good friends for a lifetime."
Today, her lips had a faint layer of pink. Xiang Cai thought she was very bold; obviously, her lipstick was just confiscated last semester, and yet today she was “committing crimes” again.
Qi Ji’s skin was white and clean, and in fact, matched the color of her lipstick. A spring breeze blew the skirt of her school uniform, while her hands were holding onto something, hidden behind her back. He wondered what she was hiding.
She looked fixedly at Xiang Cai, and suddenly said, "Xiang Cai, I have something to tell you."
Xiang Cai was startled by her solemn attitude and hurriedly said, "You ... Why are you so serious? You can just say it directly."
But Qi Ji did not immediately speak.
She stood under the warm sun, her face blushing because of its heat. The wind blew through the branches on both sides of the road, causing peach blossoms to flutter down.
When the girl opened her mouth to speak, there was no smile on her round face, and there seemed to be a flash in her eyes: "Xiang Cai, I..."
But before she could finish her words, the two suddenly heard a loud male voice interrupting her from behind.
"—Jin Qi Ji!" They saw Chen Ziran run out of the teaching building and stop between the two, breathlessly.
The girl's slender eyebrows furrowed immediately, and the words she was about to say naturally couldn’t be said.
She exclaimed, "Chen Ziran, what are you calling for?"
Chen Ziran said unhappily: "Do you think I would be willing to come out to find you on such a hot day? Teacher Chu called you, she asked you to find her in the office."
Teacher Chu Ping was the head teacher, so she must have something to discuss with Qi Ji.
Qi Ji nodded, thanked the messenger Chen Ziran awkwardly, and turned to run towards the teacher's building.
Something was stuffed into her school uniform pocket, the pink corners flashing by. Before Xiang Cai could guess what it was, she had disappeared.
Chen Ziran looked at Qi Ji’s figure as she ran further and further away, and snorted, "She is fat, but she can run quite flexibly."
He turned to ask Xiang Cai: "What did Jin Qi Ji say to you just now?"
Xiang Cai shook his head blankly: "She was interrupted before she could say it."
Chen Ziran was suspicious. He retracted his gaze and murmured, "I don't know why Teacher Chu is looking for her ..." He pondered it in a low voice. “Forget it, let’s go and watch the excitement.”
Not only did he want to watch the excitement himself, he dragged Xiang Cai to go watch the excitement together.
Xiang Cai was dragged by him to run together. The two boys were tall and long-legged, and it didn't take long for them to catch up with Qi Ji who ran closer to the ground.
In the end, the three walked into the teacher's office together.
"Report!" They shouted in unison.
Teacher Chu Ping, who was sorting out the lesson plans, looked up and saw that the three of them had come together. She felt an oncoming headache.
She was looking for Qi Ji to discuss a serious matter. However, she didn’t think the three of them were like sweet potatoes in the ground.
Chu Ping asked: "I'm looking for Jin Qi Ji. Why did you two come to join the fun?"
Xiang Cai was aggrieved; even he didn't know why he had come to join the fun.
Chen Ziran's brain moved quickly: "Report! We are here to give our reflections on the musical performance of The Little Prince!"
Xiang Cai: "..." No, big brother, you hadn’t discussed this with me!
Chen Ziran actually brought out a stack of bound papers. He said it himself, of the five thousand word reflection, about four thousand words was his own filling, and the remaining one thousand was pieced together from the Internet.
Teacher Chu Ping took his homework, and after just turning the first two pages, her face turned black.
"Chen Ziran!" Teacher Chu Ping said, "Take it back to rewrite it!"
Chen Ziran protested: "Teacher, I have worked so hard to write so many words, it was not easy! Why should I rewrite it?"
Chu Ping sneered: "Because you copied the first two pages from the Internet!" She pointed to the small print, "—See, there it is, ‘Baidu Library’, the anti-theft watermark is still there.”
Chen Ziran: ... Dead.
Qi Ji and Xiang Cai hurriedly bowed their heads, for fear of confronting Teacher Chu and being caught by her.
However, the two of them were such big people standing right there. It was impossible for Teacher Chu to treat them as invisible.
Teacher Chu turned to Xiang Cai, and asked him, "Xiang Cai, have you finished writing the reflection?"
Xiang Cai could only bite the bullet and raise his head, replying, "...Not yet, but ... but I have written more than half."
He hadn’t lied.
He understood the pride of the rose, the gentleness of the fox, the loneliness of the snake, and the pursuit of the pilot ... he wrote all of them into the reflection, but because he still did not understand the little prince, he couldn’t finish it.
He was number one in the class and had a good personality. He had a good reputation with his teachers. Since he said that he was almost finished writing, the teacher would naturally not doubt him.
Teacher Chu Ping nodded and said, "Okay, you can finish it as soon as possible. It was said that May Day was a good day to hand it in, and now there are only a few days left."
Xiang Cai slowly nooded.
He and Chen Ziran were then sent away by the teacher. Chen Ziran took the homework that was beaten back, his face red and blue, and he quickly ran away.
Xiang Cai originally wanted to leave, but he slowed his pace for a few seconds. A word floated out of the crack of the office door, stopping his footsteps.
—— “Jin Qi Ji, this teacher has received the transfer application from your mother.” Teacher Chu Ping's voice was gentle and regretful when she said, “What do you think about this matter?”
Xiang Cai stood still on the spot.
It suddenly became very quiet inside and outside the office.
It was so quiet that Xiang Cai could hear the sound of a basketball being thrown into the hoop in the playground, in the distance. It was so quiet that Xiang Cai could hear Qi Ji burst into sobs in an instant.
"...What does it matter what I think?" The girl's voice was nasally and thick, and with every few words she spoke, she stopped to take a heavy breath. "My family has already made the decision. They have a hundred reasons to transfer me, but I have only one reason to stay."
The girl sobbed and said, "They tried to persuade me, ‘Qi Ji, how great is it for you to go to Korea to be gilded? We have no language barrier. Several relatives can take care of you in Seoul. Moreover, there is a well-developed entertainment industry and musical theatre market there. It is very big. If you go to study abroad, you can stay in Korea until you graduate from university. If you can’t keep it, you will be gilded when you return home.’”
She also said, "I know my parents want the best for me. If I move to the Seoul Academy of Art now, and will take a one-and-a-half year cram school of cultural classes, I can just take the Korean college entrance examination next November."
Her tears continued to fall and the drops fell into her collar: "I know, I know ... this is the road they have planned for me, and it is the best choice they can make for me."
Her parents loved her and thought she should be content. She knew a boy whose parents had no affection nor concern for him and even took away his dancing feet.
"So it's okay." From Xiang Cai’s direction, he could only see the girl's straight back. She raised her hand to wipe away the tears from the corner of her eyes, and answered with a smile, "Teacher, I thought about it, and I will transfer schools when I finish this semester."
Chu Ping's eyes were red.
Qi Ji has always been a pistachio in the class. She was greedy, playful, and somewhat clever. She was the type of student who the teachers most liked and yet caused them the most headaches.
[T/N: Pistachio = the kind of person that makes other people happy.]
And now, she was leaving.
Obviously it was not yet graduation season, but this group of children with dreams had to go their own separate ways.
Chu Ping still wanted to say something more, but looking at the tearful student in front of her, finally nodded silently.
She opened the drawer of her desk, took out a colorful lipstick with a transparent pink casing, and put it in Qi Ji's palm.
"This is the lipstick that this teacher confiscated from you last semester, and now I will return it to you." Chu Ping touched her head. The girl's hair was soft and delicate, just like the girl was inside. "I hope you don't leave any regrets in your last two months."
Qi Ji sobbed silently, took the lipstick and bowed deeply.
"Thank you ... Thank you, Teacher Chu." She added, "I will."
She turned around and ran out, trying to find a place to be by herself and sort out her mood. Unexpectedly, just outside the office door, an unexpected figure was waiting for her.
They were both caught off-guard when their eyes met.
The boy's eyes were foggy. He looked at her and whispered, "Qi Ji ... is this what you had just wanted to tell me?"
Qi Ji’s lips moved. At that moment, countless thoughts flashed through her mind.
She wanted to say, ‘No, no. What I wanted to tell you was another thing—if I could pick, I would want to stay here for you.’
But in the end, the girl chose to bury this secret in her heart.
It may be cowardice, it may be inferiority, it may be the weight of reality, or it may be for this hard-won "friendship".
She rushed over with tears in her eyes and hugged him tightly.
"Yes." Her tears were hot. "I'm going to transfer ... this is what I had just wanted to tell you."
The casing of the lipstick in the palm of her hand was very hard, and it imprinted deeply into her palm.
Xiang Cai never knew that, when he was just seventeen years old, when he was desperately chasing after the sun, an inconspicuous star had also been chasing him.
...
Qi Ji’s upcoming transfer caused a stir in their class.
Overnight, Qi Ji out-shined Xiang Cai and became the most popular person in their class.
Her desk pocket was filled with endless classmates’ gifts, and even Chen Ziran went to the school shop to pick up a beautiful hard-skinned classmate record, which he hurriedly put on Qi Ji’s table.
Xiang Cai was shy and couldn’t afford a beautiful classmate record worth dozens of dollars. He could only find a blank, hardcover book. He marked the grids with colored pens and wrote things like "name", "hobby", "birthday", "horoscope", "things you like", "graduation messages", etc.
But it was in such a humble classmate record, that Qi Ji wrote a whole three pages just giving messages.
Her words were the same as herself, fat, naive, and squeezed into the grids one by one.
In her message, she wrote a lot of things that Xiang Cai didn't know of. It turned out that she had heard Xiang Cai’s legendary name a long time ago. She never thought that she would be at the same table as the prince of ballet, nor did she expect to be friends with him ... After meeting Xiang Cai, she learned a lot about ballet. In the ballet musical, she was even more sad than he was when Xiang Cai wasn’t chosen for Out of My World.
"Xiang Cai," she wrote, "I am very fortunate to have met you in my last year at Huawu Academy and to leave an imprint in your life."
She closed the book and returned it to Xiang Cai.
Xiang Cai suddenly said, "Write a few Korean words for me. I have known you for so long, but I have never seen you write in Korean."
Qi Ji asked, "What do you want me to write?"
Xiang Cai thought for a while. "Write ‘forever friends’.
"..." The girl laughed and said, "Okay."
So she took the book again, and put down a string of complex words that twisted in Xiang Cai’s brain:
[Friends forever. We must be friends forever.]
...
The matter of Qi Ji’s school transfer made Xiang Cai depressed.
He was in a great loss, shocked and confused, and did not understand how the parting came so suddenly.
But who in this world could be "together forever"?
At this time, Xiang Cai had no way of knowing that, just a few days later, there would be a more devastating parting waiting for him.
He didn't go online for several days, didn't touch his mobile phone, and didn't brush Weibo. He got so emotionally drained that he closed his eyes and fell asleep immediately every day as soon as he returned to the dormitory.
He didn't know how many days had passed in this muddled manner before he remembered that he still owed a theme song to a radio drama and needed to repay the debt.
He used his phone to connect to the school's wireless network. Within a few seconds, thousands of messages swarmed in and almost killed his old machine with poor performance.
It took a few minutes for his hot phone to calm down.
...What was going on?
Xiang Cai was at a loss.
Several Weibo fan group chats he joined were stuffed with 999+ news, and there was a news explosion in the QQ group.
Everyone in the group was asking:
"Is this real?"
"So suddenly?"
"I cried all night and couldn't believe it after seeing the poster."
"It's so sad, I really can't accept it."
"What on earth happened?"
There was too much news in the groups, Xiang Cai could not reach the top. His eyes fell on the first contact.
Only one person topped his QQ contacts from beginning to end.
His male god, his idol, the man he secretly loved—Wang Qingyun.
There was an inexplicable heavy atmosphere in the air, sending a vigilant signal to Xiang Cai’s sixth sense.
The boy’s teeth clenched, but his fingers eventually fell on Wang Qingyun’s icon, and he opened the dialog box.
The most recent message was sent last night.
Yiming Qingyun: Cai Cai, are you there?
Yiming Qingyun: I have thought about this for a long time and don't know how to tell it to you.
Yiming Qingyun: Because of limited energy, I decided to leave the online dubbing circle.
Yiming Qingyun: Next Friday is my farewell song festival. Will you come as my guest?
----------
The author has something to say: I had arranged three romances for the first part of this novel.
One was Yao Yin’s.
One was Qi Ji’s.
One is Cai Cai’s.
***
Wow, I did not expect to cry but I did. Qi Ji was such a ball of sunshine, it'll be sad to see her go. When she wrote the "Friends Forever," the tears.... oh the tears....
ReplyDeleteI hope to see her again and she doesn't just completely disappear.
Thanks for the chapter!
Wow this chapter made me sob...i was expecting that i would soon be crying for cai cai when the first part is over but here i cried for qi ji...more than that i cried for qi ji's and cai cai's friendship that will fade away because of the distance and time...i cried for cai cai's loss
ReplyDeleteis online dubbing and commercial dubbing same thing??
ReplyDeleteNo. Online dubbing is ebooks, audio books, audio dramas, dubbing for video/web series etc, whereas commercial subbing means VA for anime, or games or like dubbing for movues and tv shows in different languages etc.
Delete