The president of Xiao Tao Comics Club waited anxiously in the morning to exchange opinions with the only reader of the club, who was neither late nor early. Entering the classroom with a cold face, he pulled out the chair and sat down before putting on the headphones and started reading a book. The whole set of actions followed as if it was engraved in the DNA.
Tao Xi was entangled for quite a while, but couldn’t help but lean forward. He held out two index fingers to compare with the small square and asked mysteriously: “How?” His tone was like a gangster in the middle of the night.
Lin Qinhe took off his earphones, his long eyelashes drooped. He glanced at Tao Xi’s fingers, then looked at Tao Xi’s blinking eyes, his tone was indifferent: “How about what?”
Tao Xi fingers stopped for a while. Could it be that after he quietly put the drawing in Lin Qinhe’s school bag yesterday, Lin Qinhe didn’t see it when he went back?
Still hadn’t opened the bag at all?
He was anxious, so he took Lin Qinhe’s school bag behind the chair and looked down, looking more and more anxious, like a thief who robbed the bag and opened it to see valuable things were not inside
“…” Lin Qinhe frowned slightly, trying to say something, but only pursed his lower lip.
“Why is it not here?” There were not many things in the bag. Tao Xi looked through it for a while, but he didn’t see the shadow of the drawing at all, and his expression was as sad as a concubine.
He stuck his head into his bag again, and carefully checked the bottom of Lin Qinhe’s school bag.
“There is no hole either, ah.”
Tao Xi was about to continue to check whether it was stuck in the book when he heard a very low laughter, he immediately raised his head and looked at Lin Qinhe.
He caught him now. Lin Qinhe still kept his face cold, and the smile at the corner of his mouth disappeared in the last microsecond.
Tao Xi squinted his eyes and said confidently: “You are teasing me.”
Lin Qinhe took the bag from Tao Xi’s arms, raised his eyebrows as he said, “Yes?”
Tao Xi found that Lin Qinhe’s mood seemed to be sunny today, so he decided not to care about it. He leaned over to look at Lin Qinhe, his long curly eyelashes tucked in the morning light that had slipped in. He asked with a low voice: “How is it?”
In the meantime, he made up a reason for his behaviour: “Our art club is going to transform. I plan to switch to comics. Let me see how it goes.”
To be honest, he was a little nervous, not because he was afraid that he could not draw well, but he was afraid Lin Qinhe was annoyed by that.
After all, Lin Qinhe had always said that he wasted time doing useless things.
Lin Qinhe lowered his head to read the English novel that he hadn’t read last night. After turning a page, he casually commented: “It’s okay.”
Tao Xi let out a long sigh of relief. Lin Qinhe didn’t say no, so it was not bad.
He was satisfied. He took out the paper that Lin Qinhe gave him last night and continued to work on the question. Halfway through it, he poked Lin Qinhe through his school uniform with a pen and said, “I can’t do this question.”
Lin Qinhe seemed to be in a really good mood today. He briefly explained his idea of solving the problem, and then said, “The Physics question yesterday.”
Tao Xi was stunned before realizing that Lin Qinhe was referring to the question that he asked Lin Qinhe last night which he replied that he could not do it. He shook his head and said, “Thank you, but no need. I asked Huang Qing in the morning and she can do it.”
Then Tao Xi saw Lin Qinhe’s face turned from sunny to cloudy to a blizzard again.
Tao Xi thought to himself that Lin Qinhe might not be as indifferent about grades as it was on the surface. Wasn’t this also quite a deep prejudice to the second place?
He thought for a while, and said empathetically: “You definitely can do that question too.”
Tao Xi, in the sea of questions like mountains, took a little time every day to draw the comic, and insisted on drawing them for more than a week.
He felt that it was easy at first, but his idea on what to draw became lesser, so he went to the library to borrow a book of “The Latest Humorous Stories”, which he didn’t realize that it was published in 2002.
One night after school, Yang Duole and Lin Qinhe got in the car of Lin’s family to go back. Not long after they sat there, Yang Duole saw Lin Qinhe opened his backpack and rummaged through it, looking for something.
“Did you drop anything in the classroom?” Yang Duole asked.
“No.”
Yang Duole leaned on the seat and closed his eyes to rest. He was a little tired all day and planned to squint in the car for a while.
But he suddenly heard a very low laugh. Yang Duole quickly opened his eyes and looked aside, Lin Qinhe was still expressionless under the dim car lights.
Yang Duole asked suspiciously: “What are you laughing at?”
“It’s nothing.”
Yang Duole said “Oh” and continued to sleep with his eyes closed.
Lin Qinhe opened the paper in his hand again, and the protagonist of today’s four-frame comic was a peach-shaped gummy candy.
In the first grid, the gummy was walking on the street, the second grid, it was walking, and in the third grid, the peach was still walking. The fourth grid, the gummy bent down and says, “My feet are so soft.”
After it went on like this for a few days, it was impossible for Yang Duole to not find that something was wrong. He once deliberately pretended to sleep in the car, squinted and saw Lin Qinhe taking out a piece of paper from his backpack and looking at it. After reading it, he folded the paper carefully and put it in the bag, his face calm from the start until the end.
Yang Duole couldn’t help wondering if Lin Qinhe had fallen in love, but as soon as this idea came out, he was choked off by himself.
It was absolutely impossible. Except for Qiao Yitang, the youngest daughter of the Lin family and the Qiao family, Lin Qinhe only had a few female friends. There had been so many girls chasing Lin Qinhe over the years, but none of them had succeeded.
He was very curious, but he didn’t dare to secretly look at Lin Qinhe’s backpack. Lin Qinhe had a strong desire to control his personal belongings. No one, including him and Luo Zhengyin, could randomly take Lin Qinhe’s things, whether it was the school bag or the things in his room.
Yang Duole remembered that when he was doing homework in Lin Qinhe’s room during summer vacation, he saw a wooden box placed in the bookcase. The box had been there for a long time, locked, but at that time, it wasn’t. It seemed like it had just been opened by Lin Qinhe.
Yang Duole quietly opened the box while Lin Qinhe was out and took a look, and found that there were dozens of letters, a rolled up painting, and a copy of Chinese composition.
Because the copy of the composition was placed on the top, he recognized it at a glance. It was one of the essays printed by the Chinese Language group in the first year of high school after the final exam. At that time, the Chinese teacher in his class said that this composition was from Qingshui County No. 1 High School, and the title was “The Man Who Chased the Moon.” Yang Duole was impressed because his female classmate was crying at that time.
When Yang Duole wanted to continue to read the letters below, Lin Qinhe calmly called his full name.
That time, Lin Qinhe was very angry, and Yang Duole was so frightened that he didn’t dare to go to Lin Qinhe’s room to do his homework for a few days.
In addition to studying and serializing comics, Tao Xi was also thinking about making money to buy a mobile phone. He finally caught a business opportunity after returning to his dorm that one night.
“Xi da, I beg you, I really can’t finish painting. You don’t know how many paintings Lei jie asked us to do during the four-day National Day holiday. My hands had become Parkinson because of drawing, and my eyes are about to detach from the retina! ” Pan Yan wiped his tears with his hands soaked in paint.
Pan Yan’s art teacher, Jiang Lei, was a well-known female king in the Art Department of Wenhua No. 1 High School. She had a fierce temper. If anyone dared to delay handing in homework, she could yell at this person for an hour without breathing.
“I really don’t have time.” Tao Xi simply refused. He hadn’t finished papers given by Zhou Qiang yet, and the drawing hadn’t being drawn yet either.
Pan Yan begged for a long time, but Tao Xi still remained unmoved. He had no other choices. Thinking of his National Day travel plan, he reluctantly persuaded: “Otherwise, Xi da, how about I pay you to paint? 100 yuan a piece, you can draw five for me!”
The tips of Tao Xi’s ears moved, but his expression did not show any flaws. He frowned and hesitated before saying, “This is not so good. What if the painting I paint doesn’t look like yours, what if your teacher finds out.”
Pan Yan sense a little looseness, so he quickly hit the iron while it was hot and said: “Am I not believing in your painting skills? You are good, I will definitely bring you delicious food when I come back from this trip!”
Tao Xi hesitated for a moment, then shook his head, “Forget it, I have too much homework and I don’t have enough time.”
Pan Yan was heartbroken and gritted his teeth as he said: “I will give you 200 a sheet. You don’t need to paint too well, just follow my garbage level!”
“Deal.”
Tao Xi snapped his fingers and decided with satisfaction.
The day before the National Day holiday, the entire class was frantically rushing for the National Day homework, trying to squeeze out more vacation time.
Bi Chengfei and the tablemate Hu Tong were arguing again. After the argument, they started a cold war so he turned to harass Tao Xi: “Xi ge, are you going out to play this holiday? Grandma[1] will take me to Korea to watch her idol concert.”
Tao Xi was immersed in the National Day homework, and did not look up when he heard the words: “Not playing.”
He didn’t want to take a holiday at all. During the holiday, he couldn’t see Lin Qinhe, and he didn’t have a mobile phone.
Tao Xi glanced at Lin Qinhe on the side, wondering what plan Lin Qinhe had, so he pretended to ask casually: “Deskmate, are you going out to play?”
Bi Chengfei interrupted and said: “I know! I heard Yakult say that he is going to Japan with Xueshen. I’m so jealous.” He didn’t want to accompany Bi Aoxue to South Korea as a coolie.
Tao Xi lowered his eyelashes, turned the pen in a circle, and said dryly: “Just four days, you are still going abroad, can you have time?”
He also wanted to go to Japan with Lin Qinhe, but if he had the money, it would be nice to go around Wenhua City.
Bi Chengfei said: “Japan and South Korea are very close. But there is not much time to write homework. Xi ge, if you have a mobile phone, I can take pictures of delicious food for you. In exchange, you can take pictures of homework and let me copy them.”
Tao Xi was so annoyed that he decided not to add Bi Chengfei to his friend after buying a mobile phone.
He threw the pen and slept on the desk, with his head resting on his arm and his face facing the other side.
Bi Chengfei noticed that Tao Xi seemed to be upset, his eyes rolled, and he hurriedly said, “Xi ge, don’t worry, I’ll bring you a present from Korea!”
“Don’t disturb me sleeping.” Tao Xi said with his eyes closed.
Bi Chengfei stretched out his hand to rub Tao Xi’s head, however, as soon as he was about to put his claw on it, Lin Qinhe glanced at him.
He subconsciously retracted his paw and turned back honestly, feeling embarrassed that he stole the neighbour’s cat and was stared at by the neighbour.
During the four-day National Day holiday, Tao Xi was the only one living in the entire dormitory building. Every time he went out to eat, he and the uncle who was left behind to take care of him had to stare at each other.
Tao Xi finished all his homework in the first two days. From seven o’clock in the morning to eleven o’clock in the evening, he barely rested except for eating and bathing.
From the third day on, he got up again at seven and began to paint for Pan Yan, three still-life paintings, and two character paintings.
It would not be difficult for Tao Xi to simply paint them, but he had to imitate Pan Yan’s paintings. The other was carving flowers out of shit, so he had to mix shit with flowers, and the feeling was no different from eating flies.
From the sunrise to the moonrise, the three paintings were completed. Tao Xi faced the three paintings and felt that he really suffered from Parkinson and his eyes would detach his retina.
On the last day of the holiday, he finished the last two paintings and his hands were sore that he couldn’t hold a pen.
“The 200 yuan is really not enough.” Tao Xi gritted his teeth.
He didn’t know that a few years later, when he remembered that he had only sold them for 200 yuan that year, he wanted to let Pan Yan, a petty man, pay him 2 million.
Footnote:
- Not his grandma, but his auntie. Their English teacher ↩️
T/N: finger crossed, I’ll update as frequent as possible
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thank you for updating! i really love this story.
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