A Cold and Aloof Top Student Is Relied Upon - Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Together

◎Growing Up◎

That night, they didn’t get to see the meteor shower. As they were walking down the mountain, Bai Tan was draped over Gu Zhu, chattering in her ear about how she was not willing to give up on seeing the meteors. “Next time we get a chance, we’ll come again! We’ll definitely see them!”

Gu Zhu let her cling to her. Unconsciously, she had grown used to the young mistress’s closeness, becoming naturally comfortable with her warmth and scent.

“It’s okay. Next time for sure,” she comforted her softly. There was probably a little regret in her heart, but what they had tonight was already enough. Going up a mountain in the middle of the night, enjoying the wind and looking at the stars, and listening to the stories of the stars were all things she had never done before. The novelty and tranquility wrapped around her chest, giving her a swelling sense of satisfaction.

Bai Tan probably saw it too. She nestled into Gu Zhu’s shoulder and neck, her gaze upwards, always gentle and focused. Her voice was close to Gu Zhu’s ear with a hint of a smile. “Besides watching meteors, next time we can go to the beach to see the bioluminescent sea. If we’re lucky, maybe we can even see a moonbow together.”

Both the bioluminescent sea and the moonbow required extremely strict conditions—the perfect timing, location, and people. Gu Zhu had seen pictures of the bioluminescent sea online: countless glowing, blue-light-emitting plankton would gather on the beach with the crashing waves, forming large patches of blue light that looked like the Milky Way had flowed down to Earth in the dark of night.

Back then, she was a naive person of action, living in a small coastal town. She would secretly sneak out late at night when Chang Yuehua wasn’t paying attention. She’d stand alone on the beach for a long time, looking out at the sea, but as expected, she never saw the spectacle, not even as the first light of dawn appeared on the horizon.

Later, as she grew older and learned that there were only a handful of coastal areas in the world where this phenomenon occurred, she stopped hoping.

Miracles would not favor her life. This was a truth Gu Zhu had gradually come to accept. But now, listening to Bai Tan’s hopeful words, she suddenly felt the urge to pursue it again.

“Have you ever seen a moonbow?” Gu Zhu turned her face and suddenly asked. “When it’s near or at a full moon, a moonbow can appear when a very bright moonlight hits the right amount of water droplets in the air. Have you ever seen one?”

Bai Tan was a little surprised by her understanding of natural phenomena. She suddenly realized that the seemingly cold and indifferent Gu Zhu had a much greater desire to explore the world than she had imagined. She looked at the curiosity in Gu Zhu’s eyes—that longing for a world outside of textbooks—which carefully revealed a little of what was truly in her heart.

“I have,” Bai Tan said, recalling the only time she had seen a moonbow. The shock and awe of looking up by chance and being unable to look away still seemed to linger in her heart. “On the plateau of Nagqu in Tibet, it had rained that day. The surroundings were very vast, and the air was exceptionally clean. Beautiful agate-like lakes were embedded in the grasslands. When night fell, people outside the yurts were drinking highland barley wine and singing Tibetan songs. And in the sky, a very large, very round moon hung low, and behind it, a rainbow arched across the sky.”

It was a romantic night straight out of a movie. It was Bai Tan’s seventeenth birthday and her first solo trip.

Imagining the scene as Bai Tan described it, Tibet was like a sacred place that held a special meaning for many people. Seventeen-year-old Gu Zhu was sitting in the back seat of the car. The open window allowed her to hear the sound of the wind rustling through the bamboo forest nearby. Listening to Bai Tan’s experiences, her soul couldn’t help but drift to that very distant place.

“150 days.”

The person next to her suddenly said a number. Gu Zhu blinked, her floating thoughts quietly returning to reality.

“When you turn eighteen, let’s go travel together. Let’s go see the world!”

Gu Zhu’s language skills were not very good. Her words tended to be concise and factual. Fortunately, she could answer most exams in the form of an argumentative essay, which prevented her from losing too many points. If one day she had to write a narrative essay, her score would probably drop significantly.

But at this moment, a sentence she had read at some point suddenly flashed in her mind. She remembered it was written by a famous poet named Hai Zi:

—You came to the world just to see the sun,

and to walk on the street with the one you love.

Eighteen felt so far away. Gu Zhu had secretly looked forward to it for countless months and years, but now that it was a countdown in “days,” it still felt too long.

She was already impatient to explore the world with Bai Tan.

…

After the college entrance exam, they returned to normal class schedules. After a short holiday, everyone was happy and excited to see each other again.

In another month, the real summer vacation would begin. This would be their last summer vacation in high school, and their last month of peace. When they entered their third year of high school, the real battle would begin. Perhaps because they were so affected by the recent exam, there was a sense of mutual appreciation among them.

The class atmosphere was lively. Even Luo Minmin, who always had a sharp tone with Chang Ru, was much nicer to her. The occasional playful attempts to trip her up were now more like her pouncing on her, pretending to choke her but not actually doing it, which made people laugh.

Even though Luo Minmin still flitted around the classroom like a social butterfly, Gu Zhu noticed some clues in the occasional look of loss on her face.

Luo Minmin had probably made up her mind to change classes in her third year. Sure enough, when she returned to her seat, she lay on her open book, looked at Gu Zhu for a long time, and slowly said, “It’s so sad to think that I won’t be able to see this face so favored by the Creator anymore.”

Gu Zhu put down the book she was reading and turned sideways. “Have you really thought about it?”

Luo Minmin pressed her whole face against the book, only her back of the head with a braid facing Gu Zhu, nodding. “Yeah, I thought about it for a long time. I feel that instead of wasting time on something I’m not talented at, I should focus on a direction where I can put in the effort. Who knows, maybe I’ll turn things around and get into the university I want to go to?”

Gu Zhu pursed her lips in a slightly gloomy way and didn’t reply for a moment. In this class, she and Luo Minmin had known each other the longest, and she was one of the few people who didn’t dislike her personality. It would be a little sad if they had to be in different classes.

Luo Minmin looked up and saw her rare expression. She suddenly let out a laugh. “Oh my god! My Zhu-zi is finally showing this expression for me! I, Luo Minmin, am a glorious loser!”

Gu Zhu was comforted by her funny expression. She felt that Luo Minmin had a great personality—the kind that made people envious. She would get angry, she would cry when she was sad, and she would laugh when she was happy. She would think of others, and she would also genuinely like herself. She truly felt that being friends with Luo Minmin was a very lucky thing.

“If you ever need me, don’t be a stranger.” Gu Zhu looked at herself. Compared to Luo Minmin’s biased care for her, all she could offer was this.

“Hey, I won’t! I haven’t even thanked you for helping me find those notes last time. I went through them a few times during the short holiday and got a good grasp of the second-year liberal arts content before I talked to my dad. My dad finally agreed and said he’d find me a tutor for the summer vacation. In short, you helped me a lot!” Luo Minmin said, sitting up. She suddenly said in a secretive tone, “You know what? I saw a meteor one night! I secretly made a wish, so I’m definitely going to have good luck!”

Gu Zhu was stunned when she heard this. She asked in surprise, “A meteor?”

“Yeah! It must have been the night of the first day of the exam. You know our apartment is on the thirteenth floor of our building, right? I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and I was so out of it that I made a wrong turn and went to the balcony. I almost walked into the glass door. It startled me awake, and when I looked up, I saw a meteor streak right past me!”

“What do you call that if not luck?”

It was indeed luck. The meteor that they had waited for all night on the mountain was seen by someone who was half-asleep. Gu Zhu was speechless for a moment. On one hand, she was happy for Luo Minmin, but on the other, she felt regretful again that she and Bai Tan hadn’t seen the meteor shower.

It turned out the weather report hadn’t lied to them. There really was a meteor shower that night, but they just didn’t wait long enough and went home.

And the reason they went home was actually her.

Gu Zhu couldn’t stay out for long. Even though Gu Baozhi had told her she wouldn’t be back that night, the nerve that had been tied up for so long already had a habit. As soon as a certain time passed, her brain automatically activated the “go home” function.

She thought about the girl who was happily observing the sky through the small astronomical telescope that night, excitedly sharing her knowledge of astronomy and her hopeful expression for the meteor shower. She felt a belated sense of sadness.

It was as if she had personally shattered someone else’s beautiful dream. The guilt would uncontrollably spread through her just thinking about it.

The class bell rang. It was chemistry class. Li Jiajia brought a set of chemistry lab equipment for an experiment on the reaction between sodium hydroxide solution and copper sulfate solution. Li Jiajia loved to turn questions into practical experiments, as she felt it helped students remember them more firmly.

“We have already demonstrated this experiment before. This time, we’ll let interested students come up and try it themselves. Feel free to come up and participate.”

Gu Zhu watched the student who went up. The copper sulfate solution was dripped into a test tube containing the sodium hydroxide solution, generating a blue, flocculent precipitate. She stared at the blue liquid and suddenly had an idea.

After class, she and Bai Tan walked together along the shaded path to the small convenience store. When they went to buy pen refills the night before, the young shopkeeper had specifically told them to come by at noon, saying she had something good to share with them.

It was a small cake that said, “Happy Every Day.”

Seeing their puzzled expressions, the shopkeeper lit the candles in broad daylight and celebrated an unconventional birthday. “To celebrate the 3-year anniversary of our little convenience store!”

Not wanting to be a damper, they clapped enthusiastically. “Happy birthday! Get rich, get rich, get rich!”

The shopkeeper gave them a thumbs-up. “On the right track!”

After sharing the birthday cake and eating together, Gu Zhu suddenly stopped on the way back. In Bai Tan’s puzzled gaze, she suddenly said, “Pick me up at the lab tonight!”

Support A Cold and Aloof Top Student Is Relied Upon