Chapter 53: Do You Have a Metal Pipe?
Perhaps the power of friendship was simply too strong—so strong that even her dreams were filled with sweetness.
When Mu Xiangxiang opened her eyes, sunlight had already flooded the room. A blanket her mother had bought a few days ago hung halfway off the bay window, and dust motes drifted through the beam of light.
Floating up and down.
Everything felt brand new.
Mu Xiangxiang kicked off the soft quilt and sprang out of bed.
The moment she opened her bedroom door, her eyes landed on two colorful pieces of paper pinned to the doorframe with thumbtacks. She took them down and discovered they were two tickets to a music festival. In the lower-right corner was Mu Song's rather messy handwriting: "See you there."
She froze for a moment, then immediately went to knock on her brother's door. Mu Song had moved back home from the school dormitories some time ago, and the family now saw each other far more often than before.
There was no response from inside. Her mother's voice drifted in from the living room. "Your brother left early this morning. I don't know what's gotten into him lately—he's been leaving early and coming back late every day."
"Mom?" Mu Xiangxiang turned and saw her mother, then glanced at the wall clock in surprise. "Why are you still home?"
No sooner had she spoken than her father emerged from the room as well. He was dressed unusually formally, wearing a neatly pressed white shirt beneath his jacket while adjusting his collar. "We're not opening the breakfast stall this morning. Your mom and I have something to take care of."
The moment Mother Mu saw her husband, she stopped combing her hair and walked over to help straighten his collar. At the same time, she explained to her puzzled daughter: "After we got home last night, someone from the food expo organizers called us. They said they wanted to discuss a business partnership with your father and me and asked us to come to the marketing department early today..."
Her gaze shifted to the tickets in Mu Xiangxiang's hand. "What are you holding?" Mu Xiangxiang glanced at the large words "Music Festival" printed across the tickets. Thinking about how similar her parents' values were to her own, she folded the tickets and slipped them casually into her pocket. "Nothing. Just a couple pieces of colored paper."
The Mu parents had always trusted their academically outstanding daughter, and Mother Mu was immediately distracted. The couple seemed pressed for time. They quickly finished getting ready and prepared to leave. As he walked out, Father Mu didn't forget to remind her: "The dumpling's warming in the steamer. Make sure you eat before school."
Then, right at the doorway, he suddenly stopped as if remembering something. Holding onto the doorframe, he glanced back awkwardly and lowered his voice. "Well... your mom's flight to City X is this Thursday to inspect the farms. We don't know how many days she'll be gone, so she probably won't make it back in time for Yingcheng's parent-teacher conference this time, which means..."
For some reason, his voice seemed hoarser than usual that morning. Mu Xiangxiang looked at his eyes, which appeared slightly swollen. "Hm?"
"So..." Father Mu continued slowly, "that means I'll be the only one left in City A. Dad will probably be pretty busy, so before the parent-teacher conference, make sure to tell me a few days in advance so I can arrange my schedule."
Mu Xiangxiang froze slightly. Her father had already turned back toward the door, leaving only the back of his head facing her. Mother Mu, meanwhile, had already put on her high heels. She turned and gave her daughter a knowing smile before reaching out and lightly touching her husband's hand.
Their fingers naturally intertwined.
Watching this scene, Mu Xiangxiang's gaze softened. "Okay," she replied, her voice as gentle as her expression. "I'll remember."
*****
The steamer in the kitchen was packed with tiny, appetizing dumpling. Each was only about the size of an egg, steaming hot, with glutinous rice grains and diced ham clearly visible beneath the translucent wrappers. After checking the time and realizing she was running late, Mu Xiangxiang grabbed a food bag and packed them up, intending to eat them on the way.
As she walked downstairs, she mentally calculated the bus transfers needed to get from the stop near her home to Yingcheng. She still felt a little overwhelmed by how suddenly she'd returned to a normal school routine. But the moment she stepped out of the residential compound, she spotted a familiar figure and stopped. "Qiao Nan?"
Qiao Nan, sitting sideways on a motorcycle, lowered his phone and looked over lazily. Huge dark circles hung beneath his eyes.
"..." Mu Xiangxiang blinked. "What are you doing here?"
Qiao Nan stared at her speechlessly. "If I told you I was just passing by, would you believe me?"
Mu Xiangxiang: "..."
"Or maybe a strong wind blew me here while I was sleeping?"
Mu Xiangxiang: "..."
She glanced toward the nearby bus stop packed with people, touched her earlobe, and coughed with a smile before stepping closer. "Thanks."
Then she looked more carefully at his face. "Why are your dark circles so bad? Didn't sleep well? Feeling sick?"
Qiao Nan: "..."
"The biology competition's been declined already, right? Don't forget before the next round."
Qiao Nan: "..."
Mu Xiangxiang: "??"
What did it mean to keep bringing up the exact thing someone didn't want to hear?
Honestly, even Qiao Nan was beginning to wonder whether something was wrong with his brain. Otherwise, how could he have already bought an entire pile of study materials online and then still gone to a bookstore yesterday and hauled home another mountain of books, practically clearing out every high-school-level textbook and reference guide he could find?
He wasn't Mu Xiangxiang anymore! There was no longer any need to worry about fragile parents or ridiculous study responsibilities!
So why was he still staying up late reviewing? Staying up late solving problems? Staying up late doing the practice papers that old Biology Grandpa kept forcing on him?
And Mu Xiangxiang! Why couldn't she just mind her own business? Wasn't doing her own homework enough? Why did she have to concern herself with improving the grades of the entire Class Nine? Look at the books she'd recommended to her classmates:
"A Thousand Problem Statistics Collection"
"Golden Exam Questions"
"How to Memorize Physics in Thirty Days"
And on and on.
Seriously? Seriously?! Everyone judge for yourselves—what kind of malicious intent was behind recommending books like that?!
Mu Xiangxiang had happily made her recommendations and walked away without a care in the world. Meanwhile, Qiao Nan was left living in constant terror of being asked questions.
With his actual academic foundation, just attending classes normally was already exhausting enough. Yet now, after finishing homework and test papers, he had to study all sorts of bizarre supplementary materials just in case someone suddenly asked him about a problem he didn't recognize. When he really thought about it, his workload might actually be heavier than when he'd been pretending to be Mu Xiangxiang.
Yesterday alone, he'd spent the entire day buried in books—moving from studying in the classroom to studying in his room at home. Aside from briefly watching a livestream Jiang Hai and the others had forwarded to him, he hadn't even had time to touch his phone. How could he possibly have rested?
So when he looked at the culprit standing in front of him, his feelings were extremely complicated.
Mu Xiangxiang noticed the ugly expression on his face and hesitated. Then she looked down at herself. "Why are you staring at me? Is something wrong with how I look?"
"Mu Xiangxiang." Qiao Nan's low voice suddenly rang out. "Do you remember asking me before whether I regretted jumping into the water with you to save that child?"
Mu Xiangxiang blinked. "...Huh?"
"I'll tell you." Qiao Nan stared at her. "I regret it."
"I regret not strangling you to death in that pavilion before we jumped into the water."
Mu Xiangxiang: "..."
What a lunatic.
After Qiao Nan vented his frustration, he started pushing off the ground to reverse the motorcycle. Mu Xiangxiang stepped back in confusion, unable to make sense of his unpredictable mood, and simply opened her bag, took out a dumpling, and stuffed it into her mouth.
She looked up—and met Qiao Nan’s gaze.
Mu Xiangxiang hesitated. “My dad made these. Want to try one?”
Qiao Nan was still full of anger. He tilted his head left and right, gesturing at his hands holding the helmet and the handlebar.
Then a wave of fragrance drifted over. In his lowered line of sight, a pair of fair, delicate fingers were holding a dumpling right up to his lips.
Qiao Nan lifted his eyelids slightly, glancing at her somewhat awkward expression, and his gaze deepened. He opened his mouth and bit down. The moment his lips closed, they brushed against something slightly cool—different from the warmth of the dumpling.
Mu Xiangxiang immediately pulled her hand back, rubbing her fingertips without saying anything.
The salty, tender rice filling was still warm. The aroma of ham and mushrooms exploded the moment the thin wrapper was bitten through, instantly filling his mouth. The irritation in him dispersed all at once.
Qiao Nan stared at her, the corner of his mouth slowly curling as he chewed.
Mu Xiangxiang waited for a long time but he still didn’t tell her to get on the bike. After a moment of hesitation, she reached out to grab the helmet he was holding—but he raised his arm and dodged her hand easily.
Then, under her surprised gaze, he hooked the helmet lazily under his elbow, looked at her with dark, meaningful eyes, and opened his mouth with blatant expectation.
Mu Xiangxiang: “……”
****
By the time they arrived at Yingcheng, a faint blush still lingered on her face. It felt like hundreds of milliliters of powerful popping candy had been poured into her bloodstream, crackling nonstop.
Qiao Nan took off her helmet for her and coughed. “…Your dad’s cooking is pretty good.”
Mu Xiangxiang looked at him expressionlessly. Qiao Nan paused. “Hey, what’s with that look? I got up early to send you to school. You can’t even give me a few dumpling in return?”
Mu Xiangxiang studied his expression, trying to read him. “You could’ve taken them yourself.”
“I had both hands on the helmet and handlebar. Haven’t you heard of germs?”
He sounded completely reasonable. Mu Xiangxiang turned away. “Oh.”
She adjusted her jacket and was about to leave. Just as she stepped forward, a flash of color caught her eye, and Qiao Nan’s voice came from behind her. “Hey, your—”
His lazy tone cut off abruptly. Mu Xiangxiang turned around and saw him standing with one foot on the ground, bending down to pick up two paper tickets.
She checked her pocket—sure enough, they were the ones she had casually stuffed in that morning. She immediately went back and reached for them. “Thanks—”
But Qiao Nan shifted away, avoiding her hand. His gaze landed directly on the handwritten words “See you there” in the lower corner of one ticket. After a moment, he sneered. “Didn’t expect a bookworm like you to have this kind of leisure.”
“Give it back,” bookworm Mu Xiangxiang said.
He ignored her, still studying the writing with a sharp expression. “What kind of crappy music festival is this? Never even heard of it. Does the ticket even cost twenty? Your taste is pretty low.”
The thin tickets flipped between his fingers, looking like they might be blown away at any moment. Mu Xiangxiang frowned, getting anxious. “Give it back!”
Qiao Nan glanced at her worried expression. “…Is it fun going to places like that? Aren’t you embarrassed? I never go to places like this.”
Mu Xiangxiang was getting impatient. “…No one asked you to go.”
Qiao Nan looked at her blankly for a moment, then clicked his tongue. He crumpled the two tickets together and tossed them back at her. “Take them, take them. It’s just a glance, and you’re acting like I’m stealing your life. Who gave them to you that you’re treating them like treasure? Just that handwriting alone—ugly as hell. And they even wrote ‘see you there’ wrong, missing a stroke on the character. No education.”
Naturally, Mu Xiangxiang wasn’t pleased about her brother being insulted. She caught the wrinkled tickets. “Sorry about that. My brother really is uneducated—he even wrote the character wrong. I’ll make sure he copies it three hundred times when I get back.”
Qiao Nan: “……”
She smoothed out the tickets, confirmed they weren’t damaged, folded them, and put them away before turning to leave. But a hand suddenly grabbed her arm from behind. She turned back and met Qiao Nan’s speechless expression.
“Why?” she asked.
“…That ticket,” he said stiffly. “Your brother gave it to you?”
“Yeah.”
“…Why would he give you music festival tickets?”
“He got a slot for a rock competition. He said it’s his first time doing a commercial performance and insisted I come watch.”
Qiao Nan: “….”
Qiao Nan suddenly reached out. Mu Xiangxiang watched in shock as he took one ticket from her pocket, kept it, and stuffed the other back.
“…What are you doing?”
“What do you mean what am I doing?”
“Why are you taking my ticket?”
“You had two anyway. Your brother’s got his own pass. This one’s spare.”
“But—”
“Hey!” He tapped the bike seat with his helmet. “I got up early to bring you here. You can’t even give up one ticket? Seriously?”
Then he frowned again. “Or what? You already arranged to go with someone else?”
“…” Mu Xiangxiang was speechless, “You weren’t—”
“Gotta go.” He cut her off, pretending nothing had happened, put on his helmet, and started the bike.
Mu Xiangxiang stood there, completely confused. Before starting the engine, he paused again, lifted his visor, and looked at her with amber eyes. “This music festival is far from the city. No direct bus. I’ll be at school Saturday morning. Come yourself.”
Then he sped off. She watched his figure disappear.
Two unanswered questions bounced in her mind:
- Didn’t you say you never go to places like this?
- Even without a direct bus, I could’ve just taken a taxi, right?
*****
Despite all that, when the weekend came, she still honestly showed up at the gates of No. 12 High School.
The campus looked much quieter than usual. Mu Xiangxiang gripped the railing and peeked inside, accidentally catching her reflection in the polished metal edge of the guardhouse wall. Her carefully styled hair and outfit were reflected in perfect detail. She coughed, touched her pocket, and when she grabbed her phone, she accidentally pulled out the tinted lip balm she bought yesterday. The peach scent drifted up toward her nose. She pressed her lips together quickly and shoved it back into her pocket.
Her fingers tapped slowly on her phone screen.
At the same time, inside the school, Class Nine was unusually full for a weekend make-up study session.
Qiao Nan sat at his desk, propping his head up while working on a test paper. A few classmates hesitantly shuffled over. He glanced at them. “What?”
They immediately held up their tutoring books.
Qiao Nan had come prepared. On his desk at home, he now had seven different sets of tutoring materials chosen by more than forty classmates in his class spread out. The questions they were bringing him were the same ones that had stumped him last night—he had already rummaged through everything and solved them using formulas.
So he casually solved them on the spot with an effortless air.
He looked extremely cool doing it.
Yan Zhiyang’s eyes sparkled as they swept over their boss’s particularly stylish hairstyle today, his clean-shaven chin, his brand-new trendy outfit, and his clearly newly bought limited-edition sneakers so clean the soles barely had any dust.
“Brother Nan,” Yan Zhiyang said sincerely, “you look re~ally~ handsome today~”
Qiao Nan sneered and, for the Nth time that day, took out his phone to check messages—only for the music festival ticket in his pocket to accidentally slip out when his hand brushed it. Yan Zhiyang quickly bent down to pick it up before he could.
He glanced at it. “XX Music Festival? What’s that? I’ve never even heard of it.”
He shook the thin paper. “Is this ticket quality even okay? It looks kind of cheap.”
Qiao Nan kicked him immediately, snatched the ticket back, and sneered with disgust. “What do you know? You’ve never even heard of it, that just proves you’re ignorant and tasteless.”
Yan Zhiyang, who trusted him completely as a well-informed older brother figure, immediately hugged his head in shame.
At that moment, a message popped up on his phone: [Mu: I’m here.]
He immediately straightened up, letting go of the little thing he’d been holding, and ran his fingers through his perfectly styled hair.
Just as he was about to descend the stairs and turn the corner, his quick steps were suddenly stopped by a voice from behind. “Qiao Nan, wait.”
He turned around and saw a hesitant figure slowly emerging from the shadows.
As she came closer, she turned out to be a fair-faced girl. She stood a few steps away, head slightly lowered, looking at him carefully.
Hands in his pockets, Qiao Nan stood lazily where he was, his eyes showing no particular emotion. “What is it?”
Mu Xiangxiang had been waiting outside for a while and felt the sun warming her up, so she asked the security guard if she could come into the school to cool off a bit—her looks made it almost effortless for her to get in.
She walked familiar paths under the shade of trees toward Qiao Nan’s classroom. Just as she reached the stairwell, she suddenly heard a girl’s voice gathering all her courage: “…Qiao Nan, I like you!”
Mu Xiangxiang froze. Instinctively holding her breath, she slowed her steps and moved into the dim stairwell—and immediately saw a classic “romantic drama” scene: a boy and a girl facing each other.
Mu Xiangxiang: “….”
Qiao Nan stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the girl. The girl looked up at him with teary eyes. Mu Xiangxiang heard her trembling voice: “But I heard you already have a girlfriend. Is that true?”
Girlfriend…?
Just as she was still confused, she heard Qiao Nan snort without any trace of gentleness: “Otherwise what? You think I’d be lying to you?”
Mu Xiangxiang paused. Mu Xiangxiang blinked, her mood becoming complicated. After thinking for a moment, she felt it was both unexpected and somehow completely expected.
Someone like Qiao Nan… having a girlfriend actually seemed pretty normal.
The stairwell without sunlight felt a bit cold. And the scene ahead was awkward, so she quietly retreated step by step back into the sunlight and turned toward the school gate.
That was better.
She hadn’t gone far when she suddenly heard an intense argument ahead. The security guard who had just let her in raised his voice: “I’m warning you! If you keep this up I won’t be polite! I’ll call your sports school teacher!”
Another voice sounded familiar: “Damn it, I told you I’m not here to cause trouble! I’m not here to cause trouble! Just call Class Nine and get Qiao Nan out—what the hell are you insisting on?!”
Mu Xiangxiang walked around a tree trunk, and the guard came into view, fully alert and in battle mode. “You think I’m stupid? You’re definitely here to cause trouble! Everyone around here knows your reputation. If you weren’t here to fight, are you here to play games or something?”
The other person sounded like he was about to collapse. “That’s exactly what I’m here for!”
“Don’t lie!” the guard snapped. “If you’re really on good terms, why don’t you contact him yourself? Don’t tell me you’ve been blocked on phone and WeChat!”
Qiao Nan: “……………………”
At that moment, Mu Xiangxiang stepped forward and finally saw the figure blocked behind the guard.
“Cao Wei?”
The burly Cao Wei was glaring at the guard when he turned around—and froze when he saw her. “You’re that…”
The guard immediately panicked when he saw her greeting a clearly dangerous-looking sports school delinquent. “Hey, little girl, be careful! Don’t go out there!”
Mu Xiangxiang was briefly stunned by his reaction, then saw Cao Wei’s expression and remembered how he had once said he had a “born villain face” that caused all kinds of misunderstandings.
She couldn’t help laughing. “It’s fine, don’t worry. He’s my friend. He’s probably not here to cause trouble.”
Cao Wei had originally come because Qiao Nan had suddenly blocked him and he wanted to talk things over.
He hadn’t expected to run into the rumored terrifying girlfriend in advance.
The image of her carrying a steel pipe and radiating killing intent still lingered in his mind, making him instinctively wary when he realized who was speaking to him. But the next second, the girl in front of him wasn’t fierce at all. Her cool, distant appearance melted like snow the moment she laughed, soft and sweet.
Cao Wei stared at her for a moment, stunned.
He suddenly realized that without the intimidating aura, this girl was actually very slim and fair. And from her hands to her face…
Everywhere looked…
Soft.
***
Meanwhile, Qiao Nan was struggling to dismiss the teary-eyed girl in front of him. Thinking about Mu Xiangxiang waiting at the school gate made him increasingly irritated.
He stood there with his hands in his pockets, losing patience and looking away.
And then— His pupils shrank. In the distance, he saw something that made him go completely still.
Qiao Nan: “………………”
He lowered his head and started looking around his feet.
Is there a steel pipe?
If not, a baseball bat will do.
----------------
Author note:
The big guy from the sports school is taking charge of the counterattack! The fateful Shura Field! Ah!
Big guy: “White… soft… small…”
Brother Nan: “Fuck…”
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