As soon as Tao Xi returned to the dormitory, Pan Yan couldn’t wait to tell him: “Xi da, I have a few big clients here to introduce to you, all of them want to ask you to help paint, do you want to take orders?”
Pan Yan couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Several of his buddies in the art class knew that he had a roommate who could help him paint just for 200 yuan. Plus, there wasn’t much difference between the painting and his own paintings. How could these sons who were not short of money let go of this good opportunity to be lazy.
Tao Xi was a little moved.
He knew that Tao Jian said that he would come to him again a few days later. That was not a joke. This time he didn’t get the money because he was so angry. The next time he came, he wouldn’t be so easy to dismiss. With Tao Jian’s temperament, it was not impossible that he would make trouble at the school gate and everyone would know it.
He didn’t want people at the school to know, but it was impossible for him to give Tao Jian all the scholarship money.
Tao Le suffers from systemic lupus erythematosus that requires long-term use of hormones and drugs that cost a lot of money every month. He ate frugally and used the money he saved to regularly give it to Tao Le to buy medicine.
Although he hated Guo Ping and Tao Jian, Tao Le was currently the closest person to him in the world.
Tao Xi hesitated for a few seconds before agreeing: “Yes, but I won’t do it for 200 yuan. I have a midterm exam in one month. I don’t have much time to paint.”
Pan Yan replied: “No problem, I will discuss with them and give you a price increase.”
Tao Xi finally took on four more paintings at 300 yuan each. Because of the lack of time, he could only paint in the time before the lights were turned off at night, leaving him to do his homework in the quilt.
As a result, he only slept for less than four hours. Because the flashlight time was too long, his eyes were a little bloodshot the next day, there was a lot of red blood on the whites of his usually clear eyes.
But Tao Xi didn’t pay attention. He was still in good spirits, rushing into the classroom early in the morning with a fully charged mobile phone.
Lin Qinhe came in through the back door with a bottle of cold mineral water. Before the backpack was put down, Tao Xi took the initiative to take the backpack from Lin Qinhe and helped him hang it behind the chair, and then pulled the chair back with both hands, the distance he pulled out was exactly the same as usual. A whole set of movements were proficient like a five-star hotel doorman opening the door.
Lin Qinhe stood by, frowning, but said nothing.
After Tao Xi had done this, he took out a self-made business card from the drawer with his name and WeChat ID written on it. He put his hands in front of Lin Qinhe, raised his head and the corners of his mouth turned up as his eyes blinked to please:
“Young Master Lin, can you add my Wechat?”
Lin Qinhe lowered his head and glanced at his business card, then looked at Tao Xi’s expectant eyes. Those eyes were very red and swollen, as if he had been in a quilt and crying all night.
He took the business card from Tao Xi, then unlocked the phone before handing it directly in Tao Xi’s hand, saying, “Add it yourself.”
“?”
Tao Xi stared at the phone in his hand in a daze. He didn’t expect Lin Qinhe to directly give him something as personal as his phone.
Lin Qinhe sat down in his seat. Seeing Tao Xi still staring at his phone in a daze, he patiently asked, “No?” He then reached out and gestured to take the phone back to help him add it.
Tao Xi recovered. He took Lin Qinhe’s phone farther away like protecting his own baby, shook his head before nodding: “Of course I will!”
Lin Qinhe’s mobile phone wallpaper was a solid color background. Tao Xi didn’t dare to look at it for too long, so he clicked on WeChat without looking at the specific chat box. He quickly clicked on the QR code of Lin Qinhe’s WeChat ID, scanned it with his mobile phone, and added friends. After adding Lin Qinhe as his friend, he quickly returned the phone to Lin Qinhe.
“Okay, you will be my first WeChat friend from now on!” Tao Xi showed Lin Qinhe his mobile phone. Lin Qinhe was the only person on the WeChat interface.
He raised his chin slightly, the corners of his eyes and the corners of his mouth were tilted upwards, showing off like a student who had scored a hundred points in an exam.
Lin Qinhe looked at Tao Xi’s eyes for a while and looked away without saying anything. He rubbed his fingers on the unopened ice mineral water bottle, and the cool water vapor stuck between his fingers.
Tao Xi was still in joy. He looked down at his mobile phone, Lin Qinhe’s WeChat name was just the same as his name, and his profile picture was a white solid color picture. He clicked on his Moments and found that it was also blank, without any contents.
Tao Xi just changed Lin Qinhe’s remarks to Moon*, and suddenly a bottle of ice mineral water was placed on the table in front of him. Lin Qinhe said to him, “Apply your eyes.”
(* In English)
The tone was unexpectedly soft.
Tao Xi was taken aback. He subconsciously raised his hand to rub his eyes, but as soon as he touched the corner of his eye, his wrist was held by another hand. The hand brushed his lips slightly during the movement, and there was a little bit of cool water vapor between his fingers.
He unconsciously stuck out the tip of his tongue and licked his lower lip. The hand was quickly released, leaving a sentence: “Don’t rub your eyes.”
The owner retracted his hand, picked up a pen and unscrewed the cap. He bowed his head and wrote something on the paper, showing no emotion on his face.
Tao Xi was stunned for a while, suddenly felt that his lips seemed to be hot.
“Thank you.”
He quickly picked up the bottle of ice mineral water, closed his eyes and put it on. The cold touch made the eyes that were swollen and dry from staying up late a lot better, but the lips were getting hotter and hotter, and even the heart began to scream.
The English class representative Jin Jing walked to the last row to collect English homework. Since Jiang Xinyun’s incident last time, she didn’t dare to speak to Lin Qinhe anymore. She anxiously took the workbook from Lin Qinhe, but inadvertently saw a few meaningless circles drawn on the notes in front of Lin Qinhe.
She didn’t say anything and looked at Tao Xi, who was biting his lip while applying the cold mineral water to his eyes. As soon as she was about to ask Tao Xi to hand in the homework, Lin Qinhe accurately drew out the workbook from Tao Xi’s desk and gave it directly to her.
It took a few minutes for Tao Xi to put down the cold water bottle. There were a lot of drops of water on his fine eyelashes. Seeing Lin Qinhe was reading as usual, he was secretly relieved.
It was really embarrassing just now.
Fortunately, Lin Qinhe didn’t respond.
At this moment, Bi Chengfei rushed over like a moth and rescued Tao Xi who was in the advanced level of embarrassment.
“Xi ge, what’s wrong with you, why are you crying? Who is bullying you?!” Bi Chengfei looked at Tao Xi’s red and swollen eyes in surprise. The eyelashes of those beautiful eyes were still dripping with water vapor, making him look as if he was crying.
After a daze, Tao Xi replied, puzzled. “I didn’t cry.”
What was the matter, was he the kind of person who cried at every turn?
Bi Chengfei didn’t believe it, thinking that Tao Xi was pretending to be strong. He skillfully took out a small mirror from the drawer of his deskmate, Hu Tong’s table and showed it to Tao Xi, “You see that your eyes are swollen. Your grandma’s Korean idol fractured his legs, she looked exactly like this after crying all night.”
It was just that Bi Aoxue was crying and howling, and after crying, she was ugly to death, but after Tao Xi cried…he looked pitiful. A strange word popped up in Bi Chengfei’s mind
Tao Xi looked in the mirror. He didn’t pay attention when washing up too quickly in the morning, his eyes were indeed a bit red and swollen.
He suddenly smiled: “No, I used the torchlight in the quilt for too long last night doing my homework. I just stayed up all night.”
Only then did Bi Chengfei relax. In a blink of an eye, he saw the phone on Tao Xi’s desk again, and his eyes were gleaming: “Xi ge! You finally bought a phone! Add me, I will immediately pull you into our group!”
He approached Tao Xi, half-covered his mouth with his hands and his eyes were a bit wretched. He whispered: “Our group welfare is super good, we have all the gossip and resources. If you want, I’ll pack all my treasured resources and send them to you.”
This was the biggest selling point of the groupchat for the boys that he had established. Except for Lin Qinhe, almost all the other boys were in it, sharing their own seeds in a shared manner, and communicating and learning from time to time.
Tao Xi thought that Bi Chengfei was talking about learning resources, such as test questions and listening audio, so he hurriedly picked up the phone, “Okay.”
He just added Bi Chengfei’s WeChat ID, and was about to urge Bi Chengfei to pull him into the group, when he heard Lin Qinhe who had been reading and silent, said seriously:
“Not allowed to join groups.”
Bi Chengfei saw that Lin Qinhe was looking at him coldly. He shuddered subconsciously, and silently retracted his finger to pull him into the group.
Tao Xi was taken aback. Lin Qinhe’s tone didn’t leave him room for tolerance. The sudden soft shadows that had come before were gone. He was a little upset and couldn’t help but retorted:
“Then can you send me the resources?”
Lin Qinhe twisted his eyebrows and looked at Tao Xi, then paused before he said, “Can.”
Tao Xi was stunned, he did not expect Lin Qinhe to agree so easily. The unpleasantness disappeared. He slightly cocked the corners of his mouth and did not insist on joining the group anymore.
Bi Chengfei, who was on the sidelines, looked calm, but his heart was full of turbulent waves.
Damn, when were his two people behind his table close enough to share seeds privately?!
Lin xueshen looked very serious, but he didn’t expect to have an exclusive possession?
Bi Chengfei didn’t dare to mention the boys’ group and resources anymore. Hurriedly pulling Tao Xi to see the photos he took while traveling in Korea, he proudly said, “I’m good at taking pictures, ba. This was taken by grandma’s 100,000 yuan camera. I have to say that the photos taken by expensive camera are different.”
Tao Xi looked down at the photos taken by Bi Chengfei. He used to meet photographers from all walks of life when he was in Taoxi Bay. He had seen many excellent photography works. The photos taken by Bi Chengfei could only be said to be barely in focus.
He couldn’t bear to hit the mindless child, so he smiled and said, “The shot is not bad, this one is the best.” He pointed to a visible picture of seaside scenery.
“Right! Xi ge said yes, I even want to learn photography and become a director in the future!” Bi Chengfei was full of ambition.
“…”
Tao Xi wondered if he had done something wrong.
“Xi ge, you think this one is the best, then I will give you this photo. You can use it as a wallpaper.” Bi Chengfei sent the photo taken by the beach to Tao Xi.
“…Thank you.” Tao Xi didn’t really want to use this photo as his wallpaper.
Tao Xi returned to the dormitory at night, still thinking about Lin Qinhe’s promise to send him resources.
In fact, he was not very interested in learning resources, he just wanted to chat with Lin Qinhe on WeChat.
He looked at the dialog box that was saved as Moon, and there was only the “I passed your friend verification request, we can start chatting now.” which was automatically sent by the system in the morning.
We can start chatting now.
This sentence gave Tao Xi inexplicable courage. He took a deep breath and started typing in the input box.
He typed very slowly, his fingers were clumsy and he often made mistakes and then had to delete a lot of words after making mistakes.
What to send?
He slowly typed: “Tablemate, what about the promised resources?”
After he finished typing, he felt that it was unnatural so he deleted everything and opened a Mathematics book, randomly searching for a random question. He took a photo with his mobile phone and typed it again in the input box: “There is a problem that I can’t do. Can you take a look for me?”
He was afraid that this question was too simple and was annoying, so he deleted all the words again.
After tossing like this several times, Tao Xi suddenly didn’t want to send him a message.
He simply threw the phone aside, picked up the paintbrush and started to paint. Tomorrow, he would hand in the painting to the art student.
Before drawing a stroke, a message notification suddenly rang from the mobile phone on the table. Tao Xi quickly picked up the phone and looked at it. It turned out that Lin Qinhe had sent him a message.
“?”
A simple question mark.
A “?” appeared on Tao Xi’s head.
He was puzzled and replied with a guilty conscience: “What’s the matter?”
Lin Qinhe sent him a picture, a screenshot of the WeChat interface. The top part was “The other party is typing…”, the time was ten minutes ago.
Fuck!
Why did no one tell him that WeChat had this stupid function? !
Tao Xi’s ears heated up rapidly, he hurriedly posted the photo he had just taken, and then typed: “I can’t do this question.”
Lin Qinhe didn’t reply again.
Tao Xi breathed a sigh of relief while feeling a little lost.
But not long after that, Lin Qinhe also sent a photo over. It was a piece of paper with the detailed process of answering the math problem written on it. The handwriting was thin and clear.
Tao Xi was happy again, his whole face was slightly hot and he quickly replied: “Thank you, tablemate!”
Lin Qinhe didn’t say anything, just threw him a cloud disk folder.
Tao Xi still didn’t know much about other software, so he asked Pan Yan to figure it out. After downloading the folder, he opened it and found that it contained learning materials of various subjects organized by categories.
He thought this must be much better than Bi Chengfei’s collection of materials, it didn’t matter if he was not added into the group.
Then he replied “thank you” to Lin Qinhe.
But Lin Qinhe didn’t reply anymore.
Tao Xi stared at this chat record in a daze. After a while, he clicked on Lin Qinhe’s blank avatar again, only to realize that Lin Qinhe’s Moments was no longer blank.
He even updated nine photos an hour ago without any text.
Tao Xi clicked on the photos one by one, and quickly realized that these photos should have been taken by Lin Qinhe while on vacation in Japan. But compared to Bi Chengfei’s “masterpiece”, the photos taken by Lin Qinhe could obviously be regarded as taken by professional.
In the ordinary streets and alleys at dusk, the quiet and lively October fireworks flowed through his lens, and the magnificent twilight spread over the shadows of everyone in the streets and alleys, as if they were covered with red leaves in the mountains of Hokkaido.
Tao Xi suddenly remembered the same twilight yesterday evening. Lin Qinhe sat in front of the piano in the middle of the empty concert hall and played “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” that only he could hear it.
At that time, it seemed that all the resentment, jealousy and embarrassment in his heart sinked slowly in that piano music, like red leaves falling into puddles, raindrops falling into streams and rivers.
After being out of mind for a while, he gave this Moments a like. Then he saved all the nine photos, selected one of them and set it as the wallpaper of the mobile phone, and selected another photo as the background of the chat with Lin Qinhe.
T/N: Not at Tao Xi thinking BCF’s resource is study materials lol he’s so innocent and pure
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