MTLY | Chapter 34

◎Who wouldn’t be dazed by that?◎

The next morning, Song Tinghuan went downstairs and was just about to head to the kitchen to heat up some milk when she saw Jiang Yu coming out of the kitchen.

He was wearing a loose black T-shirt, and he looked like he had just finished showering. The ends of his hair were still slightly damp, pushed back carelessly, with a few unruly strands falling over his forehead.

Their eyes met. Song Tinghuan lowered her gaze and quietly walked past him.

Suddenly, a hand pressed down on the top of her head and ruffled her hair.

“Jiang Yu!” Song Tinghuan sounded like a startled rabbit. She had shouted a little too loudly.

Jiang Yu clearly hadn’t expected her reaction to be that big. He had touched her hair before, and she hadn’t reacted like this.

He froze for a moment, his hand stiffening as he withdrew it, but the corner of his lips still curved in that teasing way. “Finally willing to talk to me?”

“I…” Song Tinghuan could feel her cheeks heating up. “Don’t keep laying hands on me.”

“Huh?” Jiang Yu hadn’t expected that after just ruffling her hair, he’d get accused of “laying hands on her.” “Little girl, do you even know what laying hands on someone means? You can’t just use idioms however you want.”

Song Tinghuan stiffened. “You know. You’re the top student, so of course you know.”

Jiang Yu: “…”

After freeing herself from Jiang Yu’s hand, Song Tinghuan bolted into the kitchen like a rabbit. On the island counter, there were already two glasses of warmed milk, and not just milk, there was also a steamer basket of little pig buns and two fried eggs.

This was… prepared for her?

Song Tinghuan felt a little awkward.

Awkward about the breakfast that had appeared so suddenly, and awkward about the lingering sensation on the crown of her head.

Recently, she had felt like she was becoming more and more strange. Just like earlier, Jiang Yu hadn’t been touching her hair for the first time, but the instant his palm had covered the top of her head, she still had wanted to dodge on instinct.

If she didn’t dodge, her whole body would go stiff.

Song Tinghuan took a sip of milk. The sweet, mellow taste soothed her tongue.

Footsteps sounded behind her. Jiang Yu walked in and, as if it were perfectly natural, picked up the other glass of milk and glanced at the girl beside him. “How are you spending today?”

“Studying at the library.”

“Today’s a holiday.”

“Even on holidays, I still need to study. The sea of learning is boundless, and diligence can make up for clumsiness. Besides, I don’t have the ability to score full marks in math.”

“…”

So she really wasn’t easy to coax.

After a brief silence, Jiang Yu nodded and answered with great seriousness, “Fine.”

“?”

By the time Song Tinghuan had packed up her bag and gone back downstairs, she finally understood what Jiang Yu’s “fine” meant.

The young master had changed clothes. He was in a brand-new short-sleeved white T-shirt and black trousers, with a new limited-edition pair of sneakers on his feet. At the moment, he was leaning lazily by the door, a backpack slung over one shoulder.

He was dressed so neatly and eye-catchingly that he looked like he was heading to a runway show.

“You… are going out?”

“Mm, to the library to study.”

Song Tinghuan paused in the middle of putting on her shoes.

Studying dressed like that? She could already imagine all the gazes that would keep turning toward him in the library, like they were watching a peacock spreading its tail.

“You…” Song Tinghuan hesitated.

“You’re right. The sea of learning is boundless, and diligence can make up for clumsiness.”

“…”

There weren’t many people in the library during the holiday. To avoid being stared at, Song Tinghuan picked a secluded seat by the window. Recently, she had put most of her energy into math, planning to use the holiday to make up for the other subjects, and she also wanted to practice her spoken English properly, especially with that poetry collection Susan had given her.

But… this physics paper… seemed a little hard.

She got stuck on the third problem.

Holding her pen, Song Tinghuan scribbled on and off across the scratch paper.

“Force balance,” Jiang Yu said.

Song Tinghuan: “?”

She turned her head and saw a copy of *Appreciation of Poetry and Prose* spread open in front of Jiang Yu. He didn’t seem to be reading it much. Instead, he had tilted his head and was looking at her.

Song Tinghuan pressed her lips together and muttered back, “I know. I just wanted to doodle.”

“Mm.”

“…”

Song Tinghuan realized that coming to him with this paper had been a bit of a failure. Earlier, the physics teacher had handed out a thick stack of papers, and when she left the house, she hadn’t even looked at them, just randomly grabbed two.

“At your current stage, doing olympiad-style questions is a little early.”

“…”

Song Tinghuan was discouraged, but she also had to admit Jiang Yu was right. This paper clearly belonged to the advanced category.

Beside her, Jiang Yu curved his lips and took her paper. He scanned it once, then picked up the pen in front of her. When he saw the little bunny print on the barrel, he frowned, clearly disgusted by the soft, cute design.

Song Tinghuan watched him sweep quickly over the paper and circle a few questions before he handed both the paper and the pen back. “Just do these. They’re all core exam points. The rest you can skip.”

Even though she really didn’t want to listen to him, she had to admit she was tempted.

This was the key material circled by a god-level student, and suddenly going from two whole papers to just a few questions, who wouldn’t be tempted?

Song Tinghuan huffed twice, picked up her pen, skipped the questions Jiang Yu hadn’t circled, and started calculating on the scratch paper.

Sure enough, it felt much smoother this time. There were still some uncertain parts, but she no longer stared helplessly at the problems. The last big question was a mechanics problem. Song Tinghuan finished the first subquestion, but the second one left her at a loss.

After hesitating for a long while, she slid the paper toward Jiang Yu and passed him the bunny pen too.

She didn’t say anything, just looked at him quietly.

“What? Want me to do your homework for you?” Only when it looked like the girl was about to bristle again did Jiang Yu finally rein in his smile. He tapped the click pen lightly against the table, then wrote out the formulas and a few brief steps on the paper, one line at a time.

“Got it?”

Song Tinghuan looked at the barely three lines and instantly understood. “Oh, so that’s how it is.”

Jiang Yu chuckled. “When you don’t understand something, read the problem a few more times. The clues are all in there.”

Song Tinghuan pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to admit it, but Jiang Yu really was amazing. He deserved that runaway first place. She swallowed back what she wanted to say and followed the problem-solving approach he had given her. Very quickly, she got the answer.

Worried she might have made a mistake, Song Tinghuan checked it against the solution steps again.

“This type of problem is pretty typical. You can put together a practice set and pull it out to keep drilling whenever you have time.”

He was teaching her how to study.

The way a real top student studied.

“Do error notebooks really work?”

“Mistakes always mean your basic knowledge is weak. Actually, when you look at a thick textbook, the core knowledge points are only a few. The exam questions just keep changing around those points. Science subjects aren’t like language subjects, they don’t require years of accumulation. Once the logic is sorted out, one thing leads to understanding everything.”

Song Tinghuan nodded, half-understanding.

“What about you? Do you keep an error notebook?”

“No.”

“?”

“I don’t really make mistakes.”

“…”

Song Tinghuan thought of the way Jiang Yu did his papers. “Can I ask you another question?”

Jiang Yu turned his head. “Ask. Otherwise, why would I come to the library with you?”

Come with you.

Those words hit Song Tinghuan so easily that she had to suppress the strange feeling in her chest. “I mean, I saw that when you did papers before, you never wrote the steps. You just glanced through them casually.”

“There are too many papers. I can’t finish writing everything.”

“You can’t finish it either?”

As soon as she said that, she saw Jiang Yu looking at her with a hint of amusement. “Song Tinghuan, do you maybe have your ‘top student’ filter on me a little too thick?”

Song Tinghuan pressed her lips together, her fingernail picking at the edge of the paper.

Actually, the filter had been pretty thick to begin with, and now that the top-student layer had been added, it was the extra-thick version.

“I don’t.” She muttered under her breath.

The boy beside her tossed out a light sentence. “I’m human too. There are only 24 hours in a day.”

Right.

There aren’t that many true geniuses. Some people are just more hardworking where you can’t see it, but Jiang Yu… where was he hardworking? He looked like someone who simply didn’t like studying.

“You still have time to fight, grab late-night snacks, and date.”

“What?”

“Nope.”

Song Tinghuan denied it faster than a rabbit. Jiang Yu just looked at her, then slowly curved his lips. “Not only is the filter thick, your bias is pretty heavy too.”

Song Tinghuan: “…”

“So this is what I look like in your eyes? Fighting? Early dating? You really are…”

“Who told you to have such a troublemaking face? You don’t look like a good student at all.” Song Tinghuan shot back softly, and only after she finished did she realize what she had said. She stared stupidly at Jiang Yu.

Jiang Yu was choked by her words for a moment. When he finally processed them, his smile deepened. “Fine, you’ve got guts now.”

Song Tinghuan stayed silent.

“What do you want to do this afternoon?”

“?”

“You still want to do papers here?”

Song Tinghuan hesitated.

It was rare to get a holiday. Who would want to keep spending a perfectly good vacation on studying? She had only been holding back because she felt awkward, and now, that awkwardness didn’t seem so strong anymore.

“Or…” Jiang Yu leaned slightly closer, “shall this bad student take you out to broaden your horizons?”

He wore a smile at the corner of his mouth, his black eyes bright and clear. At a glance, he didn’t seem like he meant any good horizons at all.

Song Tinghuan wanted to refuse, but under those dark, gleaming eyes, she was bewitched again. She had to admit she wanted to see what kind of horizons he meant.

*

Song Tinghuan hadn’t expected the “broadening of horizons” Jiang Yu mentioned to be a basement music club, hidden deep inside an abandoned industrial art district. There were hardly any people around, and the place had a heavy postmodern vibe, all decadent aesthetics and bold colors.

She even ran into a few familiar faces, Li Yiliang, Han Shuming, and Zhou Yize.

“Whoa, junior!” Under the dim yellow light, Li Yiliang sat behind a drum kit, tall and broad-shouldered. When he saw Song Tinghuan, he excitedly waved his drumsticks and rattled off a lively drumbeat.

This was a world Song Tinghuan had never touched before, something fresh, intense, and another side of Jiang Yu’s life.

She walked over to Han Shuming and watched as the usually refined boy tuned a dual-row keyboard. Han Shuming looked up, his smile as gentle and light as ever. “Hello, I’m keyboardist Han Shuming.”

Song Tinghuan was slightly surprised. In this state, she had no idea whether Guan Linlin would just faint on the spot.

Seeing Song Tinghuan standing dazedly in front of Han Shuming, Jiang Yu simply reached out and pressed down on her head. “Didn’t you say you get motion sickness? Go sit over there.”

When she passed by Zhou Yize, Zhou Yize smiled at the two of them and plucked a low note from the bass strings.

Then he was met with a warning look from Jiang Yu.

Song Tinghuan’s understanding of bands came only from variety shows. This was the first time she had ever been up close to a real band in real life.

“And you?”

Jiang Yu: “What?”

Song Tinghuan looked at the people beside the stage. “What role do you have in the band?”

She thought of the guitar gathering dust in the corner of the room on the third floor of the Jiang house.

“I don’t play.”

Song Tinghuan didn’t quite believe him. If he didn’t play, why had he brought her here? And these people, weren’t they all the ones Jiang Yu got along with best on ordinary days?

He wasn’t not playing, he was probably just… not playing anymore.

“Junior!”

A bright female voice rang out behind her. Song Tinghuan turned and saw Han Jingjing walking over with a smile. She was wearing fitted nine-point pants, and her T-shirt was tied in a knot at her side, revealing a slim strip of waist, so white it was almost dazzling.

Han Jingjing hadn’t tied up her hair today. Her chestnut-colored long curls hung loose, her features exquisite, with a cool, striking beauty.

Song Tinghuan thought of all those rumors about Han Jingjing and Jiang Yu. Even if the two of them weren’t actually that kind of relationship, with such a beautiful girl around, would he really not like her at all?

Like.

That word suddenly surfaced, and Song Tinghuan was startled. Since when had she become so concerned about Jiang Yu’s love life?

The huge space was cut apart by steel beams and pipes, and the dim light kept shifting, falling over the boy’s slender, long figure. His already sharp profile looked even cleaner and more sculpted.

Jiang Yu was standing by the stage, talking to Zhou Yize. No one knew what Zhou Yize had said, but Jiang Yu curved his lips and laughed, telling him to get lost.

His tone was lazy, but there was an unrestrained vitality in it.

Han Jingjing bumped Song Tinghuan with her shoulder and winked at her, bright and sparkling.

“Hey, junior, isn’t our Jiang University heartthrob especially handsome?”

Song Tinghuan froze.

He was handsome.

Just like Guan Linlin said, with a face like that, who wouldn’t be dazed by him?

Han Jingjing leaned closer. “Let me tell you, the campus heartthrob is even hotter when he’s playing guitar and singing~”

Author’s note:
Second update in the afternoon, with a tiny red envelope~